CCS/MSP430FR2633: Frustration with CapTIvate Design Centre and Code Composer Studio on Macintosh

Hello Andre,

Thank you very much for the feedback and sorry you have run into these. I will pass this on to the team and check if we can test on a MacOS setup.

The team will likely have follow up questions.

Thanks,
JD

Hello Andre,

Sorry that you are having trouble with your setup.
Can you at least describe (at a high level) a few of the issues you are seeing.
This is in case we have it working on our side and need to figure out why it doesn't work on your side.
Example: Target won't connect to CDC, CDC not responding, Error messages?, etc.
Thanks,

Hi Andre,

Ok, our software development team set me up with one of their Mac machines that they use for regression testing.
It is running macOS Mojave v 10.14.
I installed latest version of CCS and CapTIvate design center.
All works as demonstrated in the video.

Can you provide any additional information?

Hi Dennis,

Thank you for trying this with your Mac.

Here are two screen shots showing how far I got before having to simplify my design to get code to generate. 

The first step of creating a new project works fine, the second step of adding a button group of 8 self-capacitance electrodes ends like so:

You can see that I can increment the counter to 8, but only four buttons appear. I thought this might just be a drawing problem with the window. I don't think it is. When I go back to the main window only a four-button group appears as it does in the properties panel. After I add the other items shown in the video and finally add the MCU and auto-assign the connections, I'm presented with this view:

I can only get button groups with four or less connections so settled for two mutual-capacitance groups of three buttons and a single mutual-cap' button to get the seven I need. I'm able to auto-assign without trouble then run into more bugs when trying to save the code that I was able to work around. Throughout this process I've attempted more then 6 projects without a satisfactory experience in CDC. When it comes to building, so-far I've only been able to get a clickable build button in CCS once, and the build ended with errors complaining that several symbols have been duplicated. I've not been able to build anything since.

Best,

Andre.

Hi Andre,

Yes, something does seem odd here.

I wanted to mention that you have selected the DSBGA (ball grid) package (not that has anything to do with this issue).  Just wanted to make sure you start with the correct device.  Ok, let me try this specific setup and see if I can duplicate.  Can switch to an MSP430FR2633IRHB or 2633IDA and see if you have same issue?

Hi Dennis,

I see your point, but it doesn't really matter because if I choose to create the button group first, I always get the same result no matter which MCU I choose at the end. However, if I choose one of the suggested chips you mention above before creating anything else in a fresh project, I can create an 8 button self-cap' group no problem. I can then auto-assign and get no errors, as shown below.

Notice in my first screen-shot from earlier today that the "Electrode Config" pop-up is blank when creating a button group with more than 4 electrodes. The popup is not blank when I first start the button group, but once the counter is incremented past 4, the pop-up goes blank and the top part of that window becomes quite a lot narrower. When reversing the order of instantiating, that pop-up is not blank. Is this an initialisation problem with the program where not having defined an MCU the button group is not then able to work within a proper range of allowable values?

After this I went into CCS to import the project. It's the dimmed "MSP430 Test 9" item shown in the window below. No matter which project I select in the list, the "Finish" button will not un-dim and I'm unable to proceed.

Best,

Andre.

Hi Andre,

I tried everything you tried and with various orders of instantiation and all worked perfectly for me, so let me run this be the software engineer who wrote the CapTIvate design center.

Regarding CCS and the "grayed out" project(s), this indicates that there is already a project by that name(s) in that workspace, and therefore won't allow you to re-import until you delete them. I would suggest navigating to that workspace directory and delete the existing project, then try re-importing. The CCS workspace directory should be under your users>[you]\workspace_v8, or something similar. Or, you can create a new CCS workspace and import your desired project.

Hi Andre,

Ok, I spoke with the designer and he indicated that it may be possible that if you create a new project then create a button group before instantiating the mcu, what might be happening is the default mcu (selected in the background if you don't choose one) might be the MSP430FR2512, which has only 4 Captivate IO pins. This is why the button group can only support up to 4 buttons.

His recommendation is to create new project, instantiate mcu first, then instantiate the button group, wheel, sensor or proximity next. You might even try instantiating the mcu first, then save the project, then try instantiating your sensors.

Let me know if that resolves your issue.

Hi Dennis,

I'm dismayed that there is such a disparity between my experience and yours. I'd love for this software to be so robust that we had identical results without trying.

