Pico devkit - where is the documentation?

Mike,

First, I would like to welcome you the TI E2E community, and a special welcome to the DLP section.

Let me say I can understand your frustration.  This product has just been released and we are working on releasing the documentation. 

I believe at this time that there is a programmers guide available at www.dlpdiscovery.com on the pico projector kit page.

We hope to release the other kinds of documents you mention by the end of March. 

Again, we are sorry for the lag between the product and the documentation, but  we are very glad to have you aboard.

Thanks for the reply & I'm relieved to see that there are plans to release more info.

 I've previously toyed with hacking ex-ebay DLP projectors, but found that DLP data has been near-impossible to come by in the past without paying big $ for devkits.

Now that there's a development platform available at a good price it's an excellent opportunity to get more people exploring interesting new possible applications, and I hope this won't be limited by lack of information.

Well it's April and still no sign of documentation - how hard can it be to at least put a schematic online?

Hello Mike,

Sorry, we are running behind, however, we did post a number of the documents today at this website:

www.dlpdiscovery.com/pico

Today, we posted the DMD and Drive circuit datasheets and the optical/mechanical app note.

The Reference design information (including schematics) and other interface documents will be released later in 2Q09 due to non-technical reasons.   Sorry for any inconvenience, but will post as soon as possible.

I notice the mention of the Altera Cyclone III parts in the DPP1505 datasheet - and the JTAG pins line up...

Would it be a good time to get familiar with some Altera tools?

The Altera C3 part is used as the target device to implement the DPP1505 functionality.  However, we do not expect that customers would need to modify the Altera part directly via their (Altera's) custom tools.

Ability to modify would depend on getting the FPGA code from Ti - I suspect this would not be forthcoming....

However as the datasheet for the DMD is now available, you could write your own FPGA code to drive it directly - may be useful for non-video apps - e.g. structured lighting etc, and probably not too hard to do if you were only wanting simple functionality as opposed to video processing.

I should probably wait until the schematics are released, but since someone is listening... Does the MSP430 have control over the FPGA configuration sequence and should we just wait until more documentation is released?

I think structured light is simpler to do via the FPGA versus trying to generate and vsync/frame sync a DVI connection via the beagle board. Also being able to "brute force" disable the frame sequential color is a nice bonus.

I would like to get some help on additional documentation sources to help me use the Beagle Board with a PICO...

The www.beagleboard.org/pico page helped me set up the beagle board with an SD card boot image - but it doesn't say squat about what to do after that... Kinda leaves you hanging... Even the demo video link is a dead link...

So, instead of complaining more, let's move forward with some very basic questions:

1) Suppose I want to play with some I2C registers in the PICO (as defined by the programmers guide)... Is it possible to send them to the PICO through the beagle board by sending the proper commands via the beagle serial interface using Tera Term? If so, what's the syntax?

2) Are there better suited SD boot images that are customized for PICO control or development?

3) How about a TI generated WIKI that follows the use of the PICO with a beagle in step by step form?

Hello,

If you go to http://groups.google.com/group/beagleboard and search for “beagleboard, pico” you will find instruction on how to send I2C commands through the Beagleboard.

Here is a link to it:

http://groups.google.com/group/beagleboard/browse_thread/thread/91d878ffd2f74fdf/37a2ce14f6e9649a?lnk=gst&q=beagleboard%2C+pico%2C+i2c+-+HOW#37a2ce14f6e9649a

If you go to www.dlpdiscovery.com/pico you will see Technical Documents on the right side of the page. For I2C command information refer to the “Pico Kit Programmer’s Guide” which is located on this page.

We are currently working to release additional system documents for the Pico system. This documentation will be available very soon at www.dlpdiscovery.com/pico.

Funny - I started that thread looking for info yesterday...

Here's what I've learned so far:

1) The Angstrom image that's available from www.beagleboard.org/pico already includes i2c support

2) From Tera Term, I'm able to communicate via i2c using bus3-i2c at a prompt (btw - typing in bus3-i2c at a prompt and enter will ping back the usage syntax for it)...

3) I learned that I needed to type in "root" (without quotes) in order to login to the angstrom OS to get a prompt via Tera Term

4) I learned that the pico i2c address through the beagle board is: 0x1b

5) Sending a command like this allows communication: bus3-i2c 0x1b wb4 0x0b 0x00000002 (wb4 means write 4 bytes, 0x0b is the sub-address which is test pattern mode in this case, and data = 0x00000002 which is full white)

It sure would have saved alot of time and effort if this simple info was just included with all of the other SD card setup stuff at www.beagleboard.org/pico

Good times.