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Read more about the article I2C communication in PSLab Android

I2C communication in PSLab Android

PSLab device is a compact electronic device with a variety of features. One of them is the ability to integrate sensors and get readings from them. One might think that why they should use PSLab device to get sensor readings and they can use some other hardware like Arduino. In those devices, user has to create firmware and need to know how to interface them with correct sampling rates and settings. But with PSLab, they all come in the whole package. User just have to plug the device to his phone and the sensor to device and he’s ready. The idea of this blog post is to show how this sophisticated process is actually happening. Before that, let me give you a basic introduction on how I2C communication protocol works. I2C protocol is superior to UART and SPI protocols as they are device limited or requires many wires. But with I2C, you can literally connect thousands of sensors with just 4 wires. These wires are labeled as follows; VCC - Power line GND - Ground line SDA - Data line SCL - Signal clock It is required that the SDA and SCL lines need to be connected to VCC line using two pull up resistors. But that’s just hardware. Let's move on to learn how I2C communicate. Here there is this communicating concept called master and slave. To start communication, master issues a global signal like a broadcast to all the devices connected to SCL and SDA lines. This signal contains the address of the slave, master needs to address and get data from. If the slave received this call to him, he will pull down the SDA line to signal the master that he heard him and ready to communicate with him. Here communication means reading or writing data. Then the communication happens and the link between master and slave breaks giving opportunity to other masters and slaves. One might think this is a slow process. But these signals are transmitted at high frequencies. In PSLab it is at 100 kHz and that is one millisecond. PSLab library has a special class to handle I2C communication. That is public class I2C {/**/}   Once this class is initiated, one has to call the start function to start communication. This method requires the address we wish to communicate with and the mode of operation stating if it is a read or write operation public int start(int address, int rw) throws IOException { packetHandler.sendByte(commandsProto.I2C_HEADER); packetHandler.sendByte(commandsProto.I2C_START); packetHandler.sendByte((address << 1) | rw & 0xff); return (packetHandler.getAcknowledgement() >> 4); }   Once the address is sent out, protocol requires us to stop and wait for acknowledgement. public void wait() throws IOException { packetHandler.sendByte(commandsProto.I2C_HEADER); packetHandler.sendByte(commandsProto.I2C_WAIT); packetHandler.getAcknowledgement(); }   If there are no congestion in the lines such as reading from multiple devices, the acknowledgement will be instantaneous. Once that is complete, we can start communication either byte-wise or bulk-wise public int send(int data) throws IOException { packetHandler.sendByte(commandsProto.I2C_HEADER); packetHandler.sendByte(commandsProto.I2C_SEND); packetHandler.sendByte(data); return (packetHandler.getAcknowledgement() >> 4); }  …

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Read more about the article Using external UART modules to debug PSLab operations

Using external UART modules to debug PSLab operations

Pocket Science Lab by FOSSASIA is a compact tool that can be used for circuit analytics and debugging. To make things more interesting, this device can be accessed via the user interface using an Android app or also a desktop app. Both these apps use the UART protocol (Universal Asynchronous Receiver-Transmitter) to transmit commands to the PSLab device from mobile phone or PC and receive commands vice versa. The peculiar thing about hardware is that the developer cannot simply log data just like developing and debugging a software program. He needs some kind of an external mechanism or a tool to visualize those data packets travelling through the wires. Figure 1: UART Interface in PSLab PSLab has a UART interface extracted out simply for this reason and also to connect external sensors that use the UART protocol. With this, a developer who is debugging any of the Android app or the desktop app can view the command and data packets transmitted between the device and the user end application. This  requires some additional components. UART interface has two communication related pins: Rx(Receiver) and Tx(Transmitter). We will need to monitor both these pin signals for input and output data packets. It should be kept in mind that PSLab is using 3.3V signals. This voltage level is important to mention here because if someone uses 5V signals on these pins, it will damage the main IC. There are FTDI modules available in market. FTDI stands for Future Technology Devices International which is a company name and their main product is this USB transceiver chip. These chips play a major role in electronic industry due to product reliability and multiple voltage support. PSLab uses 3.3V USB Tx Rx pins and modules other than FTDI wouldn’t support it. Figure 2: FTDI Module from SparkFun The module shown in Fig.2 is a FTDI module which you can simply plug in to computer and have a serial monitor interface. There are cheaper versions in shopping websites like eBay or Alibaba and they will also work fine. Both Tx and Rx pins will require two of these modules and connectivity is as follows; PSLab [Rx Pin] → FTDI Module 1 [Rx Pin] PSLab [Tx Pin] → FTDI Module 2 [Rx Pin] This might look strange because everywhere we see a UART module is connected Rx → Tx and Tx → Rx. Notice that our idea is to monitor data packets. Not communicate with PSLab device directly. We want to see if our mobile phone Android app is sending correct commands to PSLab device or not and if PSLab device is transmitting back the expected result or not. This method helped a lot when debugging resistance measurement application in PSLab Android app. Monitoring these UART data packets can be done simply using a serial monitor. You can either download and install some already built serial monitors or you can simply write a python script as follows which does the trick. import serial ser = serial.Serial( port='/dev/ttyUSB1', baudrate=1000000000 )…

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Read more about the article How to Read PIC Data-Sheet and Add a New Functionality to PSLab Firmware

How to Read PIC Data-Sheet and Add a New Functionality to PSLab Firmware

Reading data-sheets is not a fun task. Going through tens of hundreds of pages with numerical, mathematical and scientific data is not fun reading. This blog post attempts to simplify reading the available data-sheets related to PIC24 micro-controller used in the PSLab device to help reader with implementing a new feature in PSLab firmware. There are many features available in the PSLab device, such as; UART, SPI, I2C, ADC and Basic I/O reading. The "basic" implementation techniques do not vary much from one feature to other. That being stated this blog will carry out the basic implementation techniques one should follow and basic knowledge on PIC micro-controller programming to save himself from the trouble going through the 500+ pages in PIC data-sheets. PIC Basics: Before go into implementation there are few facts one should know about PIC programming. - In the micro-controller values are saved in a memory block known as Registers. The values saved in these registers are volatile as they are all set to 0 regardless the value they were assigned when the power is off. - Micro-controller configurations are made by setting values to these registers. Even turning on and off a whole feature like UART in PSLab device can be done using setting 0 to UARTEN register bit. - When it comes to I/O ports, there are two different types of registers called TRIS and LAT/PORT. By setting 1 to TRIS ports will make the relevant pin an input pin. Setting it to 0 will make it an output pin. Easy way to remember this is think 1 as I in input and 0 as O in output. In UART implementation of PSLab, pin RP40 is set as an input pin to receive the data stream and pin RP39 is set as an output pin to send the data stream out. These settings are made using TRIS port settings. PORT registers save the value received by the relevant input pin attached to it. The above figure extracted from mikroe learning materials, illustrates different stages an I/O pin can handle. As an extra point, ANSEL register makes the pin support digital signals or analog signals as per user requirements. - In PIC, some registers such as PORT, TRIS and registers with similar functionalities are combined together. To access the value of each individual register can be done using dot notation. Assume the program requires to access the 8th register in TRISB register set. Note that the registers are indexed from zero. This implies that the 8th register will have the index 8 in the register sub-set. The following syntax is used to access the register; TRISBbits.TRISB7   The above points cover the basic knowledge one should have when developing firmware to PSLab device. How to implement a feature like UART in PSLab firmware? The first thing to know when implementing a new feature is that the developer needs to be familiar with the relevant hardware protocols. As an example, to implement UART; relevant protocol is RS232. If…

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