CC430F6135: Custom board: SmartRF problem and simple question

Marcel van den Heuvel

Part Number: CC430F6135
Other Parts Discussed in Thread: CC1101, , CC430F6137

Hello everybody,

Since this is my first post on this forum I'll introduce myself first. My name is Marcel, hardware / software developer at MHElektronics.

We are developing a smart remote for vehicles, which means we are being challenged with a long range and ofcourse a "fail-safe" wireless connection. For a prototype we wanted to use the CC1101, and bought some modules with the "simple" CC1101 chip only, interfaced with SPI. That is working, but using those cheap modules we only achieved a range of about 50 meters (I know this has to do with the antenna, matching and traces on the PCB and stuf, but still..)

Now, I found the CC430 and I believe this fits into our project. One chip to rule them all. Our first goal is quite simple, 2 buttons on the remote control and 2 relais on the receiving side.

Also, we had acces to a custom board from another project that also used the CC430. This is programmed with a TI Launchpad, and this works using CCS.

But, I wanted to test the boards using SmartRF, not only to test the working of the radio, but also to see if the PCB antenna is doing any better then our cheap CC1101 modules. SmartRF is detecting the device, also the right partnumber and stuf, but when i press the CC430 button, the following error came pops up (yes, we are using the newest version).

At "Creating Help Documentation":

"Unexpected message received by the Startup Window: 0x00. There might be a problem with the communication between the Startup Window and the Device Control Panel. Try to close the Startu window and start it again."

Now, this failed and i continued my search by downloading the CC430 RF example code from the TI website. First tried the asynchronous example, changed the target device from CC430F6137 to CC430F6135 and now it's possible to compile, download and debug the software using the TI Launchpad.

When pausing the debug session its Always in this while loop in RF1A.c from the HAL folder (function Strobe):

while ((RF1AIN&0x04)== 0x04);     // chip-ready ?

// Delay for ~810usec at 1.05MHz CPU clock, see Section 22.3.3.7 
// Radio Control ? Crystal Control of the CC430 User?s Guide (SLAU 259)?

__delay_cycles(850);

So, any thoughts? Something I'm doing wrong? Is there perhaps a simple way to read the registers of the radio core using the terminal or should I write a program for that? And whats up with SmartRF?

Thanks in advance!

Regards,

Marcel

over 6 years ago

0 James Evans over 6 years ago

TI__Mastermind 49692 points

Hello Marcel,

Thank you for your post. Unfortunately, I don't have much experience with the CC430 or the SmartRF tool, but I'll try to help as much as I can. For the errors observed in the SmartRF tool, I'll let our software team know about this. In the meantime, I'm glad that you were able to figure out how to program the device.

I spent some time searching the E2E forum for why the code would hang in the Strobe() function in the 'RF1A.c' file. From the threads below, I learned that the RF1AIN signal is checked to see if the radio core is ready (out of sleep mode) and if not, there's a delay that allows the radio core to wake up and obtain its high speed clock and re-synchronize with the MSP430 core (refer to this app note here). Also, I saw where a hardware issue due to an external crystal caused the code to hang indefinitely in this while() loop.

Regards,

James

MSP Customer Applications

0 Øyvind K over 6 years ago

TI__Expert 4800 points

Hi Marcel,

Regarding SmartRF Studio:

Do you use one of our Evaluation Boards?

Not sure what is meant by "Creating Help Documentation". Do you mean to open the help documentation from the Device Control Panel?

Normally the error message "Unexpected message...." is something that we can see while debugging SmartRF Studio. That means if we running several startup windows and doing "not normal" things. In that scenario the startup window might get confused about messages from Device Control Panels it doesn't know about. I have tried several ways to provoke the same error on a release version but without success.

I assume you are able to reproduce the problem?

Since I didn't quite understand the "Creating Help Documentation" part, could you give some more details about what you are doing?

Regards,
Øyvind

0 Marcel van den Heuvel over 6 years ago in reply to Øyvind K

Prodigy 225 points

Hello Øyvind,

Thanks for your reply!

Here is a screenshot of the error message:

Here is an image of the loading screen when it happens:

As you can see at the bottom left corner, it should have been "create help documentation" instead of creating...

As a board I'm using a custom board with the CC430 unit.

Thanks in advance,

Marcel

0 Marcel van den Heuvel over 6 years ago in reply to James Evans

Prodigy 225 points

James,

Thanks for your reply!

I assumed the problem with my board is the same as all the others, the external RF crystal.

I de-soldered the 26MHz crystal and capacitors of the CC1101 module and installed them on my custom board.

Now, I know that my crystal is working correctly, and the capacitors are right for the application.

But still, my unit is still hanging in a while loop. I'll post a picture of the circuit and pcb for reference. Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance!

Marcel

0 TER over 6 years ago in reply to Marcel van den Heuvel

TI__Guru**** 317180 points

Are you able to probe RFXIN/ RFXOUT to see if you actually have a signal on these pins? You have to use a high impedance probe.

0 Marcel van den Heuvel over 6 years ago in reply to TER

Prodigy 225 points

Thanks for your reply!

I measured the pins and there was no signal. After figuring out why, it turned out there is an error in de PCB.

That is solved with a patch, and now there is signal from the crystal. Also, the software isn't stuck anymore.

Now i'll have to figure out why there is still no communication between the 2 boards, but I'll figure that out too I guess..

Thanks for all your help and advice.

0 James Evans over 6 years ago in reply to Marcel van den Heuvel

TI__Mastermind 49692 points

Hello Marcel,

Thank you for letting us know! We're happy to help. Please click the green "This Resolved My Issue" button.

Regards,

James

MSP Customer Applications

Sub-1 GHz

Sub-1 GHz forum

CC430F6135: Custom board: SmartRF problem and simple question