Where's all the Arty Z7 stuff?

[aappleby]

I just received the Arty Z7 board I ordered - it looked like a perfect mix of little Linux box, HDMI ports, and a big enough FPGA to implement some interesting video processing on.

I assumed like previous Digilent products there would be a nice set of intro material - in particular, I'd assumed that there would be a SD card image I could burn and stick in the board and boot up into some preconfigured Linux environment that would let me load bitfiles into the FPGA and such.

There appears to be... well, almost nothing. The "resource center" link on the product page goes to a stale Github repo on the support page, there's only one mention of the board in the forums, nothing on the Facebook page, nothing on Twitter, nothing on Stack Overflow, nothing useful in Google search. There are a couple "demos", but they don't appear to involve booting Linux. The "reference manual" in the documentation section talks about the board a lot, but the only Linux platform mention has a bright yellow "FIX ME" button next to it and the "Petalinux project" mentioned doesn't actually exist.

What the hell happened? Did I seriously spend $250 on a board that I can't even SSH into out of the box? I'm super disappointed, and will likely be sending the board back ASAP.

[asmi]

I think you've gotta wait a little bit since the board just came out a couple of weeks ago.

As for Petalinux - it does actually exist (it's Xilinx project and has nothing to do with Digilent), but you would have to build an image yourself. It can be done using Xilinx toolset, but it's not very beginner-friendly.

Besides - why would you want Linux on the board for video processing?

[aappleby]

Sure, I can understand releasing an incomplete project if this were a Kickstarter or something, but this wasn't a kickstarter - Digilent is a professional and respected company and this was a product marketed towards hobbyists and available for sale on their website that is obviously and painfully incomplete.

Even the Raspberry Pi guys had a maker-friendly bootable image available on day one, and their board costs an eighth as much.

[jpeyron]

Hi @aappleby,

I have passed you issues about our wiki and Github page as well as the SD card image on to the appropriate people. I do know that here are the different projects currently available for the Arty-Z7 on our github that does include a Linux base design. 

thank you,

Jon

[aappleby]

There's a Github repo (that's not linked from anywhere) at https://github.com/Digilent/Arty-Z7-20-linux_bd - "This project is an internal project used by Digilent for the Arty Z7-20 Petalinux Project. You are free to use it as you please, but it isn't documented on our Wiki."

Are there instructions anywhere on how to actually build the thing? The Arty Z7 reference manual says "To help you get started, Digilent provides a Petalinux project that will get you up and running with a Linux system quickly. For more information, see the Arty Z7 Resource Center."

The resource center link goes to the wiki - which has no info on Petalinux in it.

I'm willing to wait a week before requesting a refund.

[sbobrowicz]

It looks like the resource center was mistakenly missing a bunch of links. Thanks for pointing this out, I've added links for everything we have so far. I'm very sorry for any confusion and delay this caused.

Follow the petalinux quick start guide (now on the resource center) and you will be able to boot into a pre-built linux image. If you want a shortcut, just copy these two files to a microSD (FAT formatted) and use it to boot the Arty Z7 into Linux:

https://github.com/Digilent/petalinux-bsps/raw/master/projects/Digilent-Arty-Z7-Linux-BD-v2016.2/pre-built/linux/images/BOOT.BIN

https://github.com/Digilent/petalinux-bsps/raw/master/projects/Digilent-Arty-Z7-Linux-BD-v2016.2/pre-built/linux/images/image.ub

The linux_bd project is just the Vivado block diagram project we created the petalinux BSP project around. It is useful to start from it if you want to make some changes to the FPGA design used in your petalinux system, but was not intended to be documented as completely as our "Example Projects".

The FIXME in the reference manual was a reminder to update the SDSoC hardware platform status and that accidentally got left in. I've removed it. Thanks for pointing this out as well.

[jpeyron]

Hello everyone,

Update: To get the boot.bin file from the above link you will need to right click on the link and save link as.

thank you,

Jon

[breakin]

The state of arty z7 seems to be much better now compared to when this post was created but I have not been able to find the Vivado project for the program that is running on the arty z7 out of the box. That is when I first boot up my arty z7 (20) there is a bitstream running on the fpga. It flashes LEDs etc and responds to button presses. I was hoping to be able to compile this program myself since it probably is simpler than the hdmi-in/out etc. Thanks!

[jpeyron]

Hi @breakin,

Here is a thread that has the oob bin file.

thank you,

Jon

 

[breakin]

2 minutes ago, jpeyron said:

Hi @breakin,

Here is a thread that has the oob bin file.

thank you,

Jon

 

Ah there it is! Thanks!

For future people doing what I did; it would have helped if https://reference.digilentinc.com/reference/programmable-logic/arty/start was linked from https://reference.digilentinc.com/reference/programmable-logic/arty-z7/start 

[jpeyron]

Hi @breakin,

I will pass on your suggestion to our content team.

thank you,

Jon