Is it possible to save some data parmanently in AVR Microcontroller? - avr

Well, the question says it all.
What I would like to do is that, every time I power up the micro-controller, it should take some data from the saved data and use it. It should not use any external flash chip.
If possible, please give some code-snippet so that I can use them in AVR studio 4. for example if I save 8 uint16_t data it should load those data into an array of uint16_t.

You have to burn the data to the program memory of the chip if you don't need to update them programmatically, or if you want read-write support, you should use the built-in EPROM.
Pgmem example:
#include <avr/pgmspace.h>
PROGMEM uint16_t data[] = { 0, 1, 2, 3 };
int main()
{
uint16_t x = pgm_read_word_near(data + 1); // access 2nd element
}

You need to get the datasheet for the part you are using. Microcontrollers like these typically contain at least a flash and sometimes multiple banks of flash to allow for different bootloaders while making it easy to erase one whole flash without affecting another. Likewise some have eeprom. This is all internal, not external. Esp since you say you need to save programatically this should work (remember how easy it is to wear out a flash do dont save unless you need to). Either eeprom or flash will meet the requirement of having that information there when you power up, non-volatile. As well as being able to save it programmatically. Googling will find a number of examples on how to do this, in addition to the datasheet you apparently have not read, as well as the app notes that also contain this information (that you should have read). If you are looking for some sort of one time programmable fuse blowing thing, there may be OTP versions of the avr, and you will have to read the datasheets, programmers references and app notes on how to program that memory, and should tell you if OTP parts can be written programmatically or if they are treated differently.
The reading of the data is in the memory map in the datasheet, write code to read those adresses. Writing is described in the datasheet (programmers reference manual, users guide, whatever atmel calls it) as well and there are many examples on the net.

Related

Where to find device-tree?

Coming form this question yesterday, I decided to port this library to my board. I was aware that I needed to change something, so I compiled the library, call it on a small program and see what happens. The 1st problem is here:
// Check for GPIO and peripheral addresses from device tree.
// Adapted from code in the RPi.GPIO library at:
// http://sourceforge.net/p/raspberry-gpio-python/
FILE *fp = fopen("/proc/device-tree/soc/ranges", "rb");
if (fp == NULL) {
return MMIO_ERROR_OFFSET;
}
This lib is aimed for Rpi, os the structure of the system on my board is not the same. So I was wondering if somebody could tell me where I could find this file or how it looks like so I can find it by my self in order to proceed the job.
Thanks.
You don't necessarily want that "file" (or more precisely /proc node).
The code this is found in is setting up to do direct memory mapped I/O using what appears to be a pi-specific gpio-flavored version of the /dev/mem type of device driver for exposing hardware special function registers to userspace.
To port this to your board, you would need to first determine if there is a /dev/mem or similar capability in your kernel which you can activate. Then you would need to determine the appropriate I/O registers for GPIO pins. The pi-specific code is reading the Device Tree to figure this out, but there are other ways, for example you can manually read the programmer's manual of the SoC on which you are running.
Another approach you can consider is adding some small microcontroller (or yes, barebones ***duino) to the system, and using that to collect information from various sensors and peripherals. This can then be forwarded to the SoC over a UART link, or queried out via I2C or similar - add a small amount of cost and some degree of bottleneck, but also means that the software on the SoC then becomes very portable - to a different comparable chip, or perhaps even to run on a desktop PC during development.

Device Drivers to Read and Write on a Virtual memory on linux

I am working with a SoC Cyclone V board. I want to exchange data between the HPS and FPGA. They share a common RAM, whose address can be seen on Qsys. I would like to Read and write data in this shared Memory, but dont want to use devmem2 every time i do it. I understand that a driver would be much safer. I was thinking of writing a char driver as it is one of the easy drivers to write for the basic read and write operations.
Is there a way to specify the address to be used by the char driver when we build and insert it?
If not, what driver can be written for the this function (to be able to read and write float values on a specific range of virtual address)?
I have found that user io device drivers or block drivers could be good options. But I am new to this area of development and don't know if these are the only options, or are they any more.
I could really use some help in deciding which driver is appropriate, it would be better if it was a char driver where the address can be specified.
Thank you.

