Decem­ber 13, 2023

In embed­ded sys­tems develop­ment, hav­ing ver­sa­tile tools and fea­tures at your dis­pos­al can make a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence in the effi­cien­cy and effec­tive­ness of your work. One such fea­ture is the mDIO (mini dig­i­tal input-out­put) on the Blue­Box Hard­ware, specif­i­cal­ly the iC7mini Blue­Box and spe­cif­ic Active Probes.

In this blog post, we delve into the mDIO func­tion­al­i­ties, use cases, and explore its capa­bil­i­ties and appli­ca­tions.

mDIO port connectivity

mDIO port is locat­ed on the iC7mini Blue­Box and spe­cif­ic Active Probes.

The iC7mini Blue­Box is a next-gen­er­a­tion plat­form designed for flash­ing, debug­ging, and test­ing a wide range of embed­ded micro­con­troller archi­tec­tures. It includes multi-core sup­port and an Automa­tion SDK sup­port­ing all pop­u­lar pro­gram­ming lan­guages. Addi­tion­al­ly, it offers testIDEA unit test­ing and daqIDEA data acqui­si­tion and visu­al­iza­tion tool.

Active Probes are an essen­tial tool in the field of test­ing, debug­ging, and trac­ing. They pro­vide valu­able insights into embed­ded soft­ware and help engi­neers ana­lyze and trou­bleshoot com­plex sys­tems. With Active Probes you get high­er debug and trace per­for­mance; its com­pact size allows con­nect­ing to a tar­get ECU and it can be posi­tioned as far as 10 m away from the Blue­Box.

Con­nect­ing test clips or cables link the mDIO port to sig­nals around the debugged micro­con­troller estab­lish­es a link that allows read­ing or con­trol­ling sig­nals via the debug­ger.

Functionalities

Pin Toggling and Triggering

The mDIO facil­i­tates pin state tog­gling using TC trig­gers. Pin states can also act as trig­gers, chang­ing from one state to anoth­er based on trig­ger events. Addi­tion­al­ly, pins can be con­fig­ured as inputs, trig­ger­ing events on tran­si­tions from high to low or low to high.

HIL Control

mDIO can be con­trolled con­ve­nient­ly via winIDEA, enabling man­u­al pin tog­gling, state obser­va­tion, and con­fig­u­ra­tion of ini­tial pin states and direc­tions through the Hard­ware-in-the-Loop (HIL) mon­i­tor. This pro­vides hands-on con­trol and automa­tion for test sce­nar­ios.

Pattern Generation

The mDIO includes a pat­tern gen­er­a­tor fea­ture, allow­ing the gen­er­a­tion of arbi­trary dig­i­tal sig­nals with spe­cif­ic pat­terns. This capa­bil­i­ty is valu­able for gen­er­at­ing dig­i­tal fre­quen­cies, PWM pat­terns, and other cus­tom sig­nal pat­terns required for test­ing and analy­sis. More­over, it is fully con­trol­lable via the isystem.connect API, facil­i­tat­ing test automa­tion.

Use cases

• Power Con­trol
• Watch­dog han­dling
• HIL Mon­i­tor­ing
• Fre­quen­cy Com­mu­ni­ca­tion

Refer to mDIO con­fig­u­ra­tion and use cases for a detailed overview of func­tion­al­i­ties, use cases, and con­fig­u­ra­tion via winIDEA.

Conclusion

In con­clu­sion, the mDIO fea­ture on Blue­Box Hard­ware offers func­tion­al­i­ties and use cases that ele­vate the capa­bil­i­ties of embed­ded sys­tems devel­op­ers. From power con­trol to watch­dog han­dling and HIL mon­i­tor­ing, mDIO proves to be a ver­sa­tile tool for var­i­ous sce­nar­ios. As tech­nol­o­gy con­tin­ues to advance, hav­ing such pow­er­ful fea­tures becomes increas­ing­ly essen­tial for effi­cient and effec­tive embed­ded sys­tems develop­ment.