Friday, September 16, 2016

Implementing Software-defined radio and Infrared Time-lapse Imaging with Tensorflow on a custom Linux distribution for the Raspberry Pi 3

GNURadio Companion Qt Gui Frequency Sync - multiple FIR filter taps
sample running on Raspberry Pi 3 custom Linux distribution

The Raspberry Pi 3 is powered by the ARM Cortex-A53 processor. This 1.2GHz 64-bit quad-core processor fully supports the ARMv8-A architecture. For this project, a custom Linux distribution was created for the Raspberry Pi 3.  

The custom Linux distribution includes support for GNURadio, several FPGA and ARM Powered SDR devices, D-STAR (hotspot, repeater, and dongle support), hsuart, libusb, hardware real-time clock support, Sony 14 megapixel NoIR image sensor, HDMI and 3.5mm audio, USB Microphone input, X-windows with Xfce, Lighttpd and PHP, Bluetooth, WiFi, SSH, TCPDump, Docker, Docker registry, MySQL, Perl, Python, QT, GTK, IPTables, x11vnc, SELinux, and full native-toolchain development support.

The Sony 14 megapixel image sensor with the infrared filter removed can be connected to the Raspberry Pi 3's MIPI camera serial interface. Image capture and recognition can then be performed over contiguous periods of time, and time-lapsed video can be created from the images. With support for Tensorflow and OpenCV, object recognition within images can be performed.

D-STAR hotspot with time-lapsed infrared imaging.


For the initial run, an infrared Time-lapse Video was created from an initial image capture run of one 3280x2460 infrared jpeg image captured every 15 seconds for three hours. 40, 5mm, 940nm LEDs, powered by 500ma over 12v DC, provided infrared illumination in the 940nm wavelength.

Tensorflow ran in the background (on v4l2 kmod) and provided continuous object recognition and scoring within each image via a sample model. Finally, OpenCV was also installed in the root file system.

The time-lapse infrared video was captured of the living room using the above setup. Below this image are images of Tensorflow running in a terminal in the background on the Raspberry Pi 3 and recognizing/scoring objects in the living room.

Tensorflow running on the Raspberry Pi 3 and continuously capturing frames from the image sensor and scoring objects



 

GNURadio Companion running on xfce on the Raspberry Pi 3

Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Profiling Multiprocess C programs with ARM DS-5 Streamline

The ARM DS-5 Streamline Performance Analyzer is a powerful tool for debugging, profiling, and analyzing multithreaded and multiprocess C programs.  Instructions can easily be traced between load and store operations.  Per process and per thread function call paths can be broken down by system utilization percentage.  Branch mispredictions and multi-level CPU caches can be analyzed. Furthermore, disk I/O usage, stack and heap usage, and a number of other useful metrics can quickly be referenced within the debugger. These are just a few of its capabilities.

In order to capture meaningful information from the DS-5 Streamline Performance Analyzer tool, a Linux, multiprocess, C program was modified to insert 1000 packets into a packet processing simulation buffer.  A code excerpt from the program is below.  The child processes were modified to sleep and then wake 1000 times in order to simulate process activity.  The program was analyzed using the DS-5 Streamline Performance Analyzer tool.  There are two screenshots below the code excerpt where the program is loaded into the DS-5 Streamline Performance Analyzer.

void *insertpackets(void *arg) {

struct pktbuf *pkbuf;
struct packet *pkt;
int idx;

if(arg != NULL) {

pkbuf = (struct pktbuf *)arg;

/* seed random number generator */
...

/* insert 1000 packets into the packet buffer */
for(idx = 0; idx < 1000; ++idx) {

pkt = (struct packet *)malloc(sizeof(struct packet));

if(pkt != NULL) {

/* set the packet processing simulation multiplier to 3 */
pkt->mlt=...()%3;

/* insert packet in the packet buffer */
if(pkt_queue(pkbuf,pkt) != 0) {

...
...
...
...
...
...

int fcnb(time_t secs, long nsecs) {

struct timespec rqtp;
struct timespec rmtp;
int ret;
int idx;

rqtp.tv_sec = secs;
rqtp.tv_nsec = nsecs;

for(idx = 0; idx < 1000; idx++) {

ret = nanosleep(&rqtp, &rmtp);

...
...
... 
 
