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Monthly Archives: July 2010

BPM counter update: audio processing(not good)

2
Posted by Justin on July 28, 2010 – 11:17 am
Filed under electronics, General, Hardware

Finally had enough time to sit and experiment with a bunch of different designs to boost and smooth the signal from an audio source. The few that I have tried didn’t work very well, the op-amp(741) with a LP filter didn’t boost the audio as much as i liked, it was giving poor results or no results at times, and  it used more components then i would have liked, since i don’t need audio quality sound, I didn’t feel the need to buy a dedicated audio amp or ICs. the other circuit i had tried was a LP  filter with a few extra caps, it looks like it would have worked but the audio signal was way too small to get a good reading.

So i scratched everything and started again trying to go for simple, So i decided to use a Transistor amp, or class B amplifier since i am only using half of the wave…

after the first few attempts it worked, not as i wanted but it did amplify the music, but it was not giving me the correct reading, when it was read it was giving very high odd values, between 400 and 900, and when plotted it did have a sine wave to the graph. the bad thing was it was a very small change in values and was unusable to create an algorithm to determine the beat, so i went to the drawing board, and looked at my design ,

I had figured i forgot the pull down resistor on the ADC of the arduino(oops), after that i hooked it back up and tried again…….now the weird part, it didn’t work……so i double checked everything, connectivity the transistor, arduino, and i couldn’t find anything wrong…it should have been working……so i have put it down for now till i figure out why its not working ………

I finally figured it out…..I killed my MP3 player that i was using as my source audio,  and now i have to find a replacement audio source that’s a little bit more robust then the one i just fried. an idea for replacement is use a 555 timer and set it at 120BPM and use that as my test source, but its just an idea……ill let you know how it turns out this weekend….

BTW if anyone has any ideas for a simple schematic program, it would help greatly,

everything i find has extra functions or some weird way to connect the wiring …..all i need is something that i can just place a symbol down rotate if needed and connect the wires….like using paintbrushes in gimp, then drawing a line between them……i tried that method too but no luck on the paintbrushes :(

if i ever get something simple or i find a parallel cable for my scanner, i will post all my test diagrams and schematics.

MSP430 tools for linux

0
Posted by Justin on July 28, 2010 – 5:04 am
Filed under electronics, General, Hardware, Linux, OS, software

For your MSP430 launchpad to work on Linux you may have to do a little work, lol hopefully you expected this…..So lets get to it…..by the way i have Ubuntu 9.04 for my system, but that shouldn’t matter, except for dependencies may be different then mine.

First you will need a few things to get it all working, so gather your tools and programs and lets start…..

  1. launchpad with 430 value line chip
  2. http://mspgcc4.sourceforge.net/ you will need at leas the binaries, or you can build it yourself
  3. http://mspdebug.sourceforge.net/ this is the program that will let you program your msp430 launchpad and debug it if needed
  4. libusb dev files (usb headers for compilation)
  5. Readline dev files
  6. and texinfo dev files

after you have gathered all that you need you can start installing, you will most likely need the CLI to do most of the work, since we will be moving files into a root owned folder.

  1. First Build or install MSP430-gcc and other binaries for the tool chain http://mspgcc4.sourceforge.net/
  2. next install or copy the binaries /usr/ or usr/local ( i choose /usr/) I unpacked my archive inside my home folder and then CPd(copied) everything into /usr/ folder
  3. then check to see that they work, run msp430-gcc or msp430-gdb, it should just give the usage or start the program if all went well
  4. Now you want to install mspdebug, this program allows you to connect to the launchpad and reprogram the chip or debug it . It should be the simple make && make install on the source and it should go fairly quickly. if you have dependencies issues please consult the maintainer, I only listed the ones that i needed to download.
  5. after its done installing run it and test. to run it type “mspdebug rf2500″ and it should start up

