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Introduction
Thanks to Element14 and all the sponsors for selecting me as a rodtester for In the Air Challenge. I have received Texas Instruments Beaglebone Black, MSP430 and CC3200 launchpads and inductors from Wurth Electronik. I registered at AirVantage and received a kind email with their offer to help me during the roadtester. Cadsoft sent a licence for Eagle that will allow me to draw schematics and PCBs. Now I am preparing an order list for 500$ to spend. One wish would be that Element 14 as a distributor could get in their webshop sensors from SeedStudio or Adafruit.
I have proposed to study air quality during school classes. Most schools in Latvia are built in times when motorised ventilation was not used. Proposal is to measure carbon dioxide CO2 that is responsible for getting tired. This could teach the lecturer when is time to open the window. Other sensors will be dust, temperature, humidity, air pressure, light, sound level, oxygen O2.
As a dust sensor I have started to use Sharp sensor, but it is sensitive only to average dust level. I plan to detect scattered light from a 10W LED, using a webcam, Beaglebone and image recognition to count dust particles. That would allow to size dust particles. It is known that soot particles less than 10 um can cause lung cancer.
Data will be sent to the Internet of Things for plotting and later evaluation. One would be to look for correlation if air gets worse quicker during mental activities like a math test.
Customs problems
For 3 weeks I could not start the project as experienced problems in the customs with parcels from the USA. Import tax had to be payed but I could not do it as the packages were addressed for the University of Latvia, but in the university administration just kept sending me from one bureaucrat to another. Best solution was found that Element14 payed the import tax and the packages were delivered to the university where I could pick them up.
MSP-EXP430FR5969 launchpad
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Out of the Box Demo
Getting started: MSP430FR5969 LaunchPad Development Kit - MSP-EXP430FR5969 - TI Tool Folder
Connected launchpad to PC USB. Windows installed automatically MSP Tools Driver because I had CCstudio installed from the previous roadtest.
Downloaded software examples "MSP-EXP430FR5969 Software Examples" and read the pdf guides.
User's guide p.27 describes Out Of the Box example.
Programmed OutOfBox_FR5969.
Run /GUI/OutOfBox_FR5969_GUI on Windows. Connected to COM5 and looked at the live temperature data.
Activated "FRAM log mode". Green LED flashes briefly every 5s.
One could store in FRAM ca 8 hours of temperature and voltage as long as supercap lasts.
Set jumpers "use supercap" and "charge" the supercap. Should remove V+ jumper from J13.
Supplied from a from supercap LED stops blinking after a few minutes but the logging continues.
Exit from logger by pressing button 2 or reset button.
TI Energia
Would like to give a try with Energia that is very similar to Arduino IDE.
Downloaded Energia 13. Opened blink example. Tried to upload. Message came that need to run update /programmer
"A firmware update is required for the MSP430 Debug Interface (MSP-FET430UIF / MSP-FET / eZ-FET). "
"device inicialization failed"
It is a bug that several other roadtesters already encountered. Solution will be to wait until Energia 13+ appears.
http://energia.nu/pin-maps/guide_msp430fr5969launchpad/
I think Energia would not allow to use chip-internal temperature sensor and power down modes that are the major advantage of the MSP-EXP430FR5969
chip. Also in Energia is probably not implemented writing to FRAM.
CCStudio
I had CCStudio installed during previous CC3200 roadtest.
Pressed New project/Energia . A project template came up and it could be compiled and debuged (press the green bug icon)
Needs to update driver too. Update successful.
"MSP430: Loading complete. There were 506 (code) and 0 (data) bytes written to FLASH. The expected RAM usage is 20 (uninitialized data + stack) bytes."
Pasted Blink example from Energia, pressed "Debug" and after compilation MSP430 launchpad LED started blinking. So far OK.
Next I tried to make LED shine all the time and checked how long it shines from a supercap: 2 minutes and the MSP430 chip was in normal speed mode.
advanced tools/energy_trace - I could not find where to select
project/properties/build/msp40 compiler/ulp advisor was already checked active
CCStudio is described in MSP430 user guide from p.26.
I opened and compiled OutOfBox example.
tools/import ccs projects/outOfBox_FR5969
It worked by blinking red/green LEDs and the green LED blinks shorty every 5s when activated FRAM storage from GUI demo o a PC.
So far OK. CCStudio works More example code ADC_12, timer is at TI resource explorer.
Left the board runing OOB demo overnight powered from the supercap to see how long time it lasts. In the morning saw that data saving continued for 1/2 hour.
Possible time extension would be by disabling thermometer and LED flashing.
