MSP430-RF2500 Hello World

Ratterduino - (Hopefully) the End of the Rat as We Know It

2011-08-03T23:36:00.000-07:00

Okay, that's my calling - ridding the world of the rat - put it on a pedestal like smallpox, keep it in the lab, etc. But, the fields and cities are out of bounds. (Mice too - coz they can evolve into rats super fast if rats are displaced (I think))

The solution - autonomous robots that look like rats, that roam, have sensors (odour, hi-res cameras, audio) and will root out and destroy the rats they encounter.

The Microchip Menu

2010-09-19T15:13:00.000-07:00

They already know where you want to install MPLAB - C: ! No choice at all! WTH?

Why You Should Not Buy the Samsung EPIC 4G Phone from Sprint

2010-09-06T23:40:00.001-07:00

1) After searching, I could not find a way to capture Audio. With my Moto W490, it was 2 menus and about 5 button presses in all, and I thought THAT one was a crappy phone

2) I don't know how to terminate an application. There doesn't seem to be a way.

3) This whole idea of a gmail phone is a bit risky. On gmail, you enter a strong password each time. But, with your phone, once you've set your account up, anyone can get into your gmail if they know the 4 digit pin to unlock your phone. Nuts!

4) You send 2 emails each time you send one from your phone. Go figure. Obviously the geniuses at Google don't work in the marketing department.

5) I could not find a way to use the "Call phone" feature that gmail has. Obviously, the geniuses at Google don't work in the marketing department. If the phone is being marketed as a gmail phone or a google phone, you'd expect them to delight the customer with this thing up and ready. Go figure.

6) I cannot select text (like a phone number) in the Email application or the gmail app.

7) When using the gmail app, you don't get email address completion - which is ridiculous - on the PC, if you're using gmail, that's one of the best things about it. WTF? Really? WTF are they trying to prove to the world?

8) In the mail application, the delete button doesn't delete the email. Go figure. Should you make your stuff intuitively easy to use or what?

9) Sprint cannot import your contacts from your SIM card you used with an older phone.

10) After umpteen attempts, this phone has failed to pair with my Plantronics 233 bluetooth headset. With my Moto W490, it takes about 5 seconds. Also, the EPIC SPH-D700 doesn't find my Moto when looking for devices. It looks like it can only pair with Sprint devices. WTF?

11) It's not clear how to sign out of the email. I've got gmail and Email running and now, each one has an orgasm when a new email arrives.

12) With the gmail app, you can't zoom in. You can with the Email app though.

13) The phone is delivered to you (if you're as unlucky as me) with the USB Debugging enabled. Somehow, this doesn't prevent Linux from accessing the SD card. But, Windows has no clue what to do unless you put on your geek had and go into Notifications and turn USB Debugging off, so that, next time you plug in the cable, you can select the Mass Storage option.

14) There is no way to rightclick. With the advanced technology available, you'd expect they'd have figured out a way (like Apple) to use multitouch to implement this, but no. In fact, it seems like multitouch only applies to zooming.

15) Blogspot does not work cleanly. I could not tap in the post area and start entering text. It was terrible.

Go iPhone guys! Go iPhone!

Microchip Delivers Where TI Fails

2010-08-28T13:28:00.000-07:00

Finally, I achieve my wireless dream, with some help of course:)

In TI's defense, it must be noted that TI's target board consisting of the MCU, radio, crystal and chip-antenna is about the size of MCP's radio board. MCP is using a trace antenna, then the radio board goes into a daughter pigtail that plugs into a full-fledged development board. Unseemly, but functional.

Microchip Quality Policy

2010-08-22T15:21:00.001-07:00

Do they have one? Listen to this presentation by GK and you really wonder :

http://techtrain.microchip.com/webseminars/ArchivedDetail.aspx?Active=147

Microchip Thermosat Example

2010-08-22T13:24:00.000-07:00

Okay, they show you how you can take an 80's mechanical thermostat and put their parts in. But, why not go all the way and put a link in explaining how you can add ethernet or Wi-Fi connectivity so you can monitor and set this thing from anywhere in the world? How to set a 6 digit PIN, etc.

If you're out for the day, you sure want to turn the device off (or set the target so that you sae energy) and you want the thing up and running 10 minutes before you return home - so you'd ideally like to send the thing an email over the internet (how do you do a secure transaction unless you have the ability to put an embedded HTTPS server into your thermostat?) before you leave work.

