Hello Clemens, On Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 02:26:14PM +0200, Clemens Gruber wrote: > On Mon, Mar 29, 2021 at 08:02:06PM +0200, Uwe Kleine-König wrote: > > On Mon, Mar 29, 2021 at 07:16:38PM +0200, Clemens Gruber wrote: > > > On Mon, Mar 29, 2021 at 07:03:57PM +0200, Uwe Kleine-König wrote: > > > > On Mon, Mar 29, 2021 at 02:57:04PM +0200, Clemens Gruber wrote: > > > > > The PCA9685 supports staggered LED output ON times to minimize current > > > > > surges and reduce EMI. > > > > > When this new option is enabled, the ON times of each channel are > > > > > delayed by channel number x counter range / 16, which avoids asserting > > > > > all enabled outputs at the same counter value while still maintaining > > > > > the configured duty cycle of each output. > > > > > > > > > > Signed-off-by: Clemens Gruber <clemens.gru...@pqgruber.com> > > > > > > > > Is there a reason to not want this staggered output? If it never hurts I > > > > suggest to always stagger and drop the dt property. > > > > > > There might be applications where you want multiple outputs to assert at > > > the same time / to be synchronized. > > > With staggered outputs mode always enabled, this would no longer be > > > possible as they are spread out according to their channel number. > > > > > > Not sure how often that usecase is required, but just enforcing the > > > staggered mode by default sounds risky to me. > > > > There is no such guarantee in the PWM framework, so I don't think we > > need to fear breaking setups. Thierry? > > Still, someone might rely on it? But let's wait for Thierry's opinion.
Someone might rely on the pca9685 driver being as racy as a driver with legacy bindings usually is. Should this be the reason to drop this whole series? > > One reason we might not want staggering is if we have a consumer who > > cares about config transitions. (This however is moot it the hardware > > doesn't provide sane transitions even without staggering.) > > > > Did I already ask about races in this driver? I assume there is a > > free running counter and the ON and OFF registers just define where in > > the period the transitions happen, right? Given that changing ON and OFF > > needs two register writes probably all kind of strange things can > > happen, right? (Example thought: for simplicity's sake I assume ON is > > always 0. Then if you want to change from OFF = 0xaaa to OFF = 0xccc we > > might see a period with 0xacc. Depending on how the hardware works we > > might even see 4 edges in a single period then.) > > Yes, there is a free running counter from 0 to 4095. > And it is probably true, that there can be short intermediate states > with our two register writes. > > There is a separate mode "Update on ACK" (MODE2 register, bit 3 "OCH"), > which is 0 by default (Outputs change on STOP command) but could be set > to 1 (Outputs change on ACK): > "Update on ACK requires all 4 PWM channel registers to be loaded before > outputs will change on the last ACK." This is about the ACK and STOP in the i2c communication, right? I fail to understand the relevance of this difference. I guess I have to read the manual myself. > The chip datasheet also states: > "Because the loading of the LEDn_ON and LEDn_OFF registers is via the > I2C-bus, and asynchronous to the internal oscillator, we want to ensure > that we do not see any visual artifacts of changing the ON and OFF > values. This is achieved by updating the changes at the end of the LOW > cycle." So we're only out of luck if the first register write happens before and the second after the end of the LOW cycle, aren't we? Best regards Uwe -- Pengutronix e.K. | Uwe Kleine-König | Industrial Linux Solutions | https://www.pengutronix.de/ |
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