Request for a feedback

Discussions and support about ChibiOS/EX, the External Peripherals Abstraction Layer.
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RoccoMarco
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Request for a feedback

Postby RoccoMarco » Thu Jun 09, 2016 9:46 pm

Dear all,
I am thinking about an improvement of MEMS related EX drivers. While I have clear ideas on certain points I have a lot of doubts on others. The question is what features user should be able to configure? As example L3GD20 has 5 CR plus other register for FIFO and IRQ: the capability of configure all of them would require a very long Configuration. I would like to understand what kind of settings are mandatory, what kind of settings could be considered advanced (so something to be optionally enabled) and what kind of settings could be ignored.

My idea is
MANDATORY
full scale, odr, bandwidth, blockdatupdate
ADVANCED
lowpower, filteringstuffs, irqstuffs, endianness
IGNORABLE
axeanbling, fifo, all other not mentioned

Please share your opinion.
Ciao,
RM

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Re: Request for a feedback

Postby awygle » Fri Jun 10, 2016 4:32 am

My experience with MEMS is quite limited, but by looking at the L3GD20, if I were planning to use it I would probably start with the FIFO in Stream mode and setting up the appropriate interrupts to page data out at various levels. I'm also not sure when I'd ever use block data update, to be honest. The other things that you have seem to be approximately in the order of priority that I'd put them in.

I'm very interested in what you come up with here. I've been writing EX drivers for a couple of RF transceiver chips lately and those things have a *ton* of configuration parameters. Currently I'm exposing more-or-less all of them in the Config struct and making sure to put together a sensible default_config to act as a starting point. When those are a little further along I'll post the code and you can see what too much configuration looks like :D

As an aside, I was very surprised to see a high pass filter setting - I would have expected a low-pass filter, which I guess does exist but is very poorly documented. Is that to remove a DC offset in the MEMS gyro or something? Seems like you'd miss all your steady-state rotation...

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Re: Request for a feedback

Postby RoccoMarco » Fri Jun 10, 2016 8:14 am

LP filter is not suitable since except gyroscope, every MEMS has a DC component. Gravity vector for accelerometer, EM Earth field for compass, temperature for thermometer and so on. Bias usually is removed through a compensation procedure which depends on MEMS kind.
Thanks for you feedback.

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Re: Request for a feedback

Postby awygle » Fri Jun 10, 2016 8:56 am

Ah, now my confusion makes sense - I'm a space guy so you just described all of the things I'd want to measure :D. Thanks for the info!

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Re: Request for a feedback

Postby Korken » Sat Jun 11, 2016 10:05 am

Hi RM! I will give some input :)

One thing, MEMS sensor have a lot of settings so I would not obsess if it takes a day to set it up correctly.
Everything still needs to be set, either by the user or by the writer of the driver (and abstracting it for the user).

MANDATORY
* full scale
With this I assume you mean setting the scaling factor, this is indeed a must - especially for online calibration.

* odr
Also a must.

* bandwidth
This goes together with "filteringstuffs", as the sensor internally applies a lowpass filter (sometimes analog and sometimes digital).
But it needs to be set in any case. Usually to "no filtering" and let the MCU do the filtering, but depends on application.

* blockdatupdate
This name makes little sense to convey the function (even though the datasheets use it), maybe look into giving it a name that reflects the function better?
Something along the lines of allowing data overwrite in the registers?
Not sure though, the hardcore MEMS guy would like this name, not sure about beginners and how much abstraction we should have.

ADVANCED
* lowpower
This fits as advanced.

* filteringstuffs
This goes hand-in-hand with bandwidth, but is this is only for MCU-based filtering, then it fits well here.

* irqstuffs
This fits as advanced.

* endianness
It's certainly good to have, but does anything except MSP use big-endian today?

MISSING (in my opinion :) )
* bias settings should be mandatory with fullscale.
All these systems work on the sensitivity*raw value + bias, so maybe have them as a bundled package at all time?

* For ADVANCED, an interface to update the sensitivity and bias based on incoming data for sample to sample temperature compensation.
This could also be left to the user to implement.

RoccoMarco wrote:LP filter is not suitable since except gyroscope, every MEMS has a DC component. Gravity vector for accelerometer, EM Earth field for compass, temperature for thermometer and so on. Bias usually is removed through a compensation procedure which depends on MEMS kind.

I think you are referring to high-pass filtering. :)
Low-pass allows bias (the low frequency) to be kept but attenuates higher frequencies and adds phase shift as a bi-product.

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Re: Request for a feedback

Postby RoccoMarco » Sat Jun 11, 2016 11:58 am

Hey korken,
you mean there should be an initial bias/sensitività field in memsConfig?

About LP I have messed up. Ignore my previous shitty answer.

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Re: Request for a feedback

Postby Korken » Sat Jun 11, 2016 4:28 pm

>> you mean there should be an initial bias/sensitività field in memsConfig?
Indeed, I have yet to find a sensor where this is not used.
The ones I have changed this for include: acc, gyro, mag, baro and mems microphone.

