MSP-EXP430F5529 Experiment Board: debug USB ECHO

Hello, Everyone,

I have made some progress on using the USB Echo application in the MSP-EXP430F5529 User Experience software. This seemed like such a useful program I felt it was worth investing the time to trying to get it to work. I have a laptop running Windows 7 with and no comports. Being able to communicate using a USB interface to communicate with firmware seems like a hugely useful feature.

In order to get the driver to load I ran MSP-EXP430F5529 User Experience software, on the MSP-EXP430F5539 Experimenters board, and selected Demo Software and the USB Echo application. The driver will then be visible using the Windows 7 Device Manager and looking under the Ports (Com & LPT) section.

I right clicked on the MSP430_F5529_UE_CDC  driver and clicked then clicked on the on "Update Driver" menu item. The "Browse my computer for driver software" selection permitted me to navigate to where the driver is located on my laptop - C:\ti\msp430\MSP-EXP430F5529_UE_1_30_00_00\src\Drivers. After installing the driver successfully (according to Window 7) I closed everything and then restarted CCS and again ran the USB Echo Demo application, to display the USB driver.

When I double clicked on the MSP430_F5529_UE_CDC driver, a form with information about the driver was displayed. Initially, the Device status window, displayed a message telling me that "No drivers had been loaded for this device".

The only way I could find to fix this problem was to right click on the driver and select "Scan for hardware changes." This takes a long time but after a while when I double clicked on the driver, the message in the Device status window changed to "This device is working properly."

Hyperterm could not see the comport until I did this.

The other problem I found was that I had to type two characters to get them to echo back. I received both characterls, I entered but I received nothing if I only typed in one character. This may be because USB has to send a whole buffer and not one character at a time?

The other thing I would like to mention, is the the MSP-EXP430F5529 firmware does all the heavy lifting, as far as telling the PC to Load the driver etc. I am very impressed with all the firmware that comes with the MSP-EXP430F5529. Great Job TI!!!

If anyone knows of a USB CDC Terminal Emulator program other than Hyperterm, that I could use, I would be very grateful.

Any comments on how to fix the problems I mentioned are also very much appreciated.

Thank you for your help and time.

Mark

Mark MacNab said:

The other thing I would like to mention, is the the MSP-EXP430F5529 firmware does all the heavy lifting, as far as telling the PC to Load the driver etc. I am very impressed with all the firmware that comes with the MSP-EXP430F5529. Great Job TI!!!

Even though I'm not responsible for any of this, it's good to read some different tone form time to time :)

Mark MacNab said:

If anyone knows of a USB CDC Terminal Emulator program other than Hyperterm, that I could use, I would be very grateful.

Mark MacNab said:

The only way I could find to fix this problem was to right click on the driver and select "Scan for hardware changes." This takes a long time but after a while when I double clicked on the driver, the message in the Device status window changed to "This device is working properly."

Mark MacNab said:

Hyperterm could not see the comport until I did this.

Jens-Michael Gross said:

The other thing I would like to mention, is the the MSP-EXP430F5529 firmware does all the heavy lifting, as far as telling the PC to Load the driver etc. I am very impressed with all the firmware that comes with the MSP-EXP430F5529. Great Job TI!!!

It doesn't happen so often that someone is happy about the TI provided software. However, typicyl criticism is about the documentation, especially not documented implicit assumptions in the software.

Even though I'm not responsible for any of this, it's good to read some different tone form time to time :)

Mark MacNab said:

If anyone knows of a USB CDC Terminal Emulator program other than Hyperterm, that I could use, I would be very grateful.

A quite good one is PUTTY. It is, however, maybe a bit overloaded.
I still use HyperTerm (except for SSH connections, where I need ot use putty), but not the versin Microsoft includes in WIndows (this version is from NT times and almost beta state). In 2001, Hilgraeve has already released a much updated and bugfixed version (V6.3) free for personal use. I like the scrollback buffer (which is working properly now) and the way to store the configuration and call it with a link. Very convenient if you have four serial and some telnet connections you sometimes want to see simultaneously in different windows. :)
Edit: I just noticed that they have removed V6.3 from their download page and demand quite some bucks for the later versions, even for private usage. However, V6.3 is still available on the net.

Mark MacNab said:

The only way I could find to fix this problem was to right click on the driver and select "Scan for hardware changes." This takes a long time but after a while when I double clicked on the driver, the message in the Device status window changed to "This device is working properly."

In a different thread I just read that there is a problem with teh LDO that VBUS isn't always detected properly. So the device doesn't enumerate and Windows cnanot load the proper drivers.

Mark MacNab said:

Hyperterm could not see the comport until I did this.

Obviously. HyperTerm jsut accesses a (virtual) serial port. it doesn't know that the data is really coming through USB. And unless the device has enumerated and the drivers have been loaded, HyperTerm just doesn't have a serial port to attach to.

[/quote]

Jens-Michael Gross said:

The other thing I would like to mention, is the the MSP-EXP430F5529 firmware does all the heavy lifting, as far as telling the PC to Load the driver etc. I am very impressed with all the firmware that comes with the MSP-EXP430F5529. Great Job TI!!!

It doesn't happen so often that someone is happy about the TI provided software. However, typicyl criticism is about the documentation, especially not documented implicit assumptions in the software.

Even though I'm not responsible for any of this, it's good to read some different tone form time to time :)

Mark MacNab said:

If anyone knows of a USB CDC Terminal Emulator program other than Hyperterm, that I could use, I would be very grateful.

A quite good one is PUTTY. It is, however, maybe a bit overloaded.
I still use HyperTerm (except for SSH connections, where I need ot use putty), but not the versin Microsoft includes in WIndows (this version is from NT times and almost beta state). In 2001, Hilgraeve has already released a much updated and bugfixed version (V6.3) free for personal use. I like the scrollback buffer (which is working properly now) and the way to store the configuration and call it with a link. Very convenient if you have four serial and some telnet connections you sometimes want to see simultaneously in different windows. :)
Edit: I just noticed that they have removed V6.3 from their download page and demand quite some bucks for the later versions, even for private usage. However, V6.3 is still available on the net.

Mark MacNab said:

The only way I could find to fix this problem was to right click on the driver and select "Scan for hardware changes." This takes a long time but after a while when I double clicked on the driver, the message in the Device status window changed to "This device is working properly."

In a different thread I just read that there is a problem with teh LDO that VBUS isn't always detected properly. So the device doesn't enumerate and Windows cnanot load the proper drivers.

Mark MacNab said:

Hyperterm could not see the comport until I did this.

Obviously. HyperTerm jsut accesses a (virtual) serial port. it doesn't know that the data is really coming through USB. And unless the device has enumerated and the drivers have been loaded, HyperTerm just doesn't have a serial port to attach to.

[/quote]Thank you for your comments. They were very helpful.