TI LDC1000 Evaluation Module

Upon<br />arrival of the parcel from Element14 I was nicely surprised to see a full kit<br />and a secondary LDC1000EVM module giving me the opportunity to run two sessions<br />of the software. Of course<br />the first thing you do when you receive something like this is to satisfy your<br />need to play, so I plugged it straight into the desktops USB port and yep you<br />guest it no result. Doing a quick search of the packaging for any relevant info<br />for drivers etc., I read on the box that there are three steps to get it going.<br />Firstly plug it in, yep tick done! Secondly register the board at http://ti.com/ldc Off to the<br />website and searched for a registration, could not find it (man look) and noted<br />there was...

When the LDC1000 Evaluation kit arrived I found a large box containing athe LDC1000 Module and a really usefull Angular, Lateral, and Axial positioning test platform.  There was also a smaller box containing a second module.   The kit supplied is an almost complete package for evaluating the LDC1000 inductance to digital converter.  I say almost, because to make proper use of the kit a USB extension lead is required, which I didn't have lying around.  So once a cable was found I set about having a play. The package says, connect the board, register at ti.com and explore.  So I connected.  It was detected and asked the usual search for drivers dialogue. I did this... Which failed. So next to TI's website, downloaded the software and installed.  I should point out that I've...

Texas Instruments' LDC1000 Inductive Sensing evaluation board is a great unit.  The foresight to include perforations and solder points between the primary components gives this utility far beyond evaluation.  The perforated board can be snapped apart and wire connectors to be inserted between, allowing you to move the coil out to where you need it to sense, and letting you connect the LDC1000 device to the mcu in your own project via spi.  As I could have expected from reading the datasheet (http://www.farnell.com/datasheets/1744669.pdf) this USB connected device was not recognized by my Windows 8 machine. I had to dig up another machine with Windows 7 that recognized the device and linked up to the LDC1000 EVM GUI.  Once connected, though, the software package is really useful for...

First Impressions The LDC1000EVM evaluation kit is quite nicely packaged in a cardboard container with a provided test demo which allows you to quickly test lateral, angular and axial position sensing. Also included is the LDC1000 evaluation module which TI kindly provided two of, each is packaged in nice plastic boxes perfect for storage. One slightly disappointing aspect of the evaluation kit was the lack of a USB male to female cable which made testing rather difficult as all my USB ports are in hard to reach places, I would have greatly preferred a USB B connector on the board. Software No demo software was included with the kit however it's easily downloaded from the TI website where they also provide firmware for interfacing the LDC1000 with MSP430 micro-controllers....