Why not put together a demo showing how you can accomplish all this with products readily available from MCP and give the source code away and show people how to hack it and include the cost of developing this in the cost of the product? Some people see things as they are and ask why; I see things as they may be and ask why not.

What Microchip Doesn't Teach You

2010-08-22T12:46:00.000-07:00

Okay, they have a PIC that you can directly connect to an RF45 ethernet jack. Nice. Now, what you want to do is go wireless. Or, even before that, how about putting an end-to-end demo like this :

Requirements - laptop or desktop, router or modem with multiple ethernet ports, demo board

Now, how do you connect this demo board to the router and get something to look at on your PC. Where is the source code so you can customize it?

Ultimately, any application has to have a wireless backup just for security reasons. You simply cannot depend on a wire that people can snap. Always build in as much autonomy as you can. Energy harvesting is definitely a plus. This is why TI is ahead of Microchip and will continue to remain so.

Customers

2010-01-13T21:54:00.001-08:00

Maker,

Thanks for the info. I would like to get this setup working in our lab in x y so that we can do a better job of debugging yield issues. How do I get these boards and software?

I2C and SPI with Arduino

2009-09-13T09:37:00.000-07:00

Didn't look deeply into SPI, but, considering they're both supported by the AVR feature set (look at the datasheet on Atmel.com), it ought to be simple. The thing about Arduino is that there are only so many pins available for expansion - so you have to give something up. My question is - WTH do you have to give up analog pins - why not digital? Anyhow, here's a guy who's been through it :

http://www.neufeld.newton.ks.us/electronics/?p=241

Mission Impossible

2009-09-09T22:29:00.001-07:00

Alright, I've had it. I need this gadget now. This is no simple MCU hack of course but..

See what you buy and where you prefer to buy it. Have a bar code reader on your fridge and check items in. Have one on your pantry door as well. Get an idea of the frequency at which you buy the stuff (so you don't have to install weight sensors:) On the other hand, you could check stuff out of the fridge as well - to keep track of usage. Anyway, bottom line is, your fridge will inform your gadget that you need item x.

Then, in the course of your weekly movement, you gadget will alert you when you're close to your chosen store. Sometimes, taking the right exit makes all the difference in gaining that extra half hour of life to do with as you please.

This is going to take GPS and a small form factor PC. But it will be done!

Glitches Explained

2009-08-31T22:07:00.001-07:00

Turned out it was the "noise" (in this case, deterministic unwanted patterns on some key voltages) in the noisy testmode in which there was a lot of switching going on. Thing of my chip as a spider on a thin web - the thin web is the supply and ground connections. Now, the spider has a fan that's out of control - and that keeps bouncing it all around by blowing air around uncontrollably. The solution, in this case, increase the moment of inertia of the spider by increasing it's mass - here, add bypass caps between supply and ground. Electrically, what you're doing to help out the spider is putting a sink that'll make the air the fan is blowing recirculate back to itself - so there can't be any uncontrollable bouncing. Clear analogy ja?:)

Interestingly enough - on the node where the noisy switching signal was being muxed out - if I connected a long cable, I could make things more noisy - and get the glitches back. The extra current pulled from the supply in transient to work the capacitance of this cable was enough.

Glitches Galore

2009-08-29T10:42:00.000-07:00

Damn! The thrill of getting something done evaporates when you see that it works most of the time, but there are cases when it doesn't. Tricky glitches screw you up one in 5 times and that's enough to make it look like crap. When it's all digital (or supposed to be) you expect stuff to work 100% of the time. Take this example. My chip takes a pulse to increment the register pointer. We use a board with push-buttons to generate these pulses. To go from state 0 to state 15, you hit the button 15 times. With software, it's trivial to write a function that takes an argument and goes to a specified state in a jiffy. Problem is, there are times it's off by 1 state - it sometimes rolls over into state 16. You get a feel for the mountain of work involved in testing something before you can sell it. Nothing like having many hands here to make work light. Eyeballs too of course - it's the information age.

In this case, it's looking like the assumption of 100% digital is incorrect. One of the states sends a rather noisy signal to one of the pins and that might mess up my setup that has lots of parasitic inductance in the leads - rather than transmission lines to convey the signals cleanly. Probably a signal integrity thing here. Never had to deal with that before.

