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IWR6843 Operator Guide

This guide covers the supported OpenFlight setup for the TI IWR6843LEVM. It starts with an OpenFlight-ready Raspberry Pi and an unconfigured radar, then walks through wiring, firmware flashing, mounting, measurement, startup, verification, calibration, and offline replay.

The production system uses two radars:

Device Responsibility
OPS243 Sound-triggered shot detection, ball speed, and club speed
IWR6843 Short-window radar capture, vertical launch angle, and experimental horizontal direction

The sound detector sends the same impact edge to both systems. The OPS243 freezes its rolling buffer directly. The Raspberry Pi receives that edge on BCM17 and immediately asks the IWR6843 firmware to finish and dump its rolling frame ring.

For firmware development, architecture, and build instructions, see firmware developer guide. For a plain-language explanation and the July 2026 TrackMan baseline, see the IWR6843 launch-angle field report.

Current Configuration

Flash one configurable firmware image, then select one of two runtime profiles:

Component Current file or value
Firmware firmware/releases/l3_dump_configurable_capture_20260816.bin
Wide/default config config/iwr6843_l3dump_wide_24f3ms_53bin_iq16.cfg
Dense/advanced config config/iwr6843_l3dump_dense_36f2ms_53bin_iq8.cfg
Reference array calibration config/iwr6843_calibration_reference.json
Firmware size 345,860 bytes
Firmware SHA-256 bd68db511b12f5a3236c0a88c70448dc2ff42a0525455329f33138e4a2aa88d5
Transmitters / receivers 3 TX / 4 RX
Loops 12 per frame
Movie duration 72 ms

Choose A Profile

Profile Wide/default Dense/advanced
Frames and spacing 24 at 3 ms 36 at 2 ms
Saved window 53 bins 53 bins
Storage IQ16 Block-scaled IQ8
Complete dump 732,812 bytes 549,764 bytes
Choose it for Ball flight and setup tolerance Dense impact sampling

Start with wide/default. Its wider range window is more tolerant of tee placement, ball speed, and setup geometry, while IQ16 retains full signal fidelity. Its live inclinometer-adjusted LCMF output measured 0.86 degree MAE across all 59 matched 9-iron and 7-iron shots in an August 9 TrackMan session, with 0.70 degree P50 and 1.75 degree P90 absolute error. Select dense/advanced when temporal density around impact is the priority. It now preserves the same 53-bin range span while using IQ8 to fit 36 frames in L3. The 2 ms IQ8 transport has passed hardware cadence testing, but the 53-bin dense profile still needs source-of-truth TrackMan MAE validation; its horizontal and club metrics remain experimental.

Changing profiles does not require reflashing. It changes only the config passed to --iwr6843-config. Both profiles use the same host-side mount-tilt path, including live inclinometer correction when --inclinometer is enabled. They also use the measured positive TDM sign for normal TX order. Automatic sign selection is reserved for offline diagnostics because multipath can select the mirrored sign and collapse the vertical two8 channel.

On the Pi, verify the checked-in image with:

sha256sum firmware/releases/l3_dump_configurable_capture_20260816.bin

Before You Start

You need:

  • A Raspberry Pi running OpenFlight.
  • A TI IWR6843LEVM and a data-capable USB cable.
  • An OPS243 radar connected through either the Pi GPIO UART or a separately powered USB hub.
  • A configured SparkFun SEN-14262 sound detector or the equivalent supported trigger. Complete the sound-trigger wiring guide first.
  • A stable Pi power supply and stable power for every USB-connected radar.
  • Access to the IWR6843 boot-mode switch and RESET button.
  • Measurements for radar-to-ball distance, radar-to-net distance, radar height, ball height, and radar tilt.

Run all commands from the OpenFlight repository root unless a section says otherwise.

The setup path

Work these in order — each depends on the one before it.

  • Wiring

    Power and data layout, Pi UART, serial and GPIO permissions, sound-trigger line, and identifying the TI serial port.

  • Flash the firmware

    Boot mode, ROM bootloader, flashing the configurable image, and returning to functional mode.

  • Mount, aim, and measure

    Physical placement and the geometry measurements the runtime needs.

  • Start and verify

    Launch with your geometry and confirm the first capture is sane.

  • Horizontal launch and club path

    Target-line reference, separation test, and reading club path.

  • Calibration and replay

    Calibration sessions, estimator limits, and offline capture replay.

  • Troubleshooting

    When the radar does not enumerate, dump, or report sane angles.