Uploading Tritium Firmware

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ryan800
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Uploading Tritium Firmware

Post by ryan800 »

Hi everyone, I have a Tritium WS200 and am having trouble uploading new firmware to the driver controls, and updating the WS200 firmware. I was hoping for a very basic explanation of a) how to upload files via CAN and b) how to compile new driver controls software and upload that.

I'm sure James at Tritium would explain it to me, but I hassle him a lot and I'm sure I'll need clarification on a few points.

Where I'm at:

Uploading WS200 firmware: When I start triFwLoad_1_04 and select the latest tsf file and press "Erase/Prog" it times out. Has anyone seem this and fixed it?

Compiling Driver Controls Software: I'm trying to follow the read me in the TRI86_Firmware_2012-04-24 file on the Tritium website. I downloaded and installed mspgcc-20081230, but I can't find and/or install the make utility. The readme says, "Download and install a minimum install of MinGW, so that your system has 'make' on it". Can someone point me more specifically to the file I'm supposed to download/install?

Thanks!
Ryan
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Post by celectric »

Hi Ryan,

The easiest way to install MinGW is probably to download and run "mingw-get-inst-YYYYMMDD.exe" from here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/f ... -get-inst/
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Post by ryan800 »

I've actually done that, but from what I can tell I still don't have "make"

Maybe I'm calling it wrong?

The readme says, "From a command prompt window (DOS box), and in your working directory, type "make" without the quotes"

but that gives me this message:

C:\TRI_Firmware_2012-04-24>make
'make' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

Also, I attached the readme file that I'm trying to follow as a .zipreadme.zip
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Post by celectric »

You probably don't have it in your PATH, which is the list of directories that the command line looks for commands when you enter them. You can either run the MinGW Shell from the Start menu to get the PATH set up for you, or you can add it to the system wide PATH so that the tools will be available in any command line window. Follow the MinGW Getting Started instructions, particularly the section called "Environment Settings".
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Post by Johny »

In the MinGW\bin directory there is a file called mingw32-make.exe.
Copy this to the C:\TRI_Firmware_2012-04-24 directory and call it make.exe.

Then try again.
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Post by PlanB »

Summer stateside & a young man's mind turns to thoughts of EVs. How's the Lexus transaxle going Ryan, you manage to coax anymore starting torque out of it?
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Post by ryan800 »

Thanks for the quick help everyone, got make working. Anyone know how to find the hardware version, which I think I have to update in the encrypt file for everything to work?

Also, any thoughts on uploading the files? I'll work on that problem more tomorrow too.

PlanB, that pretty much sums it up, I've been busy finishing a Master's degree and looking for a job, which I'm still doing, but I figure it's time to stop neglecting my car - I can at least finish the free stuff. It's been getting me around town well enough but I think regen will be a fun upgrade.
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Post by Tritium_James »

Hey Ryan, good to see you got it mostly figured out! The hardware version is printed on the PCB.
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Post by ryan800 »

Any thoughts on the timeout issue? The bootloader tool, triFwLoad_1_04, says "erase timed out" when I press Erase/Prog.

I'm just turning on the ws200/can network, plugging the computer into the bridge, then running triFwLoad. Am I missing some steps here? Maybe I'm supposed to press the reset button on the bridge?

edit: maybe I should add that I've just tried to upload "ws200_release_1_08.tsf" to 0x400. Haven't tried updating the driver controls yet.
Last edited by ryan800 on Wed, 18 Jul 2012, 07:02, edited 1 time in total.
ryan800
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Post by ryan800 »

Plan B, no changes to starting torque just yet. I have a feeling that low speed torque-per-amp is pretty well optimized; the ws200 tuning options don't yield noticeable change at low speed. I can probably bump up the motor current limit a bit but I don't know if there would be any indication I've reached a limit until the magnets lose a little bit of their magnetization.

high speed control also needs some refinement, but I haven't spent much time on this issue. I'll definitely post up when I think I'm closer to the motor's capability.
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Post by coulomb »

ryan800 wrote: Any thoughts on the timeout issue?

