ESP-ADF I2S Recording choppy with PSRAM enabled - memory

First of all; I'm using ESP-IDF 4.2 with the ESP-ADF and have two CMM4030D microphones connected to an ESP32-WROVER-E on a custom board. These microphones should record a wav file to an SPI-Connected SD card.
And that works flawless! But not when PSRAM is enabled, should initialize on boot (which it does) and is allocatable using heap_caps_alloc(). The frequency of PSRAM, as wel as that of the SPI Flash, is set at 80MHz and there isn't anything connected to pins 16 and 17.
The SDK-Configuration most likely isn't the issue, as I took the configuration for wifi-ble coexistence example as base.
So, to conclude; when PSRAM is enabled (boots on startup and is allocatable using heap_caps_alloc), the recording is choppy, but when it's disabled (but still running the same code) it works fine... What on earth could be the cause of this issue?
Kind regards,
A confused Jochem

I've managed to implement a workaround for this problem that consists of disabling initialization of PSRAM on boot. One can then initialize the PSRAM first thing in the main with the following function.
static void psram_init(){
esp_spiram_init();
esp_spiram_init_cache();
esp_spiram_test();
esp_spiram_add_to_heapalloc();
}
One prevents the ESP-ADF from using PSRAM for allocation of buffers by disabling the initialize on boot option in the sdk config. This of course results in less memory being available (which is undesired), but it at least enables me to work towards an MVP.
One can take a look at the issue on GitHub for more details.
Kind regards,
Jochem

Related

BeagleBone Black P9 Pinout - I2C2 conflicts with SPI1 and UART1

Got a general question regarding the GPIOs on P9 of the beaglebone black. For instance, I would like to use the UART1 (RX and TX) for a R232 communication and use the I2C2 (SDA and SCL) for a sensor, using a C language application running on Linux. The problem is that the UART1 (RTS and CTS) signals are on those pins, can these features be deactivated (software)? and therefore use the UART1 and I2C2 at the same time?
PIN 19 : UART1_rtsn - I2C2_SCL
PIN 20 : UART1_Ctsn - I2C2_SDA
Next question, the same applies for SPI1 (CS0 and CS1), these pins are also on I2C2 (SDA and SCL).
PIN 19 : I2C2_SCL - spi1_cs1
PIN 20 : I2C2_SDA - spi1_cs0
So the general question : Can all 3 units, UART1-SPI1-I2C2 all run at the same time with no conflict on pins using the P9 header of the bbb?
Thank you very much for your answers
JH
It is technically feasable although when you start foraging into custom pin assignements you have to deal with alot of complexities to get everything up and working. There are many tables around the internet with the references as to which pins can do what. My favorite so far are these two : http://exploringbeaglebone.com/wp-content/uploads/resources/BBBP8Header.pdf, http://exploringbeaglebone.com/wp-content/uploads/resources/BBBP9Header.pdf
If you read these, you can see that each pin can take multiple different functions depending on configuration. These are set to the defaults by the linux kernel at boot time but you can modify the defaults using device tree overlays. The whole process is a little envolved for a single answer here but in short, to do what you want, you would need to modify and recompile the device tree overlay that the kernel loads for the device you want to change the pin assignements off.
Although there are some limits, for example, the beaglebone images are all configured to use I2C2 for identifying capes. So you can theoretically change it's pin assignments but then you shouldn't expect capes to be identified and configured properly when you do. In your example above, the UART1 and I2C2 work without conflict using their default configuration (UART1 only has Rx & TX by default). The SPI1 is a little more work. It's default configuration shares pins with the sound card (HDMI) that must be disabled to get it to work athough it does not conflict with ether UART1 or I2C2 by default.
Notice that each of these pins can have multiple functions but can only by one at any one time. Therefore, if a pin is set to use a given module (say UART1) it will not be affected by another module that can theoretically output on that pin with a different function mode. The kernel will complain if you try to use a pin for 2 functions simultaneously so you can try to load the overlays and see if it conflicts by default. Basically, if the kernel accepts to load the tree overlay, you can generally assume that it does not conflict with any other that is already loaded.
I think the other answer misinterpreted the question, and addresses configuration of the pins to perform a function of the possible mappings available to that pin. Yes, this is easily possible and is largely the point of the design.
With regards to the actual question, the answer is that it's possible but it's going to be very difficult and is most likely not feasible. And only one communication protocol will be able to be used at a time. Additionally, the spi pins are chip select pins, which require either an asserted or de-asserted state, so any kind of i2c clock or data signal will render the chip select non functional.
For i2c/uart, it would require reconfiguration of the pins and software mappings on the fly, and it will only be able to perform one of the possible functions at a time. It will also require software on all sides of the busses to be able to understand what mode the pins are in ie i2c or uart, with mutually separate and smart protocols so that none of the devices on the bus react undesirably to the garbage that will be on the bus when the bus is being used for another operation mode.

