Hi there,
So I recently purchased an ADS1298ECGFE-PDK to develop a multichannel biopotential measurement system. Unfortunately, I'm having some trouble getting the ADS1298 board to talk to the outside world, i.e. to devices other than the included MMB0 board, say, an FPGA. The MMB0 is nice, but I'd like to be able to acquire and process raw data in real time with my own hardware and software, so I need to circumvent it.
I tried connecting the SPI interface of the ADS1298 board to an Arduino as an initial experiment. The Arduino has a pretty good SPI library, so it seemed like it might be a simple way of getting raw data out of the ADS. However, in order to connect the ADS to the Arduino, I have to remove it from the MMB0 board and supply my own 5V, 3V, and 1.8V sources. I think. It's not really clear to me how to effectively power the ADS board separately from the MMB0 board. I experimentally figured out how to get those voltages to show up at the correct test points. I had the ADS board running off of voltages derived from the Arduino's power supply, which may or may not have been a good idea. When I ran a simple sketch that asked for data on the SPI interface or sent simple opcodes, I didn't see anything coming back. The START line was asserted permanently. I suspect that the ADS board is having difficulty driving the Arduino's digital inputs, but am not completely sure. Looking at the signal on a scope, it looked pretty weak.
Basically, what I want to know is, what is the simplest configuration in which the ADS1298 demo board can be used with a third-party microcontroller (Arduino or otherwise)? What kind of supply voltages need to go where? Do I just need to use two separate power supplies, one for communications/microcontroller and one for the ADS board? Perhaps the Arduino SPI library is not to be trusted?
thanks!