ST G3-PLC User manual

October 2014 DocID026814 Rev 1 1/52
52
UM1811
User manual
G3-PLC graphical user interface (GUI)
Introduction
The G3 power line communication (G3-PLC) graphical user interface (GUI) is a tool
implemented by STMicroelectronics™ that allows interfacing one or more ST platforms
equipped with the G3-PLC protocol, hereafter called G3-PLC platforms. This tool is running
on a Microsoft®Windows®PC that is connected to a supported G3-PLC®platform (see
Section 2 on page 6) through to a serial link, converted to a USB connection. On the PC
side, the communication with the G3-PLC platform is managed thanks to a node interface
plugin written in C# accessible through a graphical front-end. On the G3-PLC platform, the
communication is managed thanks to a host interface application that receives/sends the
messages from/to the PC. Messages are translated into commands for the ST G3-PLC
library. This document does not describe in details the plugin, the host interface application,
nor the ST G3-PLC library. It describes the PC tool features, it details the options that it
offers, it gives clear guidance on how to connect a G3-PLC platform to the tool and it
provides examples in order to transmit data between two different G3-PLC platforms. To
better understand some menu of the GUI, it is useful to understand how the ST G3-PLC
protocol stack is implemented:
Figure 1. Communication between GUI and G3-PLC platform
On the G3-PLC platform, a Host Interface application forwards commands from the serial
link to the right layer of the protocol stack (6LoWPAN, MAC, PHY) and it forwards responses
from one layer of the protocol stack to the serial link. On the PC side, the node interface
plugin forwards commands from the graphical front-end to the serial link and it forwards the
responses from the serial link to the graphical front-end. The host interface application and
node interface plugin communicate thanks to a serial link.
www.st.com

Contents UM1811
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Contents
1 Documentation conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
List of abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2 GUI installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.1 System requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.2 G3-PLC GUI release . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.3 G3-PLC GUI main window overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3 Getting started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.1 Node connection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.2 Node tree panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.3 GUI and Plugin Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11
3.4 Automatic confirm and indication events parsing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4 G3LIB menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.1 G3LIB root menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.2 G3LIB IB EX menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.3 G3LIB information base attributes description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
5 PHY menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
5.1 PHY root menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
5.2 PLME control menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5.3 PLME menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
6 MAC menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
6.1 MAC root menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
6.2 MLME control menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
6.3 MLME IB menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
6.4 MLME IB EX menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
6.5 MAC information base attributes description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

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7 ADP menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
7.1 ADP root menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
7.2 ADPM control menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
7.3 ADPM LBP menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
7.4 ADPM IB menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
7.5 ADP information base attributes description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
8 BER Test panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
8.1 Typical setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
8.2 Test description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
9 Sniffer panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
9.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
9.2 Data logs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
10 Basic G3 operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
10.1 Environment setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
10.2 Connect Node 1 and 2 on the G3-PLC GUI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
10.3 PHY layer data exchange . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
10.4 MAC layer data exchange . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
10.5 ADP layer data exchange . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
11 Revision history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

List of figures UM1811
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List of figures
Figure 1. Communication between GUI and G3-PLC platform. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Figure 2. Main G3-PLC GUI window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Figure 3. Add a node . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Figure 4. Node connection. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Figure 5. Node tree panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Figure 6. Plugin Settings panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Figure 7. G3LIB root panel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Figure 8. G3LIB information base explorer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Figure 9. Configure the host interface in PHY mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Figure 10. PHY root panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Figure 11. PLME control menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Figure 12. PLME menu description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Figure 13. Configure the host interface in MAC mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Figure 14. MAC root panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Figure 15. MLME control menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Figure 16. MAC IB menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Figure 17. MAC information base explorer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Figure 18. Configure the host interface in ADP mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Figure 19. ADP root panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Figure 20. ADPM control menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Figure 21. LoWPAN bootstrap protocol menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Figure 22. ADPM_IB menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Figure 23. Effect of show routing table command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Figure 24. BER Test setup. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Figure 25. Enable BER Test panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Figure 26. Configure BER Test panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Figure 27. Deactivate Reed-Solomon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Figure 28. Set GMK for the Sniffer tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Figure 29. Sniffer tool activation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Figure 30. Sniffer window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Figure 31. Environment setup to perform the basic G3 operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Figure 32. Configure Node 1 in TX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Figure 33. Configure Node 2 in RX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Figure 34. Send PHY data from TX to RX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Figure 35. Configure Node 1 PANId . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Figure 36. Configure Node 1 short address. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Figure 37. Configure Node 2 PANId . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Figure 38. Configure Node 2 short address. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Figure 39. Send MAC data from TX to RX. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Figure 40. MCPS-DATA.Indication message details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Figure 41. Configure Node 1 GMK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Figure 42. Send ADP data from TX to RX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

