DC/DC Lighting Developer's Kit

Hello,

The first basic check would be to run through the Quick Start Guide included with the kit. If you have followed each step in the setup correctly, then your board and software should be properly set up.

The Quick Start Guide is available in controlSUITE. I have also attached it here for reference.

5047.QSG-Lighting_DCDC.pdf

My initial guess is you do not have the XDS100 drivers installed? Have you installed Code Composer Studio? If you have not, then you may need to install the XDS100v1 Drivers in order to properly connect the kit to your computer through USB. The Quick Start Guide attached here details this procedure as well.

Please let me know if you still are having trouble after verifying the correct setup specified by the Quick Start Guide.

Thanks,
Patrick

Hi, Patrick:

Thank you for the reply.

First, I tried to download a copy of CCS v4 from controlSUITE.  It linked to a TI webpage.  From that page I clicked the free download for CCS V4  Nothing happened.  I tried it with Firefox and IE browsers.  Both simply returned a blank page with status indicates "Done".

I have a disk from MSP430 hardware kit. So I installed CCS V4 using the disk and installed the CCS V4.  As it turns out, there is a copy of CCS V4 on my notebook PC already.  Instead of delete it, I simply chose a different directory path.

After I installed the CCS V4, I tried to start it and followed the example.  After setup a new project, the CCS V4 windows closed unexpectedly.

In any case, I try to project -> import existing CCS/CCE Eclipse Project, a small "import" window opened and I clicked "browse" button, looking for the header file to use but could  not find it any where on my notebook PC.

At this time, I try to connect the Lighting board to my notebook PC via USB cable.  Again, the same problem as before.  I am "stuck" at the same issue as before. again.

When I plug in the USB cable, my notebook PC did not detect any "found new device" to install a software driver XDS100.  The XDS100 I moved to my desktop and it is there for me to use but the notebook did not ask for it.

I am STUCKED!!!

You do not need CCS v4 to run the demo Quick Start Graphical Interface. In my response, I mentioned CCS only to check if you had the XDS100 drivers installed. These are usually installed with CCS.

Please exactly follow the steps in the Quick Start Guide I attached. You do NOT need to load any projects in CCS, and you do NOT even need to run CCS at this point. Per the Quick Start Guide you need to do the following:

Hardware Setup:

1) On the Piccolo F28035 controlCARD, check the following switches:
- SW1, make sure this switch is in the “off” (down) position
- SW2, make sure position 1 and 2 are both in the “on” (up) position.

2) Put a F28035 control card into the socket on the LED Lighting board and connect a cable from the USB connector on the board to the computer. [M2]-LD1, near the LED Lighting board’s USB connector, should turn on.

3) Connect the LED panel to the LED Lighting board via [Main]-TB1 to TB8.

4) Connect of verify the following:
- Connect a jumper on [M1]-J1.
- Connect a jumper on [M2]-J4.
- Remove any jumpers placed on [Main]-J6.

5) Connect the banana-to-banana plug wire that came with the kit between the SEPIC out connector (BS2) and the LED Bus connector (BS3)

6) Place [M1]-SW2 into the off position. This switch will not be used in this demonstration.

7) Connect a 12V power supply to power up to [M1]-JP1 of the board. Turn [M1]-SW1 to the on position. When on, [M1]-LD1 and [M1]-LD2 should turn on.

Running the GUI:

1) On the USB drive included with the kit, browse to and double-click on Lighting_DCDC.exe. If this is the first time that the GUI is run, the GUI will ask the user to read a license agreement.

2) Click “Setup Connection” on the GUI and ensure the Baud Rate is set to 57600 and that the “Boot on Connect” Box is unchecked.

3) Next you will need to select your serial comport. This can be found by going to: Control Panel->System->Hardware tab->Device Manager->Ports(COM & LPT)
Look for the comport that is named “USB Serial Port” or similar, then select this comport in the “Setup Connection” window.

4) Click “OK”. This will close the “Setup Connection” window.

5) Turn on the board by switching [M1]-SW1 to the “ON” position.

6) On the Main Window click “Connect”. When connected the status bar at the bottom left of the GUI should say “Connected”.

NOTE: If the GUI cannot connect, then you may be either: a) selecting the wrong COM port OR b) the XDS100 drivers may not be properly installed.

7) Move the “Sepic Output” slider to approximately 20V. This sets the reference that the controller will try to regulate the output of the Sepic

8) Change the value of LED string 1’s target current to 0.04A. Note that the “LED String 1 Current” ramps until it reaches approximately 0.04A.

9) Edit the other strings’ target currents as desired. Note that average LED current draw is proportional to LED lumen output for most high brightness LEDs. Therefore, in this program, the brightness of the LEDs is being controlled.

