DLPC300 Development

Hi Sanjeev,

Yes, we are going to layout our own PCB and integrate the chips we need on it, but first we need to figure out how to manipulate the DLPC300 and DLP3000 chip set. Here I have couple questions that may need your help.

1. If I understand correctly, the DLPC300 can only be controlled by send the commands via I2C. And the commands actually are programmed in the MSP430 firmware. If we want to do some custom things, we need to reprogram the MSP430 using IAR and update the firmware using the GUI, right?

2. I know the FPGA bitstream and the DLPC300 FW are not shared. But if in the near future, we want to do more fancy custom design, mainly for projection, do you think it necessary to customize the firmware for DLPC300? Is any way we can do some development (tools, language) on that chip? Or the default FW provided is enough.

3. I feel very confused why TI does not publish all the source code. Is it this EVM only for demonstration? Since we think the EVM should allow us at least learn how to use it and do some development work. Do you think in the future you will open source all the FW?

Looking forward to your help. Thanks.

Jiawei

Hello Jiawei,

#1. Yes - for DLPC300 controlled via I2C. MSP430 does basic initialization settings, once initialization complete it is the DM365 that is doing most of the configurations. The GUI is applicable if and only if DM365 is used. Otherwise there is no use of GUI.

#2. We don't think so, you should be able to ALL the settings with DLPC300 existing firmware. Yes, the default DLPC300 firmware should be enough. For FPGA please read through LightCrafter FPGA Overview document, it talks about the design aspects, you can design your own FPGA looking at the logic but for DLPC300 the default firmware should be enough.

#3. As applicable and relevant we are publishing source code for DM365, MSP430, please understand the DLPC300 customized ASIC for interfacing DLP3000, it is not a generic programmable MCU or Embedded Processor. You have DLPC300 programmer's guide that shows all possible ways of controlling the device. 

Regards,

Sanjeev

Hi Sanjeev,

The DLPC300 Programmer User Guide only shows the details of each command. But now I get stuck in how actually I can control the chip set using the commands through I2C. Are these commands actually from MSP430 or DM365? From this document http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/dlp3000.pdf, I may expect that the commands are embedded in the MSP430 processor since it's connecting DLPC300 via I2C. So I expect I can customize some commands in the MSP430 and update the firmware using IAR and the GUI. I just want to have seen a very simple demo how I can control the chip set via those commands, and I can start researching using those documents. You answer with DM365 is confusing me.

Jiawei

Hello Jiawei,

As i said not only MSP430 that communicates with DLPC300 it is DM365 also communicate. I am not sure which part is confusing to you.

Which GUI are you referring to ?

>> I just want to have seen a very simple demo

Please define what is demo here? What exactly you want to use DLPC300 far? 

Regards,

Sanjeev

Hi Sanjeev,

Now I feel more clear. The GUI is the DLP Light Crafter GUI. We basically want to re-program the MSP430 to control the DLPC chipset independently, without the association with DM365. So the idea is, we modified the open source code for MSP430 and use Code Composer Studio to generate new bit stream file and configure the MSP430 chip using the GUI. Do you think it's durable for the MSP430 to duplicate the function of DM365 at the same time?

Jiawei