RF430CL331H: TIDA-00524 - EVM datalogger stopped to work

Hello Marco,

I am checking with the engineers who made that EVM if they have any ideas, stay tuned.

Hello Marco,

The EVM was tested for several days multiple times, up to a week, with no issues. Were any modifications made to the firmware? What sample rate and sensor samplings are being programmed (i.e. what are the settings being programmed over NFC)?

Also is this with battery in, or RF powered?

Hi Ralph.

No firmware was loaded to the Board...  

The configuration used was temp only, with measurements every minute..

The battery is in.. fully charged.. 

this EVM does not work in "RF powered" (several components are not present) .. can you clarify??

Thanks

Hello Marco,

RF power was disabled to minimize component count. The board's primary purpose is to demonstrate the battery powered application, but layout includes RF powered to support other applications as a bonus (doesn't cost extra for the traces/pads). That would have to be added by individual users.

If it's measuring every minute, the datalogger would be full within 24 hours I believe, which means logging would stop. In that circumstance, I haven't had any of my boards stop at any point. I just read out a couple boards which were full of data months ago without issue. Is it the case that the board was just sitting around for a couple days without logging and then stopped working? Or is the logger being reset periodically?

Hello Marco,

Also which phone/app are you using, and how much time are you giving the app to read the data out?

Hello Ralph
The EVM was logging every minute (only temperature) and the memory got full. I was able to “download” the full data set via android phone (nokia 5 running NFC tools) and the TI NFC bundle kit (NFCLINK-BNDL) running NFC TI tool version 1.8.
A day after I was trying to restart a new logging session, but I was not able. I don’t even get the “NFC sound” when tapping with the smartphone neither the blue LED on the TI NFC bundle kit.
As referred previously the P2.5 is toggling but P2.6 is not changing state. The current consumption indicates the RTC is running…
May I try to “re-flash” the coldChain demo firmware?
Regards

Hi Ralph. I managed to recover the board after re-flashing.. Started another session with the same settings... to check if I get the same behavior.. In the meantime I remember that when I retrieve the data with the smartphone and with the TI NFC bundle kit I got the "memory Full" message repeated.. Looking to the source code it looks that pointer are updated and the message is copied to the memory not checking if the message was written already.. possibly overwriting the "Code" area..
Can you double check this??

Hello Marco,

I will look into it on Monday.

Hello Marco,

I think I see the area of code you are referring to. I didn't write this firmware or even had any involvement with it, so I am not positive how the flow intended to run for it. I am going to run some experiments on my end though to see if I can get the "Memory Full" message to repeat as you described. Will take until tomorrow though as I need to get the logger memory full and can't sample quicker than 1 minute...

Hello Marco,

I have tried to replicate the Memory Full issue with our web firmware and have had no luck despite many creative attempts with various hardware. Let me know how tests on your end are going since you re-flashed. There's a chance that perhaps the firmware shipped with the EVM isn't identical to what is on the web, so perhaps there was a bug that is now fixed.

Hi Ralph.

After Flashing I'm getting the "power Loss" message intermittently. 

Do you have any other version (newer) of the Cold Chain demo available rather the one available on the TI website?

Whats your toughs regarding my previous post statement?

"...I got the "memory Full" message repeated.. Looking to the source code it looks that pointer are updated and the message is copied to the memory not checking if the message was written already.. possibly overwriting the "Code" area.. "

Thanks

Hello Marco,

I do not have any newer versions of the firmware, and we are not making any changes to it.

Regarding power loss, have you checked that your batteries are maintaining proper voltage? I recall we had a bad batch of cheaply acquired batteries that caused many issues due to quick drain at one point. Just an idea, as I am not seeing any issues with my own boards using the latest firmware.

I looked at the source code, but frankly I don't understand it well enough to offer feedback regarding that. All I can say is I haven't been able to cause the message to show up repeatedly so far, and that from my end it seems to be working fine.

Unfortunately, that design was done many years ago and by engineers no longer within our group, so I'm not really in a good position to diagnose the issue when I can't recreate it on my end.

HI Ralph

Thanks for the update. The batteries I'm using are new. (the EVM came without batteries). I was even using an "external" 2xAA pack to make sure the coin cell was not the problem..

Regards