Intel Pin Tool: Get instruction from address

I'm using Intel's Pin Tool to do some binary instrumentation, and was wondering if there an API to get the instruction byte code at a given address.
Something like:
instruction = getInstructionatAddr(addr);
where addr is the desired address.
I know the function Instruction (used in many of the simple/manual examples) given by Pin gets the instruction, but I need to know the instructions at other addresses. I perused the web with no avail. Any help would be appreciated!
CHEERS
wondering if there an API to get the instruction byte code at a given
address
Yes, it's possible but in a somewhat contrived way: with PIN you are usually interested in what is executed (or manipulated through the executed instructions), so everything outside the code / data flow is not of any interest for PIN.
PIN is using (and thus ships with) Intel XED which is an instruction encoder / decoder.
In your PIN installation you should have and \extra folder with two sub-directories: xed-ia32 and xed-intel64 (choose the one that suits your architecture). The main include file for XED is xed-interface.h located in the \include folder of the aforementioned directories.
In your Pintool, given any address in the virtual space of your pintooled program, use the PIN_SafeCopy function to read the program memory (and thus bytes at the given address). The advantage of PIN_SafeCopy is that it fails graciously even if it can't read the memory, and can read "shadowed" parts of the memory.
Use XED to decode the instruction bytes for you.
For an example of how to decode an instruction with XED, see the first example program.
As the small example uses an hardcoded buffer (namely itext in the example program), replace this hardcoded buffer with the destination buffer you used in PIN_SafeCopy.
Obviously, you should make sure that the memory you are reading really contains code.
AFAIK, it is not possible to get an INS type (the usual type describing an instruction in PIN) from an arbitrary address as only addresses in the code flow will "generate" an INS type.
As a side note:
I know the function Instruction (used in many of the simple/manual
examples) given by Pin gets the instruction
The Instruction routine used in many PIN example is called an "Instrumentation routine": its name is not relevant in itself.
Pin_SafeCopy may help you. This API could copy memory content from the address space of target process to one specified buffer.

Jump to App from custom bootloader in TMS320 digital media processor

I am working on a boot loader for TMS320DM6437. The idea is to create 2 independent firmware that one will update another. In firmware1 I will download firmware2 file and write it to NOR flash in a specified address. Both firmware are stored in NOR flash in ais format. Now I have two applications in flash. One is my custom boot loader and the second one is my main project. I want to know how I can jump from the first program to the second program located at a specified address. I also expect information about documents which may help me to create custom bootloader
Any recommendations?
You can jump to the entry point. I'm using this approach on TMS320 2802x and 2803x, but it should be the same.
The symbol of the entry point is c_int00.
To get to know the address of c_int00 in the second application, you have to fix the Run-Time Support (RTS) library at a specific address, by modifying the linker command file.
Otherwise you can leave the RTS unconstrained, and create a C variable (at a fixed address) that is initialized with the value of cint_00. Using this method your memory map is more flexible and you can add, togheter with the C variable, a comprehensive data structure with other information for your bootloader, e.g. CRC, version number, etc.
Be carefull with the (re)initialization of the peripherals in the second application, since you are not starting from a hardware reset, and you may need to explicity reset some more registers, or clear interrupt requests.

PIC24F - Possible for data values to persist, even after the PIC is powered off?

I have a question regarding the persistence (storage) of data values in a PIC24F, even after the PIC has been turned off.
I have read through the datasheet(s), but am confused regarding the difference of the EEPROM and Flash memory.
For example, say I have a variable "x", is there a way for the value of "x" to persist even after the PIC has been shut off? I know programs can persist in the flash memory so long as the code is compiled in Stand Alone Operation (COE_OFF). However, I am specifically wondering about data values.
If I make the program memory and the memory for the data value non-volatile, will it persist even when the power is off?
Do I need to declare the value as "static", example: static int x; ?
Or am I wrong and there isn't any way for a data value to persist even after the power has been turned off?
Thanks for the help and clarifications!
You must write to flash in pages, using the TBLWTL and TBLWTH instructions, as you have read in the datasheet for your device. This is typically for updating your software through a bootloader, and it does not sound like this is what you are after.
To access the EEPROM you can do it in smaller units, and there are compiler convenience macros for declaring where in the memory map a variable should live. You can specify that the variable lives in EEPROM and the compiler will generate instructions for accessing and updating that for you. You can also use the compiler intrinsics or the TBL instructions for reading it directly.
The declaration will probably look something like:
unsigned __attribute__((space(eedata), aligned(2)) my_eeprom_variable;
Look at the generated assembler to see what the compiler does when you access the variable.
Declaring a variable static only has traditional C semantics; it controls the scope of the variable and the initialisation rules.
Contents of registers and RAM variables are lost when power is turned off. Flash and EEPROM are both persistent. Flash can only be erased in large blocks - 128K and up depending on the type that you have. EEPROM words can be individually read or written. If you have EEPROM, that's your best bet for saving a small amount of data. Usually you have to read and write EEPROM serially.
thanks for the responses!
After some other suggestions I read through the MPLAB C30 Compiler datasheet again, and found the "persistent" attribute.
Per the datasheet:
"The persistent attribute specifies that the variable should not be initialized or cleared at startup. A variable with the persistent attribute could be used to store state information that will remain valid after a device reset."
I'm going to try using this to see if it will work.

Resources