How to use motherboard MMB0 which ADS1298 plug into?

Zhaoting,

As the EVM is shipped from the factory the DSP on the MMB0 is only used to communicate between the ADS1298 and the PC. You could choose to make additions to the open-source firmware on the evaluation kit or you could create your own firmware from scratch. The J8 header is a JTAG interface to the DSP, so as long as you have an emulator and some environment that supports that emulator you could develop code from there. 

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for reply.

Could you please tell me how could I see the program of the original firmware and make additions to it a little bit more specifically? Is there a user guide or something? I will also appreciate that if you could provide more information about the interface you recommended because I am totally new in this area.

Regards,

Zhaoting Du

Zhaoting,

The current firmware is available for download from the location below:

ftp://ftp.ti.com/pub/data_acquisition/ECG_FE/ADS1298/Source_FW_ADS1298.zip

There is a password for the archive, if you're comfortable with providing an email address here I can send you the password. Alternatively I can fetch the address you registered with the E2E, which will take a bit longer.

There is no User's Guide for the firmware. The code is commented relatively well. We'll help answer specific questions about the firmware but generally you're on your own for modifications.

JTAG is a common type of test port employed by many embedded controllers. From a JTAG interface you may deliver new firmware to an embedded controller and perform various debug actions, like single-stepping through code. 

Modifying the firmware for this project is not going to be a trivial matter if you are completely inexperienced with embedded systems.

Hi Kevin,

Here is my email address: duzhaoting@gmail.com

Thanks for your help anyway.

Best,

Zhaoting Du

Hi Kevin,

I am wondering if there's another way to do what I want to.

For example, could I use the GUI of ADS1298 (ads1298ecg-fe-1.0.3)  offered by TI to collect the data from MMB0 and do the DSP on my own PC (using software like LabView)?

Thanks for your great patience.

Zhaoting,

Yep. The LabVIEW source is available here:

ftp://ftp.ti.com/pub/data_acquisition/ECG_FE/ADS1298/Source_LV_ADS1298.zip

Same password I sent you for the firmware.

Hi Kevin,

Thanks a lot for your help.

I opened the vi you gave me yesterday in LabView and I got the exactly same GUI of ADS1298 (ads1298ecg-fe-1.0.3)  offered by TI but in LabView's front panel. Besides that I also got the block diagram of it. Does that mean I could do some additions directly to the vi you gave me so that it could perform like what Ｉ want (for example, DSP like convolution) ?

Best,

Zhaoting Du

Hi Kevin,

I have one simple question. Is the LabView source file you gave me the source code of the TI software 'ads1298ecg-fe-1.0.3' ? If yes, does it mean I could create an installer of ads1298ecg-fe-1.0.3 using exactly the LabView source file you gave me ?

Regards,

Zhaoting Du

Zhaoting,

The LabVIEW project you've been provided with is the source code for the TI Evaluation kit. You can modify it, rebuild it, and repackage it into an installer if you'd like. I believe the NSIS scripts to build the installer have been provided in the source you have. If you plan on distributing this software you'd probably do well to change the name to indicate that it is not from TI and you may not sell the software for money.

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for your information. There is another question I want to ask, under which version of LabView is the ADS1298 software source code programmed? Is it LabView 8.6? I met an error with error code 1073 when I was trying to build the application. It seems to have something to do with the version of LabView when I checked the error code on NI's Website.

http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/67F5996B9031F8C7862575150059A2B7

Do you have any experience on this (I mean building application or installer of ADS1298 software)? Any other possibilities for that error?

ADS1298 is designed using LabView 8.6.  The error code that you are seeing seems a little odd since none of the ADS1298 VIs should be using Express VIs.

We are currently working to have ADS1298 app support WIN7 and in the process, we are porting the code to LabVIEW 2010.  We hope to have this work complete soon.  During the conversion process, there have been a few errors in the conversion process with LabVIEW not supporting or changing the function of their code.  However, these all manifest as broken VIs normally, so running the VI would not be an option and prohibited by LabVIEW.

Hi Greg,

Thanks for your reply. Did you mean ADS1298 software here ftp://ftp.ti.com/pub/data_acquisition/ECG_FE/ADS1298/ads1298ecg-fe-1.0.3.exe does not support Window 7? Now I have a problem about this software. It works well on my partner's laptop which has Windows 7 Home Premium installed and we did all our experiments with her laptop. However, there is an error when I installed and opened it on my laptop that has Windows 7 Professional.

