Intermediate FPGA and RTOS class and sharing

General lounge
21

Rahul I forgot to give you the stlink jtag programmer. Message me, we can meet
tomorrow or tonight, I will give it to you

22

Hi Tim,
Don’t worry, will pick up the JTAG programmer and program the Zephyr OS next Sat.
Thanks,
Rahul

23

My apologies for forgetting that little but very important part. Are you sure, you don’t want me to get it to you?

24

Hi Tim,
No problem, don’t know if I can get time to read Zephyr.
Thanks,
Rahul

25

One of the people in the class asked some really good questions.

If I already have Chibios working, why did you want me to install Zephyr now?

If you wanted me to learn Zephyr, why did I spend 2 hours installing and getting ChibiOS to work?

I looked at Zephyr, and it appears to me that 1) it’s very new, 2) it’s still in active development ( for example they are still trying to figure out how to implement memory protection ), 3) The community appears to be … rather dead, there is only a mailing list and it’s very low traffic, and 4) I haven’t been able to find significant job listings asking for Zephyr knowledge. So I’m confused as to why we are going to spend time learning Zephyr. Do you have a goal in mind for Zephyr?

If we are talking about learning a RTOS that is popular and that will have an impact on our resumes, shouldn’t we be learning FreeRTOS?

Can you please elaborate on your RTOS class objectives.

My answer is as follows.

You bring up excellent questions. I would like to share your question and my answers with everyone. I hope you are ok with this?

I will answer the second question first.

Why install Chibios, then install Zephyr?

The RTOS goal is to write a HAL driver for a board in both Chibios and Zephyr.

To understand Chibios, you will need to have a working installation. Learning how Chibios structures its HAL will help you see how to write a well structured HAL. It is not possible to become a good in the Art of writing a HAL if you only look at one way to do it.

The reason I want you to also write a HAL in Zephyr, I want you to take what you learn from writing a HAL in Chibios and understand how it can be applied to other RTOSs. And for this Zephyr is a good choice, because of its popularity. Why not write a HAL for FreeRTOS? Simply because "ChibiOS contains within it a feature rich HAL where as FreeRTOS is only a real time kernel. " FreeRTOS does NOT include a HAL by design. Every company supporting FreeRTOS is going to write the HAL for the same devices in different ways. You are never going to learn how to write good portable HALs looking at FreeRTOS code.
http://bodlaboratories.com/blog/2016/11/05/where-to-from-here/

Also ST has chosen FreeRTOS for their RTOS. Which makes it easy to review FreeRTOS implementations as well.

“The files shipped by ST do already contain FreeRTOS projects that make use of the drivers though. In particular their big demonstration projects (the ones that come on the eval boards) that show off everything are included as buildable projects in the STM32 cube download - so maybe you could use one of those as a starting point rather than trying to port yourself?”

To answer your first question, Are we going back to learning how to program the FPGA? Yes, we are and the next thing cover will be how to “program” an open source CSI-2 for a zynq board.

In both the RTOS and FPGA, I need to get people working on usable systems as quickly as possible.

Zephyr is backed by the Linux Foundation. The members you see on the main webpage are investing into Zephyr. I think contributing code to a well founded project will demonstrate skill in a very marketable way to not only these funding members, but also to companies that use their products.

An good article

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/289253076_Choosing_the_right_RTOS_for_IoT_platform

26

Hi Tim,
Following are my notes from the Saturday (March 25th, 2017) class:

Thanks,
Rahul

Install COPRTHR SDK
PARALLELLA PAGE:
https://www.parallella.org/2013/03/08/introduction-to-parallella-and-opencl/
http://www.browndeertechnology.com/coprthr_download.htm
GITHUB PAGE:
GitHub - browndeer/coprthr: The CO-PRocessing THReads (COPRTHR) SDK - latest release is v1.6.2 (Freewill) (Procedure Explained)

sudo apt-get install gmake

apt-get install freebsd-glue

sudo aptitude
install bison

sudo apt-get install flex

gitclone libelf
Installation is straightforward - the package is autoconf’ed. Just do
``cd libelf-0.8.13;
./configure;
make;
(sudo) make install’'. Header files
will be installed in …/include/libelf/.

libconfig
./configure
make
sudo make install

sudo aptitude install autogen
The following NEW packages will be installed:
autogen autogen-doc{a} libopts25{a} libopts25-dev{a}
0 packages upgraded, 4 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 1,714 kB of archives. After unpacking 5,179 kB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] Y
autogen
./configure && make

DOWNLOAD libevent-2.0.18/
OR
GIT CLONE libevent-2.0.21-stable
{ls -al}
{head autogen.sh}
bash autogen.sh
ls -alrt
date
./configure
ls -lart
make
sudo make install
make verify

cd coprthr
./configure
make
ls -alrt
make clean
sudo make install

27

Hello,
Currently the “Parallella Embedded (P1602)” board is listed on Digikey as “Not For New Designs” hence no price is assigned to it.
Amazon sells the P1601 board at a higher price.
Best,
RK

28

Two separate issues. the NRND is because parallella is not making any more boards, hence future stock availability is not guaranteed. The lack of a price is because digikey is actually out of stock of them. That, combined with the NRND probably means they won’t re-stock it.

The P1601 uses the 7Z010 chip, which is not good enough for vision applications.

1 Like
29

This is most unfortunate.

I updated the Z-Turn VHS wiki.

Z-Turn requires a special adaptor to use a standard CSI camera interface. I
have not figured out how to make the adaptor.
There is the snickerdoodle
https://www.element14.com/community/message/163874/l/snickerdoodlesnickerdoodle-black-really-needs-a-better-name#163874
https://www.element14.com/community/thread/46522/l/snickerdoodlesnickerdoodle-black-really-needs-a-better-name?displayFullThread=true

But I dont’ think is is shipping.

So How do you guys feel about doing something that does not require a
camera?

30

I did find that it is still possible to buy the P1602-DK02

ebay looks like the best bet.

Are you interested?
I will look up the model number it should be after. The earliest version
had major heat problem.

1 Like
31

http://www.integrated-circuit.com/products-detail/P1602-DK02/EIS-3538037.html?small=Evaluation-Boards-Embedded-Mcu-Dsp

6 weeks is a manufacturing lead time.
But who knows how long it would really take for them to get enough orders
together. And what the price really is for very small quanties.

32

@tdwebste: This is the board I was talking to you about for HDMI overlays:

33

The other possibility is a CSI camera interface for the zedboard. I have a
zedboard you can use.

34

http://www.zynqbook.com/

35

The snickerdoodle black looks interesting because of the inclusion of BLE and WiFi. It could be a great platform to build a vehicle information system ( radio, navigation, hands free phone, climate control, vehicle diagnostics )

36

This morning I found this.
It has an Academic price discount.
Read more before you buy it.

37

Are these forsale? but where.

38

*Tomorrrow. Thursday *

I will be covering tutorials form the Zync book.

I will bring my Zedboard for that work.

39

I have an ebay watch on parallella, they’ve been listing the 7010 model very high for some time now, no listings for the 7020 for a year or so.

40

Yes, interested in in the P1602-DK02 if available!
Just received the P1601 board (package unopened), can return it if P1602-DK02 is available.
Thanks!