STM32F103xx Option bytes getting corrupted? - microcontroller

I am using STM32F103c6 cortex-m3. I am using 100 micro controllers in various boards.
In some around 10 micro controllers, I have seen a issue of option bytes getting corrupted.
Even though I am writing 0xA5 to RDP to remove read protection while flashing, sometimes it makes memory read protected and few times it work properly.
The remaining 90 MCUs works fine!
Even the WRP also gets corrupted in those 10 MCUs.
No where I am making Read protected in code, only write protection ! (Write protection is also removed at flashing by setting 0xA5 on RDP)
Could it be because of power fluctuation? As we are doing few auto power interrupt tests!!
What could be issue?
I flashed the MCU multiple time which are misbehaving without running the code( just flashing with RDP 0xA5, sometimes it flashes, sometimes it gets read protected and doesnot Flash)!!
Did the MCUs gone bad??

Related

Raspberry Pi 3 Model B (Android things OS) Error: Failed to open /dev/ttyAMA0: No such file or directory

I am a beginner in Android and testing Android code in which I am receiving and sending data through UART communication.
Hardware for communication- MAX232 device which is connected to Raspberry Pi3 Model B and the other part of MAX232 is connected to Vending Machine Port(Rx,Tx,Gnd to communicate my android app with the Vending Machine). My communication breaks SPORADICALLY and then starts communicating.
I do not know what the reason is
If anyone can help me in this, please suggest. Or any other information will be needed,I will share
private static final String UART_DEVICE_NAME = "UART0"; // define in my code.
**
I have to use ttyAMA0(PL011 UART) port because baudrate does not
change with the core frequency like with ttyS0(MIniUART)
**
For example: If I send 100 commands one by one, I get 2-5 times this
error.
**
> ERROR: Failed to open /dev/ttyAMA0: No such file or directory
**
Same thing happens to me reading data. I do not talk to the device (particle photon) connected to it, just listen. Since i'm expecting a response frequently, anything more than a couple seconds means things have gone south on one side or the other. It didn't seem likely though that my photon code was bad, as I had done many day-long tests with other things reading the data (arduino IDE, whatever).
Anyway, I created a runnable that fires every few seconds and checks when the last received response was. If it exceeds 60 seconds (things are most certainly wrecked and not going to get any better), I'll attempt to start up the connection again (Periperhal manager's openUartDevice). The main code waits another 60 seconds before trying again if it still has not received a response.
I also added code in 'onUartDeviceError' to trigger a callback the second that goes bad (not really sure if that's ever been the culprit in this), which will attempt the same restart logic but with a much smaller wait (like 5 seconds).
Lastly I made the Pi reboot itself (and thus the attached photon) so everything starts fresh, every morning at 6am. This has solved the issue for my purposes and its been in service for somewhere in the neighborhood of two years. Due to this reliability issue I don't do anything important with the pi, it simply exists to aggregate data from a few places and provide JSON. The photon is much more reliable even if the pi stops listening to it, so it controls the important/dangerous stuff (heaters, lithium batteries). Hopes this helps a little, but maybe some reconnect logic would solve the problem.

RS232 Alicat and Labview communication drop

At the moment I have a problem I cannot pin down. Seemingly at random my communication with my RS232 Alicat Device will get held up. It will get held up somewhere in the read or write process and be unable to complete it. Upon closing the VI I will get a "Resetting VI" error in Labview 2020. I am using 7 of the 9 RS232 ports. My question is:
How do I fix this problem so that I do not get a communication drop OR (more likely)
How do I code the system such that I can catch and move through this problem or reset the connection. Something of a VISA read/write timeout? Open to ideas on how to move past the block
Here is what I have gathered about the problem:
Windows 10, I’ve tested everything on multiple computers. It happens no matter what.
It happens at random. It might happen twice within 20 minutes or not for a couple of hours.
I have never experienced the error when probing the line. I don’t know if that is a clue, or if that speaks to the randomness of the problem
Baud Rate = 9600, Prior to this I was running at 19,200 and experienced equivalent issues. The manufacturer recommended lowering the baud rate to reduce noise. I have also isolated the cable from other parts of the hardware. At this point noise on the connection is not an issue, but I am still experiencing the error.
My buffer size is 1000 bytes.
By termination character is \r. I cannot imagine a scenario where it fails to read a termination character due to the size of my buffer
I'm querying it every 50ms. Far below the threshold of a standard timeout. Too much?
What I am currently testing.
Due to how my code block is setup I cannot yet confirm if it is getting locked up on the read or write block or both. I'm attempting to isolate the problem with only minor modifications to see if I can isolate it.
Attached is slimmed down version of my code that I isolated the error to.
I have experienced similar problems with some RS232 devices from different suppliers. The (quite bad) solution was to connect and disconnect for each communication command. The question would be what sample rate you need.
Another idea is to replace that device with an ethernet device. If I am not mistaken Alicat supplies those with Modbus (TCP).
The issue turned out to be specific to windows/my laptop. There is a USB setting that disables inactive USB's after a certain amount of time. The setting to disable the timeout was unavailable through the control panel on my laptop, though it was available on my coworkers. I had to use powershell commands to change the setting