ARM DS-5 Streamline - Profiling the process creation application

ARM DS-5 Streamline - Code View with C code in the top window
and ARM assembly instructions in the bottom window

https://github.com/brhinton/de0-nano-soc/blob/main/run.c

Thursday, June 30, 2016

VHDL Processes for Pulsing Multiple GPIO Pins at Different Frequencies on Altera FPGA

 
DE1-SoC GPIO Pins connected to 780nm Infrared Laser Diodes, 660nm Red Laser Diodes, and Oscilloscope

The following VHDL processes pulse the GPIO pins at different frequencies on the Altera DE1-SoC using multiple Phase-Locked Loops. Several diodes were connected to the GPIO banks and pulsed at a 50% duty cycle with 16mA across 3.3V. Each GPIO bank on the DE1-SoC has 36 pins. Pin 1 is pulsed at 20Hz from GPIO bank 0, and pins 0 and 1 are pulsed at 30Hz from GPIO bank 1. A direct mode PLL with locked output was configured using the Altera Quartus Prime MegaWizard. The PLL reference clock frequency is set to 50MHz, the output clock frequency is set to 50MHz, and the duty cycle is set to 50%. The pin mappings for GPIO banks 0 and 1 are documented on the DE1-SoC datasheet.

Pulsed Laser Diodes via GPIO pins on DE1-SoC FPGA

- -- ---------------------
- -- CLOCK A AND B PROCESSES --
- -- INPUT: direct mode pll with locked output
- -- and reference clock frequency set to 50MHz,
- -- output clock frequency set to 50MHz with 50% duty
- -- cycle and output frequency scaled by freq divider constant
- -- ----------------------------------------------------------- 
clk_a_process : process (lkd_pll_clk_a)
begin
if rising_edge(lkd_pll_clk_a) then
if (cycle_ctr_a < FREQ_A_DIVIDER) then
cycle_ctr_a <= cycle_ctr_a + 1;
else
cycle_ctr_a <= 0;
end if;
end if;
end process clk_a_process;

clk_b_process : process (lkd_pll_clk_b)
begin
if rising_edge(lkd_pll_clk_b) then
if (cycle_ctr_b < FREQ_B_DIVIDER) then
cycle_ctr_b <= cycle_ctr_b + 1;
else
cycle_ctr_b <= 0;
end if;
end if;
end process clk_b_process; 
- -- ---------------------
- -- GPIO A AND B PROCESSES --
- -- INPUT: direct mode pll with locked output
- -- ------------------------------------------------------- 
gpio_a_process : process (lkd_pll_clk_a)
begin
if rising_edge(lkd_pll_clk_a) then
if (cycle_ctr_a = 0) then
gpio_sig_0 <= NOT gpio_sig_0;
end if;
end if;
end process gpio_a_process;

gpio_b_process : process (lkd_pll_clk_b)
begin
if rising_edge(lkd_pll_clk_b) then
if (cycle_ctr_b = 0) then
gpio_sig_1 <= NOT gpio_sig_1;
end if;
end if;
end process gpio_b_process;
GPIO_0 <= gpio_sig_0;
GPIO_1 <= gpio_sig_1;

Thursday, June 2, 2016

FPGA Audio Processing with the Cyclone V Dual-Core ARM Cortex-A9

The DE1-SoC FPGA Development board from Terasic is powered by an integrated Altera Cyclone V FPGA and ARM MPCore Cortex-A9 processor. The FPGA and ARM core are connected by a high-speed interconnect fabric. Linux can be booted on the ARM core and the FPGA and ARM core can communicate.

The DE1-SoC board below has been programmed via Quartus Prime running on Fedora 23, 64-bit Linux. The FPGA bitstream was compiled from the Terasic Audio codec design reference. After the bitstream was loaded on to the FPGA over the USB blaster II interface, the NIOS II command shell was used to load the NIOS II software image onto the chip. A menu-driven, debug interface is running from a terminal on the host via the NIOS II shell with the target connected over the USB Blaster II interface.

A low-level hardware abstraction layer was programmed in C to configure the on-board audio codec chip. The NIOS II chip is stored in on-chip memory and a PLL driven, clock signal is fed into the audio chip. The Verilog code for the hardware design was generated from Qsys. The design supports configurable sample rates, mic in, and line in/out.

Additional components are connected to the DE1-SoC board in this photo. The Linear DC934A (LTC2607) DAC is connected to the DE1-SoC and an oscilloscope is connected to the ground and vref pins on the DAC.

The DC934A features an LTC2607 16-Bit Dual DAC with i2c interface and an LTC2422 2-Channel 20-Bit uPower No Latency Delta Sigma ADC.

3.5mm audio cables are connected to the mic in and line out ports, respectively. The DE1-SoC is connected to an external display over VGA so that a local console can be managed via a connected keyboard and mouse when Linux is booted from uSD.

With GPIO pins accessible via the GPIO 0 and 1 breakouts, external LEDs can be pulsed directly from the Hard Processor System (HPS), FPGA, or the FPGA via the HPS.