MCF8316AEVM: After I press READ EEPROM it disconnects and comes up with this error

Hi Lisa,

Thanks for your question on the Motor Drives E2E Forum. 

Have you been using the guided tuning steps on the GUI, the User's Guide, and the MCF8316A tuning guide?

Another thing you could try is not enabling the Auto Read Motor Status. 

Turning on and off the power supply during the guided tuning may also result in the connectivity issues requiring a restart of the GUI. 

Best,

Robert

Hi Robert  

Thanks for getting back to me.
Yes, I have used the GUI and the tuning steps and everything has been working for the first few hours. Things do crash now and again, but I guess that's to be expected.
Its not working with or without Auto Read Motor Status.
I have reset everything and turned on the power supply / USB in different order, and restated the GUI a bunch of times, and also tried on Chrome and Firefox - on 2 different computers. Same problem.
I think there is something wrong with the board.Can you have someone replace the board here in Taiwan or test what I have on hand?

Best,

Jonas Lillie 

Hi Jonas, 

To assess the device integrity, please help by providing the following information.

How much voltage is being applied the EVM?

What is the current draw by the EVM at 12V?

Best,

Robert

The voltage is 24V
Current draw at 12V is 28mA
FYI, D6 is on D7 is off

Jonas

Hi Jonas,

The current draw you are recording is about as expected which leads me to believe that the EVM is still in good condition. 

The firmware actually only uses one LED and that is toggled whenever there is a UART transaction between the PC and the MSP.

Does the GUI connect first with D6 slowly blinking and then you get the disconnect issue as soon as you do a read or write?

This may mean that the I2C communication failed between the MSP and the MCF8316A. D6 slow blinks about every half second because the PC periodically pings the MSP to make sure the USB is still connected.

If this is the case, you may be using the incorrect I2C target address. In the GUI side panel, there is a I2C target address field that is used by the GUI to send commands to the MCF8316. Can you make sure that the GUI is targeting the same address as what is configured in the MCF8316 EEPROM?

You can click the "Find Address" button to check what address the MCF8316A is configured to.

Best,

Robert

Yes, D6 blinks slowly, and then when I press "Read All registers" it quickly blinks 3 times, and turns off.
If I click "Find Address" and try to "Connect to hardware", you can see what happens in the video. It does go through all addresses in the "I2C Target Address", but fails in the end.

Any feedback on this?

Hi Jonas,

Is the device being powered by a power supply during these faults? If so, I may need some additional time to debug your issue.

Let me know.

Robert

Yes, its connected to a power supply

Hi Jonas,

Can you try to reload the GUI and power cycle the MCF8316. Then before reading anything, click the Find Address button.

Sometimes when the I2C error occurs, the GUI needs to be fully refreshed. The error could be because the target address was changed in the EEPROM so you will need to make sure the matching address is configured in the GUI before read/write for the first time after launching.

Best,

Robert