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trouble getting the DAC161S055 EB to work

I'm transmitting a ramp via SPI to the board, but the output is sitting midrail.

I'm powering VA and VDD with 5V. J1 is connecting pins 2 and 3 to use the onboard regulator. and i'm connecting LDACB to ground on the test port.

over SPI i've tried both wr:  00001000  DDDDDDDD DDDDDDDD  (where the data bits ramp from 00000000 00000000 to 11111111 11111111)

i've also tried using wrup: 00010000  DDDDDDDD DDDDDDDD

  • i connected the GND1 and GND2 loops to common ground. I'm not sure why i needed to do this, but it fixed my problem. 

  • Hello David,

    I apologize for missing this post.

    I assume you were communicating with the evaluation board from another MCU eval board or something similar?

    Without a common-ground connection between the two boards they would have each been at a floating potential with respect to one another, even if they're using the same wall-socket, etc. That means you may not have been meeting the required logic high and low level threshold to communicate with the device.

    Glad you have solved your problem.

  • I had originally had common-ground going into the GND banana plug so the microcontroller (an arduino mega) and the DAC eval board always had a common ground connection.

    but i wasn't able to get the DAC eval board to work until i also wired the DAC's GND1 and GND2 connections to DAC's GND.