    6. jsolarski@server-001:~$ sudo mspdebug rf2500
    [sudo] password for jsolarski:
    MSPDebug version 0.9 - debugging tool for MSP430 MCUs
    Copyright (C) 2009, 2010 Daniel Beer
    This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO
    warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

    Trying to open interface 1 on 005
    Initializing FET...
    FET protocol version is 30066536
    Configured for Spy-Bi-Wire
    Set Vcc: 3000 mV
    Device ID: 0xf201
    Device: MSP430F2013
    Code memory starts at 0xf800
    Available commands:
    = erase hexout mw read run sym
    cgraph gdb isearch opt regs set
    dis help md prog reset step
    Available options:
    color gdb_loop
    Type "help " for more information.
    Press Ctrl+D to quit.
    (mspdebug)

  6. now that it is connected its time to try and reprogram the flash, or play around with the registers.

Now that its hooked up and ready to go you can go ahead and play around with mspdebug, or connect it up with gdb to debug and reprogram as well, but im just going to go into mspdebug because i have not learned gdb as well as i should.

The main commands for mspdebugare

=        erase    hexout   mw       read     run      sym
cgraph   gdb      isearch  opt      regs     set
dis      help     md       prog     reset    step

the ones that i have used so far in my learning this program

  • dis <address>< length> — disassembles that block of memory dis 0xf800 2048
  • prog <file> program the target board “prog main.elf”
  • md <address><length in bit> read an address
  • regs    displays your registers for the board
  • erase   erases the flash memory of the board

There are plenty of other things you can do in mspdebug but that is beyond my knowledge at this point.

To reprogram the board just follow the simple instructions of  erase, prog. simple as that.

Personally the easiest way to reprogram it is use this archive, which has all the files needed to do a test reprogram …and its been edited so it can be compiled with mspgcc.

Demo program that works with GCC and mspdebug and msp tools

this is the same source code and make file found on This site. I have not modified it all i did was take the .tgz and package it up into a zip file so its an archive with in a zip file. this is the same program that’s on the 2231 chip that comes with the launchpad except a few changes to make it work with gcc.

At this point you should have a good starting point to work with this chip…just a little more research and i should be able to creating programs that do what i want them to do….

Hope this helps!!

MSP430 launchpad dev kit how too

Posted by Justin on July 19, 2010 – 6:03 am
Filed under electronics, Hardware, Linux, software

A few weeks ago I had purchased a few MSP430 Launchpad, originally from Mouser, but there wait times for shipment of the product wasn’t until mid AUG to SEP

and decided that was unacceptable for my terms of getting product and or waiting for parts…..very few times have i waited for more then a month for anything that I wanted, Sugru was different so I waited for it…..but back to the MSP430.

after searching around I found a company that sold it and was in stock, so i Decided to cancel my other orders and go with them, the company was Newark, and i was very happy with there customer service….very friendly and polite. but i have finally gotten it and was able to do a little testing but not much in the way of programming, I haven’t set up the software for it or the library’s. But i did get to solder on the 32KHz crystal that was sent with the board………to my surprise it was a SMD 1.4mm+-.1mm crystal, with the leads .5mm apart from each other. I saw this and wondered why TI hates us hobbyist. I was expecting a regular through hole crystal, like they showed in one of the videos but that’s not the case, so i will do my best to solder one on to the boards and connect all the headers. I chose the regular female headers, sorta like the arduino, and i left the other board blank so i could solder wires and add other interesting gizmos to it and also to have a board that relies on the internal oscillator. so back to the how too……. Installing the crystal is probably the hardest part of the whole kit, just because the crystal is so small and hard to handle, but if you do it smart you can solder this piece in no time flat. So lets begin with things you may need

  • Supplies
  • Launch pad
  • 32KHz crystal
  • soldering iron
  • solder
  • headers
  • Bright lamp
  • electrical tape or tape like substitute
  • odds and ends (lol)(tweezers or other tool for manipulation)

after getting your supplies ready its time to start plugging stuff in and getting things setup

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