This is a follow-up on on the previous text about reading the ADCs for the sound-generating PCB.
Some good news since the earlier text, is that the device actually seems to be able to produce some noise! So far I have only tried the DACs that are internal to the STM32F4 and not the external 8Bit DAC that is added mostly as an experiment. If you are interesting in the background story behind this PCB and all my doubts during the design process, take a look at this playlist on YouTube.
So far I have only made very initial experimentation with the DAC on the STM32F4 and will write more about this in the future as I try to have them generate more interesting sounds. But for this text, it will all be about how to set up ChibiOS for DAC output on the STM32F4.
The code I present in this text is not specific to my "custom" audio experiment PCB but should be applicable to any STM32F4 board (for example the Discovery or Nucleo).
There are two DAC channels on the STM32F4 and these are associated with the GPIO A pins 4 and 5. That is PA4 and PA5. This means we can output two independent analog signals. I am interested in using both of these DAC channels, so that is what this text covers.
Another important bit of information is that the internal DACs are 12Bit which essentially means that they translate a value between 0 and 4095 to a voltage between 0 and VDDA (3V for example).
Just like with the ADC there are some "switches" to activate in mcuconf.h to configure the DAC system.
/*
* DAC driver system settings.
*/
#define STM32_DAC_DUAL_MODE FALSE
#define STM32_DAC_USE_DAC1_CH1 TRUE
#define STM32_DAC_USE_DAC1_CH2 TRUE
#define STM32_DAC_DAC1_CH1_IRQ_PRIORITY 10
#define STM32_DAC_DAC1_CH2_IRQ_PRIORITY 10
#define STM32_DAC_DAC1_CH1_DMA_PRIORITY 2
#define STM32_DAC_DAC1_CH2_DMA_PRIORITY 2
#define STM32_DAC_DAC1_CH1_DMA_STREAM STM32_DMA_STREAM_ID(1, 5)
#define STM32_DAC_DAC1_CH2_DMA_STREAM STM32_DMA_STREAM_ID(1, 6)Since I am interested in using both channels I set STM32_DAC_USE_DAC1_CH1 and STM32_DAC_USE_DAC1_CH2 to TRUE.
In halconf.h there is also a switch to turn the DAC system on.
/**
* @brief Enables the DAC subsystem.
*/
#if !defined(HAL_USE_DAC) || defined(__DOXYGEN__)
#define HAL_USE_DAC TRUE
#endifWith these settings ChibiOS will provide us with driver "handles" for the two DAC channels called DACD1 and DACD2.
ChibiOS will now build with DAC support and we can get working on the application end of things.
I put the code concerning the DACs into files named dac.c and dac.h. The header file dac.h, just contains a few definitions and some function prototypes.
#include "hal.h"
#include "hal_pal.h"
#define DAC_GPIO GPIOA
#define DAC1_PIN 4
#define DAC2_PIN 5
#define DAC1 1
#define DAC2 2
extern void dac_init(void);
extern void dac_write(int dac, int16_t val);The defines are just there to hide those otherwise magical constants behind some new names that kind of makes more sense. I call the two DAC channels DAC1 and DAC2 and we can also see that the GPIOs that are of interest here are PA4 and PA5.
The dac.c file implements the two functions dac_init and dac_write. As part of initializing the DAC subsystem a DACConfig object is needed.
static const DACConfig dac_config = {
.init = 2047u,
.datamode = DAC_DHRM_12BIT_RIGHT,
.cr = 0
};
This sets up an initial value for the data register in the DAC. The next field datamode that is set to DAC_DHRM_12BIT_RIGHT, my feeling is that we are here specifying that the will be 12Bits and the unused bits in a full 32bit register will be to the left and the first 12 bits from the right are what is being used. The cr field probably allow us to set the DAC Control register to anything we like. There seems to be a lot of special functions we can have the DAC perform by setting up the cr in different ways. Take a look at the reference manual.
Now this DACConfig object can be used in the implementation of dac_init. First, this function sets the GPIO pins associated with the DAC channels to PAL_MODE_INPUT_ANALOG. That it is called "INPUT" is odd but just some odd naming we need to accept.
void dac_init(void) {
palSetPadMode(DAC_GPIO, DAC1_PIN, PAL_MODE_INPUT_ANALOG);
palSetPadMode(DAC_GPIO, DAC2_PIN, PAL_MODE_INPUT_ANALOG);
dacStart(&DACD1, &dac_config);
dacStart(&DACD2, &dac_config);
}Then the both DAC channels are started and this is where that DACConfigis used. Here those two "handles" that ChibiOS provides DACD1 and DACD2 are referenced.
Finally then! A dac_write function that lets us output a value to either channel 1 or 2 by giving DAC1 or DAC2 as argument. The second argument is the value to output on the chosen DAC.
void dac_write(int dac, int16_t val) {
switch(dac){
case DAC1:
dacPutChannelX(&DACD1, 0, val);
break;
case DAC2:
dacPutChannelX(&DACD2, 0, val);
break;
default:
break;
}
}All unknown values for dac are just silently ignored.
So! I was actually quite surprised that the custom PCB worked at all. Happy turn of events. The first test of it just used the above code to initialize the DACs and then I set up a GPT (general purpose timer) that periodically fired off a callback function. This callback function outputs values on the DACs that it gets from a sine wave table. That part of the code is, however, quite unpolished and I want to do something more of that before writing about it.
The next text in this series on "audio" stuff, will then most likely be about outputting waves of some kind on the DACS, using GPTs and look-up tables perhaps. We'll see.
Oh! and of course, I need to see if the external 8Bit DAC experiment works as well!
Thanks for reading, and as always all constructive feedback is much appreciated!
Please contact me with questions, suggestions or feedback at blog (dot) joel (dot) svensson (at) gmail (dot) com or join the google group .
© Copyright 2020 Bo Joel Svensson
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