13. Power Profiler UM-B-083

May 2024 · 13 minute read

The purpose of the ‘Power Profiler’ is to plot the current (and associated charge) drawn by the battery on the chip in real time over USB.

Note

The default view shown is Current(1)/Charge

13.1. Power Profiler Ribbon group

Power profiler is of the most important Toolbox tools. SmartSnippets™ Toolbox provides a special group of functions on ribbon for this tool. The Power Profiler ribbon group opens automatically when Power Profiler tool is selected.

Table 9 Power profiler buttons

Icon

Description

pselectmovetime

Selects and moves a Time Marker at the Power Profiler diagram

pmeasuredifinte

Measures the difference in time and current between two points in the Power Profiler diagram

paddtimemarkett

Adds a Time Marker to the Power Profiler diagram

pexporttocsvfil

Exports Power Profiler data to CSV format

pimportfromcsvf

Imports data on Power Profiler from CSV file

pclearsecondary

Clears the secondary current data and hides it from the chart view

pclearprimarycu

Clears the primary current data and hides it from the chart view

psnapshotchartw

Takes an image snapshot of the Power Profiler chart window in .png format

pinitialize

Initializes tool for data capturing

pstart

Starts data capturing process

pstop

Stops data capturing process

pconfig

Opens configuration dialog

pcurrent1charge

Shows View (Current 1 / Charge)

pcurrent1curre2

Shows View (Current 1 / Current 2)

pcurrent2charge

Shows View (Current 2 / Charge)

13.2. Power Profile basic usage

To start capturing measurements with the Power Profiler:

The Power Profiler should have now started capturing data and should be looking similar to the following picture:

While capturing data:

To stop capturing measurements with the Power Profiler:

13.3. Power Profiler software cursors

The User has the ability to insert a vertical cursor in the Power Profiler display (SW cursor) by toggling a specific GPIO in the SW running on the ARM Cortex M0 CPU. Instructions on how to implement this are described in detail in the document AN-B-055, Dialog Semiconductor.

The SW cursor provides an accurate correlation between the SW and the Power profile of the system in real time. The vertical line is not movable on the display window.

13.4. Power Profiler control panel

Threshold (mA): If ‘Auto Trigger’ is checked and start button is pressed, the data capturing process starts when signal exceeds the threshold value.

Time Interval (ms): If ‘Auto Stop’ is checked and data capturing is in progress, the process stops automatically after ‘Time Interval’ ms.

13.5. Power Profiler Chart Controls

The user can work in the following tool modes:

Select/Move: Selection mode (standard). In this mode a cursor allows selecting ‘Time Marker’ objects in the chart. If Del key is pressed the selected ‘Time Marker’ gets deleted.

Measure: In this mode a cursor allows showing distances of time, current and charge between two points of the chart window. While in this mode, if user presses any mouse button and moves the cursor, a line connecting these two points is drawn. The distance between the points is highlighted to the right of the second point of the line. It looks like ‘dt: [distance of time between two points] ms / dI: [distance of current between two points] mA’. If left mouse is pressed for a second time, the cursor is free to start a new measurement. Cursor can be switched to Select mode by pressing the Esc button.

Add Time Marker: In this mode a cursor allows adding a new Timemarker when any mouse button is pressed.

13.6. Power Profiler Data

The following buttons are available:

13.7. Power Profiler Chart Views

Every chart window supports the following plots types:

Current auto scale On the chart are plotted the current data following the scale which is determined by the minimum and the maximum values of the current.

Current custom scale On the chart are plotted the current data following the scale which is determined by the user defined minimum and maximum values in the configuration dialog under the ‘Custom Scaling of Current Axis’.

Charge On the chart are plotted the calculated charge values.

The user can switch between the following available view modes by pressing the corresponding toolbar buttons.

Note that charts Current 1 and Current 2 plot the same data but may present them in a different scale. This can be achieved by selecting different axis minimum & maximum values in Config Dialog > Chart Settings > Axis.

13.8. Chart management via mouse

13.9. Chart management via keyboard

The user can manage the Power Profiler via the keyboard. To do so, the cursor should be above the Power Profiler graphs.

13.10. Power Profiler configuration

By pressing the ‘Config’ button from the Power Profiler ribbon group, the Power Profiler configuration dialog shows up:

H/W Settings:

Table 10 Multiplication factor for DA1468x

DA1468x motherboard revision

Multiplication factor

revC

50

revD

100

revE

100

Chart Settings:

13.11. Calibration Procedure

In order to find the appropriate value for the Calibration Offset (mA) configuration setting in case of PMM1 or the CH1 Calibration Offset (A) and CH2 Calibration Offset (A) in case of PMM2, the followin procedure can be followed:

13.11.1. PMM1 Calibration Procedure

By default, Power Profiler prefills the Calibration offset (mA) configuration setting with value -0.01724mA for PMM1, which is a good approximation for the default 3.0V supply voltage.

If the supply voltage is different, or more accurate measurements are required, the following steps can be followed in order to remove any added load introduced by the main board (motherboard):

The following images explain the procedure described above:

When the daughter board is removed from the DA14531 PRO motherboard during calibration the power to the SPI flash must also be disconnected by removing the jumper connecting pins 1 and 2 on J1. If this is not done then the calibration current is about 1.5-2mA (the flash must be drawing this as its CS pin is left floating due to the daughter board being disconnected).

13.11.2. PMM2 Calibration Procedure

By default, Power Profiler prefills the CH1 Calibration Offset (A) configuration setting with value 0.0000189 Ampere and the CH2 Calibration Offset (A) configuration setting with value -0.0005 Ampere, which is a good approximation for the default 3.0V supply voltage. CH1 Calibration Offset represents the offset used in the calculation of the Low Current, originating from channel 1 and CH2 Calibration Offset represents the offset used in the calculation of the High Current, originating from channel 2.

If the supply voltage is different, or more accurate measurements are required, the following steps can be followed in order to remove any added load introduced by the main board (motherboard):

13.12. Power Profiler special properties

  • Power Profiler Transfer Size property: User can change the transfer size for USB IN and OUT requests. Transfer size is especially critical when running SmartSnippets™ Toolbox on Linux OS over a virtual machine environment. The default size used is 16000 bytes and acceptable values are multiples of 64 bytes between 64 bytes and 64k bytes. In order to override the default value, the user can set the POWER_PROFILER_TRANSFER_SIZE property in properties.txt file.

    Code 1 Code defining the POWER_PROFILER_TRANSFER_SIZE property
    POWER_PROFILER_TRANSFER_SIZE=65536 

    Location of properties.txt file is in user’s home directory under SmartSnippetsToolbox folder. e.g.

    C:\Users\<user>\SmartSnippetsToolbox\properties.txt

    The default value has been tested and proved to be the maximum transfer size that ensures stable performance of Power Profile when running on Linux OS over a virtual machine environment.

  • Use of older motherboard for DA14585-6, DA14531. When using older motherboards marked as P_VC the following property should be set in the forementioned properties.txt file to get more accurate results from Power Profiler tool.

    Code 2 Code defining the USE_PV_C_BOARD property
    USE_PV_C_BOARD=true 
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