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AWR1642BOOST: Short Range Radar Matlab GUI

Aaron Kruse
Prodigy 165 points
Part Number: AWR1642BOOST
Other Parts Discussed in Thread: AWR1642

I'm wondering if there's any chance that I can have an online chat or contact with the engineer who designed the Matlab program for the AWR1642Boost short range radar demo.

I'm in senior design and I've been trying to use an external microcontroller to process the same packets of data that the Matlab program receives and I've been having a very difficult time because there aren't many comments explaining how the code works. Another reason why I'm most likely having difficultly is because a microcontroller can't process data nearly as fast as a computer so I if I could get some assistance that would be much appreciated. I understand the protocol that is used for sending data via the MSS_Logger port I'm just having trouble processing the data in real time.

Thanks in advance,

-A friendly passionate future electrical engineer

  • 0
    TI__Guru*** 148804 points
    Hi,

    It seems that you are working on interesting project.

    Based on your description it seems that the issues you encounter are generic communication issues and not specific to the SRR demo GUI

    Is the external micro-controller connected through UART to the AWR1642BOOST?

    In order to test GUI, during development, one thing we do is we send a known pattern from the sensor. Then we check on the host if the correct pattern is received.

    I think this is the first step we should do to test the communication between sensor and host

    thank you
    Cesar
  • 0
    TI__Mastermind 21025 points

    Hi Aaron,

    We can help get you running.  First, you should not be using the logger, but rather the DATA UART on the device.  Your first step should be to identify the 20-pin headers on the AWR1642BOOST that correspond to the DATA UART, and connect these with jumper wires to the appropriate UART pins on your microcontroller device. Then test this connection by sending small known packets back and forth. The first problem you're likely to hit is that many microcontrollers can't handle 921600 baud, so you'll probably need to back it off.

    Once the UART connection is working, then you'll need to understand the TLV format that is used by the radar demos. You can modify an existing one to suit your needs or you can create a new one.  On the DSS side, the function that sends the data to MSS is MRR_DSS_SendProcessOutputToMSS, and on the MSS side, MmwDemo_mboxReadTask.

      -dave

  • 0 in reply to db_woodall
    Prodigy 165 points

    I haven't figured out how to generate a new SRR demo binary file from CCS on TI Cloud so what I've done so far is I've written code to receive the same packets that the Matlab GUI receives. I have been successful in doing so but for my project I only need the tracked object tlvs so it make more sense to modify the CCS code so that the awr1642boost only sends the tracked object tlvs. I'm also concerned that because processing the packets takes time my microcontroller may not be able to process the packets fast enough. My microcontroller's clock speed is 240 MHz if that is helps.

  • 0 in reply to Aaron Kruse
    TI__Mastermind 21025 points
    Take a look at the guiMonitor chirp profile command described in section 3.4 of the mmWave SDK's user guide. guiMonitor is a set of flags that turn on/off the various TLVs. No code change is necessary.

    240MHz is a good speed, but of course how much time you need depends on a lot of factors. This data is sent once a frame, and the frame time is set in the frameCfg chirp profile command (the "frame periodicity" parameter). If needed, you could slow the frame rate a bit.

    -dave
  • 0 in reply to db_woodall
    Prodigy 165 points
    Is it possible to make it so that the AWR1642 only sends a packet out when prompted using a CLI command? In this case there would be handshaking rather than a continuous stream of data and would simplify things for my use case.
  • 0 in reply to Aaron Kruse
    TI__Mastermind 21025 points

    Not without making changes to the demo code.  The simplest way I can think of to do this is to make changes to the MSS code: First, add a new CLI command. Receiving this command would set a variable to true.  In MmwDemo_mboxReadTask, check that the variable is true before writing to UART. Then set the variable false.

      -dave