Working with SERIAL input from devices

Working with Windows Device Manager

Device Manager

These can be setup in the Device Manager section of the Control Panel in Windows. To access the Device Manager, please follow these steps.

•         Click the bottom-left Start button on desktop, type “device manager” in the search box and tap Device Manager on the menu.

•         Or else, Open Device Manager from Quick Access Menu. Press Windows + X to open the menu and choose Device Manager on it. 

•         One might also Access Device Manager in Control Panel. [Google]

Once device manager is visible, we can find the device under Ports (COM & LPT). The RADAR should be listed under this section only.

Note: Device Manager is used to setup both the devices.

Reading from serial input

When we have USB COMM Port devices, we need can read data generated by them using various toolkit libraries, such as pySerial in python etc. However, we might need to Poll the device for data once or twice before actually setting up automated tasks using python.

Here I go into the thinking involved while working with such devices.

I take as example the ICM 20948 IMU component. While reading data from this device, one must:

• Refer to the Datasheet for possible COMM Port settings and requirements.
• Utilize Putty to connect serially and read data
• Looking up related documentation for downloading and installing drivers. 
• Sometimes we might have to install unsigned Drivers
• Please refer to Google to find out how to disable Windows Driver Signature Verification at boot.
• Next, lookout for consumer facing data reading software.
• For example, ICM 20948 can be used with MotionLink provided by the manufacturers to view the real time data from all the sensors.
• Such software can be customized using their own IAR Workbench IDE. 
• Look for manufacturer provided examples. 
• Look at other alternative locations to download related datasheets and configuration files or supporting applications
• Be sure to try different versions of the IDE to figure out what works on your system with that particular component.

Link to my report on system for 3D-DIC measurements and techniques using ICM and RADAR component, while hooking it up with RaspberryPi.

I worked on an academic project with the Mechanical Department, where I worked with these components and used pyserial library to interact with both of them simultaneously as was the need of the project. The complete guide to software development in these scenarios can be found alongside the report of calibration and usage.

You may access the report from my drive link here

GitHub Repo