rodan/ucurrent_ctrl

µCurrent controller

a MSP430F5510 based project that controls the power delivery to Dave L. Jones's µCurrent

 homepage:        https://github.com/rodan/ucurrent_ctrl
 author:          Petre Rodan <2b4eda@subdimension.ro>
 license:         GNU GPLv3

if you forget to turn off the original µCurrent you will find the enclosed 2032 Li cell completely flat the next day. this project provides a timeout feature to it. a push-button is used to start up both this circuit and the µCurrent. multiple presses will either reset the timeout counter or increase the timeout period. the initial timeout period can be optionally modified via a 3V serial uart. also in case the output voltage is low enough for a given period the µCurrent is turned off.

uC pinout:

P1.1 IN digital - push button trigger
P1.4 OUT digital - power-latch my circuit
P1.5 OUT digital - enable power delivery to the uCurrent
P2.0 OUT digital - blinky
P6.0 IN analog - battery voltage
P4.1 IO - SDA (i2c for ADS1110)
P4.2 IO - SCL

connectors:

external power - either 3V Li Cell or 3.7V LiPo/Li-ion (MOLEX 0530470210)
push button - optional external push button tied to the case (MOLEX 0530470210)
ucurrent power - uCurrent connections (MOLEX 0530470210)
debug - TI spy-bi-wire interface and serial uart for programming, debug and user input (MOLEX 0530470610)

power:

the uCurrent has the cell unpopulated and the power switch set to the "ON" position.
this circuit will provide the 3V needed to the uCurent

software requirements:

TI msp430 toolchain
atlas430 HAL library

build and debug

the project is based on a Makefile. REFLIB_ROOT defines the path to where this atlas430 repository has been cloned, TARGET represents the target microcontroller and config.h will be automatically expanded into compilation macros (-DFOO arguments to be sent to gcc).

the makefile supports the following options:

# check if everything is installed and paths are correct
make envcheck

# remove the build/TARGET/ directory
make clean

# compile the project and library
# create dependency tree and source code tags
make

# burn the firmware onto the target microcontroller
make install

# perform an optional static scan of the source code 
make cppcheck    # needs dev-util/cppcheck
make scan-build  # needs sys-devel/clang +static-analyzer

in order to use gdb to debug the project make sure to enable the CONFIG_DEBUG macro in config.h and run in a terminal

LD_PRELOAD='/opt/atlas430/lib/libmsp430.so' mspdebug --allow-fw-update tilib gdb

and then start gdb from within the project directory:

make debug

commonly used gdb commands:

target remote localhost:2000
monitor reset
monitor erase
load build/MSP430FR5994/main.elf
b
disassemble
nexti
info registers
continue
tui enable

more images of the prototype are available here

rodan / ucurrent_ctrl