CC430 Based USB AP for SimpliciTI and Chronos

Hi Dominic,

The CC1111 Packet Sniffer dongle is already available PCB files and firmware, it's not necessary to use the CC1111 from chronos.

Best regards,

Vinicius

Dominic Valentino said:

We recently received our Chronos CC430 watch and was surprised that the Access Point  was a CC1111 USB AP (yes I shouldn't have assumed it to be the case).

We are developing a wireless PC based application that is very similar to the Chronos tool and so need to develop the AP firmware as well.  I don't want to do a mixed 8051/430 system and so need to some how get a CC430 USB AP to pair with the Chronos for development.

 

Could I use the CC430 Development tool and connect a USB converter to one of the serial ports?

Also can I reprogram the CC1111 USB AP that came with the Chronos to work with the TI Packet Sniffer?

I don't want to have to buy the full CC1100 dev. kit just to do the packet sniffing.

 

Thanks!

 

Dominic

 

 

 

Dominic Valentino said:

Could I use the CC430 Development tool and connect a USB converter to one of the serial ports?

Dominic Valentino said:

Also can I reprogram the CC1111 USB AP that came with the Chronos to work with the TI Packet Sniffer?

However, but if it is the 868-915 MHz band you're working with, you might want to consider to just buy CC Debugger + CC1111EMK, and use that dongle as sniffer device. It is still a lot cheaper than a full dev kit.

Hi everybody,

I'd like to use the SimpliciTI packet sniffer software with a cheap and handy device. So the CC1111EMK868-915 (CC1111 USB Dongle) would be perfectly suitable.

According to the last answer above one can use the CC1111EMK with the packet sniffer but the CC1111EMK must be programmed with a specific firmware using the CC debugger. Did I understand this right so far? Is the CC debugger really necessary, won't the CC1111EMK be shipped already programmed with the necessary firmware?

Now my question: If I have to program the CC1111EMK, where do I get the firmware from?

I am sorry to bother you guys with maybe a bit silly questions but I already searched the TI website and the whole WWW for this with no success.

Thanks for your help in advance!

Fabian

Hi Fabian,

Did I understand this right so far?

Unfortunately, the CC1111EMK isn't being shipped with the packet sniffer firmware pre-programmed.

The firmware to use is an Intel HEX file image that is included with the SmartRF Packet Sniffer PC tool (typically "C:\Program Files\Texas Instruments\Packet Sniffer\General\Firmware\sniffer_fw_ccxx11.hex" ). You will have to program the USB dongle in advance with the .hex file using the SmartRF Flash Programmer PC tool.

Your questions are okay -- TI still have room for improvement with regard to web information and kits & tools documentation.

---
As an alternative to getting yourself both CC1111EMK + CC Debugger (each sold separately), and your main goal is to be able to capture and debug RF protocols, you might also want to consider getting a CC1110DK-mini for 868/915 MHz instead. This kit bundles two CC1110 target boards, plus one CC Debugger, and will also allow you to use one of the target boards as a packet sniffer device (when connected via the CC Debugger), and might become slightly cheaper. (But with this option you will miss out on any USB development with the CC1111.)

Hi esy,

Great, thanks a lot for your quick response!

That's all I needed to know. Would be great if one could see this somewhere on the website...For the future ;-)

Regards,
Fab

Hello

I am facing a similar problem.  I just got my cc1111EMK868, downloaded the packet sniffer and started it up.  No matter what I do the packet sniffer seems to default to 2.4GHz and I can find no way to tell it that I have an 868-915 Dongle attached.  I have tried this on both an XP platform and a System 7 platform with the same results.  I was under the assumption that I would not need a cc1110DK to get this to work.

I hope this is the right place to post this question.

Thanks

David

OOPS... If I had read the entire page I would have seen that my question is redundant and appears to have been answered previously...off to figure out how to download the firmware.  However, please let me know if there is something else involved.

Thanks much,

David

Hello Again-

I followed the suggestions above and found the .hex file.  When I launched the smart flash programmer it did not recognize the presence of the CC1111EMK.  I checked the system and it appears that the CC1111EMK is not registered with a port.  Is there a driver that must be installed to make this device work?  I cannot find any reference to this.

Sorry for the multiple posts but I am having a lot of trouble getting going with the RF product. line... it was sure easier to get started with the 430 products.

Thanks,

David

I have the CC1111EMK and the first time I tried to program it I also could not get the green light in the CC Debugger, which is another indicator that it recognizes the device. The problem was that I did not plug in the dongle itself in a USB port so that it gets the power. The programmer does not supply the power to the dongle. After that, the device is recognized and it programs just fine.

