I was fortunate to have been selected to test a second Avnet UltraZed-EV Starter Kit that Randall and the sponsor added to the original roadtest. Things got off to an inauspicious start as a train derailment somewhere between Chicago and Portland (OR) delayed the UPS shipment of my kit.
I finally received it last night (06/22/2020) at around 7pm.
I am particularly interested in testing the integrated H.264/H.265 video codec unit (VCU) component of this kit and eventually I'd like to use it as the platform for a home video surveillance/security system But that's jumping ahead - need to verify everything is working first. I'm hoping to use VCU TRD that Jason Moss did as the "pipe cleaner" UltraZED-EV + IO Carrier Card VCU Design Example (v2018.3).
Unboxing and assembly
I was somewhat surprised by the large size and weight of the shipping box even though I had seen that the shipping weight was 7 pounds.
Inside the kit box there were two foam trays.
The first contained the carrier card and the UltraZed-EV System-on-Module (SOM) plus the heatsink/fan assembly.
The second contained the 12V power supply (US/UK/Euro AC cords), one ethernet, one USB A to microB cable, a 16GB SD card, and SOM mounting hardware. The getting started guide incorrectly indicates that there are 2 USB cables and an 8GB SD card.
The hefty 10A power supply and 3 power cords are responsible for most of the package weight.
The kit requires a minimal amount of assembly which is not mentioned in the getting started guide (maybe assumed to be obvious).
- Remove film from heatsink thermal tape
- Attach heatsink/fan assembly to the Xilinx XCZU7EV-1FBVB900 device on the SOM
- Secure heatsink/fan assembly with spring clip that is provided
- Mount standoffs on carrier card
- Plug SOM into the 3 JX micro connectors on the carrier card
- Secure SOM to standoffs
- Plug in fan
Closeup of SOM
The completed carrier card assembly with power supply attached
The insertion force required to connect the SOM seemed a bit high - I worry about flexing PCBs with SMD components. The connection seems very robust.
There was no included voucher for Vivado Design Suite license so hopefully that is no longer required otherwise I'll need to request one. This GSG is from 2018 - Version 1.3.
There also was no battery included for the RTC so I'll need to figure out what battery I need.
There are also a lot of jumper configurable headers on the carrier card that I'll need to figure out.
>> I just found the carrier card user guide that will probably answer most of my questions - just a lot of reading to do UZ-EV-CC-UG-ver1.pdf
>> The battery is a 1.5V LR44
Running the Out of Box Demo
The UltraZed-EV Starter kit is shipped with a simple demo stored in the SOM’s QSPI and eMMC Flash devices. The carrier card came with the boot mode switches and voltage monitor jumper already configured for this demo. I've used my Windows 10 host PC with an Ultra96 so the Com port drivers are already installed. Connecting the USB-UART opens two COM ports. I used the process of elimination to determine which was used for the demo configuration (in my case it was the second port - COM4). I use putty for my serial terminal.
Boot by turning on the carrier card power switch and after a short time get to the login prompt. User is root with password root.
Booting also runs the blinky application which blinks the red PS User LED.
The fan is somewhat annoying - like the fan on the Ultra96, just a bit lower pitch.
There are a couple other simple apps included with the OOB demo.
- user-led-test toggles user LEDs based on state of user pushbuttons 2-4, not sure why pushbutton 1 isn't used
- user-switch-test verifies that the user slide switches change state
The quick check looks good. Time to get serious.....