{"id":15195,"date":"2016-07-07T11:02:02","date_gmt":"2016-07-07T18:02:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.digilentinc.com\/?p=15195"},"modified":"2025-06-02T02:37:00","modified_gmt":"2025-06-02T09:37:00","slug":"zybo-pmod-pack-now-has-linux-support","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/zybo-pmod-pack-now-has-linux-support\/","title":{"rendered":"Zybo Pmod Pack Now Has Linux Support"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Zybo
Closeup of Zybo Pmod Pack Demo running at ASEE. The PmodOLED is currently displaying the ambient temperature of 24 degrees Celsius (a little hard to make out in this photo). It was fun watching the ambient temperature spike when attendees were let into the exhibit hall!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We recently\u00a0debuted the Zybo Pmod Pack as the first of many Pmod <\/a>Packs to join the Digilent Pmod ecosystem. This particular pack’s hardware was chosen specifically to\u00a0compliment the features of the Zybo Zynq Development Board<\/a> (although will work well with any of our\u00a0FPGA<\/a> or MCU<\/a> boards) including a Bluetooth module,<\/a> real-time clock and calendar, a light and\u00a0temperature sensor as well as an OLED display, all for $60 USD.<\/p>\n

If this wasn\u2019t enticing enough, we\u2019ve now\u00a0added software support that takes the Zybo Pmod Pack from complimentary to crucial for anyone\u00a0looking to speed up their embedded Linux development process with Zybo.\u00a0To quote\u00a0our\u00a0Applications Manager,<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cLinux is now accessible to our customers like it has never been before.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

This\u00a0post will discuss how the accompanying demo works and where to find it.\u00a0The Zybo Pmod Pack Demo<\/a> uses the PmodALS <\/a>ambient light sensor, PmodTMP3 <\/a>temperature sensor, PmodRTCC <\/a>real time clock and calendar, PmodBT2 <\/a>Bluetooth module and PmodOLED <\/a>display. The light\u00a0sensor outputs a voltage range from 0-3.3 V which we\u2019ve converted to percent saturation of the circuit\u00a0rather than lux. The temperature sensor outputs raw information as milli-degrees Celsius with a 0.5 \u00b0C resolution. A simple conversion outputs data in degrees Celsius. The real time clock and calendar is used\u00a0to display the year, month and day. By adding this module, the demo can keep the date and time even\u00a0when the Zybo is power cycled (provided the coin cell battery isn\u2019t removed). All values are displayed on\u00a0the OLED display as well as sent to the terminal wirelessly via Bluetooth.\u00a0To get and display data, pre-existing Linux drivers were used for all five ICs of the Pmods.<\/p>\n

\"zybo
Complete Zybo Pmod Pack Demo sending ambient light, temperature and clock data to the terminal via Bluetooth.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Pretty convenient! In order to display the sensor\u00a0and time values on both the PmodOLED as well as in the terminal, two separate threads are running.\u00a0One is controlling the local display to the OLED while the other sends information to the terminal via\u00a0Bluetooth. This multi-threaded approach is made possible due to the on-board Linux operating system. In other words, the Zybo Pmod Pack Demo consists of two different embedded Linux apps, both\u00a0designed using the PetaLinux <\/a>Toolset.<\/p>\n

The PetaLinux Toolset was\u00a0created by Xilinx <\/a>and designed specifically to make embedded\u00a0Linux design more accessible to Xilinx FPGA users. Xilinx’s official website defines it as follows:<\/p>\n

PetaLinux Tools offer everything necessary to customize, build and deploy Embedded Linux solutions on Xilinx processing systems. Tailored to accelerate design productivity, the solution works with the Xilinx hardware design tools to ease the development of Linux systems for Zynq\u00ae-7000 All Programmable SoCs<\/a>, MicroBlaze and PowerPC.<\/p>\n

PetaLinux consists of three key elements: pre-configured binary bootable images, fully customizable Linux for the Xilinx device, and PetaLinux SDK which includes tools and utilities to automate complex tasks across configuration, build, and deployment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

FPGA <\/a>users can now design and build Linux systems and deploy custom programs\u00a0using a very standard and well documented process.\u00a0In addition to the Linux support, each Pmod in the Zybo Pmod Pack has a custom Microblaze IP core<\/a> that\u00a0allows for easy drag and drop programming. You can find more information about the range of support\u00a0options on the Zybo Pmod Pack wiki page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We hope you enjoy the\u00a0bundle and stay tuned as more Pmod <\/a>Packs will be coming very soon! Let us know in the comments below what you think you could do with this product!<\/p>\n

0<\/span><\/a><\/div><\/div>
Be the 1st to vote.<\/div><\/div>
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Check out the new Zybo Pmod Pack Demo and all of this product’s awesome capabilities!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":15200,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,1554],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[4491],"class_list":["post-15195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-expansion-modules","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/zybo-pmod-pack-demo-3-e1467913993688.jpg","authors":[{"term_id":4491,"user_id":26,"is_guest":0,"slug":"talesab","display_name":"Talesa Bleything","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7445e0f9a1a578bd8aca1528d6ed4c8a?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"Bleything","last_name_2":"","first_name":"Talesa","first_name_2":"","job_title":"","description":""}],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15195"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31603,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15195\/revisions\/31603"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15195"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=15195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}