Introducing the FPGA Interface Python API

[Terry_ALE]

This came up during an onsite HT FPGA class and am not the end user.  They have the link to this forum discussion and will reach out to you if it is needed.

[metux]

Why aren't you using the standard Linux infrastructure for FPGA deployment and control ?

(it's just a matter of few days to add a backend of some new fpga chip, in case you've got some that isn't supported yet).

And why aren't you just adding a new bus driver for your interface, so common things like channels, queues, registers, irqs, etc can be directly supported by existing kernel infrastructure ?

Ah, looks like you're trying to do IRQs in userland. That's funny, especially when calling that "realtime" at the same time. Oh, are that really actual IRQs (that finally trigger the CPUs irq line, which needs to be handled in-kernel), or just some status registers ?

And the really big question remains: how could we ever validate that stuff, w/o any access to the source code and being kept completely in the dark about everything ?

[Terry_ALE]

I recommend you post this to the LabVIEW Idea Exchange: https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/idb-p/labviewideas

[SKTheLimit]

Does this API help in any way for my Mac to access indicators/controls of FPGA VI that is running on a network cRIO?

My goal is to let my client to read/write access to FPGA VI on cRIO. If not, can you advise what technology I can use to do that? I believe this API requires nifpga.dll so is this Windows only?

Thank you!

[Michael_Strain]

Unfortunately the libraries that the FPGA Interface Python API calls into and depends on do not support OSX today.

If you are experienced with python, it probably wouldn't be too hard to have a simple python app running on the cRIO expose the data you want through an RPC layer or something.  I know at least one person has made a simple REST server to publish the data from the cRIO (I don't recall if they ever open sourced it though).

[simbim]

Can you provide additional information on how to use this interface on myRIO hardware? Can the Python session be run on the PC connected to the myRIO or it needs to be on the RT Linux of the myRIO?

[Michael_Strain]

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@simbim wrote:

Can you provide additional information on how to use this interface on myRIO hardware? Can the Python session be run on the PC connected to the myRIO or it needs to be on the RT Linux of the myRIO?

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If you build a bitfile for a myRIO target, then you can use that bitfile from a PC connected to the myRIO.  You would specify your resource name as rio://ip-of-myrio/RIO0.