Maker Makes It

2009-08-27T21:44:00.000-07:00

An end to end solution. That was fun - developing the software and hardware and delivering a complete solution - giving a demo. All in a day's work. Here you see the Arduino mating with a custom board delivered by ExpressPCB.com and assembled by me with parts from Digi-Key. Systems, here we come!

Of course, this is not the end. It's something I can use, but not something everyone can depend on, without doling out more TLC than they care to. Packaging is required - we need headers on the custom board to mate it with the Duemilanove with minimal effort. Plug and play is the name of the game. Anyone know how to launch a program on Win or Unix automatically when you plug something into USB? How does the PC know what you plugged in and what to launch? Good q.

Sub-Microsecond Delays with Arduino

2009-08-25T21:19:00.000-07:00

It's possible!

The Arduino delayMicroseconds() function creates the shortest delay possible from within the Arduino language. The shortest delay possible is about 2 us (microseconds). Not true - I've tried and the shortest is about 4.5 us.

For shorter delays use assembly language call 'nop' (no operation). Each 'nop' statement executes in one machine cycle (at 16 MHz) yielding a 62.5 ns (nanosecond) delay.

__asm__("nop\n\t");

__asm__("nop\n\t""nop\n\t""nop\n\t""nop\n\t"); \\ gang them up like this

Really, why not a loop?

Dat's vy :

If you write a C loop, it will change into NOP instructions and compares/increments for counters. So your timing will be off. Unrolling loops is a standard practice to get rid of the compares/increments.

Verdict :

You also need to know stuff on this page :

http://arduino.cc/en/Reference/PortManipulation

If you use digitalWrite(), a single write takes 4.5 us to execute. But using

PORTB = PORTB & B11101111;
to set pin 12 low, with no intentional delay, I see a delay of about 400 ns. So much for being able to get 62.5 ns! If I put in 4 NOPs, I get the delay increasing to 620 ns. So we're on!

Space Left on Your Board - What to Tack On

2009-08-25T18:11:00.000-07:00

Put some 0603 or 0805 land connected to some large pads that you can solder wires to. Same with some SOT23's since you can connect decent robust transistors to those. Then, you're all set to blue wire your board and cover up your mistakes.

National Trips Up TI

2009-08-25T15:16:00.000-07:00

LM2611 needs a min of 2.7V, didn't want that to limit the min VDD at which I could talk to my part, so I run if off my 6.6V rail that the TPS61085 is putting out. Not sure where my big mistake is, but the joy of getting the 61085 working after realizing that NXP puts stripes on the CATHODE of its Schottky diodes unlike the rest of the world soon evaporated when I saw what the LM2611 was doing to the boost output. That's a big lesson - you need to think about high current issues - a charge pump is probably way better off here in terms of working right off - especially when you've got a fixed voltage rail. What was I thinking? I thought - hey, a Qpump needs a regulated input, I'm better off with a switcher. What I didn't tell National in their feedback form was that the Cuk is pulling about 1A out of the boost. The table is getting hot!

I am using the LM2611A driven by an on-board boost (TPS61085) to realize a -5V voltage. I am using components according to the datasheet Figure 1. The boost output is correct when the LM2611 is disabled - it is 6.6V solid. However, when the LM2611 is enabled, there is large ripple on the boost output and the feedback node voltage of the LM is about 0.4V and the output is about 2V. The boost output average value is still 6.6V when the boost is overcompensated - with a 0 ohm and 1 uF cap on COMP. With 51k and 1 nF, the ripple is about 10V p2p. There is no other load on either the boost of the Cuk. Any help I can get in resolving this issue will be greatly appreciated.

Looking at the LM2611 datasheet - it looks like the startup current (despite what is claimed as soft-start) is way up there in the 1.5A range. So it could be that the 61085 is cycling in and out of UVLO all the time. So nothing really works. I wonder if a charge pump would really be better of here - if you can find a low current part, go with it.

