Posted on April 28, 2015 at 02:36Hello!
This is my first post at this forum.
I am developing a MIDI sequencer device based on a STM32F429DISCOVERY board running at stock 180MHz. In order to send midi messages the USART1 is configured for 31250 bauds and the appropriate DMA is configured to transfer a 3 byte array stored in ram to the USART. I was doing tests of even timing of sending of midi messages, by configuring the Timer 4 update interrupt, within the service routine of which I am enabling the memory-to-peripheralUSART1 DMA operation. This gives me a periodic sending of a 3 byte message over the USART1 peripheral.
Everything works great and with correct frequency and correct data, but i have a small issue which i have been researching for few days now and have not been able to correct. To make things clearer, within the timer interrupt routine I set a led on the discovery (RG13) to momentarily blink and connected 1 channel of an oscilloscope to the led pin. The second channel of the oscilloscope is connected to the USART TX pin. Now, when the code is executed, i can see the led pulse on the oscilloscope's CH1, followed by the USART serial data on the CH2. But for some reason the time between the led pulse and the beginning of the serial data transfer fluctuates with every sending of the data. It increments with every sending, going from around 1uS to around 30uS, and then jumps back to 1.
I noticed that if i slightly change the USART baudrate, the time fluctuation between the pulse and the data sending changes in pattern, going faster or slower and with longer or shorter range.
I have tried resetting all the apropriate flags from USART as well as DMA, have tried to disable/enable the timer, played with interrupt priorities, but nothing has worked to get rid of the time fluctuation.
As you can imagine, the stability of this is crucial for a MIDI sequencer hardware application as it bases the timing of the musical events, which must be rock solid.
I have also tried using the USART by itself without DMA, manually sending every byte, basically same results. Interrupt driven USART TX exhibited likewise results.
The only thing which seemed to work to get rid of the time fluctuation of USART TX response is, before every sending operation to deinitialize USART and the DMA modules and reinitialize them again. This seemed to give a stable operation but inserts a long delay between the timer interrupt and the actual sending of the data over the USART, which is unacceptable.
If anyone has any thoughts on this or have done anything similar, I need an advice on where to look at.
Thanks a lot in advance!
Best regards,
Konstantin
#stm32f429-usart-dma-on-timer
