SparkFun Acconeer XM125 and SparkFun IoT RedBoard not working

Sensors
1

I purchased SparkFun Pulsed Coherent Radar Sensor - Acconeer XM125 (Qwiic) SparkFun IoT RedBoard - ESP32 Development Board. At first I just bought the radar sensor. However, after watching some tutorial videos I found that it is better to use Qwiic for connection and better to use IoT RedBoard. So I bought the redboard later. I followed exactly all the steps in the tutorials. For the first time after finishing all the setup and configuration, I could get the distance/presence measured. Later when I tried to run the program again, the Serial Monitor in Arduino IDE just quickly showed a yellow warning message and the yellow message disappeared immediately. Even it is impossible for me to read what the warning message is. I guess it might show there is a problem with connection.

I am pretty sure the connection is good. Because I tried to use the Exploration Tool from Acconeer, it works well.

Any technician from SparkFun, can you please help me with this issue? I have attached
Arduino IDE_ESP 32_XM125 Antenna Sensor_Rev1.pdf (3.4 MB) for the steps I took to set up the board and the sensor.

Thank you very much.

2

Un-select automatic baud rate selection and set it manually has helped folks here :slight_smile:

If you changed the firmware it might help to swap it back and then re-try the examples

The good news is that you know the board is working fine which indicates it’s likely just a setting/config issue

3

Thank you for your reply. Can you please tell me how to unselect automatic baud rate?

Thank you very much.

4

Arduino Examples - SparkFun Qwiic Pulsed Coherent Radar Sensor Breakout - Acconeer XM125 Hookup Guide just make sure you are setting to 115200 like it says and have the arduino firmware flashed

The datasheet might also be helpful

5

Thank you for your reply. I got another problem.

I tried to flash the radar sensor as advised. But an error occurred. The attached screenshot shows the error message. Can you please help me to check and how to fix this?

Thank you very much,
Jundong

6

image.png

Sorry I forgot to attach this screenshot just now.

7

This type of error often occurs when:

  • Another program is already using the COM port
  • The user account running the program doesn’t have sufficient privileges
  • There may be issues with device drivers or system configuration

To resolve this, the user might try:

  1. Closing other programs that might be using the COM port
  2. Running the program as an administrator
  3. Checking device manager to ensure the COM port is properly configured
  4. Verifying that the correct drivers are installed
8

Thank you for your help.

9

With your suggestion, I updated the firmware. Now the presence detection example works. Then I changed to the firmware for distance detection, and some distance measured. But still there is a problem. I found that the distance results are not consistent and accurate. It is not like the results shown in the demo video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdbWGezCCSg

Any suggestion for improving the results?

Thank you very much.

10

Make sure nothing is within the detection field that shouldn’t be (wires, etc) and/or control for lighting/reflections and such…you can also implement an averaging filter in your code to help keep it from jumping around too much