ADSP-21020 EZ-LAB Eval-board interface VI

[bobcook40]

Does anyone have experience with developing a LabVIEW serial interface to the ADSP-21020 EZ-Lab evaluation board?  It is part of a legacy system that currently requires us to upload files using the DOS prompt.  I am unable to find any good documentation for the original lab21k interface program provided by Analog Devices and then no longer offer any support for this system.  We would like to incorporate this into our LabVIEW interface.    Any ideas?

[SimonH]

Bob,

Let me preface this reply by letting you know that I am not terribly familiar with the ADSP-21020.

From what I understand (based on a half hour of reading what I could find on the internet) it requires that you compile your C program using a particular compiler and then upload it to the board for execution.

Are you trying to use LabVIEW to automate the uploading of your already compiled application?  If so you may be able to do so using serial communication if you know the required protocol.  I was unable to find any documentation about how to interface with this board which makes it hard for me to suggest any possible ways to tackle this problem.

If anyone out there knows more about these particular devices and can help please do chime in.

Regards,

Simon H
Applications Engineer
National Instruments

[bobcook40]

Simon H,

Yes I am trying to automate the upload process.  Currently it relys on a manual confirmation that upload sequence did occur.  I have the same difficulties with trying to get solid information on the protocol and if there are any hidden commands inserted as a part of compilation process. 

Bob

[SimonH]

Would it be feasible to write a .bat script to handle the upload process (using the current DOS based utility) and then call that .bat script from LabVIEW or would that defeat the purpose of using LabVIEW?

~ Simon H

[bobcook40]

I suppose we could do that.  I will have to explore that.  I was thiking if done through LV I would know if the script sucessfully completed.  I could then allow the operator to continue with operations.  If I recall you dont really know if the execution of a *.bat script is sucessful or not, its been a while since I wrote DOS based scripts. 

I was hoping we could use LV to point to the file for upload and just go from there.  Compiling the file does not need to be a part of the LV vi.

I am new to developing a LV programing so I am not familiar with its full capabilities.

Bob

[MattP]

Hi Bob,

You can use the System Exec VI to execute a DOS command line, including batch files.  The nice thing about this VI is that it will also return the console output generated at the command prompt, so if the compile tools give some some sort of textual indication that they completed successfully, you can parse the output string from the System Exec VI to know if an error occurred.