Standalone System In Zedboard and FMCOMMS2

[romel_ivan333]

Good afternoon everyone,

I am working on a project to connect the Zedboard and FMCOMMS2 using the HDL workflow advisor.

 

What I want to do is to have the Zynq FPGA (PL, not the processor) generate samples of a sine wave and send these to the RF for transmission FMCOMMS2, and to have this system operating stand-alone, without any further connection to the PC running Simulink.

 
It seems to me that, the way I have the project set up, I need to keep Simulink connected to the board, even if it is not doing any processing. If I disconnect the ZedBoard from the PC, I get an error message on the PC. By "disconnect", I mean literally unplugging the Ethernet cable from the PC's port. The error message specifies that "a runtime error occurred in the System Object 'comm.internal.SDRTxZedBoardFMC234SL', while executing the 'stepImpl' method" .
 

I would also like to know if it's possible to save the generated bitstream into a bootable image, so that I whenever I turn the board on, I get the desired functionality. I have followed the instructions in the PicoZed SDR SpeedWay 2015 Training but it doesn' work. 

 
I have attached a Word document with more details about how I have my project set up; also, the project folder with all the files. I'd be grateful if you could take a look at it and see if I'm doing everything correctly.
 
Word document: https://www.dropbox.com/s/2avrwizrnjtfrgv/ZedBoard and FMCOMMS2.docx?dl=0
 
Project files:  https://www.dropbox.com/s/gqm70cenxecks6m/SineWave2.rar?dl=0

 
Thanks for your help,
Romel

[jpeyron]

Hi Romel,

This is an interesting project. Unfortunately this is outside of the scope of the forum. Others in the community might have more input. 

thank you,

Jon

[D@n]

If all you want to do is output a sine wave, you shouldn't need simulink at all.  Sending a counter, stepped by 2^n/clock_rate/desired_frequency at every sample, into a CORDIC component should be sufficient to do the same.  You can find several cordic cores on OpenCores, or you can build your own--they aren't that hard to build.

Dan

[romel_ivan333]

Hello Dan,

Thanks for your reply. Currently, I am doing this project because I want to use model-based design that Mathworks provides.  I have started with a simple  example such as sine wave because it is easy to implement, probe, and troubleshoot. I have followed many tutorials from Mathworks and Avnet successfully, but the last part standalone implementation is missing.  I think there are some problems with the "devicetree.dtb" and  "uImage"  files to boot Linux.  

Greetings,

Romel

[romel_ivan333]

Hi Jon,

Thanks for your reply. Yes, it is an amazing topic, I just started learning embedded systems and I like it a lot.  I will be pending if somebody in the forum has more comments. Once the project is done, I will post the final solution for the other members.

Greetings,

Romel.