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Re: Request for a feedback

Postby RoccoMarco » Mon Jun 13, 2016 9:37 am

I am working on L3GD20 trying to make driver more elegant.
Current configuration structure is

Code: Select all

/**
 * @brief   L3GD20 configuration structure.
 */
typedef struct {

#if L3GD20_USE_SPI || defined(__DOXYGEN__)
  /**
   * @brief SPI driver associated to this L3GD20.
   */
  SPIDriver                 *spip;
  /**
   * @brief SPI configuration associated to this L3GD20.
   */
  const SPIConfig           *spicfg;
#endif /* L3GD20_USE_SPI */
#if L3GD20_USE_I2C || defined(__DOXYGEN__)
  /**
   * @brief I2C driver associated to this L3GD20.
   */
  I2CDriver                 *i2cp;
  /**
   * @brief I2C configuration associated to this L3GD20.
   */
  const I2CConfig           *i2ccfg;
#endif /* L3GD20_USE_I2C */
  /**
   * @brief L3GD20 initial sensitivity.
   * @details If set to @p NULL default typical value is used.
   */
  float                     sensitivity[L3GD20_NUMBER_OF_AXES];
  /**
   * @brief L3GD20 initial bias.
   * @details If set to @p NULL zero value is used.
   */
  float                     bias[L3GD20_NUMBER_OF_AXES];
  /**
   * @brief L3GD20 full scale value.
   */
  l3gd20_fs_t               fullscale;
  /**
   * @brief L3GD20 output data rate selection.
   */
  l3gd20_odr_t              outputdatarate;
#if L3GD20_USE_ADVANCED || defined(__DOXYGEN__)
  /**
   * @brief L3GD20 block data update.
   */
  l3gd20_bdu_t              blockdataupdate;
  /**
   * @brief L3GD20 endianness.
   */
  l3gd20_end_t              endianness;
  /**
   * @brief   L3GD20 HP filter mode.
   */
  l3gd20_hpm_t              hpmode;
  /**
   * @brief   L3GD20 HP configuration.
   */
  l3gd20_hpcf_t             hpconfiguration;
#endif
} L3GD20Config;


I would like to add advanced things related to IRQ but this is is a PITA because IRQ cfg has a lot of switches and values in a lot of different registers.

I don't know how it should be done. An idea could be this.

Code: Select all

/**
 * @brief   L3GD20 configuration structure.
 */
typedef struct {

#if L3GD20_USE_SPI || defined(__DOXYGEN__)
  /**
   * @brief SPI driver associated to this L3GD20.
   */
  SPIDriver                 *spip;
  /**
   * @brief SPI configuration associated to this L3GD20.
   */
  const SPIConfig           *spicfg;
#endif /* L3GD20_USE_SPI */
#if L3GD20_USE_I2C || defined(__DOXYGEN__)
  /**
   * @brief I2C driver associated to this L3GD20.
   */
  I2CDriver                 *i2cp;
  /**
   * @brief I2C configuration associated to this L3GD20.
   */
  const I2CConfig           *i2ccfg;
#endif /* L3GD20_USE_I2C */
  /**
   * @brief L3GD20 initial sensitivity.
   * @details If set to @p NULL default typical value is used.
   */
  float                     sensitivity[L3GD20_NUMBER_OF_AXES];
  /**
   * @brief L3GD20 initial bias.
   * @details If set to @p NULL zero value is used.
   */
  float                     bias[L3GD20_NUMBER_OF_AXES];
#if L3GD20_USE_ADVANCED || defined(__DOXYGEN__)
  /**
   * @brief L3GD20_CTRL_REG1 value.
   */
  uint8_t                   cr1;
  /**
   * @brief L3GD20_CTRL_REG2 value.
   */
  uint8_t                   cr2;
  /**
   * @brief L3GD20_CTRL_REG3 value.
   */
  uint8_t                   cr3;
  /**
   * @brief L3GD20_CTRL_REG4 value.
   */
  uint8_t                   cr4;
  /**
   * @brief L3GD20_CTRL_REG5 value.
   */
  uint8_t                   cr5;
  /**
   * @brief L3GD20_REFERENCE value.
   */
  uint8_t                   reference;   
  /**
   * @brief L3GD20_FIFO_CTRL_REG value.
   */
  uint8_t                   fifocr;
  /**
   * @brief L3GD20_FIFO_SRC_REG value.
   */
  uint8_t                   srccr;
  /**
   * @brief L3GD20_INT1_CFG value.
   */
  uint8_t                   int1cfg;
  /**
   * @brief L3GD20_INT1_SRC value.
   */
  uint8_t                   int1src;
  /**
   * @brief L3GD20 X-axis threshold value.
   */
  uint16_t                  xthreshold;
  /**
   * @brief L3GD20 Y-axis threshold value.
   */
  uint16_t                  ythreshold;
  /**
   * @brief L3GD20 Z-axis threshold value.
   */
  uint16_t                  zthreshold;
  /**
   * @brief L3GD20_INT1_DURATION value.
   */
  uint8_t                   int1duration;
#else
  /**
   * @brief L3GD20 full scale value.
   */
  l3gd20_fs_t               fullscale;
  /**
   * @brief L3GD20 output data rate selection.
   */
  l3gd20_odr_t              outputdatarate;
#endif
} L3GD20Config;

Suggestions?

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Re: Request for a feedback

Postby Giovanni » Mon Jun 13, 2016 9:57 am

Configuration structures are usually constant, are all those parameters meant to be modifiable or constant?

Giovanni

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Re: Request for a feedback

Postby RoccoMarco » Mon Jun 13, 2016 11:10 am

All of them are constant,
These value are just the initial value of register or driver fields. If some of them requires edits after the start there would be specific APIs like any other driver.
RM


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