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1 Documentation conventions
List of abbreviations
The following abbreviations are used:
Table 1. List of abbreviations
Abbreviation Description
6LoWPAN IPv6 over low power wireless personal area networks
ADP Adaptation layer
BER Bit error rate
GUI Graphical user interface
G3 G3-PLC powerline protocol
MAC Medium access control layer
PC Personal computer
PHY Physical layer
PLC Power line communication
UART Universal asynchronous receiver transmitter
USB Universal serial bus

GUI installation UM1811
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2 GUI installation
2.1 System requirements
A personal computer (PC) including:
Operating system Windows 7.
Microsoft .NET©framework 4.0 or later installed.
20 Mbytes free on the local disk for the archive to be uncompressed.
One or more USB ports.
2.2 G3-PLC GUI release
The GUI is released in a zip archive. To run the application, the archive needs to be
uncompressed on the user local disk.
Once the archive is successfully uncompressed, the user needs to run the
StPowerLineGui.exe file.
2.3 G3-PLC GUI main window overview
Once the StPowerLineGui.exe executable has been launched, the main window of the G3-
PLC GUI appears on the screen after few seconds.

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Figure 2. Main G3-PLC GUI window
The elements of the main window are:
1. Power Line Sniffer button: it opens the Sniffer tool panel
2. Plugin Settings button: it opens the configuration panel
3. Plugin Information button: it shows the plugin information panel
4. ST Power Line GUI information button: it shows the G3-PLC GUI information panel
5. Node tree navigation panel: it is used to select a specific node and to choose the
command type
6. Command panel: it is used to execute a specific command
7. Trace window: it traces the traffic from/to the G3-PLC GUI application and one node.

Getting started UM1811
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3 Getting started
3.1 Node connection
More than one G3-PLC platforms can be connected to the same instance of the G3-PLC
GUI. Click on the small cross on the command panel to connect one G3-PLC platform
(Figure 3). Alternatively, right-click on the ST PowerLine Host icon and click on “Add Node”.
Figure 3. Add a node
Once the “Add Node” cross has been selected, one new tab appears in the command panel.
In the node tree panel, selecting the “COM” section gives access to the serial link
configuration. Then the enhanced COM port that corresponds to the G3-PLC platform to be
driven needs to be selected. Click the Open port button (Figure 4) to enable the
communication between the G3-PLC GUI and the board.

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Figure 4. Node connection
Once the Open button has been selected (1), the trace window (2) allows checking that the
command has been correctly transmitted to the evaluation board. The G3-PLC GUI
command panel has as much tab as G3-PLC platforms are connected. To identify the tab,
the associated COM port is displayed in the panel title (3).
3.2 Node tree panel
The G3-PLC GUI offers access to the “Service Access Points” (SAP) of each layer specified
by the G3-PLC standard plus some additional features such as a bootstrap application or
the G3 library configuration.
Once a G3-PLC platform is connected, it can be explored thanks to the object tree panel.
Each root menu can be collapsed or not to see its detailed content. The detailed content
gives access to each specific SAP: PHY, MAC, ADP, BOOT and G3LIB.
Additional levels of the interface (such as IPv6) may be present. The related functions may
be used in conjunction with specific firmware projects that may be obtained from your local
support.

Getting started UM1811
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Figure 5. Node tree panel
All the services provided by one layer may be accessed from the main menu or from one of
its sub menus. Below here there is a brief description of each main menu:
PHY: the PHY menu offers an interface to use the PHY primitives of the G3-PLC
protocol.
MAC: the MAC menu offers an interface to use the MAC primitives of the G3-PLC
protocol.
ADP: the ADP menu offers an interface to use the 6LoWPAN primitives of the G3-PLC
protocol.
BOOT: the BOOT menu offers an interface to use the ST defined bootstrap application.
This feature will not be described in this document. Please contact your ST local
support for additional information.