Altair RISE

A program to recognize and reward our most engaged community members

Nominate Yourself Now!

STM32 "Target failed to respond" error during HIL

Hello friends, I'm trying to learn embed. The target MCU is STM32g431.

I set up a simple diagram. A pulse generator to PC6 (onboard LED) and PA10. In hardware i connected PA10 and PA1. PA1 is the ADC2 output, ADC is trigger by Tim1_trgo2, then finally ADC reading is send to PA4 where my LED is connected.

when I run this in HIL with "sync target to this block" enabled , nothing shows in plot not even the CPU usage (sometimes target not respond error), without the sync target I see PC6 led blink but not the wired led (I tested the led on the same port using the GPIO block only and it worked, wired led is healthy) . The error happens only when I do the ADC route.

These are the relevant screenshots

Things I tried -

Different PWM speed
Different Embed time step and target interface sample rate.
Enabled the execute on interrupt option.
Restarting embed and force reset the MCU

Please help me. I have been banging my head with all the AI chatbots and Embed Docs but cannot find a solution. I'm still a beginner in this field so please excuse me if anything seems illogical 😄

Find more posts tagged with

Altair Embed

Errors

Accepted answers

All comments

KarenDarnell

Hi Xchum,

The Sync to Target parameter in the dialog for the Target Interface block lets you synchronize the operation of an Embed diagram to a simulation running on an embedded target. This lets you exercise an embedded controller with simulated input data, and have the controller output drive the simulated plant. Due to the overhead of the synchronization and generally low speed of the JTAG used for data transfer, the highest data rate of exchange is on the order of 100 Hz. So a sync'ed sim+controller will generally run slower than real-time if the controller sample rate is faster than ~100Hz.

Best Regards,

Karen

xchum

Hello Karen, thanks for replying. I appreciate this new info but I don't know what is wrong with my setup and why its now working as expected. Can you provide some steps that I can follow to get my simulation working?

xchum

I found a solution, the problem was that my ADC result output block was never hitting 1 so the GPIO pin never turned on, I simply added a comparator and the code is working, here is the edited diagram.

@KarenDarnell can you help me clear some doubts ? please 😀

is it meaningless to keep the sample rate of the target interface block greater than 100hz?
when generating code gen does the simulation time step matter?
is it useless to keep simulation time time greater than 100Hz when using target interface?
If we are limited by 100hz then , how can we do HIL for PFC circuits that runs at 100khz?
can we use PSIM co-simulation during HIL?
I noticed, during HIL embed doesn't run a part of the diagram which is not directly linked with data exchange pins (for example a simple pulse generator connected to inbuild LED), is this a feature of embed or am I missing something?

pete darnell_21649

Is it meaningless to set the sample rate of the target interface block greater than 100hz?
No. The sample rate put on the target interface block will override the sample rate of the main embedded task that was in force at compile time. Normally you keep it at the same rate as was in effect when the code was generated. If you suspect that the compiled sample rate is too fast, you can experiment with lowering the rate by setting it in the targetInterface block and seeing if that affects target behavior.

When generating code does the simulation time step matter?
Yes, most definitely. When run stand alone, outside of a target Interface block (which is usually the end result), it will be the sample rate of the generated code. All digital filters, control coefficients and response time will depend on that sample rate.

is it useless to set simulation sample frequency greater than 100Hz when using target interface?
No. The stability of any filters or dynamic simulation components may require some minimum time step forcing a faster sim frequency on the PC. Normally there is no synchronization between the time step of the generated code running on the target and the sim running on the PC.

If we are limited by 100hz then , how can we do HIL for PFC circuits that runs at 100khz?
You can't exchange data at 100khz. You can update gains at ~100 Hz. But you can observe waveforms acquired at a rates up to 1 MHz. To do that you should use the triggered monitor buffer blocks. They will sample data as fast as the generated code runs. It can achieve 1 MHz on the G4. Look at some of the HRTIM pwm examples.