I wonder if it's a Windows firewall issue. Do you remember getting any messages from Windows about the firewall?

According to email I just searched, Weber and I had trouble with this. It seems that the easiest way to fix it is if you answer the right questions the first time Windows offers help (we didn't). It doesn't seem to offer again, so you have to go into firewall settings and specifically enable WSConfig or whatever to use a "public network". That's right - Windows considers a network of your computer and one other device to be a public network, so it disables access by default for your safety. Windows really is pretty bad when it comes to permissions.

What version of Windows are you using?
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ryan800
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Post by ryan800 »

I think I had this issue too when I was first setting the controller up but I can use config, DCTest, etc fine now so I don't think that's the problem here.

I'm using windows 7.

Thanks for the thought though, I'll double check it to be sure.
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Post by Sutho »

Hey Ryan,

I didn't read the above super-thoroughly, but it sounds like you need to do the following to get the firmware to start loading:

1. Power up CAN-Ethernet Bridge and get PC communicating with it
2. Run the TriFwLoad software and select Firmware File and Erase/Prog

Then.....within about 5 secs

3. Plug CAN cable to power-up WS200 which should kick off the bootloader.


Cheers,
Sutho

Last edited by Sutho on Wed, 18 Jul 2012, 10:20, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by PlanB »

Any IPM depolarisation references I can find in the literature are related to over temperature Ryan so I think you could kick your 80A up to 96A briefly to see if the launch torque improves (1.6 x 20% = 32% should be noticeable).
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Post by ryan800 »

Sutho, I just tried that but same result - it waits for the controller then says erasing flash, then erase timed out.

I tried uploading new driver controls software as well, but same result except that at one point I changed the wrong digit while trying to update the version number and the erase seems to have worked, so now the car doesn't drive at all... oops.

To explain that mistake, here's the encrypt file:

@echo off

set /p key=<tri86.key.txt
msp430encrypt.exe tri86.a43 tri86.tsf 0x00001002 3 %key%

The 3 is the correct hardware number for me, but I first changed the 0x00001002 to 0x00001001, which seems to have cause the driver controls to stop functioning.


PlanB: my understanding is that permanent magnets have a characteristic called the coercive field which is the field strength required to bring the magnet's net polarization to zero. Near this point is where the magnet becomes demagnetized. As temperature increases toward the Curie temperature, the coercive field is reduced to zero. So heating a magnet to the curie temp will demagnetize it but so will heating it close to the curie temperature then applying a moderate current. I think 100A will be fine when I first start driving, but my concern is that at some point hot motor + 100A will not be fine anymore.
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Post by coulomb »

ryan800 wrote: I tried uploading new driver controls software as well, but same result except that at one point I changed the wrong digit while trying to update the version number and the erase seems to have worked, so now the car doesn't drive at all... oops.

To explain that mistake, here's the encrypt file:

@echo off

set /p key=<tri86.key.txt
msp430encrypt.exe tri86.a43 tri86.tsf 0x00001002 3 %key%

The 3 is the correct hardware number for me, but I first changed the 0x00001002 to 0x00001001, which seems to have cause the driver controls to stop functioning.
As far as I can tell, the msp430encrypt line by itself will just write a new tri85.tsf file, so you can just run the command again with the right parameters and rewrite the .tsf file correctly.

If you didn't notice your mistake and updated the software using the bad .tsf file, I would expect that the boot-loader would simply reject the .tsf file, and not update the software.

Have you tried just re-running the msp430encrypt file (edit your encrypt.bat file and use it to reduce the chances of an error) and tried re-doing the boot-load process using triFwLoad?

[ Edit: trimmed excess quote at end of post ]
Last edited by coulomb on Thu, 19 Jul 2012, 06:58, edited 1 time in total.
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