[MAGEEC] Comms. protocol between data gatherer and host PC

Alex J Lennon ajlennon at dynamicdevices.co.uk
Thu Feb 6 14:59:31 GMT 2014


Hi James,

That's really useful thanks. I have some background in USB development
so can see where you are coming from with this.

Am I right in thinking that the device is a HID class device, or is it
more custom than this? (thinking about Windows driver support here)

I had assumed that it would be enumerating as a standard serial class
device and you would have a protocol running over the
virtualised serial link, this being easier in terms of driver support on
host OS platforms.

Was there a reason for not going down the USB serial route? I am
wondering how difficult that would be for me to put in place?

Thanks!

Alex

On 06/02/2014 12:46, James Pallister wrote:
> Hi Alex,
>
> I haven't gotten round to writing up the protocol yet, but it is
> reasonably simple. Here is a fairly long and detailed email, which
> will probably be copied to the wiki at some point.
>
>
> The device appears as a custom USB device, and all of the commands are
> sent as control transfers. There is almost a one-to-one mapping
> between the methods in the pyenergy.EnergyMonitor class and the
> control transfers performed to the device. The only slight
> complication is there are 3 ADCs and 4 measurement points, the mapping
> of which ADC measures which measurement point is done in the
> enableMeasurementPoint method (with request number 7).
>
> For the exact details, see:
> https://github.com/jpallister/stm32f4-energy-monitor/blob/pyusb/src/python/pyenergy.py
>
> The actual control transfers themselves use the bRequest parameter of
> the control transfer to differentiate between types of action. The
> wValue and wIndex parameters both specify data for that particular
> request. There are many possible requests:
>
> Request
> 	bRequest 	wValue 	wIndex 	Description
> Toggle LEDS
> 	0
> 	N/A
> 	N/A
> 	Toggle one of the LEDs on the board
> Start Measurement
> 	1
> 	Measurement point
> 	N/A
> 	Start measuring the measurement point specified by wValue
> Stop Measurement
> 	2
> 	Measurement point
> 	N/A
> 	Stop measurement the measurement point specified by wValue
> Set Serial
> 	3
> 	Low chars
> 	High chars
> 	Set the 4 character serial of the device.
>
> Bottom 8 bits of wValue is ASCII, character 0. Top 8 bits is character 1.
> Bottom 8 bits of wIndex is character 2 and top is character 3
> Set Trigger
> 	4
> 	Measurement point and pin
> 	Port
> 	Set a trigger on a pin, so that measurement is automatically
> triggered on a rising edge, and stopped on a falling edge.
>
> Bottom 8 bits is the pin number (wValue).
> Top 8 bits is the measurement point number.
> wIndex is the ASCII representation of the port (A, B, C...)
> Currently I have only tested this with PA0.
> Get Energy
> 	6
> 	Measurement point
> 	N/A
> 	Get the accumulated energy figures.
>
> Returns a 48 byte structure.
>
> typedef struct {
>     uint64_t energy_accum;
>     uint64_t elapsed_time;
>     unsigned peak_power;
>     unsigned peak_voltage;
>     unsigned peak_current;
>     unsigned n_samples;
>     uint64_t avg_current;
>     uint64_t avg_voltage;
> } accumulated_data;
>
> Have a look at the convertData method in pyenergy.py for how to
> convert these figures to real units.
>
> Map ADC to measurement point
> 	7
> 	Measurement point
> 	ADC
> 	Map an ADC to a measurement point.
>
> ADC = number 0-2.
> Probably best not to do this while the measurement is running
> Is running
> 	8
> 	Measurement point
> 	N/A
> 	Checks whether the measurement point is running or not. Useful for
> when triggers are being used.
>
> Returns 4 bytes, integer.
> 1 = Running
> 0 = Not running
> Get number of runs
> 	9
> 	Measurement point
> 	N/A
> 	Reports back the number of completed runs performed. This is mainly a
> sanity check, so that the host will know if it has 'missed' a measurement.
>
> Returns 4 bytes, integer = number of runs.
> Clear number of runs
> 	10
> 	Measurement point
> 	N/A
> 	Resets the number of runs counter to 0.
> Get instantaneous
> 	11
> 	Measurement point
> 	N/A
> 	This returns the most recent raw ADC values for voltage and current.
> This is useful for graphs.
>
> 24 byte result structure.
>
> typedef struct {
>     unsigned voltage;
>     unsigned current;
>     unsigned average_voltage;
>     unsigned average_current;
>     uint64_t current_time;
> } instant_data;
>
> The current and voltage are both fairly noisey, so they are averaged
> over the last 32 samples. This provides much smoother results.
>
> Have a look at the convertData method in pyenergy.py for how to
> convert these figures to real units.
>
>
> I'm not sure how this would be implemented in .NET, however if there
> are bindings for libusb, then it boils down to some fairly easy
> control transfers. The USB device appears as ID 0xf539:0xf539.
>
> For example in python:
> # Return whether the measurement point is currently taking
> # measurements or not
> def isRunning(self, m_point=1):
>     b = self< span class="o" style="box-sizing: border-box;
> font-weight: bold;">.dev.ctrl_transfer(0xc1, 8, int(m_point), 0, 4)
>     running = unpack("=L", b)
>     return bool(running[0])
>
> Here the code is performing a control transfer on endpoint 0xC1
> (indicating there is data to receive, endpoint 0x41 is used when no
> data needs to be returned). Request type 8, for "is running", then the
> measurement point as wValue. The final parameter indicates 4 bytes to
> be returned. This is converted to a boolean. I suspect it would be
> similar in .NET.
>
> The board should be fairly forgiving about the sequencing of requests
> sent to it, with the exception that Bad Things will happen if
> different ADCs are mapped to the same measurement point in request 7.
>
> If anything is unclear, or I've missed out some vital bit of
> information, just shout.
>
> Cheers,
> James
>
> On 06/02/14 09:14, Alex J Lennon wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Could anybody point me to a breakdown of the comms. protocol between
>> the data gatherer and the host PC, if there is such a thing?
>>
>> I'm interested in putting together a simple .NET application, perhaps
>> involving
>> ZedGraph, having one foot on the dark-side as it were.
>>
>> Many thanks!
>>
>> Alex Lennon
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> mageec mailing list
>> mageec at mageec.org
>> http://mageec.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mageec
>

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