Their response :
__________________

The issue is you have a boost regulator (TPS61085) is driving a dynamic load (the LM2611). So first you should probably put a filter between them - for example a cap to further reduce any existing ripple from the boost regulator. The other thing to check is the inductor you've selected for the boost regulator. Depending on the current load of the LM2611, it will also determine the value of inductor of the TPS61085. Also, you probably should first check the LM2611A circuit by itself, with a test bench power supply, and then you can see thecurrent levels you can expect (both average current and the transients). From then you can optimize the boost regulator circuit inductor and other parts (output cap, etc) appropriately.
_____________________

What they missed (failing to see things from the customer's point of view can sometimes be fatal. But, a big outfit like NSM is probably safe) :

1) I've done my layout already. If they know something like this probably won't work, why not specify the source better on their datasheet?

2) Who really has the luxury of trying out different caps and inductors? That's nuts - this is not like running spice on your ckt.

My mistake was in not using jumpers to isolate the different modules and allowing test-sources (clean, expensive) for verifying the modules. What I did try was to force the 6.6V output of the TI boost and see if that helped - but I was forcing through a really long cable, so it probably had almost no effect.

Any, end of the story is that most of the bench triple supplies have a negative supply that you mostly can't use for anything else, so all I had to do - and here, my great idea of putting down some non-standard pads at the last minute really helped me out - I was able to put down a 2N7002, a resistor and some wires do give the MCU more control. Stuff works pretty well actually.

Maker Breaks It

2009-08-24T23:24:00.000-07:00

Not only did my on-board boost not work (TPS61085), but the current it pulled from the supply was so weird in transient that it was the least I could do to 1) Turn off power, 2) Take that chip out. I saw straightaway some mistakes I had made in my design and approach :

1) I had left the FREQ pin floating. Wonder how you catch stuff like that without an LVS?
2) I didn't put in a jumper on the supply to the boost - I should have made it easy to cut this thing out - as it turned out I had to use the heat stream to get the chip off and there were still problems after that.
3) Shame on me - knowing about the backgate diode and having PMOS pullups, I didn't put in a jumper to cut the PMOS pullup out - now that backgate diode is clamping on of my comm pins - but, somehow, though the scope doesn't pick it up, the interface still works.
4) I should have put a jumper cutting the inverting boost off from the output of the boost. Childishly simple, but it's amazing what you can not-think of when you're under pressure. Lesson - think modular.
5) I should have put more pads on the board to let me solder some wires to drive these functions from the outside in the event they didn't work. Lesson - think modular and what-if!
6) In soldering (assembly), I should have thought modular too - start off with the boost and see if it's working.

Weird, with an input supply of 3.5, and the chip removed, and supply passing through the boost inductor (3 uH) and then going into the Schottky, the other side of the Schottky diode was 0.45V. Wha?

Also, the value for the FB node advertised on the TPS61085 datasheet is 1.24V, I was seeing a 0.6V that scaled with supply. What's going on?

Atleast I didn't get 2A of current when I turned on the supply:)

Otherwise, the interface works - the Maker has landed - in one week, a GUI running on a PC with it's own serial interface code, talking to the MCU and getting ACKs, MCU commanding the chip in test-mode. Not bad. I feels good.

Arrays in AHK

2009-08-23T12:52:00.000-07:00

To learn how to work with arrays in AHK, read

1) Help docs for StringSplit (tells you the convention - there's nothing set in stone, but you want to let var0 have the number of elements and var1,..,varN have the actual data

2) This great post from meister Infogulch : [lib] pgArray - A solution for Manipulating AHK's Arrays v2

3) Look at the help on Arrays - you can search the Index for that.

To create a string from an array, you're looking at something really nasty like

string =
Loop %var0%
{
string .= var%A_Index%
}

I know, you wish perl was easier to use on Windows, you with AHK was more like perl. But, what can you expect for $0.0? It's a great tool for the price.

Hello World Arduino GUI

2009-08-23T10:02:00.000-07:00

Status :

Basic GUI in AHK to talk to MCU - done
String manipulation to give user visual feedback on chip state - pending

Biggest headache was talking to the serial port in Windows. Sure, there are 1000's of GUI programs out there, but what happens when you want to write a program where you can push a button and get data out? Now you need a lite solution. Luckily, the dons on the AHK forum have cooked something up that calls the buildComDCB DLL from M$. It's not a 'lite' solution, but...

