...

How to use the Spatial Transform Engine Wizard (STEW)

Introduction

This user guild is for the companion configuration manager. It's designed to create the timing and special spatial transforms for companion chips:
AP0102, AP0200, AP0201, AP0202
With sensors
AR0132, AR0136, AR0138, AR0140, AR0143, AR0147, AR0231, AR0233.
And the stacked chips
AS0142, AS0147AS0142AT, AS0142ATE, AS0143AT, AS0143AT1, AS0147AT, AS0148AT

Note, not all combinations are available, check for ini files. This application is intended to replace STE for configuring AP0102 & AP0200 and Register Wizard for configuring the AP0201 & AP0202. It is also intended to support the AP0300 in the future.

...

The companion configuration tool can be run as a Devware plugin for live updates of the companion processors or it can be launched as a standalone application. The same UI is used in either case.

The plugin can write settings directly to hardware.

The standalone application can be used to create and explore available configurations when the hardware is not available. Available here; \aptina imaging\bin\stewapp.exe
From a Command Line, you can start up the application and include the configuration file to be used.
For example; stewapp.exe -u -i <configuration.cfg>

The CLI (Command Line Interface) User Guide can be found here.

Prerequisites

You will need one of the above sensors, and AP 200 series processor and demo3 board. Use an AP0102 or AP0202 and communicate over USB if it's available. Downloading settings over Ethernet often cuts further communications and requires the hardware to be reset. Run Devware and check your configuration can be initialized and creates streaming video.

...

With the above hardware attached, select the 'STE Wizard' or 'Register Wizard' on the 'plug-ins' menu. A user interface similar to this should appear. It should have the correct companion processor and sensor identified. It may or may not have all the tabs along the top (More on this later)
Image Removed Image Added

Writing to hardware

The application should be ready to write a solution to the hardware immediately without changing any settings. How to do this depends on the type of AP processor you have and if it has a Ste.

...

In this case the UI should look like the image below (no tabs, these are all for configuring the Ste) and a write button on the front page. If you are writing a solution sometimes it can be hard to tell if it worked. Adjust the frame rate a bit, write the solution again and look for changes in frame rate measured by Devware.
Image Removed Image Added

Writing to hardware (With Ste: AP0102, AP0200)

...

The active sensor output can also be flipped or mirrored using the check boxes.
Generally, the active sensor frame size is slightly smaller than the available frame size. By default the pixels used are used from the center of the physical sensor. The location button can be used to adjust this default. Positive values for the horizontal offset will move the active location to the right. Positive values for the vertical offset will move the active area down. If you are using lens correction in the Ste transform the lens will center on the physical center of the full sensor area in effect ignoring this setting. It is possible to adjust the lens center separately. See the lens correction section.

Sensor to companion protocol

...

There are many ways to configure the 200 series timing. The following diagram shows the major timing paths. Some paths are fixed from the hardware configuration and some can be chosen at runtime to optimize the chip timing and power usage.
Keep-syncSensorPLLPLL0PLL1External ClockP2P1Sensor
CoreColor
PipeSteTxssJpeg/H264External Clock

The sensor can be driven in three ways: from the companion external clock, from the companion PLL0:P2 output, or from its own clock. The output can be configured in five ways: Txss from PLL1, Txss from PLL0:P2, Keep-sync from PLL1, Keep-sync from PLL0:P2, Jpeg/H264 from PLL1. This gives fifteen configurations. Two of these aren't really viable as the PLL0:P2 is shared between the sensor and the output. That leaves thirteen configurations. The Companion Manage supports six of these as shown in the following table.
The reasons for picking these modes are complex. Driving Txss or Keep-sync from PLL1 allows finer tuning of the output frequency but uses more power. Development resources. More modes could be added over time.

Table 1
The following is an example of the timing display for mode 1 from table 1.

This is the simplest case. This is the key

...

This is a typical output from a net timing. (Mode 5 from the table 1)

The companion vblank and hblank have little meaning in this context. The new lines are the Ethernet settings. PLL1 is used to drive the net output. Note that 'M' = 24.0741. This is the effective 'M' value built from the both the fractional register value and the integer value of M. It is used when a PLL setting needs to be fine-tuned.

Timing, Sensor has own clock

...

Lens can be imported and exported list of comma separated pairs. No information as the units are stored. This is to match historical file formats. It is recommend that the units are encoded into the file name:
Sunex DLS219-AR0140.cvs
Sunex DLS219-um.cvs
The lens information can also be imported from a STE xml configuration file but can't be exported in this form.

Command Line Tool

User Guide is available here.

Anchor
_Toc430691573 _Toc430691573

Revision History