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CCS/MSP430FR2633: CapTIvate MCU Devkit Questions -- Serial UART Communication / Design Center CPU Overloading

Part Number: MSP430FR2633

Tool/software: Code Composer Studio

Hello,

We're working on a project using the CapTIvate MCU development kit and are having trouble getting data/communication from the board. The board seems to be communicating with the design center, but when we try using a USB connected to a basic serial monitor instead we get no output at all (including noise).

 

Is there anything we should change from the automatically generated code to get UART communication with USB or through TX/RX pins?

So far we haven't made any modifications to the base code. We are still getting communication to CapTIvate design center which implies the board is capable of outputting data.

Our second question is in regards to scaling up grid sizes on mutual capacitive channel grids and how this affects CapTIvate design center. 

When we use a 4x4 channel we are able to see touch sense data in CapTIvate without any problems. However, as we scale up the number channels and physical size of the board we notice that CapTIvate design center becomes unstable (and causes CPU usage to skyrocket to somewhere close to 100%). 


Is there something we're overlooking that could cause this to happen? 


We'd ideally like to be able to tune an 8x8 board of sensors (i.e. all 16 channels) via the design studio, but since this is happening we are limited to using serial communication to/from the board. 

Thanks very much for your time!

  • Hello Chana,

    There are two separate USB interfaces going over the same cable for the CapTIvate Design Kit. One is the typical MSP ex-FET connection which appears as two separate com ports on your machine. One is the debug interface that CCS/IAR/IDEs use, the other is the back-channel UART that is available for your application. The Design Center does not communicate with the chip using this interface. The Design Center uses the separate HID interface that is on the programming board to communicate with the device. This USB connection appears as a dual mode HID device on your PC, and cannot be used with a typical terminal program as it requires a GUI interface to interact with. For more information about the HID bridge, please see the CapTIvate Design Guide. software-dl.ti.com/.../ch_evm.html

    If you want to make an 8x8 sensor board and tune it , you can do this with the Design Center. Start a new project within the design center and add the button icon. Double click the button array and choose self/mutual type and the array size. After exiting that window, double click on the MSP430 icon and setup your pins. You can have the program auto-assign that if you like. After which, you need to generate source code and import that to CCS. Then download the generating code to the device and run. You can then go back to the Design Center and hit the Connected checkbox within the MSP430 icon menu. You then should be communicating with the CapTIvate device that is contented to your custom sensor array, and are able to tune from there.
  • Hello Chana,

    Did the above post help you with your issue?
  • Hi Jace,

    Thanks, that solved the issue we were having, and we were able to send data to a separate MCU for data processing.

    - C

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