Now I'm faced with a quandary - how do I process data - it was a snap in Perl, but AHK's emphasis is not on data manipulation, so it doesn't give you 'lite' methods :(

Leave Well Alone

2009-08-21T22:04:00.000-07:00

I had given up on my USB/serial at home after my outfit's MCU dev board and the MSP430 failed to be installed properly. Learnt later that both used direct USB and I was always pointing windows to the virtual COM port drivers. I try half heartedly to plug in my Arduino today and - pleasant happenings - it works without me having to do a thing. There are some things you have to give M$ credit for. BTW, writing to the COM port from Autohotkey or anywhere (including MS-DOS command prompt) is the last link in my chain. There seems to be a ray of hope thanks to this post which I intend to scrutinize minutely :

Seial (COM) Port Console Script

Arduino Trumps All

2009-08-20T18:42:00.000-07:00

Gave up on my own outfit's microcontroller after the code they have on the website failed to compile on their own assembler. Tough one. Arduino is super easy to use. Great job by the azzuri on this one. The IAR rep who called me to follow up on my download of the kickstart version was also amazed.

One disappointment was that, despite running off a 16 MHz clock, the Arduino cannot put out a pulse narrower than 4 us on one of its output ports. Might need something fancier than digitalWrite to accomplish that.

Pololu's GUI + Serial Tutorial

2009-07-25T09:05:00.001-07:00

Be a power hacker :

http://www.pololu.com/docs/0J4

RTFM Works

2009-06-21T09:52:00.000-07:00

Last gasp accomplishment for the day - Friday. The inhouse software guru spoke - it's just RTFM. Use Zterm on the Mac to connect to the radio. Before that, open up the manual for Roving Networks' radio that Sparkfun is using. I keep claiming to want to be in RF, how come I never did that? Hmmm..

Anyhow, in this case, the Mac never did pair with the modem - needed default passkey, not no passkey. So, Igoe should really have said to RTFM.

What I have noticed with Zterm is this - you can power up the modem and use Zterm to talk to the modem in command mode - as long as TX/RX are not connected to the AVR. If they are, no hope.

Then, if you have connected TX/RX to the AVR and are running the monski pong sensor reader program, you can't get the sensor values - no matter how many /r's you send - which is exactly what the Processing sketch does. Why? If I run the Processing monski_pong_handshake sketch, stuff works fine. And then, once the sketch is up and running, I can interrupt it and go into Zterm and continue reading sensor values using Zterm. What's going on??

Whoops, and just like that, after my friend returns, stuff behaves. I can go into CMD mode arbitrarily, and even read sensor data through Zterm. The trick seems to be to wait a few seconds after powering up the Arduino setup. After that, the Mac has paired with the device and made the serial port available. Of course, once the Mac has seen the device, the serial port is always available. But, if you try connecting to it 5 seconds after you power up the bluetooth modem, you're out of luck.

Wireless Monski Pong

2009-06-19T16:06:00.000-07:00

Alright Mr. Igoe, this is the first one that doesn't work.

When I power up the setup, the LED near the RTS pin blinks (keeps) about 2x a second.

If the MAC has already paired with the device once, then, if you run the program in processing, the LED near the CTS pin goes solid on.

Then, if you stop the program, (it does draw the screen BTW, but no action), the LED near CTS goes off, and the one near RTS starts blinking at 1 Hz.

Very hard to debug this one on the MAC - how to you know what's showing up on the serial port?

A general question about the Arduino board - are the RX/TX pins on the header connected to the same ones that go to the serial-USB adapter chip?

So Much for Mac's Users Friendliness

2009-06-19T10:04:00.000-07:00

I still remember a show on TV 20 years ago touting the Mac's user friendliness with a PC example - "abort,retry, fail?". Here's what I got from the Mac Mini today when I tried to run Arduino :

uncaught exception in main method:
java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: /Useres/xx/arduino-0015/Arduio
15.app/Contents/Resources/java/librxtxSerial.jnilib: no suitable image
found. Did find:
/Users/xx/arduino-0015/Arduino15.app/Contents/Resources/java/librxtxSerial.jnilib:
no matching architecture in universal wrapper

Leaves me helpless.

Mission A.d : Push Button, Send LED

2009-06-14T17:57:00.000-07:00

Accomplishes a Hello World version of Igoe's CatCam program. I can push a button on my Arduino board connected to the Mac and get my PC to send a mail to my gmail. Will post the code soon.

