Best Beginner Board That Can Pcie Interface With Pc

[exwhyzed]

Hi,

 

I'm plowing through learning AVR and i think my next battle will be dabbling iwth FPGA.  I would like to use the program ROS (Robot Operating System) but this looks like it poses a few challenges.  ROS runs on Linux, so i'd need one computer for that.  Then if i want to hook up a bunch of robot sensors to the FPGA, i would still need to connect the board to the PC.

 

In looking online, it looks like there are Diligent boards that have this PCIe connectivity.  But they are over $1000.  Am i missing something, or are these expensive boards the only way to have a PC and an FPGA work together in realtime?

 

If not, can someone perhaps give me some suggestions on where I could start learning about this type of topic (other than going to school because I'm already in school for something else).

 

I'd like to experiment with robot vision and robot balancing (wheel or legs).  An Atmel AVR chip has lots of pins for me to hook up sensors, wheel encoders, gyroscopes etc. But when I look at a Nexys 3 for example, i see a bunch of ports, and i'm not sure how sensors are even interfaced with these boards.

 

Okay after writing this i just stumbled upon an ebook called FPGA for dummies, so I guess that's a start.  But to anyone reading this, please feel free to throw in your "two cents."  Any information I can get will be much appreciated. Thanks in advance!

 

 

[jamey.hicks]

I would definitely recommend using a Zynq board. PCIe is such a headache, and none of the PCIe boards are cheap.

 

We've been putting together motors and sensors on a Motor Robot Kit (https://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Catalog.cfm?NavPath=2,403&Cat=11) with a Zedboard (but soon to be replaced by a Zybo to make more room).

 

We'll post a writeup when we're a bit further along, but the code is on github. Here's the test of the gyro peripheral module:

   https://github.com/cambridgehackers/connectal/tree/master/tests/test_gyro

[LariSan]

Hi exwhyzed, 

I'm not sure exactly what you are looking to do, but it sounds as if you are doing Linux development + FPGA. 

 

First, all of our boards connect to PC's over USB. 

PCIe is good for high speed processing when you want to shovel a lot of information over a data bus, but it is not required for most applications. 

So the question is if you want to just have your board talk to the PC (like transfer data to it), but do the processing on the board side (this is good if you want to program the board to be a robot and you would periodically connect it to the PC to program it, but the robot would run freely), or if you want the board to merely capture data and then shovel it over the the PC to do the processing (a robot that would need to be tethered to the PC).

 

Without knowing more of what you are wishing to do, I'd recommend that you would use our Zynq board (it's both a processor to run Linux and an FPGA). 

http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?NavPath=2,1332,1335&Prod=ZYBO

it's right now on sale at 151.00 USD, but is regularly 189.00. 

 

Hope that helps a bit. 

-Larissa

[exwhyzed]

Larissa,

 

Thanks for the information and recommendation.  I will have to do a bit more research and you've given me something to base my design around.

 

 

 jamey.hicks,

 

Thanks for the links.  I hadn't considered the chipKIT boads for my project but you've given me something new to think about.

 

 

Happy New Year all!

[JimO]

I would definitely recommend using a Zynq board. PCIe is such a headache, and none of the PCIe boards are cheap.

 

We've been putting together motors and sensors on a Motor Robot Kit (https://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Catalog.cfm?NavPath=2,403&Cat=11) with a Zedboard (but soon to be replaced by a Zybo to make more room).

 

We'll post a writeup when we're a bit further along, but the code is on github. Here's the test of the gyro peripheral module:

   https://github.com/cambridgehackers/connectal/tree/master/tests/test_gyro

Hello Jamey,

One quick note here...we have parts available to make the robot platforms bigger.  That may help if you want to continue using the Zed board.  Check out the Base Plate and Extender Plate options at http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Catalog.cfm?NavPath=2,403&Cat=11

[LariSan]

No problem! We love seeing what people are doing with our boards! Make sure to share on our Project Vault when you are done!

https://forum.digilentinc.com/index.php?/forum/16-project-vault/