ADC12D1800RFRB - Wavevision 5 Commands to Acquire Data

Hi Hsiang-Chao

For details on how the Wavevision 5 software initiates a data capture please review the information at the following link: http://e2e.ti.com/support/data_converters/high_speed_data_converters/w/design_notes/1783.aspx

The file "Programmers' Guide to WV5_DLL API r0p9.pdf" provides the details regarding the DLL commands used to enumerate, configure and capture data with a reference board.

Support for using the DLL API is limited. However there are some additional threads on E2E on this topic that may also be useful here: http://e2e.ti.com/support/data_converters/high_speed_data_converters/f/68/p/187541/675239.aspx#675239

and here:

https://e2e.ti.com/support/data_converters/high_speed_data_converters/int-high_speed_data_converters/f/70/p/154748/564735.aspx

I hope this is helpful.

Best regards,

Jim B

Hi Jim,

Thanks for your quickly reply.

I have another question about  the "7144.Wavevision5 DLL API Support.zip" file, is there a suitable Example Code for package "P2R1" ?

Because the Example Code in " Programmers' Guide to WV5_DLL API r0p9.pdf " is for old version P1R2, and has no definition of "pChannelData" and "ChannelCount",  it seems not for P2R1 ?

I wish you could provide me the Example Code for P2R1, I've worked on it for a very long time. 

Thanks

HC, Huang

Jim,

I'm also interested in an updated example and additional instructions on using that example. Eventually, I'd like to get the wvdll.dll working with Matlab but I wanted to test out the sample code before moving on to Matlab, so I'd appreciate any additional assistance that I can get with it.

Thanks

Hi Syed

Unfortunately the information provided earlier in this thread is all the support we can offer for using the Wavevision based tools with other applications.

Please try searching other threads on E2E as there are a number of other users that have already succeeded with this type of implementation.

Best regards,

Jim B

Hi Syed,

I have arrived a bit late in this conversation but I have had some experience with the XML file associated with WV5. You might be able to implement some additional functionality in WV5. Depending always what your goal is.

It seems that some sort of XAML has been employed when developing WV5, i.e, WV5 queries the board to find out which equipment you have got and then loads the necessary xml file. The XML file in a nifty way describes in a class-like manner what sort of registers the FPGA has declared in its verilog code and the associated operations (read/write) and the related op-codes. For example when you press the acquire button an op-code is sent from the PC, to the Cypress mcu and then to the FPGA which then runs whatever the op-code tells it to do.

You can add tabs, menus, buttons and implement additional functionality by using the XML file and by observing what the rest of the XML file does. I have implemented a couple more registers in the verilog code and extended the XML file to send some values and read succesfully read them back. So far this has served my purposes.

Best,

Evros

Thanks for the response Evros. I tried your suggest but I wasn't able to determine what particular XML was being loaded for the LM97600 board. Is there a way to determine which file is being loaded ? The only file that I could find was a CPP file which seems to contain the functions for it. 

Hi Evros,

We haven't been able yet to access our ADC08D1520 from an application program, and I would like to know if you could provide either some explanation on how to do it or actual code. I used the code provided in the API document, but the board is not recognized (it fails the WvBoardEnum call).

Thanks in advance,

Julio de Melo

Hi Julio

Are you able to get the Wavevision 5 GUI to recognize, configure and operate the board normally?

I just want to make sure the basic communications with the standard software GUI are working before you spend time trying to debug the issues using the DLL.

Regards,

Jim B

Hello Julio,

I have used MATLAB to access the provided DLL's  and have been able to successfully acquire samples with the board. You should be able to use the DLL with any framework you want though. I have used the code found in this forum and to get it to work for the 1520 I had to modify it a little bit. 

Please bare with me for a couple of days since I do not have access to the code right now. I will provide you with a working example and details.

Make sure your directory structure is correct; i.e., the folders with the fpga bit file and the mcu firmware.

Regards,

Evros

Hi Jim,

Thanks for the reply.

WaveVision works fine, we are able to collect data without any problems. Like others, we are trying to make data acquisition faster and automatic.

I am using MS VisualStudio, and I am able to correctly compile the sample code that is published on pages 10-11 of the Programmer's Guide to WV5, after minor corrections. That's the only C code I could find anywhere, nothing from the forum. When I run the code below, I won't get past the enumeration call.