With the help of a software guru of course :)

Basically, following the lead from Tom Igoe :

App running on the Arduino is very simple and just services a pushbuttom press and a very simple handshake with the PC over the serial port, which also serves in the debounce (PC implements a 2 second delay. Yuck!)

PC runs a very simple program (in Processing code) to monitor the serial port and look for the secret byte. When it gets it, it fetches a PHP page from the webserver.

Webserver, services that request by sending a mail using the simple port 25 protocal at mail.google that doesn't require authentication.

Mail will be in your spam folder in your gmail because it looks like an obvious forgery.

VDIG Mirror

2009-06-13T22:37:00.000-07:00

The whole setup - Arduino + processing is quite unreliable - no offense to the nice people who've put it together. It lacks the "heavyweight" quality.

Anyhow, for those seeking VDIG - which lets you generate quicktime output from you webcam, here's a mirror:

http://www.eden.net.nz/7/20071008/

Courtesy of Tim Molteno. Hero!

One glaring error by Tom Igoe :

Pg 298 - he's put "myCam" before width in his call to Capture. How????????

The Best Apache PHP Setup Guide in the World

2009-06-13T11:53:00.000-07:00

Here :

http://www.reaper-x.com/2007/09/24/installing-and-setting-up-apache-22-series-with-php-5-on-windows/

But, this is a mistake to install just Apache. Later you'll be installing PHP, etc. What you want to install is XAMPP. Check that out!

Arduino Igoe Monski Pong Prequel

2009-06-04T15:00:00.000-07:00

Code for the book Making Things Talk is available online :

http://www.makershed.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=0596510519

Now, code for the example on Pg 59 is in the file called sensor_reader.

Set Realterm to ASCII to see a presentable display. I used just resistors (no flex) and moved the probe (analog Pin 0 or 1) around VDD and GND to see that max code is 1023 and min is 0. Tells you it's a 10 bit ADC - neat. The last character appears weird it must be said.

With a 1k to 5V and 10k to GND divider, I see codes ranging from 931 to 929 - 2 LSB's of p2p noise. About 10 mV of noise there p2p. That's within the ADC bandwidth. And what is that? Need to check the datasheet there. Gives an idea of the KT/C noise and the active device noise of the ADC? p2p noise is about 6x the rms noise?

Arduino Serial Success

2009-06-04T00:01:00.000-07:00

The big tip - screw what Igoe says - don't even look at Putty. Putty was busy with I don't know what when I clicked "Open" - not even a peep.

Go straight for Realterm - probably the best serial comm tool ever written.

Goes without saying - you can't have Realterm looking at your port and use the same port to write to the arduino simultaneously. You'll have to close the port in Realterm first - just press the button.

Arduino Interrupt Handling

2009-06-03T22:28:00.000-07:00

This stuff worked very cleanly in MSP430. Problem is that people are doing a lot more basic stuff with Arduino at the moment so interrupts don't seem to have caught on just yet.

Anyhow, here's what I was trying to do :

Push the button and get the uC to play the Melody. Didn't work, so then I say just blink the LED. That also doesn't work.

This much I see :

(stuff you have to know is that every program in Arduino has a "setup()" and a "loop()")

I light up the pin 13 LED within loop.
Then, I set the ISR to clear the LED, delay and the light it up again.

Doesn't work - all I see is it clears the LED. Come on, this is really simple.

Then, Lefty tells me that you can't use delay within your ISR.

WTH!!

The goal, BTW, is to get through Igoe's book. Great guy - saw him at Maker Faire. Seems to have done everything I want to do. Now, while the economy's got me down is the time.

Anyhow, 11:35 at night, nailed the interrupt thing - can play Melody at the press of a buton. Now, to try out one serial example from Igoe's book and call it a day.

Arduino Here I Come

2009-06-03T22:24:00.000-07:00

Okay, MSP430 sucks, Atmel rules. Yesterday was day one. BTW, Atmel and Arduino rule the Maker Faire (no one mentions Atmel of course). I asked on Dallas guy at the MF if he's considered MSP430 and he said no. No way.

Anyhow, we put Arduino on a Compaq running XP yesterday and the performance was pretty crappy. You click the Tool menu and wait about half a minute.

At some point, we're going to get some smart CS people from Eastern Europe to fix this. Italy doesn't seem to cut it yet.

