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I have a backlight driver based on LP8545. The circuit is virtually identical to Typical Application (1) in the datasheet except Vsync is not used and tied to ground, FILTER is tied to ground with a 10k resistor, and PWM is tied to ground because I want to use programmatic control. When I supphy VBATT and VDDIO and drive the EN pin high, the part responds to I2C commands: I can read status in registers 00h-07h. When I turn the part on by writing 05h to the control register 01h, I can also the settings from registers A0h-A7h (settings are at factory values as per datasheet). However as soon as I turn the part on, the OCP bit in register 02h is set. This happens even with no LED strings connected (i.e. OUTn are floating) and even if I remove the inductor from the circuit. How can I diagnose what is wrong?
Hi Anton,
You'd better to check the booster output voltage. OCP fault will appear if the output keep too low for more than 50ms.
BR,
Robin
Hello Robin,
thank you, that helped. The output voltage was equal to the input voltage less diode forward drop, because my circuit has the external FET, but LP8545 default configuration has EN_EXT_FET=0. I temporarily connected the external FET's source to drain and the booster started up, producing the output voltage of 28.7V expected given the default setting in the voltage control register (A5h) and the values of the feedback resistor divider. However, now I have a couple other problems:
(1) when I turn on the EN_EXT_FET bit in register A2h, the output voltage decreases (!) from 28.7V to 20.3V. It changes when I change the target boost voltage in register A5h, so the regulator is obviously doing something:
A5 VoutF VoutN
--------------------
6B 18.07 24.18
6C 18.62 25.28
6D 19.21 26.43
6E 19.78 27.56
6F 20.36 28.72 // default setting
70 20.97 29.89
71 21.56 31.04
72 22.13 32.18
..
78 25.63 34.64
..
7F 29.11 34.64
I checked the voltage on the FB pin and it really becomes smaller when I enable external FET gate drive: 25V when EN_EXT_FET=0 but 17V when EN_EXT_FET=1 at default VBOOST setting. In addition, when the external FET is disabled, the output voltage maxes out at 34.6V.
(2) since the part can't start up at default settings unless the external FET is shorted out, and EN_EXT_FET cannot be set unless the part has started up, I tried to write the settings registers to NVM by following the procedure in the datasheet. However, it seems to have no effect, and when I poll the EE_READY bit after writing EE_INIT=1 and EE_PROG=1, it never goes to 0. Is it possible to program the settings registers to NVM on the bench? I really don't want to redesign the backlight converter. I checked out the parts recommended in this older question on this forum, but none of them can go up to 55V.
My schematics is below:
Hello Robin,
for the present I disable adaptive mode by writing B7h (EN_EXT_FET=1, EN_ADAPT=0) to register A2h. However, EN_ADAPT does not make a difference: the output voltage is 20.38V whether I write B7h or BFh.
Hi Anton,
Could you present the all register value you configured? Let me have a check.
For NVM programming, it has been practiced by bench test.
BR,
Robin
Hello Robin,
sure, here are the contents of all I2C registers when LP8545 is outputting 20.3V. I also dumped the 9Xh block which seems to contain diagnostic data, hope it helps.
| 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F ---+------------------------------------------------ 00 | 00 05 00 FC 00 65 C0 90 | 32 1E 26 3B 5A 8C 74 94 FD 00 00 00 00 00 00 7C A0 | 7F B5 B7 7B 28 CF 64 2D
Yuting Shao said:For NVM programming, it has been practiced by bench test.
I see, but as I wrote above I tried the procedure in the datasheet (write 5 to 01h to turn on, wait for output voltage to settle, write settings to A0..A7h, write 4 to 72h, write 2 to 72h, wait 200ms, write 0 to 72h) multiple times and it had no effect: after a reset the AXh registers are at their default values. What's more, I never observe EE_READY (bit 7 in 72h) be zero during these attempts. What am I doing wrong?
Hello Robin,
The output voltage keeps stuck at 20.3V also when I connect the LED strings. What else I could measure to diagnose this problem?
Hi,
The voltage set by A5h is the initial voltage, and the device will output a proper voltage according to the loading.
As for NVM, could you try again with other devices?
BR,
Robin
Hello Robin,
after some further experiments I believe I have arrived at an understanding of the situation. Apparently, when EN_EXT_FET is set to 1, LP8545 switches to a mode in which one unit increment in VBOOST is worth 0.5V of voltage on the FB pin instead of 1V. The base feedback voltage seems to increase from 10V to ~11V. The description of VBOOST setting in the datasheet does not mention this, but this hypothesis is consistent with the schematic "Typical Application for High Output Voltage (3)" which promises output voltage "Up to 55V" with a resistor divider of 63.4k and 59k: with Vout=55V and these resistors, Vfb=26.5V=11V+31*0.5V and not 40V. After replacing divider resistors in my schematic withR70=100k and R71=75k, I got output voltage up to 63V on the highest VBOOST setting.
Regarding NVM, I figured out that I can set the EN_EXT_FET bit during the 50ms after I turn the part on, before it signals the OCP fault, so it is no longer critical. If I can't get NVM to work I will ask a separate question.
Thank you for your help and attention.