Vivado Logic Analyzer Waveform Procedure

I have been using Vivado Logic Analyzer for months. and believe me it took so much time to properly see the debug singals on waveform. I usually mark the debug signals on block design and then synthesize and generate bitstream . But sometimes i can see my clock on debug "FCLK" or sometimes "ProcessingSystemFCLK, using (Setup_debug on synthesized designs ) . Then also sometimes i can see proper transiitons of waveform on ILA , and sometimes i can see only one straight value there; No transiitons whatsoever. Sometimes I get LUTRAM error and sometimes the bit stream generated successfully.
It will be appreciated if one can tell me the proper sequence for debugging signals and whether first to program device using Vivado or using SDK. And also kindly clarify above points too.
thanks so much
Regards
There are many bugs lurking in the Vivado ILA code, I've run into many myself. I have had the most success generating the ILA in a managed IP project and manually instantiating it in the RTL (use the example project to get a template). That way you can be sure what clock it is running on. If you are getting different clocks I would guess this is why your probes seem to behave differently.
If your device is getting full, Vivado can sometimes fail routing with large ILA blocks. If you rerun the build you may get different results.
As far as programming it, it doesn't matter if it is programmed with Vivado or SDK, but Hardware Manager only exists in Vivado, so you'll need to bring this up and point to the .ltx file to view the probes (don't forget to refresh the device).

PIC32 becomes unresponsive after a few hours

I have a PIC32MX340F512 board developed by another company for us, The board has a DS1338 RTCC and 24LC32A eeprom, and display unit on an I2C bus, on this bus i included a TSL2561 I2C light sensor, i wrote code in c to poll the light sensor continously , when the light sensor reaches a certain level i save the time and date and light sensor value on SD card. This all works fine but if i leave the system without exposure to light inside tunnel where incident light on one end of the tunnel is ought to be monitored the system becomes unresponsive no matter how much amount of light you apply and then if i switch power off and back on again everything starts to work normal. i am a one man development team and have been trying to find out the problem for months, i activated the watchdog timer to prevent the system from hanging but the problem still persisted. i then decided to find out if the problem is with the sensor by including a push button to activate light measurement but still when 4-5 hours elapse the PIC cant even detect a change in the the input pin. Under the impression that a hardware reset overrides anything going on i included a reset button and it also works ok for the first few hours after that the PIC doesn't seem to be responding to anything including a reset. I was getting convinced that there is nothing wrong with the firmware but also with all this happening the display unit (pic16f1933 and lcd) on the I2C shares power with the main unit and doesn't seem to be affected as it alternates between different messages constantly Does anybody have an idea what could be wrong (hardware/firmware or my sensor). I am using a 24v DC power supply purchased seperately. The PIC seems to go into a deep sleep although i dd not implement any kind of SLEEP mode in my code. Nb We use the same board for many other projects and i haven't come across such a problem . Thanks in advance.
I think you need to (if you haven't already) explore the wonderful world of in-circuit-debugging (such as with the ICD3 or PICkit 2/3). It allows you to run the processor in a special mode that lets you pause execution, see exactly which line of code is being executed, inspect variable values, and step through the code to see which parts are running and not running, or see exactly where execution takes a wrong turn. If the problem takes hours to reproduce, that's okay. You can just leave it overnight running in debug mode and hopefully it will be locked-up or 'sleeping' in the morning. At this point, you will be able to pause the processor and poke around to see if you got caught in some kind of infinite loop or something. This is often the only way to dig inside a running piece of code to see why things aren't working as you expect. But as you say, those bugs that take hours or days to manifest are the trickiest. Good luck!
It sounds like you can break up your design into two main parts, sd card interfacing, reading the rtc and reading the light sensor. If it were me I would upload a version of the code that mimics reading the light sensor but only returns fake data and see if that cures the problem. Additionally do the same with the other two modules separately and see if any of the three versions of your project not show this problem. From there just keep narrowing it down until you find the block of code thats causing problems.
if Two or more versions of your debug code show the same problem then my guess is it has to do with one of the communication protocols. I had a problem with a Pic32 silicon version blocking when using the DMA in conjunction with the SPI peripherals. So I would suggest checking the errata for your chip.
If you still cant find the problem, my only suggestion would be to check for memory leaks or arrays that are growing into reserved memory.
Hope that helps, good luck!

