ACE software logs download error

Hi mmw_ee2051 ,

The download error is an known benign issue, not related to your issues interacting with the board. 

From looking through your log file, I can't see any obvious reason that you would be having trouble interacting with the board, could you provide any further clarification on the issues?

Thanks,

Eoin

Thank for your message EoiN. My fundamental issue is that I am not able to elicit a phase lock indication from the evaluation board. I've followed the instructions in the user's guide step-by-step multiple times to no avail. As far as I'm aware, I have specified parameters within the capabilities of the ADRF6821 component. Another detail that might be relevant, ACE does not automatically detect that my board is connected to the USB device, I have to manually add it. But then ACE indicates that "State=unavailable", not sure if this is also expected/benign with this specific IC. 

Another user reported a similar issue ( ADRF6821 board not connecting to ACE s/w with SDP-S ), but the specifics of their solution are not clear from the thread.

Hi mmw_ee2051 ,

With ACE, there are two ways to open a plug-in, one is to connect the device, wait for it to be automatically detected and then click the tile at the top of the screen with the device name in order to open the plug-in with the attached hardware.

The other is to open the plug-in from the list at the bottom of the screen in the "Explore without hardware" section, this opens the plug-in in a virtual mode, without a connection to the device, allowing users to see what evaluation modes are available but not actually interacting with hardware, so for example register maps may not update accurately.

If you are opening the plug-in from the "Explore without hardware" list, then it does not actually create a connection to the board, so this would explain some of your issues if this is the case.

You mentioned you have a similar issue to the other thread, do you see a similar blank tile showing at the top of the screen when you connect your device?

Or do you not see any new tile appear here at all? 
If you see the blank one it means your evaluation board's EEPROM is blank or corrupted, we can advise on resolving this.

If you see no new tile appearing at all, it indicates your device is failing to connect and that ACE cannot see it.

Please advise which case is more close to the issue you are seeing and we can follow up with recommendations.

Thanks,

Eoin

Hi Eoin,

                    I do indeed see the blank tile (screen cap below). It sounds like I need to resolve an EEPROM issue. Would you advise?

Thanks, 

    mmw_ee2051

Hi mmw_ee2051 ,

Sure, we can resolve this. It seems like it may have been a manufacturing error on the eval board, given that it has occurred twice on the same product.

The EEPROM contains the ID string for the eval board, which is how ACE detects what product is connected. It seems this is blank on your eval board, but we have a recovery tool in ACE that allows you to flash it with the correct memory.

In the left sidebar in ACE, drop down the Tools menu and you should see "EEPROM Recovery Tool". Click on this and a window should open on the right hand side of your screen.

In the other thread that you linked, there is a zip file uploaded in one of the comments. Download this and unzip it, you should now have a .dat file.

With your device connected via USB, in the EEPROM Recovery tool select the .dat file using the file browser. In the connector dropdown, you should see something like ConnectorA (unless you are using an SDP-B or SDP-K1, which have multiple connectors. Select whichever your board is connected to). You can leave the Address as it is for now.

Click the Connect button to connect to your device, then click the light icon on the left which will flash an LED on your controller board, this ensures you are connected and writing the correct board. 
Click "Write EEPROM" and it should write the .dat file contents to the memory, and your issue should be resolved. You may need to plug your eval board out and in again to refresh the EEPROM and see the correct tile showing in ACE.

If you have issues or see an error relating to the Address, try incrementing the address from 50 through to 57, I believe this is the full range of addresses that the EEPROM may be present on any of our boards.

Hopefully this helps,
Thanks,
Eoin

My attempt to write the EEPROM following your instructions reports an error (screen cap below, Any thoughts?

Apologies - I overlooked the detail about cycling through the addresses. Setting this to 54 instead of the default 50 successfully programmed the EEPROM. FWIW - I placed an order for two of these eval boards for this project and the other unit also appears to have a corrupted/empty EEPROM.

While this is certainly progress, I'm still unable to establish phase lock via the onboard LED. Do I need to direct this specific issue to a different group?

Hi mwee2002 ,

I'm glad that resolved the issue for you and that you are able to connect.

As for the phase lock issue, it would be best to direct that to the RF & Microwave Q&A Forum here:  Q&A 

This forum is mainly monitored by the ACE platform development team, our product-specific knowledge is limited so I can't say for sure what the cause of the phase lock issue is.

You might also mention the EEPROM issue in your post there, and the fact that you have observed this on two boards, this points to an issue with flashing the board EEPROM during eval board assembly, so it is definitely worth relaying this info to the product team.

Thanks,

Eoin

Thanks again for the support Eoin. I'll mark this answered and redirect the phase lock issue to the RF & MW forum.

No problem, happy to help!