RE: Raspberry PI 2.0, Windows 10 and how to drive the DAC8734 from TI (AKA the DAC8734EVM Road test Board)

DAB — Sun, 26 Jul 2015 19:46:12 GMT

Good update Peter.

I am still trying to think of an application where I would need 16-bits, but you never know.

DAB

RE: Raspberry PI 2.0, Windows 10 and how to drive the DAC8734 from TI (AKA the DAC8734EVM Road test Board)

michaelkellett — Sun, 26 Jul 2015 07:13:51 GMT

Interesting stuff.

The DAC looks fine but the coupling from the PI to the SPI is a bit disappointing. To be fair this is common with all big Operating Systems (to me an OS is Big if it's any bigger than Keil's RTX or FreeRTOS). Since it's closed for applicants it can do no harm to say that my application to the Road Test suggested using an FPGA to drive the DAC. Then you could use a PI (or similar) to do what it's good at, ie doing bulk calculations in blocks nice and fast, and then dump a big chunk of data to the FPGA via SPI (which it can also do at a respectable speed) and let the FPGA do the nimble footed low level stuff (at which it will blow the socks off any known processor.)