FMX Direct 2D Issue

Good afternoon all!
I'm experiencing a rather annoying issue with one of my current projects. I'm working with a hardware library (NVAPI Pascal header translation by Andreas Hausladen) in one of my current projects. This lib allows me to retrieve information from an NVIDIA GPU. I'm using it to retrieve temperatures, and with the help of Firemonkey's TAnimateFloat, i'm adjusting the angle on a custom-made dial to indicate the temperature.
As FMX defaults to Direct 2D on Windows, i can monitor the FPS with any of the various "gamer" tools out there (MSI Afterburner, FRAPS, etc).
The issue i'm having is that when i put the system into sleep mode (suspend to RAM/S3), and then start it up again, the interface on my application is blacked out (partially or completely), and nothing on the UI is visibly refreshing. I'm calling the initialization for the NVAPI library regularly and checking the result via a timer, but this doesn't fix the issue. I'm also running ProcessMessages and repaint on the parent dial and it's children controls (since i can't seem to find a repaint for the form or even an equivalent).
I tried various versions of the library, and each one presents the same issue. The next paragraph indicates that this was in fact NOT the issue, and that it's actually the renderer at fault.
I have one solution, but i want to know if there's something more... elegant, available. The solution i have involves adding FMX.Types.GlobalUseDirect2D := False; before Application.Initialize in my projects source. However, this forces FMX to use GDI+ rather than Direct2D. It works of course, but i'd like to keep D2D open as an option if i can. I can use FindCmdLineSwitch to toggle this on/off dependant on parameters, but this still requires me to restart the application to change from D2D to GDI+ or vice-versa.
What's weird about it is that the FPS counter (from FRAPS in my case) indicates that there's still activity happening in the UI (as the value changes as would be expected), but the UI itself isn't visibly refreshing.
Is this an issue related to Direct2D, or a bug with Firemonkey's implementation? More importantly, is there a better method to fixing it than disabling D2D? Lastly, also related, is it possible to "reinitialize" an application without terminating it first (so perhaps i can allow the user to switch between GDI+ and D2D without needing to restart the application)?
This is may be of the issues with FM prior to the update 4 hotfix - 26664/QC 104210
Fixes the issue of a FireMonkey HD form being unresponsive after user unlock - installing this might resolve the issue for you.
The update should be part of your registered user downloads from the EDN (direct link http://cc.embarcadero.com/item/28881).

DirectX 11: simultaneous use of multiple adaptors

We need to drive 8 to 12 monitors from one pc, all rendering different views of a single 3d scenegraph, so have to use several graphics cards. We're currently running on dx9, so are looking to move to dx11 to hopefully make this easier.
Initial investigations seem to suggest that the obvious approach doesn't work - performance is lousy unless we drive each card from a separate process. Web searches are turning up nothing. Can anybody suggest the best way to go about utilising several cards simultaneously from a single process with dx11?
I see that you've already come to a solution, but I thought it'd be good to throw in my own recent experiences for anyone else who comes onto this question...
Yes, you can drive any number of adapters and outputs from a single process. Here's some information that might be helpful:
In DXGI and DX11:
Each graphics card is an "Adapter". Each monitor is an "Output". See here for more information about enumerating through these.
Once you have pointers to the adapters that you want to use, create a device (ID3D11Device) using D3D11CreateDevice for each of the adapters. Maybe you want a different thread for interacting with each of your devices. This thread may have a specific processor affinity if that helps speed things up for you.
Once each adapter has its own device, create a swap chain and render target for each output. You can also create your depth stencil view for each output as well while you're at it.
The process of creating a swap chain will require your windows to be set up: one window per output. I don't think there is much benefit in driving your rendering from the window that contains the swap chain. You can just create the windows as hosts for your swap chain and then forget about them entirely afterwards.
For rendering, you will need to iterate through each Output of each Device. For each output change the render target of the device to the render target that you created for the current output using OMSetRenderTargets. Again, you can be running each device on a different thread if you'd like, so each thread/device pair will have its own iteration through outputs for rendering.
Here are a bunch of links that might be of help when going through this process:
Display Different images per monitor directX 10
DXGI and 2+ full screen displays on Windows 7
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ee417025%28v=vs.85%29.aspx#multiple_monitors
Good luck!
Maybe you not need to upgrade the Directx.
See this article.
Enumerate the available devices with IDXGIFactory, create a ID3D11Device for each and then feed them from different threads. Should work fine.

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