MSP-EXP430FR5994: How to workaround the missing sdcard despite BOOSTXL-AUDIO presence

Pascal Chambon

Part Number: MSP-EXP430FR5994
Other Parts Discussed in Thread: BOOSTXL-AUDIO, MSP430FR5994

The MSP-EXP430FR5994 no longer has the sdcard slot populated, so the corresponding pins of the chip are unavailable - and we dont have the abilities necessary to solder things to the tiny remaining metal points.

We could maybe use the only SPI port exposed as pins (P5.0 and 5.1), with an external sdcard module, but it is also used by the DAC of the BOOSTXL-AUDIO module, so it's hard for us to identify how this could conflict with our sdcard module. The only SPI CS available to target the sdcard module seems to be P4.4

Since we want to record audio and store it onto the sdcard, sharing the same MOSI/MISO for the same task might also lead to throughput issues.

Is there any advice or workaround, somewhere, to easily use a SDCARD holder on this MSP-EXP430FR5994 launchpad ?

I searched the docs and examples and forum in vain, and there are no other dev kits for this MSP430FR5994 it seems.

Thanks in advance for your help

4 months ago

0 Gary Gao 4 months ago

TI__Mastermind 35095 points

For the demo code build for boostxl-audio playbcak is just use the FRAM to store the audio information not use the SD card https://dev.ti.com/tirex/explore/node?node=A__ABA4dsZcYlnMm7wCaGlRKw__msp430ware__IOGqZri__LATEST

Why do you must to use the SD card?

0 Pascal Chambon 4 months ago in reply to Gary Gao

Prodigy 20 points

Thanks for the inputs,

yes the record-to-fram demo works, but not the log-to-sdcard demo, and overall we need access to sdcard for our own use case, long-time recording of voice, that's why we need to find a handy way to plug an sdcard without interfering with the boostxl-audio data transfers.

0 Gary Gao 4 months ago in reply to Pascal Chambon

TI__Mastermind 35095 points

We do have other pins for SPI as below, the launchpad should use the PN package and you can see lots pins can do as SPI

0 Pascal Chambon 4 months ago in reply to Gary Gao

Prodigy 20 points

Thanks for the hint, lots of these pins are not exposed on the launchpad but I think I have found a usable secondary SPI in these, indeed.

And I had confused "ste" with chip-select, but since any output pin seems to be usable as chip-select, more flexibility is possible even when using a single SPI port.

Thanks !

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MSP-EXP430FR5994: How to workaround the missing sdcard despite BOOSTXL-AUDIO presence