Digilent Pmod Support

I wish to use, PmodGPS - GPS Receiver and PmodWiFi - 802.11b WiFi Interface with Zedboard.

Are these supported by the onboard linux image or I would have to write drivers to access them?

I wish to choose amongst the operating system accordingly. Xillinux, Ubuntu for ARM, CNX, VxWorks or Windows CE or Embedded Standard.

http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Catalog.cfm?NavPath=2,401&Cat=9

0 Former Member over 13 years ago

chaitanyakale,

There are five PMOD ports available on the Zedboard. The JE1 PMOD connector connects directly to the MIO port on the PS portion of Zynq. This would require you to write a very simple driver to interface to this hardware and decode the UART signals on the GPS, and/or the synchronous serial interface on the WiFi PMOD.

The other option is to use one of the remaining 4 PMOD ports and write some HDL to interface to them, and then place the data on one of the AXI-4 buses available to bring the data into the ARM core.

I believe Digilent has a road-map for these drivers, but I don't have access to it at the moment. I'll see what I can dig up.
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0 Former Member over 13 years ago

Thanks a lot for your quick reply.

It means to using both of them at a time would require me to write HDL code for one then. How much time shall it take? I have no previous experience with Xilinx as well as ARM. I'm making a shift for the first time.

I was considering a very quick solution, if possible.
Would you recommend me any other GPS & WiFi modules which can be accessed easily.

It would be great, if I could survive without HDL and device drivers for sometime. I wish to consider it later and not immediately due to time constraints.
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0 Former Member over 13 years ago

I'll read in detail about it to check out. Does not look that much time consuming to me, but I'm not sure. Probably, you can make a better guess.
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0 Former Member over 13 years ago in reply to Former Member

chaitanyakale,

If you have no FPGA experience, nor embedded system experience you could be talking about a significant learning curve. Avnet is beginning to roll out it's SpeedWay's for Zynq and the Zedboard.

http://www.em.avnet.com/en-us/design/trainingandevents/Pages/Xilinx-Zynq-SpeedWay-Design-Workshops.aspx

If any of those are close to you I would highly recommend attending. You can also contact your local Avnet office to get more information on when training will be available in your area.

If you do not have any need for the programmable Logic section of Zynq, then I think i would suggest using a different Digilent development board with just a processor on it.

FPGA's are very powerful things, and thus they are also very complicated. Zynq being one of the more complicated Programmable Devices available today.
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0 Former Member over 13 years ago in reply to Former Member

chaitanyakale,
I want to use the PMOD on the PL portion of Zynq,what is the maximum IO frequency? Can I use 20M?
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0 Former Member over 13 years ago in reply to Former Member

I have a question into sullins (manufacturer of the PMOD connector) asking what the max frequency is. I will report back as soon as they get back to me.

I would think that 20MHz is definitely doable on those pins. Couldn't hurt to drive a clock out of the pin and take a look on an o-scope though.
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0 deaxman over 12 years ago in reply to Former Member

When you say to write some HDL to interface to them what do you mean exactly, like are we just writing HDL to pass the info from the AXI to the port or visa versa?
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0 fayyazrafiq over 12 years ago in reply to Former Member

chaitanyakale,
You do not need to time consuming driver for pmod-wifi digilent, you just need to connect with the SPI of the PS and connect them to EMIO for access to pl side pmod. Do need to write driver, just use the SPI driver for that. If you have done this already, its good. Otherwise, if you need further help, feel free to ask question.

Fayyaz
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