FPGA - Vibration Analysis

Great project, although an FPGA solution will take a year or two to get through the learning curve, the build, the software development and the test/tuning phase. Even expensive commercial solutions would take significant time to apply to your application and achieve desired results. If you need more power than a Pi, you could look at PC "stick" computers, but they start at around $250.

Hi Dougw,

Thanks. That is the last resort; get a mini PC to fit into the PCBs snugly. In parallel, if I use a TABLET, the latter would also resolve my problem.

Raspberry Pi5 is an another option as pointed out above by Michael.

These are short cuts but will definitely work.

I am going to give FPGA a shot. Most ostensibly the better way ahead. 

Use of FPGA for such purposes, an example is of the CN-0540 (Analog Devices) / ADC 24 bits, around 50 K samples / sec, has ARDUINO pins which plug in to the DE-10 Nano  (FPGA Board by INTEL) . 

Still need an Operating System for the GUI of the FFT display. Battle not won !

https://wiki.analog.com/resources/eval/user-guides/circuits-from-the-lab/cn0540/de10-nano

Friends, if any of you have ideas, please shoot.

Once I succeed in getting the FFT / Frequency Domain data display working i.e. prototype ready, then it won't take long as I have the opportunity to test the set-up on premises. 

Sincerely,

How about using a DSP / TMS320F6xxx series from Texas Instruments for the purpose of FFT ?

Any one with TI DSP experience, please ?

I think you are not quite in the right gear with respect to the processing hardware to do FFT calculations.

Start with defining the problem rather than the hardware to do the maths.

What size of DFT (determined by ratio of max frequency and resolution needed)

eg 1024 length DFT with 20kHz max frequency will give you about 20Hz resolution which may not work well for big engines. So you could use a much bigger DFT or reduce the maximum frequency.

Then you need to work out how many DFTs you need to compute per second.

Then you need to look at what kind of hardware will do the trick.

For example - about the cheapest way to hit your problem would be to use an ST STM32H7xxx series processor - some have 16 bit ADCs, easily fast enough for your application. Being ARM Cortex cores there is FFT code for free. The STM32H7xx will clock at 400 - 500 MHz. They are MUCH easier to use than FPGA or DPS type parts and the tools are cheaper and much easier to get help with.

You'll need to do some research to work out how fast any given chip or board can do the processing you need.

Of course if the chip isn't fast enough you may need to step up to something faster.

My advice would be to

define the signal processing task

get a prototype working using parts chosen to be cheap and easy to work with.

then refine the design.

Most people start off by using  a bought in ADC board that will just plug straight into a computer (almost always a PC).

I've known people start off with a PicoScope (or similar) and a PC - that way you hardly need to think about hardware design issues at all and can get right into the important bit of measuring some real data. (But you always have to define the processing task to scope the hardware you need first.)

MK

• I've written a flow for the mcc board, that lets you experiment with sample rates and sizes. For FFT and acceleration force calculations. A tool to test the theory in practice, and play with the parameters.

• I've written a flow for the mcc board, that lets you experiment with sample rates and sizes. For FFT and acceleration force calculations. A tool to test the theory in practice, and play with the parameters.