For XDS100 Driver Installation:

If during the hardware setup, when you connect the USB cable to your computer, a window pops up asking to search Windows Update for the proper drivers, then please follow the below steps:

Please let me know if you have exactly followed these steps and what issues you run in to.

Thanks,
Patrick

Hi, Patrick:

Thank you for your very detailed instruction.

First, I found out couple things that I did wrong before.  I installed CCS v4 from MSP430 disk.  As it turns out, that CCS version does not install XDS100 automatically.  So I deleted all the previous CCS installation on this notebook PC (I installed twice before), then re-install CCS using TMS320C2000 disk.  So the XDS100 is included automatically.

I followed your hardware setup steps and everything seems OK.  Then I followed the "Running the GUI" steps.  The one thing is that in the GUI "Setup Connection", I had "boot on connect" checked.  So I un-checked this box now.  The USB port is set at 57600 speed as Com 4.

At step 6, I still don't get connection.  It says "Could not connect: Please Check Connections"

When I plugged in the USB cable, the PC said it was installed a new drive and later said the installation was successful.

You mentioned that at this point, I either have the wrong comm port or the drive is installed incorrectly.  I checked the device manager couple times, it matches the GUI connection setup.  I plugged and un-plugged USB cable couple times and it also appeared to be fine.  What should I do next?

Thank you for your help.

Hi, Patrick:

I also changed the comm port property in the device manager for Comm 4 port from 9600 to 57600.

I try to connect the GUI with the lighting board and still got the following message:

"Please Ensure SCI Boot Jumper is Placed or that the Target is Flashed Then Try Again"

Where is the SCI Boot Jumper?  Do you think that I need to flash the target (F28035) control board again (with Lighting_DCDC_Flashimage.out")??

I use CCS for MSP430 code development right now, but have not use CCS for C2000 before.

Thank you very much for your help.

Hello,

This post (http://e2e.ti.com/support/microcontrollers/tms320c2000_32-bit_real-time_mcus/f/171/p/57174/441319.aspx#441319) details how to Flash the controlCARD again as well as some other settings that might help (such as reflashing the on board emulation FTDI chip). There is a PDF at the top of the post.

This post (http://e2e.ti.com/support/microcontrollers/tms320c2000_32-bit_real-time_mcus/f/171/p/57941/206192.aspx#206192) details jumper/switch settings that you double check against.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Nishant

Hi, Nishant:

Thank you for these two references.  I will check them to see if they can help me out.

I read the Quick Start Guide again, I notice that it says:

"The GUI requires Microsoft .NET framework 3.0 to run.  Please ensure that the software is installed prior to running this program."

I have Windows 7 OS Home Premium Edition on my notebook PC pre-installed.  I check the "Program and Features" and notice that I only have Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Client Profile on my notebook PC. 

Is this enough to meet the .NET framework 3.0 requirement to run?

If not, should I find this .NET framework 3.0 on the web to download and install?  Please advise.  Thank you.

The .NET framework you have looks to be a higher version, so you should be good to go with respect to that.

Regards,

Nishant

Hi,

I followed the steps to set up a project and compiled and downloaded (debug mode) a copy of DCDC lighting image onto the EVM.  After terminated the CCS and using GUI, still cannot connect to the EVM.

The message is still "unable to connect, please check connection."

While using CCS I did not notice any error message.

On the F28035 control board, my switch setting are:

SW1- ON (towards top and GPIO-28 is connected to U6-pin 2)

SW2- ON (both are towards top, so both GPIO-34 and TDO are connected to 3.3V)

SW3- OFF (both are towards bottom, so VREF-HI is connected to VDDA and VREF-LO is connected to VSSA)

(When I received this EVM, the SW3 were ON (towards top) and connected to external VREF-HI-EXT and VREF-LO-EXT.)

I am still unable to even demo this EVM at all.

I am really lost.

I did the CCS downloading again.  The GUI still did not connect with the EVM.

In the CCS windows, I clicked "view problem", In the problem window, it says "0 errors, 0 warnings, 0 infos".

The F28035 control stick has LED1 ON (green) with power ON.

The F28035 LED2 and LED3 are OFF.

The program suspended at line 253 (at void main(void))

I clicked the run button, only LED3 (RED) were blinking.  Then I clicked Halt button and the blinking stopped.

I repeated this several times, it seems CCS is communicating OK with the EVM F28035 control board.

After I terminated the program and closed CCS, the GUI simply could not connect with EVM!!

The DCDC lighting kit came with a flash memory stick and it contains DCDC_lighting_image.out.  How does one download this file directly to EVM using CCS?