Red Pitaya radar firmware discussion

November 7, 2017

Since the August 2017 eclipse, Pavel has made numerous improvements to the FPGA firmware and associated C code. The particularly interesting changes are those enabling easy GPS 1PPS input. An interesting question is does the clock synchronize to 1PPS or instead tag the data at the pulse? It seems the latter is more likely at first guess.

Radar firmware/software: start with Pavel’s radar project.

The basic idea is to:

1. setup a virtual machine
2. install Vivado
3. compile & create an SD card image like the LED blinker example

Pavel’s commit adds the trigger logic to the radar projects. However, we experienced problems with radar.c

The server outputs Bus error when it reaches these lines. It stems from the sts (status) AXI, communication pathway.

Pavel said:

The error that you observe is expected. The radar.c code should be modified to adapt it to the radar FPGA configuration. In its current state, radar.c is mostly a copy of a code from an SDR project that I never tested with the radar FPGA configuration.