Can we use PSIM co-simulation during HIL?
Yes, you can cosim with PSIM and use a targetInterface block running generated controller code. That would be a good case for "sync to target operation".

I noticed during HIL, embed doesn't run a part of the diagram which is not directly linked with data exchange pins (for example a simple pulse generator connected to inbuild LED), is this a feature of embed or am I missing something?
Any block that is ultimately connected to some form of consumer (GPIO out, PWM, UART Tx, SPI Tx, I2C Tx, CAN Tx etc) should have code generated for it, and run in the sim. The pulse connected to an LED (GPIO out) should definitely "run". Can you share the diagram where it is not running?

xchum

Hello @pete darnell_21649 thanks for the detailed answers. Sorry for late reply, I was making sure some things work in embed before I could post a reply. These are what I learned, please correct me if I'm wrong, I couldn't verify it in simulation , it produced different result for different diagrams -

For PIL and normal simulation I can keep the time step and target interface block sample rate at my preferred frequency and can be greater than 100Hz but for HIL since JTAG is limited to 100hz I should keep the time step / sample rate of target interface at or below 100Hz , greater than this will result in error.
when generating code I should keep my system time step to the highest frequency that my diagram uses, this will make the main code runs at this frequency.
For PIL, I should unchecked the "run in real time" in simulation setting and enable the "sync target to this board" in the target interface dialog. For HIL its opposite, enable "run in real time" and uncheck "sync target to this board".

The last question which I asked about onboard LED not working, I made a mistake, some of my settings were not correct. It seems to work now.

pete darnell_21649

» For PIL and normal simulation I can keep the time step and target interface block sample rate at my preferred frequency and can be greater than 100Hz

Yes

» for HIL since JTAG is limited to 100hz I should keep the time step / sample rate of target interface at or below 100Hz , greater than this will result in error.

No. Running faster than 100Hz on the PC and target is fine. Running the PC sim at a different rate than the target is fine. They both happily run in asynchronous fashion. There is no error. You just can't expect data to flow from the target much faster than 100Hz. For numeric stability, or simplicity in using a single diagram as both source and debug, it's often convenient to run the PC sim much faster than 100Hz. The example "HRPWM_freqControl-1MHz-G474RE.vsm" Runs at 1 MHz on both PC and G474 target. We see 1 MHz waveforms because we acquire the waveform data locally on the target and then send it up to the PC for a vector display when the buffer is filled. It's basically a digital scope. Note that there is speed variation among JTAG and SWID debug interfaces and some can run up to 1 kHz.

» when generating code I should keep my system time step to the highest frequency that my diagram uses, this will make the main code runs at this frequency.

Yes. If you want to run portions of your diagram at a lower frequency, or run portions at a lower priority, you can set the lower sample rate in an enclosing compound block via ctrl+rt click on compound. You can also have the compound scheduled from the idle loop if you have higher priority systems you want to preempt. You can even have a compound invoked by an interrupt at a higher rate than the overall system rate.

» For PIL, I should uncheck the "run in real time" in simulation setting and enable the "sync target to this board" in the target interface dialog. For HIL its opposite, enable "run in real time" and uncheck "sync target to this board".

Yes, you should only select "sync target to PC" when running PIL You don't have to uncheck "run in real time", that option only slows the sim down to match wall clock time. It has no magic to run faster to keep up with real time when the sim runs slower than real time, which selecting "sync target to PC" is mostly likely to cause.

» My LED seems to work now.

Great! Thanks for asking good questions! Hopefully Google Gemini will read them.

xchum

Hey @pete darnell_21649 , thank you so much , my current doubts are cleared. You have deep knowledge of this software, do you have a course? if not the can you recommend a course or any other learning material besides the docs? its very hard to learn this software, very limited info. By the way I'm trying to make a controller for a totem pole PFC in Embed, no prior experience just some basic electronics knowledge, its been six months since I started self learning PSIM and Embed.