IWR1642BOOST: mmWave Demo Visualizer

Anthony Pesin

Part Number: IWR1642BOOST
Other Parts Discussed in Thread: IWR1443BOOST

Dear Technical Support,

I built a parser to get data from the radar and I see that when I try to get the scatter data (x, y coordinates, peak level, doppler value), TotalPacketLength is varying when NumDetectedObjects is changing.

Whereas TotalPacketLength remains constant when I get the Relative Power level as data without any issue.

My issue is therefore this one: because I am reading a constant amount of bytes and that TotalPacketLength is varying, I could not predict what will be the TotalPacketLength in the next frame so parser is stopping.

I notice a difference in between getting the Relative Power level and getting the scatter data as regarding the TotalPacketLength .

Could you please advise on such issue?

Thanks for your support.

Best regards.

Anthony Pesin.

over 4 years ago

0 user6096953 over 4 years ago

Expert 1310 points

Hi Athony,

are you aware that the length of every frame, i.e., your TotalPacketLength is given as header information? Simply extract this value and configure your parser accordingly.

Best regards

0 Anthony Pesin over 4 years ago in reply to user6096953

Intellectual 600 points

Hi,

Yes I am aware of that.

The issue is that I read a number of bytes on the serial COM port and then parse the header and the payload. It is easy to set the serial buffer length when the length is fixed but not when the length is variable, I miss the synchro word.

I may read the header on serial COM port in a first step to know the length and then read again on serial COM port to get the payload knowing the length.

Thanks for your quick reply.

Best regards.

Anthony.

0 user6096953 over 4 years ago in reply to Anthony Pesin

Expert 1310 points

Anthony Pesin said:

I may read the header on serial COM port in a first step to know the length and then read again on serial COM port to get the payload knowing the length.

This seems to me the only viable option in case you want to parse in real-time.

Wish you best luck!

0 Anthony Pesin over 4 years ago in reply to user6096953

Intellectual 600 points

You are right. Thanks.

Anthony.

0 Nitin Sakhuja over 4 years ago in reply to Anthony Pesin

TI__Mastermind 30405 points

Hi user6096953,

Thanks for your response.

Anthony,

As the above user replied, you need to parse the message header to decode the total length of the packet as well as the types and number of data objects coming out in the packet. The output message is sent out as a TLV (type, length, value) data stream. Please refer to the following threads.

IWR1443BOOST: Which antenna does the demo visualizer recieve and display the range profile data from IWR1443?
Refer to the following thread on how to download the mmWaveDemoVisualizer source code and refer to the parsing function as mentioned:
1. IWR1642: How to read the UART stream

Thanks

-Nitin

0 Anthony Pesin over 4 years ago in reply to Nitin Sakhuja

Intellectual 600 points

Thank you Nitin and user6096953 and sorry for the delay in my response.

Now I am able to parse the frames through USB COM port in a real time manner.

Thanks for your support.

Best regards.

Anthony.

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IWR1642BOOST: mmWave Demo Visualizer