DLPDLCR230NPEVM: Booting problems

Hello Lukas,

Welcome to the E2E forum and thank you for your interest in DLP® technology.

There are a few recommendations to get started:

1. Please review the DLPDLCR230NPEVM Quick-Start Tutorial.
2. Check the power supply being used. We are working on publishing an updated guide, with the new spec. Try using a supply with at least 4A current output. Usually the issue tied to this is a continual power cycling, but it may help in your case as well.
3. Ensure that both the I2C and SPI interfaces are enabled on the Raspberry Pi. With the latest Raspberry Pi update, these interfaces are disabled by default. This will prevent you from communicating with the DLP micro-controller and SPI flash device.
4. If point 3 has been attempted and it is not possible to re-flash firmware through the Raspberry Pi as the typical method, it may be necessary to attempt to flash the flash device via SOIC clip. Instructions for doing so can be found on the SPI Flash Device with SOIC Clip Guide for Corrupted Devices FAQ page.

Please let me know if these recommendations are of use to you.

Regards,

Austin

Hello Austin,

thanks for the fast reply.

About your suggestions:

1. I already reviewed this tutorial and set up both projectors so that they worked before just fine
   
2. I tested different power supplies. For the first device nothing changed with different settings. All the LEDs are still contantly on and no image is projected.
   The second device shows some changes: If I put on 5V 4A now both the D_HOST_IRQ, and the D_INIT_B LED as well as the projected DLP logo blink every second. I again re-flashed but nothing changed. However if I put on 6V 4A, as stated in some other forums, only the D_INIT_B blinks and the DLP logo is projected all the time. Now which state is better? Does the D_INIT_B LED blinking indicates some malfunction of the FPGA?
   
   
3. Both the I2C and SPI interfaces are enabled on my Raspberry Pi. The re-flash works on my second device but not on the first.
   
   
4. I would suggest to focus on the first device because I dont have the tools right now to perform the SOIC clip re-flash.
   
   However the re-flash with the Raspberry Pi works on the second device but sadly does not solve this problem:
   

I would be happy if we can get the second device to run again. The first device has probably a bigger issue because I did not find anything similar in other forums where the problem of the second device seems to be a common one.

Thank you in advance
Lukas

Hello Lukas,

Lukas Reichert said:

The second device shows some changes: If I put on 5V 4A now both the D_HOST_IRQ, and the D_INIT_B LED as well as the projected DLP logo blink every second. I again re-flashed but nothing changed. However if I put on 6V 4A, as stated in some other forums, only the D_INIT_B blinks and the DLP logo is projected all the time. Now which state is better? Does the D_INIT_B LED blinking indicates some malfunction of the FPGA?

The second state is preferred. There is a small voltage drop on the board before the power reaches the DLP power management IC. Voltage supplies have a certain amount of accuracy, so it is more preferred to have a ~5.2V supply to ensure that if the supply is even a bit less than the 5V that it is rated for, the UVLO mechanism within the DLP PMIC will not trip. In short, using the 6V supply should work well.

The D_INIT_B LED blinking seems to indicate that the FPGA is continually power cycling. Normally I would recommend re-flashing the FPGA, but it appears that you have done this recently. Would it be possible to probe the following signals while this failure is occurring?

• FPGA_READY
• FPGA_P1P18V
• FPGA_RESETZ

Lukas Reichert said:

I would suggest to focus on the first device because I dont have the tools right now to perform the SOIC clip re-flash.

Lukas Reichert said:

I would be happy if we can get the second device to run again. The first device has probably a bigger issue because I did not find anything similar in other forums where the problem of the second device seems to be a common one.

Sorry, I'm a bit lost here. Which device would you like to focus on?

Regards,

Austin

Hello Austin,

sorry for the confusion, I meant the second device where the D_INIT_B LED is blinking.

I am not exactly sure, where to probe these signals. Are the following points right?

• FPGA_READY -> GPIO14
• FPGA_P1P18V -> U28-5
• FPGA_RESETZ -> R15

If yes, I get the following signals:

• FPGA_READY -> no signal
  
  
  
  
• FPGA_P1P18V after start-up -> constant 2.6V
  
  
• FPGA_RESERZ -> this
  
  

If this is not right, could you please tell me, where to probe them?

Thank you
Lukas

Hi Lukas,

The points you have chosen were good selections for the signals with the exception of FPGA_RESETZ. I meant for this to be the signal pulled up by R542, but you have come across something useful here. It appears that the DLPC is continually restarting. I presupposed that the controller was not cycling since it sounds as though you are seeing a consistent projection. Is that true? 

