6. Board Controller
The Wireless STK Mainboard contains a dedicated microcontroller for some of the advanced kit features provided. This microcontroller
is referred to as the board controller, and is not programmable by the user. The board controller acts as an interface between the host
PC and the target device on the radio board, as well as handling some house-keeping functions on the board.
Some of the kit features actively managed by the board controller are:
• The on-board debugger, which can flash and debug both on-board and external targets.
• The Advanced Energy Monitor, which provides real-time energy profiling of the user application.
• The Packet Trace Interface, which is used in conjunction with PC software to provide detailed insight into an active radio network.
• The Virtual COM Port and Virtual UART interfaces, which provide ways to transfer application data between the host PC and the
target processor.
• The admin console, which provides configuration of the various board features.
Silicon Labs publishes updates to the board controller firmware in the form of firmware upgrade packages. These updates may enable
new features or fix issues. See 9.1 Firmware Upgrades for details on firmware upgrade.
6.1 Admin Console
The admin console is a command line interface to the board controller on the kit. It provides functionality for configuring the kit behavior
and retreiving configuration and operational parameters.
6.1.1 Connecting
The Wireless Starter Kit must be connected to Ethernet using the Ethernet connector in the top left corner of the mainboard for the
admin console to be available. See 8.1.2 Ethernet Interface for details on the Ethernet connectivity.
Connect to the admin console by opening a telnet connection to the kit's IP address, port number 4902.
When successfully connected, a WSTK> prompt is displayed.
6.1.2 Built-in Help
The admin console has a built-in help system which is accessed by the help command. The help command will print a list of all top
level commands:
WSTK> help
*************** Root commands ****************
aem AEM commands [ calibrate, current, dump, ... ]
boardid Commands for board ID probe. [ list, probe ]
dbg Debug interface status and control [ info, mode,]
dch Datachannel control and info commands [ info ]
discovery Discovery service commands.
net Network commands. [ dnslookup, geoprobe, ip ]
pti Packet trace interface status and control [ config, disable, dump, ... ]
quit Exit from shell
sys System commands [ nickname, reset, scratch, ... ]
target Target commands. [ button, flashwrite, go, ... ]
time Time Service commands [ client, server ]
user User management functions [ login,]
The help command can be used in conjunction with any top level command to get a list of sub-commands with description. For exam-
ple, pti help will print a list of all available sub-commands of pti:
WSTK> pti help
*************** pti commands ****************
config Configure packet trace
disable Disable packet trace
dump Dump PTI packets to the console as they come
enable Enable packet trace
info Packet trace state information
This means that running pti enable will enable packet trace.
UG340: MGM13P02 Mighty Gecko Module Radio Board User's Guide
Board Controller
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