This version is outdated by a newer approved version.
This version (10 Dec 2020 19:25) was approved by Juan Chong.The Previously approved version (10 Dec 2020 19:13) is available.
This version (10 Dec 2020 19:25) was approved by Juan Chong.The Previously approved version (10 Dec 2020 19:13) is available.This is an old revision of the document!
Table of Contents
iSensor Eval GUI User Guide
This guide assumes that you've connected your IMU to the EVAL-ADIS-FX3 and that the Eval GUI software was able to successfully verify communication with your IMU. We recommend checking out the Setup and Troubleshooting guide before continuing with the Eval GUI user guide.
Once at the main window, click on “Connect to FX3” to enable all of the GUI features. If the connection to the EVAL-ADIS-FX3 was successful, all of the Eval GUI utilities will become active and the screen should look similar to the image shown below.
Reading and Writing to IMU Registers
The FX3 Evaluation GUI provides several ways to read and write the IMU’s onboard registers. The “Register Access” tab provides a quick way to modify IMU registers, allowing for manual configuration of the IMU without the need to develop any extra software. Hex-to-decimal conversion can be toggled by checking the “Scale Data” checkbox in the upper-right corner of the screen. The “Continuous Read” checkbox will toggle an automatic, periodic read of all the registers listed on the current page.
Individual registers can be read by clicking on the corresponding register’s cell in the table. The entire page may also be read by clicking the “Read Page” button in the upper-right corner of the screen.
The active register page can be changed by clicking the drop-down shown below and selecting a new page. Only valid pages for that particular sensor will be shown. Sensors that do not have register page capabilities will only show registers on page zero.
Registers can be written in either hexadecimal or decimal format by selecting the target register, typing the new value in the “New Value” text box, and clicking on “Write.” Registers that are write-only will display a “Write Only” message in the status box above the “New Value” text box. Registers that are read-only will not display any message unless attempting to be written to.
The “Register Access” tab can also measure the data ready output rate dynamically by clicking on the “Measure Data Ready” checkbox. It's possible for this feature to not detect the data ready signal if a non-default data ready setting is configured.
Streaming/Logging Sensor Data to a File
The “Data Logging” tab provides the tools necessary for reliably streaming sensor data to the host PC. Data can be saved to disk in .csv format.
Register Logging
The register logging form allows you to capture a custom list of registers from the target IMU. Registers can be added in any order, irrespective of page. The register list can also be saved to a file to allow for easily recalling a complex list of registers on different systems.
Setting the “DR Active” check box configures the EVAL-ADIS-FX3 to wait for a data ready signal before initiating a SPI transfer. Data captures may be performed without data ready synchronization, but this configuration is not recommended since invalid data may be read from the IMU. The images below show the differences between data captures performed with and without “DR Active” enabled.
The IMU data rate (data ready) can be read from this form to help verify that the sensor configuration is valid before kicking off a data stream.
Setting the “Validate DR Period” checkbox will notify the Eval GUI to measure the sensor output data rate and verify that the requested list of registers does not exceed the IMU data valid period. The SPI SCLK, SPI stall, number of registers, and protocol overhead are all taken into account in the calculation. The image below shows what a SPI transaction that exceeds the data ready period looks like.
The three text boxes near the bottom of the window configure the data write behavior for the stream.
- # Samples To Capture sets the total number of samples to capture. For example, if the sensor data rate was set to 2000SPS and you wanted to capture 1 hour of data, the number of samples to capture would be 2,000 * 3,600 = 7,200,000.
- # Samples Per Write sets the number of samples to buffer between writes to the disk. This is particularly useful on slower machines or very long-term tests. For example, if the sensor data rate was set to 20SPS and you wanted to capture data for 30 days, but only write to the disk once per hour, the samples per write setting would be 20 * 3600 = 72,000.
- # Lines Per File sets the number of rows to write per file. The default 1,000,000 is a good compromise between file growth and usability and was chosen to work around an issue with Microsoft Excel where the software will struggle when opening files with more rows.
The register list is entirely customizable and can be saved in a file for future use. Register reads can either be synchronized to each data ready strobe or read asynchronously.
The “Data Plotting” form allows you to quickly visualize sensor data and optionally record it to a file. Several registers can be plotted concurrently.
The “FFT Data Plotting” form allows you to visualize the FFT sensor outputs in near-real-time. Markers and -3dB lines can also be added to the plots to aid in evaluating the frequency response of our high-performance IMUs.
resources/eval/user-guides/inertial-mems/evaluation-systems/eval-adis-fx3-eval-user-guide.1607624725.txt.gz · Last modified: 10 Dec 2020 19:25 by Juan Chong