Prerequisites

What you need depends on what you are trying to do. As a minimum, you need to start out with:

Hardware prerequisites

  1. The EVAL-AD7770-AD7779 evaluation board. All three device variants (AD7770, AD7771, AD7779) share the same hardware form factor and connect to the ZedBoard via FMC LPC. The active device is selected in firmware. Refer to the evaluation board user guide for board-level details.

  2. An FPGA carrier platform: ZedBoard (Zynq-7000 ARM/FPGA SoC development board)

  3. A micro-SD card (16 GB or larger)

  4. A Micro-USB cable for UART console access

  5. A network cable (Ethernet) connected to a router or switch

Software prerequisites

The following software files are required to boot the system. Pre-built files for this reference design are distributed as part of the ADI Kuiper Linux SD card image:

  • BOOT.BIN - first-stage bootloader, FPGA bitstream, and FSBL

  • uImage - Linux kernel image

  • devicetree.dtb - device tree blob for the ZedBoard + AD777X

Note

These files are meant to be placed on the FAT boot partition of a Kuiper Linux SD card. They replace the default boot files for the ZedBoard. The root filesystem (ext4 partition) is provided by the Kuiper Linux image. See Using Kuiper Images for instructions on flashing the Kuiper Linux image to an SD card.

If you prefer to build from source, the HDL project is available at projects/ad777x_fmcz. Build instructions can be found at Build an HDL project.

Normally, for basic functionalities regarding visualizing the data received from the FPGA, we use the following:

  1. IIO Oscilloscope, a graphical tool for capturing and visualizing IIO device data

  2. Scopy v2.0 or later (must contain the IIO plugin)

A UART terminal application (e.g. PuTTY, Tera Term, Minicom) configured for 115200 baud, 8N1 is needed to observe the boot process and interact with the Linux shell.

Note

ADI does not offer FPGA carrier platforms for sale or loan; obtaining one is a normal part of development or evaluation.