...
    WvDebugModuleSetOutputFilename("dll.txt"); // This is absolutely necessary to start the DLL 
    WvDebugModuleModifyAll(TRUE);
     if (!WvBoardEnum(&board_count, &board_names, &version_dll)) return false;
….

I've seen somewhere a variation in which an explicit call for starting the DLL is executed. Am I supposed to do that or, as I am assuming, the calls above do that?

Thanks for your help.

Regards,

Julio

Hi Evros,

Thanks for the reply.

I am using MS VisualStudio, but I think if I get any code that works, that would help me get into the right direction, regarding making the right calls and following the right sequence of calls.

As I replied to Jim, I didn't find any code in the forum, so I relied on the one given as example in the Programmer's Guide to WV5. If you could provide me with either your Matlab code or a template, I can work out the details.

Thanks for any help,

Julio

PS: I am also considering using the FPGA interface, but I haven't started on this yet. Any pointers on this would be greatly appreciated too.

Hello Julio,

Be sure to check the DLL output file ("dll.txt") to pin-point errors. It has proved pretty helpful as I remember at some point. 

In the initial stages I was not sure on how to proceed so I had added some functionality to the verilog code (used XIlinx ISE) and then used the wavevision script file to add some buttons and some commands. Maybe this can help you, depending on what you want to do. After I got the MATLAB code working I no longer used wavevision.

I am not sure what you mean by FPGA interface, do you mean the API commands regarding the FPGA per se ? It is possible to modify the verilog code to do whatever you want to do - this is what I did for my project - as long as the "protocol" between the API and the FPGA is obeyed, i.e., the API sends an opcode for reading a sample, the FPGA sees it and puts it on its data lines and waits and so forth until the API has read the number of samples that you will have specified in the respective call. Don't forget that in the middle of all these lies the MCU as well. Also be careful to keep the way you send the samples the same as they are zero padded to 16-bit words to accommodate 12-bit boards as well. In short; you can do whatever but when you send the results back to the PC you need to stick on the existing way of doing it. 

Evros

Hi Julio,

I have the same problem as you. I am using VisualStudio and I am able to correctly compile the sample code that is published on the Programmers' Guide (the dll is correctly linked).

In particular, all the function of wvdll library that I call in my code return as false, eg, if I call the function WvDebugModuleModifyAll, always it returns as false (and I don't know why).

Probably I have some problems with the location of the configuration directory for the hardware. My code is under "C:\Users\m.giuliano\Fast ADC\SW Test\FastADC_sw_test\FastADC_test_solution" and the directory for the hardware is under "C:\Program Files\National Semiconductor\WaveVision5\hardware". I have already copied the  hardware's folder under my VS project but nothing has changed.

How you solved your problems? How can I manage this issue?

Thanks for your help

Regards

Matteo

Hello Julio,

I would first like to apologise for the delay. I only hope you understand. Please see the attached scripts for interfacing the DLL with Matlab. 

 5672.1520_matlab.rar

Do not forget to copy the whole hardware directory into the directory you will be including in the Matlab path so that the DLL will be able to load the appropriate scripts.

I am sure if you copy the steps into your C# code or whatever you will get the same functionality.

Evros

Hi Matteo,

I was able to, finally, get the program to work with the board. After playing with a couple of calls, the board sent the samples allright.

Now, on the quest for a fast collection of multiple records. Our intention is to acquire data as fast as possible, but as I read in this forum and I want to evaluate, it seems like we can't get faster than 5 samples/second. Did you try anything in this direction?

Thanks for your suggestions, it really helped.

Julio

Hello Julio,

Glad you got it sorted. I once again apologise for taking too long to reply last time. 

To answer your question, 5 acquisitions per second was pretty much the best I could do with MATLAB (see attached files in my previous post). I can do one acquisition every 0.3 seconds without the device getting too hot. May have to install a heatsink for my demo.

It is an evaluation module after all and with the current MCU/USB controller and DRIVER/DLL combination I guess you cannot do much better than 5 acqs/sec. 

Evros

Hi Evros,

I am the one to apologize. Sorry for the delay in acknowledging your message and the receipt of your files. I was busy  trying to make my C program to work, which I finally succeeded, and was afraid of moving to a different platform in between.

I will go over your scripts, and try to make it work with Matlab as well.

Thanks again, and I'll give you a feedback whenever I have it working.