As for the "already imported" supposition, those grayed-out projects have never before been imported so I have no idea what to delete since there is only the one copy at "/Volumes/High\ Sierra/Users/high/CapTIvateDesignCenter_1_70_00_03/CapTIvateDesignCenterWorkspace/MSP430 Test 9" Deleting that would delete the files created by CDC.

Best,

Andre.

Hi Dennis,

I'm not surprised that there is an default initialisation that I'm running into. How come you're not? Perhaps the program would be better to have already instantiated a chip for the user upon creating a project instead of initialising against a hidden set of parameters?

Are you running the exact same version I am on the same OS with the same Java install (jre-8u191-macosx-x64)?

I wonder if there is something wrong with the files generated by CDC that CCS can't tolerate. Here are three screen-shots of the workspace showing three different projects:

Do any of these look suspicious? I could only get the "Finish" button to un-dim for the "FastSample..." project when choosing it directly with the browse button attached to the "Select search-directory:" text field. Selecting it in the "Discovered Projects" list doesn't un-dim the button.

Best,

Andre.

Hi Dennis,

Here is a zip file of "MSP430 Test 10". Perhaps you or your engineers can have a look at it to see why it doesn't import?

Best,

Andre.

MSP430 Test 10.zip

Andre,

I'm actually running Mojave v10.14, which I believe is a later version than yours.

I want to also mention that each time there is a new release of CCS and/or CDC, our software group runs regression testing to make sure that nothing breaks between the versions, so this means all of the pre-defined CDC projects will import and build in the latest version of CCS.

What you are showing me looks fine.
I think there might be some confusion regarding the directories.
When the CDC is installed, it creates a directory: "/Volumes/High\ Sierra/Users/high/CapTIvateDesignCenter_1_70_00_03/CapTIvateDesignCenterWorkspace.
This is where all the demonstration code/projects are placed. And no, you don't want to delete any of these. If you do, re-installing CCS will replace the deleted files.

The other directory is related to CCS and would be on your machine something like: "/Volumes/High\ Sierra/Users/high/workspace_v8" and if you have never created or never imported a CCS project, then yes, this directory should be empty of any project files.

So the point here is when you are in CCS, import a CDC project making sure you are pointing to the CDC directory "/Volumes/High\ Sierra/Users/high/CapTIvateDesignCenter_1_70_00_03/CapTIvateDesignCenterWorkspace".

The way CCS works is if there is an existing project with the same name in the CCS workspace "/Volumes/High\ Sierra/Users/high/workspace_v8", then Yes, that project will appear grayed out in the CCS import dialog box. Then you will need to deleted that project in the CCS workspace directory "/Volumes/High\ Sierra/Users/high/workspace_v8".

I don't know what else to suggest, other maybe upgrade to Mojave.
I can tell you that we do have many Mac users that use the CDC and CCS successfully over the past 3 years.

Hi Andre,

It's been awhile with no response from you so I will assume you have worked out your issue.
I will mark this as resolved, but you are welcome to re-open if you have further questions.

Hi Dennis,

Although I have workarounds for the issues with CDC, I've not been able to fix the problems with CCS and have gotten only more frustrated with the process. I'm hoping you or one of the developers of these two packages would run them in a fresh install of High Sierra using the versions of the different components I've outlined already and HELP me with my installation. Telling me that it works for you in a different system isn't helping me at all, but making matters worse for me as Mojave is not an option.

Since your team does regression testing, they then would have a High Sierra system to test on. If there is someone there who would like to run these packages on High SIerra, I'd be interested in hearing from them. So far I've only heard from one other person, presumably running High Sierra. They are having no success either. Watch it on YouTube below.

In the interim I've installed NXP's MCUXpresso packages and am having nothing but success, which stuns me as Eclipse and the like tend not to run well on Mac, but their stuff is smooth and reliable. I've had no problem building multiple example projects with three different SDK's for three different boards and next week I should have their evaluation boards to see if everything connects well, too.

I really like the MSP430 and MSP432 platforms and think they're a good choice for this project I'm working on, but if the stuff doesn't work as well for me (and the guy at AddOhms) then it's of no value.

Please let me know when you've got this working smoothly on High Sierra.

Best,

Andre.

 

Andre,

I don't think I can provide any additional guidance. I'm limited as to what I can try. I spoke with several folks on this end and one suggested updating your version of Java to the latest. So I'm going to pass this over to one of our CCS support engineers to see if they can at least determine your issue with CCS and maybe work backwards from there.

Again, sorry this is such a hassle for you. If this was a commonly reported issue, we would have probably already have a recommended solution.