LP-EM-CC2340R5: SmartRF Studio 8 cannot regonize the CC2340R5 with XDS110

Hi,

Interesting. Did you try to run SmartRF Studio as administrator on the machines that are failing? 

This should not be needed, but there is a slight chance that the offending machines might be blocking some internal access to the XDS110 endpoints. 

If that does not work, could you uninstall your SmartRF Studio 8 v1.2.1 and install version v1.2.0? This might not lead to anything, but I have seen in the past incompatibilities between specific hosts and versions of our SW. 

You could also try to see if there are any variations between the device drivers of the offending machines and the working one, but that is a very improbable scenario since Uniflash works well. 

I will try to think about any other possible root causes and report back in case I find anything. 

Hope this helps,

Rafael

Thanks for your response.

I had tried administrator mode before but did not help. And I just tested with V1.2.0 and V1.1.0 on one of the failure machine, and the issue remained.

Just share more information:

We tried installing SmartRF8 on another machine, but it still failed. Our notebooks are used in manufacturing and typically have only a few tools installed, such as J-Link, Tera Term, and similar utilities. All of them (x4) are currently failing with this issue. The only PC that works is my development machine, which has a wide range of development tools installed—from older versions to the latest—not only from TI but also from other vendors’ applications and drivers. When we ask help from our CC2340R5 module provider, they respond that they got the same issue as us, and cannot get useful help from the agent.

P.S. We need SmartRF to perform RF tests, as we have found the results to be significantly better when using SmartRF 7 compared to DTM mode on other chips. However, due to this issue, we currently have to use DTM first, while we continue looking for a solution to run SmartRF.

Hi,

Thanks for the additional details. It seems there is something on the offending notebooks that is blocking the proper operation of the utility.

One additional question: using the utility xdsdfu.exe, can you try to identify which firmware version is actually loaded to the LP-XDS110s used? 

Open a command window and go to the directory below:

C:\Program Files\Texas Instruments\SmartRF Studio 8\drivers\common\uscif\xds110

issue the command xdsdfu -e to identify the LP-XDS110 and its firmware version. 

If that works well, you can try to flash the firmware version that was shipped with the SmartRF Studio V1.2.1 by issuing the following command:

xdsdfu -f firmware_3.0.0.33.bin -r

Then, re-issue the command xdsdfu -e to verify if the firmware was properly written to the LP-XDS110

Usually newer versions of the firmware do not have incompatibilities with older tools, but since you are not able to make anything work correctly, it is worth trying. 

I will ask other internal teams to see if there are some additional ideas to try. 

One last thing. Just to be absolutely sure: Uniflash works on the notebooks used in manufacturing, right?

Regards,

Rafael

Hi Rafael,

We have two LP-XDS110s, one is running 3.0.0.38 and the other is 3.0.0.36. And downgrade to 3.0.0.33 did not fix the issue.

> ./xdsdfu.exe -e

VID: 0x0451    PID: 0xbef3
Device Name:   XDS110 Embed with CMSIS-DAP
Version:       3.0.0.33
Manufacturer:  Texas Instruments
Serial Num:    LS4100WL
Mode:          Runtime
Configuration: Standard

> ./cli.exe -- print-test-targets

LS4100WL - Unknown (XDS110)

Yes, I'm sure it works well with Uniflash (8.6.0 / 8.8.1 / 9.2). One machine already running Uniflash 8.6.0 for couple month, but get same issue after install SmarRF 8. Most new set up machines tested with Uniflash 9.2, one of them has been downgrade to 8.8.1 (same as by development machine).

Hi, 

Regrettably this is a very tricky situation that we haven't experienced before. Usually the tips above are enough to overcome any issues.

Since you also tried changing USB ports and used self-powered HUBs, the only remaining item would be to try to reinstall the XDS110 Windows drivers (a very long shot, since Uniflash works). For that, I would follow the instructions to fully remove and then reinstall the device drivers as shown in the section Troubleshooting of the XDS110 page at:

https://software-dl.ti.com/ccs/esd/documents/xdsdebugprobes/emu_xds110.html 

The windows device drivers shipped with SmartRF Studio 8 are typically located at:

C:\Program Files\Texas Instruments\SmartRF Studio 8\drivers\xds110

Just for reference, what is the brand and model of the manufacturing PCs? Are the LP-XDS110s connected to USB2 or USB3 ports of the PC? Although we haven't seen this before, it might be useful to look for potential issues afflicting specific configurations. 

Regards,

Rafael 

Hi Rafael,

Because the notebooks are located in manufacture for production now. I had only one machine on hand, Acer Swift SF114-34, it should be USB3, and I did most tests on it currently.

I think it may not be HW issue because my colleague can reproduce the issue used the same Notebook as my develop machine (Lenovo V15 G4 ABP), but there are totally different applications installed on that machine because he is HW RD. And here are two more machines we saw the issue:

1. HP 14s-cf1045TU
2. Lenovo Thinkbook 14 G5 ABP

Today I tried belows, but still fail...

1. Change OS language & system locate from TC (Taiwan) to English (US)
2. Reinstall SmartRF and Uniflash after change language
3. Reinstall SmartRF to a simple path (c:\ti\SmartRF8)
4. Remove drivers from Device Manager and reinstall the XDS110 drivers from SmartRF 8
5. Remove drivers from Device Manager and reinstall the XDS110 drivers from Uniflash 9.2

I test the language setting because my develop machine is the only one used English OS. Unfortunately, wrong guess...

Hi,

One additional aspect that you mentioned and it could be affecting the normal operation of the SmartRF Studio 8 is internationalization.

One of the developers indicated seeing problems in the scenario where the username has special characters. The reason is that SmartRF Studio stores some temporary files in the directory below and one of the developers indicated that this might prevent it from working correctly. 

C:\Users\<username>\Documents\Texas Instruments\SmartRF Studio 8

Can you run SmartRF Studio and browse to the subdirectory xds of the location above and check if it has .dat files that have recent timestamps? If they are absent, it is a good indication the tool is failing to create the necessary temporary files. 

Cheers,

Rafael

Hi,

The folder "C:\Users\<username>\Documents\Texas Instruments\" even not exists on failure machine.

Manufacture (failure):

- Username: INGICS
- Email: INGICSPU**** 
- User folder: c:\Users\INGIC\Documents

My Develop Machine (OK):

- Username: TIM CHAO
- Email: tim.chao***
- User folder: c:\Users\timch\Documents

There is no special characters, but maybe it causes by uppercase?

Tim,

Thanks for the additional data. The development team submitted a bug report to implement the support of internationalization characters on SmartRF Studio. Although there is not yet a release date, usually the dev team corrects these issues in a timely manner. 

Please apologize for the inconvenience. 

Best regards,

Rafael