User Guide

2009-03-11T14:25:00.000-07:00

Thanks, that helps. One thought - is there a compiler feature that can tell the user what clocks will be active with the program he has written and what current consumption he can expect? Users, like me, who are novices are more interested in creating apps than in optimizing them. Later, when we start thinking about optimization, we would want to know where the ducks are to shoot. Such a feature in the compiler might make the MSP430 more marketable. It might already exist.

Replying to:

Execution will suspend immediately. Code execution will pickup immediately after the device is awakened. So the lines of code will execute after the device wakes back up. The operating modes are described in Chapter 2 of the Family User s Guide. You can download this from the following link:

http://focus.ti.com/mcu/docs/mcuprodtechdoc.tsp?sectionId=95&tabId=1201&familyId=342&techDoc=6&documentCategoryId=6

Please let me know if you need further assistance.

Regards,

If you have further questions please reply to this email. And see the MCU Knowledge Base located at http://www-k.ext.ti.com/sc/technical-support/mcu-kbase

-----Original Message-----
Sent: 3/9/2009 05:45:43 PM
To: support@ti.com
Subject: eZ430-RF2500 demo app question

I am using this product from TI. My question is about the MSP430. What happens when the following line is encountered by the execution unit?
__bis_SR_register(LPM3_bits+GIE); // LPM3 with interrupts enabled

does it suspend operation immediately and go into a low power mode or does it finish execution of the current program before going into LPM3?

If it suspends execution immediately, how does it make sense to suspend execution during a program containing :

SMPL_Ioctl( IOCTL_OBJ_RADIO, IOCTL_ACT_RADIO_SLEEP, "" );
__bis_SR_register(LPM3_bits+GIE); // LPM3 with interrupts enabled
SMPL_Ioctl( IOCTL_OBJ_RADIO, IOCTL_ACT_RADIO_AWAKE, "" );

or even :

while (SMPL_SUCCESS != SMPL_Link(&linkID1))
{
__bis_SR_register(LPM3_bits + GIE); // LPM3 with interrupts enabled
BSP_TOGGLE_LED1();
BSP_TOGGLE_LED2();
}

In these examples, we say go into LPM3 and then we ask it to do other things. Does execution of the program pick up where it left off? Is there an online location I can find answers to such questions?

Surprise! P1DIR and Port_1 ISR

2009-03-09T21:22:00.000-07:00

You can't use the push button on P1.2 of the eZ430-RF2500 to generate an interrupt if you have bit 2 of P1DIR set. Nice.

And, BSP_init() - though supposedly a utility, will mess this up. So watch out.

Stage 3 - Day 2 ATR

2009-03-01T21:55:00.000-08:00

Okay, the documentation is horrendous, but, still, kudos to the TI team for atleast putting something together that works. I think they have what it takes to send TXN soaring. But, it'll have to be a team effort.

In the demo app for the eZ430-RF2500, they're using a timer interrupt to wake the chip up and run the join-network, etc. Okay, figured that part out. Also, there's a lot of undocumented stuff scattered around like

__bis_SR_register(LPM3_bits + GIE); // LPM3 with interrupts enabled

without it being really easy to find out what the effect of this will be. Now, if they had a PDF of the source code with hyperlinks... ummm.

Stage 3 - Push Button on End Device Toggles Access-Point LED

2009-02-28T14:58:00.000-08:00

Turning out to be not so simple as the demo code for the eZ430-RF2500 is famously unmaintainable. Wish some of those folks had been exposed to some structured programming concepts. How's someone to take this :

BSP_EXIT_CRITICAL_SECTION(intState);
}
}
}
}
}

[Wince:(] I'd rather see :

} // if( SMPL_R..
} // for
} // if( sPeer..

} // while(1)
} // main

And it gets better - function definitions without any clues about what the h they do, code snippets in the main() that really should be separate functions... If we don't need to know what they do, why not put them in the .h files? Not the best way to sell MSP430.

Stage 2 - Push Button Toggles LED on Same Board

2009-02-28T13:50:00.000-08:00

Done. There is no quick way. You have to read a few posts and a bit of the datasheets. Nothing like being able to delegate:)

Now, for the big kahuna - probably can just scale down the temp sensor monitor.

