Analog Discovery does not work with newer Waveforms versions

[tutu]

Hi everybody,

I use the legacy model of Analog Discovery in a custom made environment, means, I use only the libraries from adept2 (2.16.6 runtime) and Waveforms to communicate with the device. All happens under Linux by using Python 3.

Usually this setup works very well until I try to use a newer version of waveforms. I checked nearly all available Waveforms versions. libdwf version 3.2.6 is the last version which works without errors. Obviousiy, something must have been changed in the succeeding versions.

The error happens when trying to open the device with FDwfDeviceOpen. The contents of the phdwf pointer is set to zero. Other functions, like the FDwvEnumXX are working correctly as can be seen in the following 

linux: load libdwf.so ..
** Waveforms version: b'3.6.8'
** Number of Devices: 1
** ID: 2 , revision: 3
** Name: b'Analog Discovery'
Opening first device
** HDWF: 0
press Enter ..
Device closed

in contrary to

linux: load libdwf.so ..
** Waveforms version: b'3.2.6'
** Number of Devices: 1
** ID: 2 , revision: 3
** Name: b'Analog Discovery'
Opening first device
** HDWF: 1
press Enter ..
Device closed

are there any ideas how to work around this, let us call it a bug? Normally I do not have a problem to use the old version, but what I read so far, the newest versions of Waveforms are intended to support the legacy models, aren't they?

best regards

[attila]

Hi @tutu

The dwf lib requires files in the firmware path which are the firmware images for various devices. The dwf also depends on the adept runtime.
At the moment dwf app bundle options are supported on Windows and OS-X, but I will add for Linux too.

[attila]

Hi @tutu

The AD(1) is supported.
To have more detail about failures use the FDwfGetLastErrorMsg:

szerr = create_string_buffer(512)
dwf.FDwfGetLastErrorMsg(szerr)
print szerr.value

[tutu]

16 hours ago, attila said:

szerr = create_string_buffer(512)
dwf.FDwfGetLastErrorMsg(szerr)
print szerr.value

Thanks a lot! And sorry for not posting that in my question, here is the answer:

b'Communication after programming failed or image device id is wrong.\nID: 0x2 Type: 0x1 Version: 0x5\n'

The adept.log file shows:

438534296       2257        2223777536    1       ercNotSupported             FTDIC::FGetInfo unsupported device attribute

I think you answered the question in following thread

There you assumed a firmware issue

What I found so far: I use the actual firmware from adept 2.16.6 runtime but I see that the waveforms SDK has also a firmware directory. For now I ignored this. The only environment variable I do set is the DIGILENT_DATA_DIR to the adept directory (which includes firmware, xbr, jtscdvclist.txt, xpla3)

 

[tutu]

After some digging ..

libdwf.so seems to rely on a fixed path for the waveforms firmware. "/usr/share/digilent/waveforms/firmware" needs to be existent. Until now I haven't found an environment variable which might bend the path. For a custom install this is a little bit unpleasant. Any suggestions to work around?