Now my problem is that the sniffer never worked and more recently, after programming it with the TI Chronos AP firmware, it did not get recognized by the Control Center and I also don't see a serial port associated to it on Windows (which is probably why the CC does not see it). Not sure why the programming always goes fine but the CC1111EMK seems to not work. I suspect I'm doing something dumb, like the power issue before.

If anyone has any ideas about what may be the issue, please let me know.

Thanks, 

Edmund

Hello Edmund,

the CC1111EM and the RF Access Point that comes with the Chronos kit have one fundamental difference - the ports where the LED is connected to and the USB pull-up line are swapped (cf. both schematics). Hence if you simply program the AP firmware into CC1111EM hardware it will signal a USB reset once the LED should be controlled. This prohibits very effectively USB enumeration.

If you want to use AP firmware on the CC1111EM, please recompile the project with the "CC1111EM" define in place. This will use LED / USB pull-up setting that is compatible with EM hardware.

Kind regards,
Anton

Could you provide firmware for Chronos AP to work with packet sniffer? I have the smartRF04EB so I can reprogram it.

Thanks, JC

Hi JC.

Here is an experimental firmware image you can try with the two above-mentioned changes (see inside the attached zip file).

I tried the firmware image and I was able to capture generic packets sent from a CC1110 at 868 MHz. It was a bit difficult to connect the CC Debugger onto the small test points (the CC1111's debug interface) on the back-side of the RF access point in order to reprogram it though.

The readme in the zip has some rough instructions on how to use it, but if you have more questions you should probably post them inside this thread (gathering it here makes it easier for the next guy passing by).

Please note that the eZ430-Chronos is still not officially supported by the packet sniffer -- this is just an experiment for you :-)

It works, thanks! I had some problems with .prs file generated from SmartRF Studio 7 so I used version 6 and now all is working.

Is there plan to release Packet Sniffer compatible with Simpliciti v. 1.1.1? Will be needed to re-program the AP again in this case?

I don't know about the plans for supporting SimpliciTI v1.1.1 (or what its differences with v1.1.0 are), but I know that most parts of the protocol parsing is done by the PC application, so I don't think you would need to update the firmware for that.

I have read through this thread and it seems that no-one on the thread actually got the CC1111EM to work with the packet sniffer firmware.  This has also been my experience.  I programmed the CC1111EM with the packet sniffer firmware that is in the Packet Sniffer program folder, using the CC Debugger.  Then when installing the hardware the device enumerates as "TI CC1111 Low-Power RF to USB CDC Serial Port (COM4)" using the windows driver "usbser.sys".  However, the device cannot start - "This device cannot start (Code 10)".  I have tried this in both Windows 7 (x64) and Windows XP in virtual mode (I had to use this mode to use the CC Debugger as there is no Windows 7 x64 driver for it yet) with the same results in both operating systems.  Has anyone out there been able to get the CC1111EM working as a packet sniffer device?

Hi SteveH

I got my CC1111EM working well, as I remember I download the last version of packet sniffer that comes with the binary image inside, I flash the binary image using the CC Debugger, and force the drivers to dll folders inside Packet Sniffer as well.. and it's working well, I have it in use with CC430.

Best regards,

Vinicius

Hi Anton,

Thanks for the information. I looked at the code and I can see there is code that was ifdef'd for CC1111EM. Unfortunately, since the AP uses a processor that is 8051 based, I cannot build it with the Chronos IDEs, and I really don't want to have to download a trial version of the IAR compiler to just build the firmware image for the CC1111EM. I bought the CC Debugger and a CM1111EMK because I thought that is all I needed to be able to re-program an AP to work with the latest code on the Chronos (short of soldering wires to the original Chronos AP dongle, which I did and worked). It would make a lot of sense to me if you posted the CC1111EM image already built in the correct way to make this work as a Chronos AP.

Besides the Chronos AP firmware for CM1111EMK not working, I also did program the CM1111EMK with the sniffer firmware, and like I mentioned in my original note, I was not able to sniff any packets from the Chronos-AP SimpliciTI sessions. Any idea why that would not work? I'm fairly certain I followed the given instructions, used the correct firmware and did not get any errors anywhere, yet the sniffer app did not show any packets.

Thanks in advance for your help,

Edmund

Edmund:

See this thread: Re: Difficulty using CC1111EMK-based packet sniffer with EZ430 Chronos

I had exactly the same problem as you describe, and was able to get the packet sniffer working.