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A newbie guy needs help here

Hello. I am an electrical-electronics engineering student. I started be interested in DSP. But I don't know about anything about criterias for buying a DSP kit. I will do a school project that includes creating electric guitar effects(wah, reverb, fuzz, overdrive etc.) with using DSP theory. I think good start for this job is selecting a compatible DSP kit. While  I was looking for kits I saw C5535 eZdsp kit with low cost and good effiency. Is this card good for beginning and improving? Does it makes too many problems at Windows 7? Are there better DSP kits that comes with good money/performance ratio at middle cost range(150 ~300 $) and have good usability for future studies when i improved myself  ?

Thanks for help. Best regards.

  • Unless you have a real need for speed, you may want to consider one of the LaunchPad kits from TI. For example, for $17, you can get the Stellaris ARM Cortex-M4F based Launchpad, which has floating point for doing DSP. Here is a link to the LaunchPads: http://www.ti.com/ww/en/launchpad/home_head.html

    Hopefully, that helps.

  • Thanks for suggestion sir. I will do guitar effects so speed is important for me. If you mean more speed than this, I dont need more speed than this for now :) But uuhm I just want to buy a   well performanced card that can support my future works. Which card do you suggest except Launchpad ( Ijust ordered MSP Launchpad yesterday :D )

    Best regards.

  • Well, 80 MHz floating point operation is pretty good. I have no idea what sampling frequencies you need.

    If you want to spend $100 on an eZdsp for C5535, go for it. I bought one, and then found I needed to send it to Spectrum Digital to have the internal JTAG programmed. So be prepared to do that. Not sure if that has happened to a lot of people, but I know it happened to more than me. That said, the C5535 is a RAM-only environment, so be ready to do some bootloading of your code, vs. LaunchPads (which are flash-based). There will also be some differences in the code environment. Not sure of anything else I can say regarding TI boards...

     

     

  • Hello. I've read bout that JTAG thing you've spoken about. A friend of mine has needed to JTAG for  her router. We don't have any services at Turkey to do that. So it is really hell of a work in here. So I dont  want to deal with that problem. I think about amass more dollars :D and buy one of these;

    https://estore.ti.com/TMDSDSK6713-TMS320C6713-DSP-Starter-Kit-DSK-P391.aspx

    What is your opinion about it sir?

  • Sorry, I have no experience in the C6000 area, so I will not comment on the 6713 starter kit. The reason I mentioned looking into the Cortex-M4F kit - the ARM Cortex-M arena appears to be a very hot area, and having skills with M4F would probably be a good thing for you in the long run.

  • Hi sir. I'm still thinking of buying  C5535 eZdsp but i remembered your comment again.
     "If you want to spend $100 on an eZdsp for C5535, go for it. I bought one, and then found I needed to send it to Spectrum Digital to have the internal JTAG programmed. So be prepared to do that. Not sure if that has happened to a lot of people, but I know it happened to more than me. That said, the C5535 is a RAM-only environment, so be ready to do some bootloading of your code"

    Would you explain that situation more detailed? What is the internal JTAG and why did you need it? Can you say  " You absolutely need do that JTAG for using that card" ? 

    And about that bootloading thing,

    Do you mean, everytime  i need to load code from PC to chip and then I can continue to real-time demo.


    Best regards.

  • When I first received my board, I plugged it into the USB socket on my laptop. When I brought up Code Composer Studio to try to download some code, CCS did not recognize the JTAG. As it turned out, there was a factory programming necessary (but not done) of the JTAG mechanism.

    Regarding bootloading, the 5535 is a RAM-only part. The program needs to be loaded onto that RAM on power up, usually done with a bootloading mechanism. There is SPI flash on the board, external to the 5535, which can be used to hold a program which is then downloaded and run from internal RAM.

    Hopefully, that helps.

  • Your messages help me very well sir. Thanks for that again. So I understood that it is %50 chance(i said %50 because i am not so lucky about those electronic stuff :)  )    to get a card that has not got factory programing of the JTAG mechanism. If my card has not got that programing is there anything that i can do to fix it? Or I need a professional help?

  • When I discovered that the JTAG was not "programmed," I was instructed to send it to Spectrum Digital. There was not a workaround that I could execute to update the JTAG on the board, so I did send it in. Fortunately, it came back fully functional.

  • We had the same problem with one of our boards. With the help of some Googling, we managed to program the JTAG ourselves, using MProg and the XDS100_wUART.ept file.

    We also had the microphone connector which was badly soldered on a couple of the boards. Easier to fix than to diagnose...

    To answer OP, it really depends on how much horsepower and external connectivity you need. But I think that the C5535 would be a good match based on the information you provided. The only thing which bugged me was the lack of byte addressing (i.e. char is 16-bit), which makes porting some existing libraries very difficult if they rely on 8-bit char data type.