Purpose of the DCT

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SuMa_296631
Level 5
Level 5
50 replies posted 25 replies posted 10 replies posted

I'm having trouble understanding the purpose of the DCT and why would I need to use such a thing.

The only documentation I can find is in the examples (there always seems to be a DCT created by the IDE but not necessarily used in the code), the fact that the DCT exists in one or two of the "documentation" PDFs, and the SPIs that tell me how to read and write one of a couple of sections.

However none of that tells me what it is for!

I can imagine that it might be of use for "configuration" details for my embedded solution, but how do I set that up? How do I specify what I want stored, where (doers that matter?), how to update it and what restrictions there are on update frequency etc..

I'm limited to the WICED SDK 2.4.1 (the hardware I'm using is based on the STM32F1xx devices which are not supported in any more recent version of the SDK as far as I know) so I must admit I've also limited my search for answers to that SDK (and Google of course).

Pointers, URLs etc would be appreciated.

Susan

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1 Solution
Anonymous
Not applicable

Hi,

What you were guessing is correct, the DCT is used to hold configurations. These include mfg information, certificates for security and WIFI configurations. users can also add any application specific sections there.

To figure out what goes in DCT and how, have a look at WICED/platform/include/platform_dct.h. This includes the structure that goes in to the DCT. The file WICED/internal/dct.c creates an instant of this structure and fill it. This is finally created in to a binary file and written to internal or external flash.

Hope this would help.

Regards,

Bassem

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2 Replies
Anonymous
Not applicable

Hi,

What you were guessing is correct, the DCT is used to hold configurations. These include mfg information, certificates for security and WIFI configurations. users can also add any application specific sections there.

To figure out what goes in DCT and how, have a look at WICED/platform/include/platform_dct.h. This includes the structure that goes in to the DCT. The file WICED/internal/dct.c creates an instant of this structure and fill it. This is finally created in to a binary file and written to internal or external flash.

Hope this would help.

Regards,

Bassem

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Thanks bdawood.

I must admit that I get nervous when the only documentation is is the comments in the code files. (One reason I dislike doxygen!) Coders may well be able to write good code but my experience is that either the comments are missing, misleading or do not add any value at all.

While I admit that it is easy for code and documentation to get out of sync and I congratulate Broadcom for providing the code in the first place, I still like to see documentation that describes the philosophy, functionality and intended manner or use. Example code is generally useful but rarely added to comments.

However I guess we have to deal with what is available....

Susan

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