AD796x no-OS Example Project

See projects/ad796x_fmcz (doxygen) for the Doxygen documentation.

Supported Evaluation Boards

Overview

The EVAL-AD7960FMCZ is a fully featured evaluation kit designed to demonstrate the performance of the AD7960, a low-power 18-bit, 5 MSPS PulSAR differential ADC. The device uses an LVDS serial interface for high-speed data transfer and is configured through a simple 3-wire SPI port. The evaluation board connects to a Xilinx carrier board (such as the ZedBoard) via the FMC LPC connector, where an AXI ADC core, AXI DMAC, and AXI PWM generator on the FPGA manage data capture, conversion triggering, and clocking.

Applications

  • High-speed data acquisition systems

  • Communications and instrumentation

  • Medical imaging

  • Radar and electronic warfare

  • Test and measurement

Hardware Specifications

Power Supply Requirements

The EVAL-AD7960FMCZ is powered from the carrier board FMC connector. No external power supply is required when connected to a compatible carrier.

On-board Connectors

Connector

Description

P1

FMC LPC connector (underside) that mates with carrier

J1, J2

SMA connectors for differential analog input (IN+, IN-)

No-OS Supported Examples

This project is organized around the no-OS variant-based build flow. Selecting a variant at build time (--variant <name>) chooses which application is compiled. Shared initialization data is defined in src.

IIO Example

The IIO example exposes the AD796x ADC through the IIO framework using iio_axi_adc and AXI DMAC, enabling host-side data capture over UART. The project launches an IIOD server so that the user may connect via an IIO client such as IIO-Oscilloscope or Scopy.

If you are not familiar with ADI IIO Application, please take a look at: IIO No-OS

If you are not familiar with ADI IIO-Oscilloscope Client, please take a look at: IIO Oscilloscope

No-OS Supported Platforms

Xilinx

Used Hardware

Connections

Mount the EVAL-AD7960FMCZ to the ZedBoard via the FMC LPC connector. The AXI ADC core on the Zynq PL communicates with the AD796x through the LVDS interface routed via the FMC connector. Connect a micro-USB cable to the ZedBoard UART (115200 baud) to interact with the IIO server.

Build Command

The Xilinx platform uses the CMake/Ninja build system via the no_os_build.py helper script. Available variants: iio. Available boards: zed.

For toolchain setup and prerequisites, see the Xilinx CMake build guide.

# Source the Vitis environment (adjust path for your installation):
source ~/.xilinx/2025.1/Vitis/settings64.sh
# PowerShell (Windows) equivalent:
#   & "$env:XILINX_VITIS\settings64.bat"

cd no-OS

# Build the IIO example on zed
python tools/scripts/no_os_build.py build \
   --project ad796x_fmcz --variant iio --board zed \
   --hardware /path/to/pulsar_lvds_adc_zed/system_top.xsa

# Build and flash (requires a connected debug probe)
python tools/scripts/no_os_build.py build \
   --project ad796x_fmcz --variant iio --board zed \
   --hardware /path/to/pulsar_lvds_adc_zed/system_top.xsa \
   --probe openocd --flash