Are you Interested in a Class teaching Matlab Simulink FPGA programming?

General lounge
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The course objective is to learn and explore high level FPGA programming.

I am trying to determine if there is sufficient interest for a Matlab Simulink FPGA programming class.
The minimum interest would be 3 or more people.

This class would be taught by me on Saturday or Sunday, depending on which works best for everyone.

This class would teach how to use Matlab Simulink models to program an ZedBoard.
FPGA boards are rather expensive. about 475 USD

The following options are available.
A group buy through VHS, from Avnet which is the cheapest.
Or a possible application for educational discount as Other “Lab Managers”
https://resource.digilentinc.com/verify/identify

The class would require at minimum 1 board shared among the people taking the class. I am buying one board for myself.
The people taking the class could individually practice the work using the shared owned ZedBoard. If the people wish to obtain a board for there personal usage. We could perhaps order more.

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I’m interested. How much would the class be?

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I’d also be interested. Which versions of matlab work for this?

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Ok, It seems like there is enough interest. I will get back to you with
details tomorrow.

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Do you think the Zybo might be good enough for the class? It has a smaller fpga and the board lacks the high speed ports, but I doubt we would be doing anything with the high speed ports. The price different is big. retail $190 vs $475 (academic prices are: $125 vs $320 )

The PYNQ-Z1 board is even cheaper (academic price is $65) but it is fairly limited in features.

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Hector, that is one thing I wanted to check, was to see if the software
would run on the Trainer Board. I am verifying the software requirments
right now and will post them “around lunch time”.

Tim

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You could also consider the parallella, these are starting to appear cheap on ebay. Unfortunately i/o options are limited but if you wanted to build a motherboard, I have pcbs and connectors for my design.

https://parallella.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3081&p=15301

The parallella has an XC7Z020 on it.

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I have another party interested in the class, dependent on schedule as he travels a lot

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I am working from Matlab examples using a trial copy. I hope to get an
educational discount.

I am contacting Matlab for that, but if there is someone from University or
Colleage wishing to help obtain a copy for teaching purposes it is greatly
appreciated.

The zedboard is the cheapest board on the list of supported Xilinx boards
for

One of the following Xilinx® boards:

  • Virtex-7 VC707
  • Zynq-7000 ZC702
  • Zynq-7000 ZC706
  • ZedBoard
  • ZYBO Zynq-7000 Development Board
  • Digilent Nexys™4 Artix-7
  • Kintex UltraScale FPGA KCU105 Evaluation Kit

I am less familar with the other supported boards.

I think it is worth some time searching and investigating the more
economical boards suggested.

The cost of the course, is “shared” hardware cost plus a small donation to
VHS. I suggest ~20 dollars.
It looks like we may to be working on less expensive alternative hardware.
If that is possible I welcome that.

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It’s not clear to me what you’re trying to do with Matlab, high frequency, low frequency etc. If you target something like motion control it will probably attract a bunch of people and keep the costs low since it’s low frequency (usually).

I can probably lend someone one of my Zync boards for this. The best place to start is taking the list of boards above and finding out the part numbers of the xilinx parts they have on them. eg. the ZC702 has a XC7Z020 on it, same part as the parallella (probably in a different package but it’s the same die). I think this should work out fine, just need retarget the ZC702 generated design for a different pinout (and possibly a different reference clock).

I have an ebay watch running on Parallella, this one just closed and was quite affordable - Parallella by Adaptiva 16 Micro-Server Computer P1600-DK03 | eBay

It’s also worth noting that machinekit (linux cnc distro) is being ported to Zynq. Linux runs on the on die PPC and the fpga is available for motion control acceleration - more at Xilinx Zynq port not available · Issue #903 · machinekit/machinekit · GitHub

Some kickstarter junkies probably have one of these in their cupboard (I think @rsim might have bought into this one?).

One last note, machinekit (linuxcnc distro) is being ported to Zynq. This is super cool, linux runs on the on die ppc chip and the fpga fabric becomes available for software offload. More at Xilinx Zynq port not available · Issue #903 · machinekit/machinekit · GitHub

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The goal is to first demonstrate the tool chain with a “simple” example. Preferably an example from the tool chain, known to work with the tool chain.

Then a more practical low resource example, such as motion control.
Other possible examples could be audio or low frequence image processing.

Finally after success with the tool chain and a low resouce example. Then we would choose another example people are interested in or we would use what was learned to go off and do personally interesting examples / projects.

1 Like
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Thx, this looks interesting.

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Reviewed the contents of the Matlab-Simulink support for Zynq ( Xilinx Zynq Support from Simulink - Hardware Support - MATLAB & Simulink ). My take is that for general programming we can use any Zynq based board ( Mathworks provides an example of how to add a custom board into Matlab by adding the Zybo board https://www.mathworks.com/help/hdlcoder/examples/define-and-register-custom-board-and-reference-design-for-soc-workflow.html ).

The other options ( SDR, Motor Control, Machine Vision ) all required additional support boards ( AD-FMCOMMS3-EBZ, AD-FMCMOTCON2-EBZ, FMC-HDMI-CAM, or FMC-IMAGEON ) that connect to the Zynq by means of a FMC port. If we plan to do any of it (SDR, Motor Control, Machine Vision) then we should pick a board that has a FMC port (this rules out the Zybo). Someone made an adapter board to connect the Parallella to the FMCOMMS board for SDR.

Anyway, so the choice of base board to use for the class will depend if we are planning to do any vision/radio/motor control or not.

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