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launchpad stopped working

hey yesterday i got my launchpad with msp430-g2231 and it was working great until this morning when i decided to play a little with it and make some leds blink after uploading some code on the device something when wrong and i couldn't  get any code on my launchpad

when i try to upload something to it ccs shows me this error 

Error connecting to the target: Could not find device (or device not supported)

i searched the forum and found some ideas like updating the ccs, changing the usb port , the usb cable but the problem still exists 

so what should i do in this situation ? if you need any other information feel free to ask

any idea its appreciated 

Vlad 

  • A typical error when a device stops responding, is that code was uploaded that causes an almost immediate reset of the device. Over and over again. This prohibits the FET to establish a JTAG connection.

    If this is the case, there are two possible solutions. First, hook up to the device using the BSL. Which is difficult since the G chips on the LaunchPad don't have a BSL. :(
    The other one is using a different software such as the Elportronic Flashpro130 software (there is a free verison available). Starting the erasing cycle over and over again while manually triggering a reset of the chip will sooner or later allow the Elprotronic to connect to the chip again, erase the faulty firmware and then all is fine.

    To avoid this kind of accidental locking, I sugges placing a delay loop right at the start of the main loop (after disabling the watchdog, but beware, a faulty access ot the watchdog register can also cause an immediate reset)

  • ah i didn't know that faulty code (or badly written) could cause an immediate reset of the device 

    i know that i should search but could you point me to some basic tutorials on how to use/write code for the launchpad ? 

    i will try your suggestion as soon as i get the flashpro130 downloaded

    thanks for your input 

  • Vlad Conut said:
    ah i didn't know that faulty code (or badly written) could cause an immediate reset of the device 

    There are several security mechanism that cause a device reset (so the device won't just freeze if something goes wrong, or, worse, continue to behave erratically). One of them is e.g. a write access to the watchdog control register without the proper password. Others are instruction fetches from a vacant memory address (usually an indicator of stack corruption or stack overflow).

    Since disabling the watchdog is the first thing most people do in main(), forgettign the password might cause a reset loop. And since such errors usually happen at the start of the project, there are usually not many variables that need to be initialized by the startup code. So the reset happens almost instantly after the reset - giving only a very small window for the JTAG to connect.

    Vlad Conut said:
    could you point me to some basic tutorials on how to use/write code for the launchpad

    The MSP on the LaunchPad is no different from any other MSPs, as far as the coding goes. No special coding techniques required. There are differences, since the ram is small, the hardware modules are limited and there is no BSL, but that's true for some non-LaunchPad MSPs too.

    Well, coding for MSPs (or many other microcontrollers) in general is different from writing PC programs :)
    But that's is a subject that can easily fill a book. (and one day I'll write one, if I ever find the time)

    Vlad Conut said:
    i know that i should search

    You can do a forum search for the word 'main'. It will surely find you a lot of threads with code for different aspects of the MSP universe :)
    Also, the LaunchPad product page, or the product page(s) of the LaunchPad processor(s) should contain several links to applicaiton notes (with example code)

  • im not very familiar with the MSPs but i want to learn how to use them in various projects

    i think my launchpad has another problem - in the package there were 2 msp430 and you said the problem may be the code i uploaded (im not saying its not :) ) but when  i changed the msp430 on the launchpad with the other one in the box  i got the same error in CCS also im not sure if this is what i should get  in the FET-Pro430 

    "The FET-Pro430 free version works only with  TI's FET adapters.

    If 3-th Party FET adapter its used then the standard FET-Pro should be used" its this normal or im doing again something wrong ? 

    thanks for your help so far 

     

  • Vlad Conut said:
    "The FET-Pro430 free version works only with  TI's FET adapters.

    Hmmm, looks like the free FET_Pro doesn't accept the LaunchPad FET as a TI FET.

    It might be the firmware version of your LauchPad intergrated FET.

    You should contact the people at Elprotronic and ask for advice. They can tell you what's going on.

  • hey sorry i havent posted the progress - but i didn't made any since my last post :( and i almost forgot about my launchpad till i found this http://hackaday.com/2010/08/11/how-to-launchpad-programming-with-linux/  and decided to give it a try (thought it was the setup)  but still no luck 

    contacting the people @ Elprotronic didn't do any good they gave me some suggestions but in the end the board its still unusable

    what i don't understand its why both of the msp430 (g2211 and g2231) are not working - could be something damaged on the board beside the two msp430 ?

    anyway since the board its so inexpensive and i do want to play a bit more with it i ordered another one but if someone could offer me some pointers on how to get the old board working ill appreciate it  - i only hope not to break the new one as fast as i broke the old one 

    thanks 

    Vlad

  • As silly as it may sound, USB has an annoying habit of turning devices off via power saving, my mp3 player used to switch on and off constantly and after a google search on it i found that under the "Universal Serial Bus controllers" -> "USB Root Hub" -> "Power Management" tab, the allow the computer to turn off this device... was ticked :/

  • is that common to windows or other operating systems are "affected" ?

  • Depending on distribution, kernel and installed tools this can happen under linux as well, as it also incorporates USB suspend features.

    I think it's called USB autosuspend and can be set somewhere in /sys/. Quite some time ago I used this feature to get a longer battery life on my laptop but it effectively killed the fingerprint reader (as it didn't support energy saving modes).

    I also hat trouble due to autosuspend under Windows using a CP2102 USB serial converter, it was shut down by windows if I didn't open the serial port and my system wouldn't get the voltage it needed anymore, so I also had to disable the power savings for that device to make it work always.  

    Maybe something similar can happen with the launchpad. 

    And well, this might also be a stupid sounding suggestion (but often stupid things are killing things) - but have you checked if all the jumpers are in place needed for JTAG access, and there is a voltage supplied to the MSP?

  • yeah the jumpers are all in place - and the the msp its getting power since the green and red led (P1.0) are lit (not sure why its the red one lit)

    ill check the usb thingy but im not sure that its the problem

  • In th emeantime, I took my own private LaunchPad (V1.4, never updated to anything, drivers from a ~2-year-old install of CCE) and the current version of the Elprotronic tool had no problems flashing the 2011 or the 2231. So it's not the Elprotronic tool.

    P.s.: my system in the office is XP+SP2.

  • ok so  what exactly do i have to do ? can you write some steps  also will it work on a windows 7 machine ? 

    thanks for the support 

  • My theory is, TI has a grand design that it works automatically. But that is just a throry. 

  • today i got my new launchpad :-? didn't play too much with it but i noticed it came with two different controllers this time the m430G2553 and m430g2452 will try to rescue the old launchpad on a machine with windows xp maybe that will work :D

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