A wide range of LaunchPad boards is manufactured by TI. These have different sizes, different microcontrollers, and different processing capabilities.

For information about the MSP-EXP430G2 TI Launchpad board, refer to the topic MSP-EXP430G2 Board in the basic section of TI Launchpad.

In order to write codes for various applications and to program the TI Launchpad boards, we require the Energia IDE. We can also use Code Composer Studio for the same.

The Energia IDE is available for download on the Energia website. Since Energia is an open-source, the IDE is available for free. You can download the latest version for your operating system from here.

Refer to the topic Using Energia IDE and Adding a new library to Energia IDE and using it in the basics section of TI Launchpad to learn how to use the Energia IDE.

In order to use the TI Launchpad boards with the Energia IDE, we need to connect the board to the machine (Laptop/PC) on which the Energia IDE is installed. The board needs to be connected using a USB cable designed for the board.

The driver will not install automatically when the board is connected to the computer/laptop through the USB cable.

The steps for installing the device driver are given below. Once the driver is installed, you can run the inbuilt blink program in the IDE to blink the on-board LED. You can refer this link to blink the on-board LED of your board.

In order to install the driver, the steps given below, need to be followed.

1. Connect the board to the computer/laptop using the USB cable. Windows will try to install the driver but will fail. You will see the following pop up on your screen.

2. Open the Device Manager from the control panel in your computer/laptop and look under the Other Devices. You will see an Unknown Device or MSP430 Application UART as shown in the image below.

3. Right-click on the MSP430 Application UART and click on the Update Driver Software option as shown below.

4. On completion of step 3, the Update Driver Software window shown in the image below will appear. Select the Browse My Computer For Driver Software option as shown below.

5. You can download the MSP430 Launchpad driver from here. 

You can visit this TI page and download the driver from there. You will find the driver under the title Software below the Related Products. Click on the MSP-EXP430G2 Launchpad Driver ZIP file under the Software title.

You can also download the driver from the attachments section given below.

Extract the downloaded zip file at a location of choice.

A window will appear wherein we can select the location from where the driver needs to be installed. See the image given below.

Select the Include subfolders option.

Using the browse option, select the Launchpad_Driver folder from the location where you have extracted the driver.

In the above-shown case, the driver was unzipped in the D drive in a folder named TI_Launchpad_MSP430G2. The driver zip file on unzipping had the folder name LaunchPad_Driver.

6. Click on Next after selecting the driver's folder. The computer/laptop will start installing the driver.

This step may take some time. Once the driver has been installed successfully, you will see a window as shown in the image below.

Click on close.

7. See the device manager again. The device listed as Unknown Device under Other devices will no longer be there. Instead, you will see a new device having the name of the board for which it was installed (Here MSP430 Application UART) listed under Ports (COM and LPT).

8. Now open the IDE. Open some example sketch or some new sketch. See under the tools tab. You will see the device installed in the Port option as shown below.

Also, select the board that you are using from the list of boards under the tools tab.

Also, select the "dslite" as the programmer from the list of programmers under the tools tab.

9. The device driver has been successfully installed and the board is ready to be used. Just open the sketch you want to run, or write an application sketch and upload it onto the board.

Word Of Caution: The latest version of the IDE (1.6.10E18) needs a few changes to be done in order to work with the MSP-EXP430G2553.

Follow the steps given below in order to overcome the issue.

1. copy <energia directory>\hardware\tools\DSLite\DebugServer\drivers\MSP430.dll to <energia directory>\hardware\tools\msp430\bin\

2. edit <energia directory>\hardware\energia\msp430\boards.txt an change the 2 occurrences of rf2500 with tilib

3. restart energia and you should be able to upload to the MSP-EXP430G2 with MSP430G2553.

(We found this solution on the 43oh forum and it is one that worked for us. Here is a link to the discussion on the topic: http://forum.43oh.com/topic/9848-energia-1610r18-windows-7-launchpad-msp430g2553-dont-load-sketch/ )