Using stm studio for variable monitoring

Candas1 · March 30, 2023, 5:53am

We discussed about Deadtime compensation in the other thread.
I received the boards and tried running in openloop with a hoverboard motor but I wasn’t successful yet, bear with me it’s the first time I use simplefoc.

As I wasn’t sure the serial monitoring is fast enough to visualize the phase current, I used another approach that worked well for me in the past with STM chips.
In platformio.ini, I added -g -ggdb in the build flags.

I declared a variable outside the loop

PhaseCurrent_s current;

I populated this variable in the loop

current = currentSense.getPhaseCurrents();

I am then able to visualize the phase current in STM STUDIO:

(You will have to click OK many times because of some address errors when opening the elf file)
And I used those settings for faster acquisitions:

I am just sharing this method because I haven’t seen any mention about this in the forum

Antun_Skuric · March 30, 2023, 6:54am

I had no idea that we can use stm studio with arduino ide. This is very cool!

Candas1 · March 30, 2023, 7:02am

What it does is parsing the elf file to find where the variables are stored in memory.
Then it reads or writes the memory with SWIM protocol (STLINK protocol) I think.

I was even thinking about rebuilding this tool in web in a more user friendly way after seing this

But sorry that’s off topic

Juan-Antonio_Soren_E · March 30, 2023, 1:52pm

That uses webUSB as should the web_SimpleFOC_Studio. Maybe a chance to see that happening.

Candas1 · March 30, 2023, 2:44pm

I also tried the STM32CubeMonitor in the past, I think it’s the replacement for STM Studio, it has more features but I couldn’t get it to acquire data as fast as STM Studio.

Anthony_Douglas · March 30, 2023, 4:24pm

Hey Candas1, I want to try this, but I don’t know how to set up current sense, not quite. I have some idea but am painfully aware of how things can get complicated.

Can you post the exact code you used? I can extract the critical elements and make some elemental code to monitor current with this board.

I want to monitor current to do stall detection. The best thing for me is to watch the combined current of all three phases. That way I can take a single measurement and see what the current draw is, no need to average out a bunch of measurements on a single phase.

Candas1 · March 30, 2023, 4:46pm

Unfortunately I am away from home.
But I picked code from this example

github.com

simplefoc/Arduino-FOC/blob/master/examples/hardware_specific_examples/B_G431B_ESC1/B_G431B_ESC1.ino

/** 
 * B-G431B-ESC1 position motion control example with encoder
 *
 */
#include <SimpleFOC.h>

// Motor instance
BLDCMotor motor = BLDCMotor(11);
BLDCDriver6PWM driver = BLDCDriver6PWM(A_PHASE_UH, A_PHASE_UL, A_PHASE_VH, A_PHASE_VL, A_PHASE_WH, A_PHASE_WL);
LowsideCurrentSense currentSense = LowsideCurrentSense(0.003f, -64.0f/7.0f, A_OP1_OUT, A_OP2_OUT, A_OP3_OUT);


// encoder instance
Encoder encoder = Encoder(A_HALL2, A_HALL3, 2048, A_HALL1);

// Interrupt routine intialisation
// channel A and B callbacks
void doA(){encoder.handleA();}
void doB(){encoder.handleB();}
void doIndex(){encoder.handleIndex();}

This file has been truncated. show original

Antun_Skuric · March 31, 2023, 10:46am

Here is how I was able to reproduce it.

first add a build_opt.h file in your arduino sketch and add inside the line -g -ggdb

Then add a variable in your Arduino loop that you wanna log.

For example the current measurements as suggested by @Candas1


PhaseCurrent_s current;
void loop(){
    ....
    current = current_sense.getPhaseCurrents();
    ....
}

And then compile the code.
Onece when your code is uploaded and complied it will output:

Open your stmstudio and import the variables form the elf file indicated by the arudino ide compilation

And then add the variables to the viewer

For more precision of the visualization you might need to adjust the acquisition settings. In y case I’ve used these settings:

Candas1 · July 21, 2023, 6:34am

STMViewer is a new open source tool worth following.

Candas1 · August 19, 2023, 8:37am

I have been using STMViewer for some time now, I must say I like it.
You can add a variable, type the name of any global variable like motor.LPF_current_q.Tf, update the variable address, and it just works.

And this way of debugging is less intrusive, it shouldn’t slow down your code.

Anthony_Douglas · August 20, 2023, 2:59am

how do you use it? Compile, upload using arduino, and then what?

Candas1 · August 20, 2023, 9:11am

You can download STMViewer from here.
Here are the installation instruction.
I believe it needs at least version 13.2 of GDB (issue).

I am compiling with platformio using -g -ggdb build flags, this ensures proper information are available in the .elf file.
I made a short video showing basic usage of the tool.

If you change your program, the memory addresses might change, so you need use the Update variable addresses button.

This should support different model of stlinks and should work on STM32 only.
But it works for me with a Chinese STlink V2.1 clone and GD32F103/GD32F130 chips also.

Anthony_Douglas · August 20, 2023, 4:29pm

Yeah but after downloading it, like what’s the process? You compile with arduino, how does it know the memory address? Doesn’t it need to have info from the compiler somehow to know the address of a variable and it’s name? I don’t see how it can get that info.

Oh ok a video is awesome, sorry. Will check it out thanks! Looking in there and seeing the system working is extremely important but in arduino it’s quite hard.

Edit:hm, how do you get this mysterious .elf file? It’s the binary I take it?

Candas1 · August 20, 2023, 5:01pm

It’s generated together with the bin file if you use the build flags I mentioned

Candas1 · August 21, 2023, 8:57am

But just one thing I want to clarify, I don’t want to send the wrong message.
SimpleFOCStudio is best for most users:

I works on any MCU as it relies on Serial communication
It’s designed for SimpleFOC

But there are specific use cases when tools like STMViewer are useful:

you can sample every 1ms, it’s very useful to visualize phase current
it’s not slowing down your program, maybe it helps with PID tuning on slow MCUs?
you can easily edit/display your own variables or variables that are not exposed by the commander

So more for advanced users/developers.

o_lampe · August 21, 2023, 9:13am

Anton wrote how to trigger the platformio debug toolchain from Arduino-code

first add a build_opt.h file in your arduino sketch and add inside the line -g -ggdb

Just to clarify: this “build_opt.h” file doesn’t already exist somewhere in my arduinoIDE libraries?
I don’t have to edit it and add the -g -ggdb line, but have to create a new file? Is that correct?

Anthony_Douglas · August 21, 2023, 5:05pm

I never figured out build options with arduino very well, but there was a file specific to each family of boards that contained a section where the build options were located. There are some instructions I think I left on the forum for modifying some of them in some ways, the build options were needed to get current sensing working with the b-g431b-esc1 board.

runger · August 21, 2023, 5:37pm

Why would you use platformio’s debugger from inside ArduinoIDE? That doesn’t make that much sense for most people, I think.
At that point it would be easier to just use PlatformIO, for code and debugging, and not have to deal with the idiosyncrasies of both IDEs at the same time?

Anthony_Douglas · August 21, 2023, 5:39pm

definitely my plan for when I try to do stuff with the lepton 3.0 eventually is to use platformio

VIPQualityPost · August 21, 2023, 7:43pm

why not start today it’s significantly faster and easier to configure than arduino IDE