Using PIC18F K40 microcontroller flash memory as storage

I'm using PIC18F67K40 microcontroller in my project.
It has 1kB EEPROM memory and 128kB program memory (flash).
For now I'm using EEPROM to store my settings.
Application is "growing" and I realized that at some point 1kB will be not enough. Some of settings are arrays of pretty big structures.
I realize, that flash memory has 100k 10k write cycles and that I can buy external EEPROM, but I don't want to change anything in hardware and memory in this product will never reach 2k writes for sure.
My quesion is:
How can I switch from EEPROM storage to flash storage?
Do I have to recalculate some CRC after program memory changes?
Do I have to define somewhere in project settings, that I'm using some flash memory for storage?
Is there anything what I have to do in order to use flash memory like this?
100k writes is only the endurance of the data EEPROM not of the flash memory (only 10k writes). You could expand the endurance with a EEPROM emulation.
There is a really nice library from Microchip for EEPROM emulation in flash memory.
Have a look here: EEPROM emulation
I did this for a client a couple of years ago. I can't post the code for NDA and copyright reasons, but the basic trick was to use something called RTSP (Run Time Self Programming). RTSP may be going obsolete now, but whatever replaces it may work in a similar way.
Essentially the flash looks like a series of pages which can be written word at a time, but erased page at a time. What you will need to do is write some code that can unlock and erase a page then write to it. Once you have done this the page can be read as ordinary memory.
You don't need to change the settings. However make sure that the page you use is well clear of the program code.
If you want a CRC (usually a good move) you'll have to calculate it yourself.

Network connection reset after intensive operation

I am doing a measurement project where I send and receive data from numerous devices on my network. The send/receive can be considered fast and intensive, as there is almost no pause and a continuous flow of data. However, the data to/from each device is quite small, on the order of a couple of bytes each. For some reason, I am experiencing a reset of my entire ethernet connection where my internet connection also goes down, and I lose connection to all my devices as well. I have never experienced such a situation and am wondering what are some of the common situations that might lead to resets like this?
Actually, it turns out this had to do with the way I constructed my thread, in which I would create a new socket continuously without discarding the previous one. Stupid right? Well I fixed the code and the ethernet no longer crashes.

Serial Comms dies in WinXP

A bit of history: We have an application, which was originally written many years ago (1998 is the first date in PVCS but the app is about 5 years older than that as it originally was a DOS program). This application communicates with a piece of hardware via serial. When we got to Windows XP we started receiving reports of the app dying after a short time of running. It seems that the serial comms just 'died' and the app was left in a stuck state. The only way to recover from this situation was to restart the application.
The only information I can find regarding this problem was apparently the Windows Message system would miss that information was received, the buffer would fill and the system would get stuck. This snippet of information was left in a old word document, but there's no evidence to back this up. It also mentions that this is only prevalent at high baud rates (115200+).
The solution was to provide customers with USB->Serial converters along with the hardware.
Today: We are working on a new version of the hardware that will run across a network as well as serial ports. So to allow me to work on the network code, minus the actual hardware we are using a VSCOM NetCom113 device. It also installs a virtual comm port on the users (ie: mine) machine.
Now I have got the network code integrated with the app, it appears that the NetCom device exhibits the same behaviour as a physical commport. This is undesirable as I need the app to run longer than ~30 seconds.
Google turns up zero problems that we experience.
I was wondering:
Has anyone experienced this before? If so what did you do to fix/workaround the problem?
Does anyone have any suggestions as to whether the original author of the document is correct and what I can do to test the theory?
Unfortunately I can't post code as the serial code is tightly couple with the rest of the system, though if you have questions regarding it I can answer questions about it.
Updates:
The code is written using Win32 Comm routines - so I am using CreateFile, ReadFile. There's also judicious calls to GetOverlappedResult.
It's not hanging per se, it's just that the comms stops. You can access the menus, click the buttons, but nothing can interact with the connected hardware. Using realterm you can see that no data is coming in or going out.
I think the reference to the windows message is that the problem is internal to windows. Data has arrived but the kernal has missed it and thus not told the rest of the system about it.
Flow control is not used.
Writing a 'simple' test is difficult due the the fact that the code is tightly coupled and the underlying protocol is quite complex and would require a lot of work.
Are you using DOS-style serial code, or the Win32 CreateFile approach?
If the former, be very suspicious: if at all possible I'd convert to the latter.
If the latter, do you know on what kind of system call it's hanging? Are you in a blocking read call? or an overlapped I/O call? or waiting on an event? (I'm not sure I have enough experience to help, but those are the kinds of questions that come to mind)
You might also check into the queue size, which you can set with the SetupComm function.
I don't buy the "Windows Message system" stuff -- it sounds fishy; you can write good Win32 serial i/o code that never uses Windows messages.
edit: does your Overlapped I/O use events? I seem to remember something about auto-reset events occasionally missing their trigger... check your overlapped I/O calls very carefully to see whether you're handling the possible outcomes properly. Perhaps there's a way to make your code more robust by automatically cancelling the overlapped i/o and restarting another read. (I assume the problem is in the read half, not the write half?)
edit 2: A suggestion: assuming the win32 side has missed a byte or packet, and your devices are in deadlock because they're both expecting each other to respond to something, can you tweak the other side of the serial I/O to regularly send some type of "ping" packet with an incrementing counter? (and log the ping packets on the PC side; that way you can see whether you've missed any)
Are you sure you have your flow control set up correctly? DTR, RTS, etc...
-Adam
i have written apps that use usb / bluetooth serial ports and have never had an issue. with bluetooth i have seen bit rates (sustained) of 800,000 bps for long periods of time. most people don't properly implement the port.
My serial port
Not sure if this is a possibility for you, but if you could re-write the code using C#.NET you'd have access to the SerialPort class there. It might remedy your problem. I know a lot of legacy code based around the Win32 API for hardware I/O ports tended to fail in XP due to timing (had a small bit of experience with MIDI).
In addition, I don't know if you can use the Win32 method of Serial Port access in Vista, so that might shut out future MS OSes from being able to use your code.

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