The error says 'An error occured with error code 8
Write to Text File in ADS1298EVM_Main.vi<APPEND>
C:\Program Files\ADS1298ECG-FE\libmmb0\saved\Estyx History.txt'

I found the txt file mentioned above and open it, it says as follow:

Read from /version    value 0.2.18    length 6    with an error code of 0 -> 09:42:39
Read from /ads1298evm/conf/ch1set    value 0x1    length 3    with an error code of 0 -> 09:42:39
Read from /ads1298evm/conf/ch2set    value 0x1    length 3    with an error code of 0 -> 09:42:39
Read from /ads1298evm/conf/ch3set    value 0x1    length 3    with an error code of 0 -> 09:42:39
Read from /ads1298evm/conf/ch4set    value 0x1    length 3    with an error code of 0 -> 09:42:39
Read from /ads1298evm/conf/ch5set    value 0x1    length 3    with an error code of 0 -> 09:42:39
Read from /ads1298evm/conf/ch6set    value 0x1    length 3    with an error code of 0 -> 09:42:39
Read from /ads1298evm/conf/ch7set    value 0x1    length 3    with an error code of 0 -> 09:42:39
Read from /ads1298evm/conf/ch8set    value 0x1    length 3    with an error code of 0 -> 09:42:39
Read from /ads1298evm/conf/config1    value 0x86    length 4    with an error code of 0 -> 09:42:39
Read from /ads1298evm/conf/config2    value 0x10    length 4    with an error code of 0 -> 09:42:39
Read from /ads1298evm/conf/config3    value 0xDC    length 4    with an error code of 0 -> 09:42:39
Read from /ads1298evm/conf/devid    value 0xB6    length 4    with an error code of 0 -> 09:42:39
Read from /ads1298evm/conf/gpio    value 0x0    length 3    with an error code of 0 -> 09:42:39
Read from /ads1298evm/conf/loff    value 0x3    length 3    with an error code of 0 -> 09:42:39
Read from /ads1298evm/conf/loffflip    value 0x0    length 3    with an error code of 0 -> 09:42:39
Read from /ads1298evm/conf/loffsensn    value 0x2    length 3    with an error code of 0 -> 09:42:39
Read from /ads1298evm/conf/loffsensp    value 0xFF    length 4    with an error code of 0 -> 09:42:39
Read from /ads1298evm/conf/loffstatn    value 0x6    length 3    with an error code of 0 -> 09:42:39
Read from /ads1298evm/conf/loffstatp    value 0xFF    length 4    with an error code of 0 -> 09:42:39
Read from /ads1298evm/conf/pace    value 0x0    length 3    with an error code of 0 -> 09:42:39
Read from /ads1298evm/conf/resp    value 0x0    length 3    with an error code of 0 -> 09:42:39
Read from /ads1298evm/conf/rldsensn    value 0x0    length 3    with an error code of 0 -> 09:42:39
Read from /ads1298evm/conf/rldsensp    value 0x0    length 3    with an error code of 0 -> 09:42:39
Read from /ads1298evm/conf/reset    value 0    length 1    with an error code of 0 -> 09:42:39
Read from /ads1298evm/conf/sleep    value 0    length 1    with an error code of 0 -> 09:42:39
Read from /ads1298evm/conf/config4    value 0x2    length 3    with an error code of 0 -> 09:42:39
Read from /ads1298evm/conf/wct1    value 0xA    length 3    with an error code of 0 -> 09:42:39
Read from /ads1298evm/conf/wct2    value 0xE3    length 4    with an error code of 0 -> 09:42:39

When I tried to connect ADS1298 to PC, the board seemed not to be recognized by this software and I could not see the registers map in the software.

I checked this error code in LabView error codes. Error code 8 could either mean a 'File permission error' or a 'DMA Hardware error detected'.

Could you please help me fix this problem?

Regards,

Zhaoting Du

Zhaoting -

As noted, the ADS1298/1198/1298R/1198R software does not currently support any Win7 operating systems.  This is described both in the user guide and product folder page where you downloaded the software.

We have had a couple customers tweak the software and successfully get it working on Win7, but theses are modifications done externally to our currently supported software.  So it is possible that for some reason that it works on your partners PC, but this is not the expected behavior of the software application.

We are working to release a new version in the next few weeks that will support Win7.  At that time, we will change the user guide and product page to reflect this change.

Hi Greg,

I have a question about the source code here ftp://ftp.ti.com/pub/data_acquisition/ECG_FE/ADS1298/Source_LV_ADS1298.zip

I tried to open the main vi 'ADS1298EVM_Main.vi' and run it. However, there is an error here says

'An error occurred with error code 7

Write to Text File in ADS1298EVM_Main.vi<APPEND>

C: \work\LabView Files\LV86\libmmb0\saved\Estyx History.txt'

I have tried it both in LabView 2011 and LabView 8.6 and they all have the same error. Could you please tell me how I could run the vi in LabView environment?

Regards,

Zhaoting Du