Julio

Hi Julio,

I wrote a C++ code with a dedicated thread to acquire the data as fast as possible (the thread was set in maximum priority and it carried out the three operation Start->Read->Stop cyclically). In this test, carried out with an internal trigger, I obtained an acquisition speed about 24 sweep/second (a single sweep was long 4KB) .

In order to synchronize the acquisition using an external signal, I carried out some test using an external trigger and I obtained the maximum speed about 10 sweep/second (important: using the external trigger I noticed that the value of duty cycle influence the correct synchronization of the acquisition).

Does anyone who got better results? Can someone tell me how to increase this values of speed (if it is possibile)?

Best regards

Matteo

Hi Julio, 

I am trying to use labview installing on pc window7 to communicate adc08x1520rb. I also consider to do data acquisition in FPGA instead of calling any software running on PC to improve speed. I wonder what kind of FPGA interface you find to use for communicating with the board. Please share me some thoughts of how to start. 

Thank you!

Best Regards,

Bridget

Hi Bridget,

We haven't done anything yet regarding the FPGA interface. We are still searching for a board that could be connected to the adc board, so that we could have access to the FMC port.

But we are a long way from having any results: we're used to the Altera/VHDL/Quartus/ModelSim environment, and we'll need to make a switch to the Xilinx/Verilog/ISE/Cadence(?) one.

Other messages in this forum make references to using the FPGA source files and configuration files in trying to change some of the board behavior, but I haven't looked into them yet.

If and whenever we have any results, I'll post in this forum.

Julio

Hi Julio,

Thank you for your reply. I appreciate it.

May I know why you are searching for a board which is able to connect to the reference board, ADC08D1520RB. It looks like that ADC08D1520RB itself has input/output to control FMC port in its FPGA chip.

I am working on ADC08D1520RB board and try to use LabView to control the reference board. I wonder if you have used MATLAB to communicate with the board through WinUSB drive installed on PC. If so, I wonder what interface you used to control ADC hardware? I find that USI interface supported by the reference board defines 1 input port and 4 output port defined in adc08d1520.v, but only the last 3 output ports are called in the .v file. 

//usi spi
input sdi_usi,
output US,
output sclk_usi,
output scs1_usi,
output scs2_usi,

Thank you!

-Bridget

Hi Bridget,

Answering your first question, we intend to extract the samples from the AD converter through the FMC port, since the USB interface is rate-limited. As cited a couple of times here, the maximum rate is around 10 samples of 32Kbytes records per second, whereas through the FMC port we might achieve the native rate of 1.5 GSps. We hope!

We are currently using an executable file that is called from LabView. We haven't used Matlab yet, but I think there should be no major issue in using it. Please, refer to the files provided by member Evripidis Karseras in another post for Matlab access.

So far, we have used just the program provided in the documentation files, and we did not play with configuring the AD converter using the USI interface you mention. If we do any tests with this, I'll post it here.

Regards,

Julio

Hello all,

Just to complement Julio's answer,  in the code I have it seems that you can control the ADC via a user SPI interface with the signals (check .v file, schematic and .ucf file) with:

scs_adc, sclk_adc, sdi_adc, sdo_adc

but that is just for sending commands to the ADC chip, not the FPGA. You need the FPGA and the Cypress MCU to send the samples over to the PC. Even when using LabView (and the wv5 DLL).

The USI SPI signals are indeed populated on the board but internally the sdi_usi is not connected to anything:

input sdi_usi -----> not used

I think that finding a way to use the DLL with labview would be much easier rather than directly communicating via SPI since the effective transfer rate would be the same. If you want drastic measures do what Julio says and use the FMC port in conjunction with another evaluation board/device that works with labview.

Edit: Of course you can use the ADC SPI to setup the ADC and then use the FMC output bypassing the FPGA/MCU as far as capture/transfer is concerned.

Evros

Hi  Julio, 

Hi Bridget,

excuse my late response.

bridget yu said:

Hi Evros, 

Thank you so much for your response. 

Please correct me if I am wrong. So, adc08d1520.v describes interfaces to ADC, not FPGA. If so, which files are for FPGA? But if we can control ADC from LabView on PC, FPGA just use its original logic to send data to PC via Cypress MCU. In this case, why we have to control FPGA? 

I cannot answer why they were not used in the Verilog code, the board works as advertised so that's that. If you study the schematic you will notice that the tracks for those signals are implemented so you can control the ADC using the SPI interface with anything you want, bit-banging from the PC, labview, some other Evaluation module, MCU, whatever.