DDC264EVM software support

Hi Paul,

See attached the code for the FPGA in the DDC264 EVM which takes the data from the device, stores it locally and sends it through the USB to the PC. Unfortunately, we can not distribute the current VB source for the PC interface and it will be a while till we get there... Hopefully the attached can help...

Regards,

Edu

**Attachment temporarily removed for maintenance. ***

Good afternoon Edu,

Thanks for the swift reply and the FPGA information.
We are interested in writing our own control in VB or similar and as such would find information on the USB comms. or dll's much more valuable.

br, Paul

Hi Paul,

Sorry for my late reply. I am trying to see what I can do.

Regards,
Edu

PS.: By the way, tried to start a conversation with you, but I do not have that option. It may be because of your settings (?). If so, you may want to switch your settings to "site options" settings, "Conversations configuration", to All Users. (http://e2e.ti.com/group/helpcentral/f/301/t/59914.aspx#214110)

Hi Edu,

My group recently purchased a DDC264 Evaluation Module and we are hoping to interface the device with LabView. Are there standard communication protocols available for controlling and reading from the FPGA? We need to align the timing and data acquisition with other parts of our instrumentation. As with the posts above, we would like more control than the provided software interface.

Please reply or contact us by phone at our office (603-646-2393).

Thanks,

Joel D

Hi Joel,

The DDC264EVM GUI provided on TI web site is using USB to control and communicate with FPGA.

So when you are using the GUI to run the DDC264EVM, only thing is to connect USB bus to your PC and also power on two power supplies (5V and VSPA=5V).

As you mentioned if you want to directly access FPGA, then I think you can use the upper-left hand side (TMS, TDI, TCK, TDO, xDGND, 3.3V) connector

to connect to a Xilinx platform cable. Then you don't need to connect USB cable to the EVM.

Thanks and best regards,

Chen

Dear Chen, Thanks a lot for your quick response. To clarify, we would like to use the USB interface to control and communicate with the FPGA, NOT through the supplied GUI but from our own programming environment. This is necessary to test the evaluation module within our existing instrumentation platform. So any information on the USB communication protocol (or dlls that handle this) to configure acquisition parameters and transfer data would be really useful.

Thanks,

Venkat

Hello All,

allow me to jump in and affirm Venkat's request that some more information about USB communication to the DDC264EVM is really needed.

We also would do some own software, C++ and Labview.... to get some more out of that great module.

Regards, Stefan

Hi Venkat and Stefan,

I can describe the associated DLL in more detail and provide an example of what it looks like in VB. I am currently working on this and will have a response by tomorrow morning.

Regards,

Yvette

Hello Yvette,

that's good news. I'm curious about it. Thanks in advance :)

Best regards, Stefan

Hi all,

This is very positive support from TI and I hope we will see much more discussion and interest in the product.

br, Paul. 

Hi everyone,

I am still working on this and will provide a response when I am done.

Thanks,

Yvette

Hi everyone,

Attached is a DLL user's guide for interfacing with the DDC264 EVM.

Please note is this a first draft and is provided AS IS. Due to limited bandwidth, we cannot provide any further support for creating customized GUIs for our marketing EVMs.

Thanks,

Yvette

8176.DDC264_EVM_DLL_usersguide.pdf

Hi everyone,

just wanted to ask if anybody manged to get data from the DDC264 EVM by using the DLL.

I find it hard to guess the meaning of all the parameters even if the calls itself are documented now.

If you have to share some experiences - please do so - I will do it too.

Best regards

Hi Stefan, yes we have managed to use the dll to configure and receive data.

Although I am no longer involved with that project due to change of employment I know where I collected the relevant information from.

If you would like to email me at britfanuk@hotmail.com I will discuss further.

regards, Paul.

Is there any update regarding the source code to interface with the DDC264 EVM?

Hi,

We can provide you with fpga source code only.

Through the fpga, you will add your program to interface with DDC264 device.

3302.7624.FPGA Firmware (DDC264_Verilog_Firmware).zip

Yvette thank you for your use guide of dll for ddc264evm. I 'm really new to ddc264evm .I have one ddc264evm and I wold like to understand how to comunicate with it using matlab or java . My question is on your user guide, that is : where I find that dll and what is his name ? I have some dll in evaluation module folder but is one of them (adodb.dll,Microsoft.visualbasic.powerpacks.vs.dll,msdatasrc.dll,nationalinstruments.common.dll,nationalinstruments.ni4882.dll.stdole.dll,zedgraph.dll)?

Thank you in advance

Giorgio,

Yvette is now working with a different group but I would be glad to answer your questions. 

The DLL that the user guide mentions is the USB_IO_for_VB6.DLL.

It can be found in the "Drivers" folder of the following software package which you may already have.

DDC264 Installation

To use the DDC264 with this DLL, you will need to make calls to the functions inside the DLL using the guide provided before.

Thanks and Regards,

-Adam 

Thank you very much Adam. but USB_IO_for_VB6.DLL i smade only for Visual Basic ? I try to use USB_IO_for_VB6.DLL in matlab generating a header file following the guide to dll present in some post before but I have had strange error when I have called the functions in matlab.

Thank

Giorgio

Sorry Adam If I stress yoou about matlab and Dll but now I create a header file to use with USB_IO_for_VB6.dll and I'am able to loadlibrary with Matlab. In the header file I have put the signature found on the dll guide but I can't put CCyUSbDevice *USBDevice = new CCyUSBDevice(NULL); because is not a function. So I have to make a load library with CCy.dll or is loaded automatically when I load USb_IO_for_VB6.dll. I 'am just a litle bit confuse about this.

Have I to download some tool from cipress site ?

Thank again adam

Giorgio

Hello Adam,

Recently I bought ddc264evm board from TI. 

I was successful to communicate with board by the software that TI recommended.

The only problem that I face to is that reading output data from the board is not continuously, and each time I need to press bottom (Fast Data) to read all 256 channels only once. So I decided to figure it out somehow using a cad tool like MATLAB to communicate with cypress micro controller to do this task.

Unfortunately I realized that MATLAB can see the device but it was not able to address the usb port correctly to use the commands.

Any way to make the story short, I have had many search on the web to see if someone was able to do this job successfully.

Unfortunately still I haven't found my answer yet. :(

My goal is to read data, and record them in my machine for every one second in an hour.

I will be happy if you give me any advice to resolve this issue, please!

Regards

Reza 

Reza,

What you need is to write a code segment that calls the functions in the USB_IO_VB6.dll file. Please send an email to me at adam.sidelsky@ti.com and we can get this to you. 

Regards,

-Adam

Hello Reza,

I've been looking into the issue you've been experiencing.

You will be able to read data in a continuous manner in MATLAB through the ‘USB_IO_for_VB6.dll’.

We have a User Guide for that specific library on how to interact with it to configure the DDC264EVM and take measurements (it’s the file attached I provided). Inside, you’ll find all of the information necessary to interact withthe FPGA as you intend to through the use of an API.

7167.USB_IO_for_VB6_DLL_User_Guide.pdf

Let me know if you have any further questions.

Best regards,

Simon