Programming for the HY TTC 50 or 60 - spartanracingelectric/VCU GitHub Wiki

About the TTControl HY-TTC 50/60

The HY-TTC 50 and HY-TTC 60 are part of a family of general purpose automotive electronic control units. They offers a large array of inputs and outputs for sensors and power control, as well as communications via CAN/LIN/serial. On our team, these ECUs are the central point of control for our entire vehicle, so we call them the VCU, or Vehicle Control Unit.

We used the HY-TTC 50 from 2015 to 2021, and we switched to the HY-TTC 60 in 2022 and have been running it since. The HY-TTC 60 is equivalent to the HY-TTC 50, except the HY-TTC 60 has additional analog inputs on some of the pins that were unused on the TTC 50.

Programming for the HY-TTC 60 is done in C on our team, though CoDeSys (“Controller Development System”) is also supported by the hardware. TASKING VX, by Altium, is the recommended toolset (compiler).

Setting up your computer for development

VCU SDK

Our VCU SDK includes the source code and tools necessary for compilation and flashing of the HY-TTC 50.

  • Download the VCU SDK from our team drive, under:
    • SR > SR Software > Applications > VCU_SDK_2020-04-04.zip
    • Note: The 2020 SDK excludes some tools and documentation which are available on the team drive
  • Extract the VCU folder to somewhere easy to access on your computer
    • You will need to remember this location when we get to the cloning step below
    • Note: Cloud folders like google drive or onedrive can cause complications with git (rare)
    • Important: Do not change the folder structure or you will not be able to compile

Contents

The zip file contains a single folder, called VCU. It's okay to rename this. The VCU folder contains a single folder, called Environment. Do not rename this folder or move any of its subfolders, or you may not be able to compile later. The Environment folder contains all the code needed for compilation, organized into the following subfolders:

  • bsp
  • build
  • dev
    • Each subfolder in here represents a single "program" that runs on the VCU
    • This folder is empty in the dev kit. You must clone the SR-14 folder/repo from GitHub into this folder. Instructions below
  • examples
    • These are example programs, provided by TTControl. They show how to use individual features on the VCU. You should read through these.
  • inc
    • These header files are your interface to the VCU's hardware.
  • lib
  • templates
    • If you want to make a new program, you can copy the ttc60_template to the dev folder. (You could also start with a folder from examples)

IDE

We recommend Visual Studio Code ("VSCode" or "Code"), but you can use any IDE/editor you want. https://code.visualstudio.com/

git

git is the version control system (VCS) that we use for our source code. Our git repository is hosted by github.

Install git

You will need to download/install git if you don't already have it. I recommend that you learn to use git from the command line to help you prepare for a real job. You can download git here: https://git-scm.com/download

There are GUIs available in case you get lost, or want a visual for what you're working on.

Clone VCU repo from github

Once you have git installed, clone the VCU repository INTO the VCU/Environment/dev folder.

General instructions: https://help.github.com/en/github/creating-cloning-and-archiving-repositories/cloning-a-repository

Example: I extracted the VCU folder from the VCU SDK to /mnt/g/fsae/VCU therefore I will cd into /mnt/g/fsae/VCU/Environment/dev/ before I run the git clone command

rusty@Gridania:/mnt/g$ cd fsae/VCU/Environment/dev/
rusty@Gridania:/mnt/g/fsae/VCU/Environment/dev$ git clone [email protected]:spartanracingelectric/VCU.git sre
Cloning into 'sre'...
Enter passphrase for key '/home/rusty/.ssh/id_rsa':
remote: Enumerating objects: 1635, done.
remote: Total 1635 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 1635
Receiving objects: 100% (1635/1635), 5.92 MiB | 9.95 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (1087/1087), done.

Remember: It's important to maintain this folder structure, or else you will have trouble when you want to compile

To compile/build the software, you need

  • Altium TASKING VX – our toolset/compiler
    • Do not change the default install folder
  • Environment\build\settings.mk must be updated to point to your version of TASKING (4.0 or 3.0) or else compilation will fail with an undescriptive message:
 -compiling: avlTree.c
The system cannot find the path specified.
make: *** [build/avlTree.obj] Error 1
  • The first time your code compiles successfully, you will receive another error. It should try to download the .NET framework automatically. The error should go away when the framework is installed and you compile again.
 ---------------------------------
  Creating APDB... 
 ---------------------------------
make: *** [postbuild] Error -2146232576

Changing compilation target between TTC 50 / TTC 60

In the Makefile in the VCU repository, change the line:

TARGET=

to either

TARGET=TTC50

or

TARGET=TTC60

Flashing the VCU

To flash, run and debug software, you will also need:

  • TTC Downloader, from the SDK, for flashing the compiled software (.hex file) onto the VCU
  • PCAN-View, also from the SDK, or PCAN Explorer (sponsored by PEAK systems – ask your team lead) for monitoring CAN messages
  • A PCAN dongle (PCAN-USB) with drivers installed
  • Optional: RMS GUI for monitoring the motor controller status if writing software that interacts with the motor controller