SkyTraq Venus 6 EVK/SDK


Introduction


My first contact with the SkyTraq Venus 6 was in 2010, when i bought the Navin miniHomer (my personal "Gadget Of The Year 2010") from the german distributor ZNEX. The miniHomer containes a derivative of the Venus 6 series (Venus621bLP). Fascinated by the chip, i ordered the suggested Venus638FLP evaluation kit (EVK), the software development kit (SDK) and some "bare" Venus638FLPx-L chips in LGA69 package (10mm x 10mm x 1,3mm).


The shipping of the kit was very fast (3 days from Taiwan to the destination). The customs formality and paperwork was done by the carrier FedEx, importation VAT has to be paid for the kit.

Venus638 EVK top view (large)
Fig. 1: Top view of my Venus368-EVK (modified)


After some analysis of the EVK, i did some modifications:



At the 30-pin header a Honeywell HMC6352 compass chip on a Sparkfun breakout board is connected.

Venus638 EVK bottom view (large)
Fig. 2: Bottom view of my Venus368-EVK (modified)



The SDK and API documentation is very slim. Therefore i did a complete rework of the SDK (SkyTraq kernel 1.6.0), reorganized andreformatted all the code and added Doxygen comments.


Additionally i ported the AVR FAT32 package to the Venus638 and added some low-level I2C routines ("bit-bang" mode for Venus634 compatibility, and also hardware I2C functions for the Venus638)and some high-level routines for the Honeywell HMC6352 compass IC.


The modified and extended sources, packed as STI_GPS_ModTG_v0.0.2.zip can be downloaded and used in own projects (send an with a little description of your project to get the password. Made for SkyTraq kernel 1.6.0, no kernel libs included).


A Cadsoft EAGLE library SkyTraq_Venus63x.lbr provides schematic symbols and layout footprints (created with Eagle 5.11.0).


While doing some experiments with the EVK and SDK, i collected some things about that stuff, that can be found in the next section. Maybe this will help others to avoid pitfalls and puzzling about some things in the SDK...


Trivia and worth knowing things


Trivia:



Worth knowing: