Tag Archives: ESP8266 Sigma delta

Testing Vpp control

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Setting up:

It’s been a while since I have worked with the board powered up.  I hooked up the lithium cell and USB cable to my Computer, then the charger started doing it’s job. I then started the serial terminal on my computer.  I hooked up my Oscilloscope to watch Vpp live during testing.

The code still in the board tries to regulate Vpp according to the reading it gets from the ADC.  This isn’t working well.  Since It’s been a while, I built and re-uploaded the project without any changes. This reminded me how I had the tools set up. Of course, the behavior of the board didn’t change with this upload. Next, I disabled the feedback loop to do my testing.

Voltage verses duty cycle:

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Vpp Control Loop (Firmware V00M)

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Plan:

This week I decided to work on the control loop. I decided to add a simple adjustment scheme to the 5 mS system timer event. And then create a way to change the required voltage in increments of 0.1 Volts starting at 10.0

Implementation:

I created a local “static” variable in the events.c file for the target voltage. I then created a function to set this variable target_voltage and another function to get the value of target_voltage.  I then added a simple if statement into the 5ms event that increments the duty cycle of the Sigma Delta if the measured value is too low and decrements it otherwise.  I compiled and tried this, Vpp is ugly.

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Voltage Boost testing

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I have a very stable version of the Sigma Delta(ΣΔ) firmware to test with.  I decided to use it to test the Voltage boost circuit.  I started by populating the PCB with the voltage boost components.  Definition: Populate a PCB means installing the components onto a board; this includes but isn’t limited to soldering.

PCBVboost  PCBVboostPop 

Once Installed, I started modifying the code for a simple test. The first test is a sanity check.  I disabled all functions other than sending an incrementing number out the serial port every 5 seconds. And then I ran into another problem.  I had upgraded my install of Ubuntu studio to 16.04 earlier this week and now USB wasn’t working in the virtual machine.  After a few hours of fiddling, I got it working and finally built and uploaded the test code.  The terminal started counting as expected.

Next I turned on the ΣΔ and set the duty to 16. I figured out the prescaler with the following math.  An inductor will reach approximately 2/3 saturation current after a given amount of time calculated by inductance divided by resistance.  I am using a 2 μHenry inductor with an internal resistance of 0.25 Ohms. 2×10^-6 /.25 = 8×10^-6 or 8 μsesonds.  So the most efficient use of the inductor will be between 4 and 8 microseconds. One cycle (pulse width) at 80 MHz is 12.5 nanoseconds. This results in a prescaler of 640 for an 8 microsecond pulse width. If I choose a prescaler of 255, I end up with a pulse width of 3.2 microseconds.  This is a simplified calculation and I hope it will get me close enough.  The PCB resistance, capacitors, and R5 all contribute in varying degrees. I also set GPIO16 as an output and drove it low to enable the voltage booster.  And the code ran as I was hoping for.  I measured the Vpp voltage at 5.93 Volts which is slightly above the 5 volts being supplied by the USB. Yeah! small victory.

The next firmware modification turns on the Sigma Delta and set the duty cycle to 128 (50%) .  I measured 2.75 Volts. So next I read from the ADC each time I sent to the terminal.  The value I read back was 137.  Then I enabled changing the duty with each update. and the values changed with each step.  Very good. Next I did a little math on the data. The ADC reads 1/1024 V/step.  So when I got the reading of 137, that means (137/1024)*20 = 2.675 V.

I get a small error but within 5% reading a meter verses calculated.  I fixed this by changing the 20 to 21.  I got the error because of a 5% error in the calculation of the voltage divider.  I had known about this error, but was ignoring it.  Now it is fixed.  I then started to play with the prescaler to see if i could make it work better.  The 100 Ohm resistor is having more affect on the circuit than I had anticipated.  With a prescaler of 128, Vpp rises to 8V.  At 64 Vpp rises to 11.6 V. At 32 Vpp Rises to 11.6 V again. At 16 the Vpp Rises to 11.6 again.  This suggests the design is limiting the max voltage. I need to check the reverse breakdown voltage on the diode and FET.  I would like to see better control between the steps.  With a prescaler of 0 it Vpp peaked at 12.1 V.  It took more steps to get there, and the steps weren’t linear.  It still needs tuning, maybe a different inductor.

This was fun playing with the Voltage boost circuit.  I actually got it to work fairly well.  This is the first switching boost circuit I have designed from scratch. Of course, I have had a few bumps along the way.  I have uploaded the test code to GitHub.

Have you designed a circuit that was out of you normal area of expertise? I would love to hear about your experience.

Sigma Delta Testing V00A

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I have been fighting using the Sigma Delta(ΣΔ) for a few weeks now and all of my research so far has not been fruitful.  So, My intention this week is to implement a very basic ΣΔ operation that will change the prescaler for the whole range of possibilities 0 – 255.

The hardware watchdog timer triggers after about 6 seconds without a WDT reset. I have decided I want the sigma delta prescaler to step from 0 to 255 every 5 seconds.  I will put each step of the prescaler out to the serial port using system calls.