What is the state of HOST_IRQ on your board?

Lukas Reichert said:

The second one worked fine this morning and I was testing some scripts to switch off the beamer via the GPIO Pin 26. At some point when switching the beamer on, it did not boot correctly and now it displays only the initial "DLP Texas Instruments" logo without the rainbow pattern.

Can you speak more on what was done here? Can you share the scripts? Which GPIO pin 26 are you meaning here?

Regards,

Austin

Hello Austin,

Austin Snyder said:

I meant for this to be the signal pulled up by R542

I did one more measurement at this point and the signal looks similar to the one from R15:

Austin Snyder said:

I presupposed that the controller was not cycling since it sounds as though you are seeing a consistent projection. Is that true?

Yes, the DLP Logo is projected constantly once I start the beamer. But sometimes there are slight variations from the original DLP Logo for example the first image I sent in this forum with the strange color pattern around the logo. Sometimes there is just a white image without logo. But in every state only the D_INIT_B LED is blinking and I am not able to project my image via the python scripts.

Austin Snyder said:

What is the state of HOST_IRQ on your board?

When I turn the beamer on, the D_HOST_IRQ LED blinks for about a second and then switches off and stays off for the rest of the time.

Austin Snyder said:

Can you speak more on what was done here? Can you share the scripts? Which GPIO pin 26 are you meaning here?

Sure, my script looks something like this where I switch between the on and off states. Maybe I turned it on and off to fast because at one point it got stuck in the current state.

The pin 26 is the one from the User Guide Table 9-2:

Best,
Lukas

Lukas,

Is this toggling between PROJ_ON high and low done repeatedly? Please try removing the beamer off command to see if your performance improves. I would also ask that the system be brought up without your automation script to see if this behavior is tied to your program.

Regards,

Austin

Hello Austin,

Austin Snyder said:

Is this toggling between PROJ_ON high and low done repeatedly?

Yes.

Sorry for the confusing code snipped. I dont actually use it on boot, these are just the commands I used and I did not use them in this order. In my script I use either the on or the off command. Sorry, last week I could not access my Raspberry Pi for the actual script. 

Right now I am using no python script when booting the projector. I also have no Raspberry Pi connected.

Lukas

Hi Lukas,

Lukas Reichert said:

Yes.

Lukas Reichert said:

Right now I am using no python script when booting the projector. I also have no Raspberry Pi connected.

I am somewhat confused by these statements. Does the behavior continue when PROJ_ON is not toggled? I should also mention that there should be a minimum time between turning the projector on/off and switching it back off or on. Turning off the projector quickly before initialization or the parking sequence is complete could wear on the system over time.

Also, were the products still under warranty (within 90 days or purchase) when you initial post was made?

Regards,

Austin

Austin,

again, sorry for the confusion, I try to explain my situation:

Last week I used a python script with the commands from the code snipped above. At this time the projector was connected with my Raspberry Pi and was working fine. The script was nothing automated that would run at startup, I had to manually type in commands for the script to do something. I run the script and with one command I could change between the 0 and 1 state of the GPIO 26 PROJ_ON. At the beginning it worked just fine and switched the projector on and off but at one time it stopped working and got stuck in the above explained state. I disconnected the Raspberry Pi and was not running any script and the projector still did not work.

Again I explain what is wrong:

When I plug in the projector and turn it on the first second all three LEDs are blinking. Then only the D_INIT_B LED is blinking and the projection gets stuck in the DLP Logo. I tried different power supplies but nothing helped. I tried to re flash the controller and the fpga but nothing helped. The projector is not connected to the Raspberry Pi and still got this error.

This has nothing to do with any python script but I think with a malfunction of the projector. Also the three FPGA signals that I measured do not correspond to any python script.

I hope that clears some misunderstandings. The products were not under warranty, if we cant fix the problem, we can close this.

Thank you anyway for your help Austin

Lukas,

You are welcome to the help.

If you are still interested in pursuing fixes for these EVMs, I would recommend probing and observing the startup sequence of the DLPA2005 as detailed in Figure 3 of the DLPA2005 datasheet. It is somewhat concerning that the P1P8V (1.8V) rail is stabilizing at 2.6V, though I cannot think of how this came to be with the process that you describe here. My theory is that the DLPA2005 PMIC is detecting a fault and resetting the system via the RESETZ signal. Typically this appears as a flickering projection, so your case would be out of the ordinary.

Please feel free to respond back to this thread for further assistance on this issue or open another thread for assistance on another question.

Regards,

Austin