I intend to pursue this course from Free-Electrons (https://free-electrons.com/training/embedded-linux/) as a self-learner. They use Atmel SAMA5D3 Xplained board. My question is: can I use Raspberry Pi 3 instead of the Atmel board for completing the labs? If yes, would it be too much effort for someone who is almost a newbie in this field?
A comparison between the two boards can be found here (in Italian): http://www.campana.vi.it/blog/confronto-raspberry-pi3-beaglebone-black-sama5d3-xplained/. Rasp Pi3 seems to win in almost every respect, except for the number of GPIO pins and the price of Pi is around £30 vs £79 for Atmel (checked today). I'd really love it if the Pi could be used for this course.
Thanks in advance for any help.
As sawdust stated, the main parts that will differ are the u-boot and kernel labs because they are specific to the SoC and board. They may not be so easy to adapt. The main issue is that they are all about getting a system booting on the platform so the followings labs depend on them.
The buildroot lab will differ a bit because of the different SoC but is way easier to adapt. Also, you won't be able to do the "Filesystems - Flash file systems" lab at all because the RPi doesn't have any NAND flash. That is one of the main reason why we are using the SAMA5D3 Xplained.
Related
I bought a cheap board with Altera Cyclone II from ebay and want to start experimenting.
I created a simple program, after some research I managed to compile it and after flashing to the board the programming tool said it is 100% complete.
However the behaviour of the board has not changed since the time I first plugged the power supply in(three onboard LEDs are blinking).
It looks like the program has not been loaded to the board.
I don't know what I did wrong.
Any ideas? I am completely new to FPGAs. Thank you
Normally the configuration stream is written into fpga sram, and it won't live across the power cycle. If you want that configuration be "permanent", write it into on-board configuration flash chip.
Did you check with this short introduction: http://laurie.tech/start-fpga/ ?
I have a usb modem with MT6272M chipset, can I take out its chipset and program it? I know that some ICs are programmable and some are not but I really want to program an IC without investing on arduino, rhasberry pi, or intel gallileo so trying to recycle electronic wastes.
Most of the ICs in the electronic waste are not programmable. Because they are specifically designed to do one job efficiently and that program is bound to the IC.
What you are searching is Programmable Integrated Circuit or Micro-controller chips. These are specifically designed to re-program again and again.
Anyhow if you find a specific Integrated Circuit from the waste,
First and most importantly, find its data-sheet (mostly available
in their manufacturer's website for free).
check whether is it a Programmable Integrated Circuit.
if yes, what is the hardware requirement to program it and build the
hardware circuit
write the program according to the specific requirements using
compatible libraries.
connect to the PC
Find the correct boot loader and upload it to the IC.
upload the program, which you have written, to the Programmable Integrated Circuit.
Test it
As you can see, you will need to build different hardware for different Programmable Integrated Circuit. So it is cheaper for you to buy arduino or raspberry circuit board. Then you can reprogram more chips using same board again and again plus the help of the community and the thousands of libraries.
Edit
If it is not mentioned in the datasheet whether you can program it or not , most probably it can't reprogram.
And other thing is that the main function of a modem is signal processing. For example, old cable modems are converting analog signals into digital signals. So they are not designed to reprogram or to do logical calculations. With my personal experience, you better start with a simple micro-controller and once you know the basics, you can go for higher level. Anyway I admire your idea to recycle the waste ICs.
I am developing a computer vision system to control orientation of two mirrors to track stimuli in field of view.We are sending coordinates to motor over network and trying to track as smoothly as possible.
I have two questions regarding this :
1.Is Python suitable for this kind of project . I have already coded it in Python and find it very easy to use.
I am running Raspbian on raspberry Pi but found that it's not a real time os. We are sending command every 20 ms to the server built on raspberry Pi. Should I switch to arduino or patch the Linux kernel for this application.
Python, combined with OpenCV, is one of the best candidates for this task.
As mentioned in the comment above, the "real-time" issue is OS related. I personally recommend an Arduino-based solution, even though that puts more burden on the hardware design. You could also check the new IoT solutions from Intel, they have a wide range of boards.
My boss has given a code for testing PCI express on an Altera board. The code consist of several c code files having instructions such as reading Bios, setting some registers, writing to buffers etc.
My job at present is to see the functionality of the code by running it.
I am new to FPGA and I am unable to understand what tools, compilers etc will I use for compiling it for the FPGA.
Since it is a C code so I am sure I cannot use the same environment as that of Verilog/VHDL. Can I get some hints as to what compilers are available for compiling C code for testing various interfaces of an FPGA?
Thanks and regards
H
If the FPGA board is just connected through a standard PCIexpress interface, it isn't that hard to create a Linux driver to simply access a couple of registers. This might even be easier to do than getting some old DOS-based drivers to work.
I did some work on this in a pre-project to my masters thesis some years ago - if you're interested, it's available here: http://loejer.dk/files/FORK,%20pdf.zip
It sounds like the intent is that you connect the PCI-E card to a normal computer with a PCI-E slot, then run the test software on the host computer, so it will talk to the board via PCI-E, and exercise the board from the host, collect data on the host, and so on.
Such code will almost certainly be quite non-portable. You'll probably need to ask what system it's for (or examine the code to find hints -- e.g., if it starts with #include <windows.h> that's a pretty fair indication that it's for Windows).
The OS it's written for will give at least an 80% (or so) clue about what compiler to use -- if it's for Windows, chances are pretty good that it's intended for Microsoft's compiler. If it's for Linux, there's an even better chance that it's for gcc/g++. If it's for MacOS, it's probably for g++, but if it's really new, might target Clang.
My company is trying to build a pcb with an obsolete xilinx fpga (XC3042A) which is part of the XC3000 series chips. Does anyone have any experience programming the data to the chip? I'm looking for what software, hardware, etc. people have used.
I have programmed old Xilinx chips (XC4010XL) using a custom built interface to the ISA bus.
I used Turbo-C on a DOS box and a home-made ISA card with '245 (bidir transceiver) and a 74LS74 (dual flip flop D) for strobe signals on a slave parallel configuration.
It is not difficult to implement the same using a parallel port, for instance.
You should be able to find the programming specs from the Xilinx website. They provide documentation on the different methods used in programming their FPGA. It should be in their AppNotes. They have several modes - typically slave serial or select map (parallel). That means some sort of SPI flash, or parallel flash, or JTAG.
If you look around, you may find schematics for a DIY programming cable too! You can also interface a small micro, say a 8-bit PIC to handle the programming specs while you design your own custom interface to it or interface it to a SD card or something else.
The current Xilinx tools and cables will program old parts.
The XC3000 series does not use the JTAG interface, so you can not use the Xilinx programmer to download your configuration.
You can do so by either using an external EPROM or an embedded processor to download the code.
Take a look at this applications note from Xilinx:
http://www.xilinx.com/support/documentation/application_notes/xapp090.pdf
For daisy chain:
http://www.xilinx.com/support/documentation/application_notes/xapp091.pdf
It describes the data format as well as signal info for downloading the configuration file to the FPGA.
You can use older version of the Xilinx programmer from their web site and configure the devices, I believe the last version of the xilinx supporting the 3000 series was version 8 but I am not sure.
Check out FTDI. You might be able to convince them to go with some updated hardware. It's currently $150 CAD for USB + FPGA, and $80 CAD extra if you bundle it with a Manual. Plus shipping.
It even supports the free web kit available from the Xilinx website.