Problems in setting up power profiler kit PPK

RE: Problems in setting up power profiler kit PPK

wlgrd — Fri, 30 Jun 2017 11:44:38 GMT

TLDR; Faulty board. Closing :)

RE: Problems in setting up power profiler kit PPK

Aravinth — Mon, 12 Dec 2016 10:37:31 GMT

@wilhelmsen Thank you for asking. We just received RMA from Nordic and replacement should arrive soon. We can close this issue. Thank you very much for the support.

RE: Problems in setting up power profiler kit PPK

wlgrd — Mon, 12 Dec 2016 10:34:08 GMT

@Aravinth Any news?

RE: Problems in setting up power profiler kit PPK

Aravinth — Tue, 22 Nov 2016 16:13:05 GMT

@hungbui we wrote to SemiconductorStore.com yesterday and waiting for the reply. Thank you all again for awesome support. I will let you know how it goes.

RE: Problems in setting up power profiler kit PPK

Hung Bui — Mon, 21 Nov 2016 13:20:23 GMT

Hi Aravinth,

Yes, please try to contact your distributor for replacement. If it's not possible for replacement from them, you can send us your board and we can send you a new one.

RE: Problems in setting up power profiler kit PPK

Aravinth — Mon, 21 Nov 2016 09:37:15 GMT

@wilhelmsen thank you very much for your support. We have purchased it from SemiconductorStore.com. Should we return it to them? How do we inform them that it is confirmed by Nordic that it is a faulty board?

RE: Problems in setting up power profiler kit PPK

wlgrd — Mon, 21 Nov 2016 09:24:19 GMT

Then I actually think you have a faulty board. It seems to me that the switch to the smallest measurement resistor doesn't happen. The system thinks that the switch has happened, but it hasn't. It is clear that the lower measurements are good, so you should return this board for a new one.

RE: Problems in setting up power profiler kit PPK

Aravinth — Fri, 18 Nov 2016 15:16:28 GMT

@wilhelmsen thanks for your continuous support. 270 Ω (268 Ω) resistor load measures 83.32 mA. Please check the original post for the updates with images (UPDATE on 18-Nov-2016).

RE: Problems in setting up power profiler kit PPK

wlgrd — Wed, 16 Nov 2016 07:56:56 GMT

That sounds very good for that range at least, and how about in the range of 270 Ohm?

RE: Problems in setting up power profiler kit PPK

Aravinth — Tue, 15 Nov 2016 14:51:57 GMT

@wilhelmsen 1 MΩ (998 KΩ) resistor load measures average 3.04 uA and 470 KΩ (466 KΩ) measures average 6.39 uA. Resistor calibrations are set to default and updated. VDD is set at 3000 mV and P16 (DUT) measures 3015 mV. Please check the original post for the updates with images (UPDATE on 15-Nov-2016).

RE: Problems in setting up power profiler kit PPK

wlgrd — Tue, 15 Nov 2016 13:58:00 GMT

@avarinth okay, I see that the ppk is maxing out. Again, can you please just connect a known resistor instead of the LED's? E.g 1MOhm and 500kOhm and post the results?

RE: Problems in setting up power profiler kit PPK

Aravinth — Mon, 14 Nov 2016 14:57:59 GMT

@wilhelmsen Please check the original post for the updates with images (UPDATE on 14-Nov-2016) because i can't attach images in the reply. Measurements were around 74 mA with load and increasing the HI resistor calibration brought it down. As you said, i have update the calibration to 2 ohm and restarted. Yes. it shows a small window at startup about Calibration. If load is removed, then it is around 0 mA with noises as shown in the first image. Without load VDD at external pin is 3015 mV for Software VDD regulator at 3000 mV. When Load is connected it drops to 2830 mV. As soon as load is connected (without multimeter in between), it goes from 0 to 74 mA as shown in the second image. After that it stays at 74 mA with "Hi" resistor at 2 as shown in the third image. Load is 2 LEDs with 330 Ohm resistors each as shown in the post.

RE: Problems in setting up power profiler kit PPK

wlgrd — Thu, 10 Nov 2016 13:12:15 GMT

Also, please measure the VDD on the DUT connector to verify that we actually have 3V. This is very important! When doing the calibration, please just use a known resistor and don't bother with a multimeter in-between.

RE: Problems in setting up power profiler kit PPK

wlgrd — Thu, 10 Nov 2016 13:09:43 GMT

The measurement resistor should never have to be adjusted that much, so if it goes higher than 3ohm there is definately something wrong. Does your software do a calibration at the startup, and you can see zero current drawn (just noise) with the external DUT removed? Please try to set the resistor value to e.g 2Ohm and restart with the DUT disconnected. Insert the tests you have and report back, just so that we can verify if there are some offset error in the system.

RE: Problems in setting up power profiler kit PPK

Aravinth — Thu, 10 Nov 2016 10:59:17 GMT

@Hung Bui : This question is to know whether I'm doing resistor calibration correctly. With default calibration and my test load with 3 LEDs with VDD set 3000 mV, shows average current of 80mA. Then i set "Hi" to 19.4 to match 7.7 mA. Is it right what i have done? Do i have to change anything physically in the board for calibration?

RE: Problems in setting up power profiler kit PPK

Aravinth — Thu, 10 Nov 2016 10:58:21 GMT

@Hung Bui : If i disconnect PPK and reconnect, then it starts from 0mA but then goes to 7.7 mA even though Multimeter measures 5.6 mA (2 LEDs) as shown in the image above under UPDATE on 10-Nov-2016. If i disconnect external DUT, then it shows noise as shown in the image above under UPDATE on 10-Nov-2016. If i remove one more LED and Multimeter measures 2.9 mA, then i see noise and average of 4.5 mA (still wrong) as shown in the image above under UPDATE on 10-Nov-2016.

When i was starting ppk.py, there was a warning that ppk software was tested with numpy 1.9.2 and my version is 1.11.2. I have downgraded numpy to 1.9.2 and it doesn't show me the warning anymore. Other than that i don't see any software errors.

RE: Problems in setting up power profiler kit PPK

Hung Bui — Tue, 08 Nov 2016 12:02:05 GMT

It doesn't make much sense when it stuck to 7.7mA even after restarting. If you disconnect the PPK and connect it again with power would it still stuck to the initial 7.7mA or change to 0mA ? Also, if you actually disconnect the external circuit, would the measurement stick to 7.7mA ?

Do you see any change or noise when it's measuring ? I suspect it's a software issue.

Regarding your question, as in the userguide stated, you should only connect 1.8V to 3.6V to the external DUT supply. If you want to connect 4.2V I would suggest to connect it via the USB port or via V5V pin (pin 5 Port P1,P2,P3) please see the schematic. Make sure you compensated the difference in the input voltage (4.2V instead of 5V).