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IWR6843ISK: MMWAVEICBOOST and IWR6843ISK Unreliable

David Kyle
Prodigy 120 points
Part Number: IWR6843ISK
Other Parts Discussed in Thread: MMWAVEICBOOST, , UNIFLASH

Hello

I have the MMWAVEICBOOST and IWR6843ISK combination of devboards and I’m having trouble getting the system to work reliably. I’ve put the mmwave_sdk_03_01_00_02 software onto the board and typically I find the visualization tool will work maybe 1 in 30 power ups.(i.e. the tool at https://dev.ti.com/gallery/view/mmwave/mmWave_Demo_Visualizer/ver/3.1.0/). If the tool does start it will run indefinitely and until the next power cycle.

More specifically, if I open a terminal to the board config com port I find that only 1 in ~30 times will I see any activity after resetting the board. On closer investigation, and with the code running under CSS and adding various debug code I find I’m getting stuck in the function SOC_waitBSSPowerUp in file soc_xwr68xx.c. Specifically, I don’t think it’s coming out of the while loop below.

while (CSL_FEXTR(ptrSOCDriverMCB->ptrTopRCMRegs->SPARE0, 18U, 16U) != 0x7)
{
}

Any help is much appreciated.

Thanks

David

  • 0
    TI__Mastermind 30405 points

    Hello David,

    Thanks for providing a targeted description of the problem. At the core, there seems to be two issues in order which could be causing this problem:

    1. There was a firmware issue identified in SDK 3.0.0.8 (and hence all binaries built on top of it) which could cause the power up sequence to hang in the loop you mentioned. EVMs shipped from the assembly house are flashed with the SDK 3.0.0.8 OOB demoand need to be updated with the corresponding demo from SDK 3.1.1.2 in which the firmware issue was resolved.  

    2. Recently, we also found a bug in Uniflash 4.6.x which, depending upon how the target device is searched in the Uniflash interface, could signal successful flashing without actually flashing the new binary on the EVM. Hence the board would still have the old binary (in this case the faulty OOB demo from SDK 3.0.0.8).

    Please follow the instructions provided in the following post to correctly re-flash the EVM with SDK 3.1.1.2 OOB demo binary and re-test.

    IWR6843: Not able to get lab0017_mmwave_sdk_68xx working

    I believe the above should resolve your problem.

    Regards

    -Nitin

  • 0 in reply to Nitin Sakhuja
    Prodigy 120 points

    Thanks Nitin , for both the help and the very quick response.

    I’ve updated my code to “mmwave_sdk_03_01_01_02-Windows-x86-Install” and “mmwave_industrial_toolbox_3_3_1__win.zip”, and the board now starts reliably.  

    My next problem is running in debug in CSS. I can’t find a reliable combination of “entering debug mode”, “powering cycling”, and the  “reset button”. Maybe 1 in 5 times everything will be good and I will hit the break point at main(), but usually the debugger fails to start.  As before I’ll appreciate any advice you can give.

    My debug screen is shown below - can you see anything wrong ?

    Thanks

    David

  • 0 in reply to David Kyle
    TI__Mastermind 30405 points

    Hi David,

    Did you flash the ccs debug firmware i.e. C:\ti\mmwave_sdk_03_01_01_02\packages\ti\utils\ccsdebug\xwr68xx_ccsdebug.bin on your EVM as instructed in the mmWave SDK user guide in section 3.2.2 (CCS development mode)? You need to flash this firmware before you load the program executable(s) through CCS as this firmware sets the hardware in a valid state.

    Regards
    -Nitin

  • 0 in reply to Nitin Sakhuja
    TI__Mastermind 30405 points
    Hi David,

    I have not heard back from you so I would assume that your issue is resolved. Please create a new thread if you have further questions.

    Regards
    -Nitin
  • 0 in reply to Nitin Sakhuja
    Prodigy 120 points
    Hi Nitin

    Please could you confirm the firmware image I need to flash to restore none CSS functionality.

    Thanks

    David
  • 0 in reply to David Kyle
    TI__Mastermind 30405 points
    Hi David,

    To run the demo in non-CCS mode, you can flash the respective .bin file for the demo you want to run. If you want to run the SDK Out of box demo, please flash the following image :

    C:\ti\mmwave_sdk_03_01_01_02\packages\ti\demo\xwr68xx\mmw\xwr68xx_mmw_demo.bin

    Regards
    -Nitin