I will put all the code in the user_main.c file so that I, and anyone else that looks at my code can see all that is going on.  I extracted a new set of SDK files into a new folder called SigmaDelta.  I then created a new Eclipse project file in this new folder.    I struggled with creating the project in Eclipse.  I finally got it set up the way I wanted.  In the past setting up a project in Eclipse has always been easier, but this time it just didn’t work well for me.

I copied my shell scripts(that is batch files for windows users) that I use to automate building and testing from the UProgrammer folder. Next, I removed the references to AT_CUSTOM_UPGRADE in user_main.c and user_config.h.  I then performed a sanity check by putting one line of code to send “Hello World” out the serial connection and tried to build.  It failed because I forgot a semicolon.  I fixed that and got a new message saying code will not fit in irom0_0_seg.  I need to update the linker  file.  I copied the one from the UProgrammer folder.  Built again and it compiled. Next I uploaded it to see if it still works.  It doesn’t seem to work.  The baud rate is set to 115200, but I am getting a little bit of garbled text after boot completes.  I decided to try putting a small delay(5 ms) in before printing the “hello World”. This also didn’t work.

I need to implement a timer and looked at the sntp example in the API guide.  I set the timer to repeat every 5 seconds. Unfortunately it seems to just hang. I had a similar problem when I moved to this version of the API, I removed the uart_init line and I started getting regular data coming across the serial line. Still garbled, but happening every 5 seconds.  So I looked at uart_init from the uart.c. I found and copied the call that actually sets the baud rate.  I used this to modify the baud rate for UART0 and I started getting Hello World every 5 seconds.  Next step, turn on the Sigma Delta and start incrementing the prescaler.

I created the variables prescaler and duty and set them to 0. Then I went back to my old code and grabbed a copy of the set prescaler code.  I put the code in to set the prescaler, increment it, and print out the value every the timer event is called. I compiled, uploaded it and I saw numbers increasing across the serial terminal.  Then I waited for it to get to 100.  It continued to count.  I let it continue all the way up to 255 and then changed the wifi mode to STATION_MODE like the UProgrammer firmware. Next, I modified the code to turn on the output(GPIO4) and change the duty cycle.

Still working. Connected to wifi and tested again. Still working.  I explicitly set GPIO4 as an output set to 1 and tried again. Still working I turned on HSPI overlap mode and tried again. It started crashing and rebooting.  It looks like somehow the HSPI is conflicting with the SigmaDelta generator.

I commented out the code to set up GPIO4, and the code to connect to the wifi access point and it crashes. I changed the duty back to 0 and it doesn’t crash anymore. Next I checked the Pin assignment worksheet to see what else is connected to GPIO4 and I didn’t find anything interesting.

It looks like I have to do an HSPI overlap deinit immediately after getting data out of the RAM.  This could be a problem because I want to be generating Vpp while transferring data into the processor.  This could limit my options.  If my code is small, I can generate Vpp. If it’s large, I may have to program in blocks.

I do have the capabilities to assemble and test the voltage booster now.  I will go back into the UProgrammer Firmware code and deinit the HSPI overlap and see what happens.

I have put this week’s test code on GitHub here. How do you find problem code?

Sigma Delta Testing V00I

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Last Week I wrote to  and read from the SPI RAM but only verified it with a logic analyzer.  I read from the registers and sent them out on the serial line. Like before, I did a hello world test and actually expected to see hello world after the menu. It didn’t work, I forgot to take care of several things in the software. I adjusted the software a little at a time testing with each change until it started working.

Once I saw “Hello World” in my serial console, I decided to start testing the Sigma_Delta output.  I want to know if it causes system crashes without the voltage boost circuit having any connection to power. Without R5 or L2 installed, the boost circuit really can’t have much affect on the system. Q5 also isn’t installed so the Sigma Delta output on GPIO4 is driving to high impedance.

I changed the firmware so that GPIO4 is the Sigma Delta output.  Then I un-commented out the line in user_init() that configures and enables the Sigma Delta output.  Before, I had a very limited range of prescaler I could use for the Sigma Delta signal. I can set the sigma delta prescaler from 0 to 100.  I was expecting to get full range which would be 0 to 255.  So I went back into the software and looked to see if I made a math error.  The math is simple and it looks right so I decided to look at the Sigma Delta register definition.  The register definition matches the way the code is written.  I checked Kolban’s ESP8266 book, it didn’t have anything useful about the Sigma Delta.  I looked for it in Espressif’s  SDK programming guide and found nothing. Next I searched using Google. This turned up the page I had originally found on Espressif’s bbs.  It describes the prescaler being a value of 0 to 255. So I still don’t know why going bigger than 99 causes the system to crash.  It is not clear what is causing this rebooting.

I will look at the Sigma Delta software more next week. I have uploaded the current status of the code to GitHub.

I would love to hear from you readers.  The only comments I get are spam!