Stage 1 - Flashing LED on Target Board

2009-02-28T12:15:00.000-08:00

Found a thread that helped. I want to first use the pushbutton to do something on the target board itself before going wireless. Before that, Mann muss first ensure he can talk to the LED.

Fortunately, that's a piece of cake if you use the flashing_LED example by Dannenberg. You'll have to change #include "msp430.h" to #include "msp430x22x4.h" as in Adrian's example https://community.ti.com/forums/p/859/2554.aspx#2554. And, you'll have to ignore the warning that derivative and target don't match (MSP4301x11 vs 2x44 or something like that, allow it to continue)

But, moved the target board back to battery, and stuff works. A journey of a thousand miles, etc.

Wireless Hello World

2009-02-28T10:29:00.001-08:00

What I define as the hello-world of the wireless world. Press a button here, light up an LED there. Duke's teach-science project tells you how to do this with a 433 MHz link, but you need to hook stuff up with wires and a breadboard. Or you could buy a garage door opener. Or, just use the eZ430-RF2500 from TI and do a little programming.

My goal - push the button on the End-Device target board and light up the LED on the Access-Point board. It's not that trivial since you need to know a bit about the network protocol and such, but, atleast, no messy wires making a lab out of your house.

Access-Point - connected to PC through USB for power only. Awaiting a packet that tells it to toggle the LED status.

End-Device - connected to battery board. Polls (or awaits interrupt from) push button port to send a packet to the access-point with code indicating please-toggle-LED.

What's missing in TI documentation :

Block diagram of the eZ430-RF2500 - how is the MCU connected to the CC2500 - schematic diagram is overkill.

Resources :

SimpliciTI protocol overview

Custom USB Apps

2009-02-28T08:44:00.000-08:00

Answer to "How to tweak that app that runs on the PC?"

there is a new version of the sensor monitor for the eZ430-RF2500-SEH which includes the full source code and was built using free or open source software. this might be a good start for you:

It was developed using the open source Qt
cross-platform applications framework, QWT, and compiled using Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition, which are all freely available.

Hello World Done

2009-02-26T13:51:00.000-08:00

Took the out-of-box access point device (the one that's in the USB stick) and converted it into an end-device, did the opposite with the end device (one that's plugged into the battery board) and re-ran the demo sensor visualizer app.

This used section 10.2 of the SLAU227D app note (Feb 2009 revision).

I would reword some of it:

10.2 point # 2:

existing :

Select Open Existing Workspace, and browse for the demo application workspace (*.eww) file. The project is available on the CD or at http://www.ti.com/lit/zip/slac139.

Problem :

Windows needs to know that you want to look at extensions for Known File Types (once you've installed IAR, .eww is a known type - and so you will not see .eww, you will only see the other files that are .ewd .ewp (when you select All Files).

Preferred wording :

Select "Open Existing Workspace", and browse for the demo application file "eZ430-RF2500 Sensor Monitor Demo vX.YZ"

Point #4 :

Existing :

Select Project -> Debug in IAR to download...

Preferred :

Select Project -> Debug using the Project menu in IAR to download...

Point #6 :

Exsting :

Select Debug --> Stop Debugging exits the debug mode while leaving the target board executing code.

Preferred :

Select Debug --> Stop Debugging to exit the debug mode while allowing the target board to continue executing the program.

FET Vs IAR

2009-02-26T10:25:00.000-08:00

The Flash Emulation Tool costs $100. But, what does it get you over just the eZ430-RF2500 hardware? Is it only that you can protect the firmware with fuse-blow for production purposes?

How do I download code into the MCU from IAR? I don't see Project-> "Debug in IAR" in the IAR. Maybe that's a typo. Probably means "Project->Debug" in IAR.

In IAR Workbench, Unable to "Set as Active"

2009-02-26T10:18:00.000-08:00

Kudos : Brandon E

Problem : App note http://focus.ti.com/lit/ug/slau227d/slau227d.pdf says to right-click on "Access Point" project in IAR and select "Set as Active". But, that option is grayed out when I right click. Is there a physical difference between the access point board and the end device board? I switched them out of the box just to see if I could get the firmware download right as a hello-world example.

Solution : Is the Access Point project name already in bold? Yes? That means it's already active.

There is no physical difference between the boards. Behaviour is entirely dependent on the code.