Archive for the ‘Zynq’ Category

May 18 Webinar – Basics of Digital Control of Power Electronics

Friday, May 14th, 2021

Our webinar series is back! Grab your lunch or a coffee and join us for this free webinar on the basics of digital control of power electronics.

From the comfort of your own desk you can join ELMG Digital Power for a free webinar to expand your knowledge and expertise about the advantages that digital electronics provides including:

* Flexibility
* Configurability
* Re-tuning the loop for component variation such as Electrolytic capacitor freeze out at low temperatures
* Management of the non-linearity of the converter
* Self-measurement of the loop response in closed and open-loop

and learn about the three key basics of digital control of power electronics these being

1. Limited number of bits.

2. Power converter characteristics including non-linearity

3. Limited PWM timer precision

This webinar will be hosted and presented by Dr. Hamish Laird, ELMG Digital Power’s CTO and a Principal FPGA and Power Electronics Engineer. Hamish has considerable experience in the design and implementation of varied digital control systems and IP for power electronics on FPGA platforms.

The webinar on Basics of Digital Control of Power Electronics: Where to start and what is important will be held May 18, 2021, at 12 Noon PDT on Zoom.

Spaces are limited.  

See you at the webinar.

Click here to register

Free Webinar – Digital Control of Power Electronics using Zynq

Friday, January 31st, 2020

If you have just sat down at your desk with a coffee, then put that aside for a minute and grab your diary. Review your schedule for Tuesday 4th February and consider this stellar opportunity: on that day ELMG Digital Power will be hosting a FREE webinar on Digital Control of Power Electronics using Zynq.

That’s right, from the comfort of your own desk you can join ELMG Digital Power (Members of the Xilinx Alliance Program) for their Zynq Digital Power Webinar and expand your knowledge and expertise by discovering:

* What is important in digital power, including numeric precision and latency
* Why you would use a FPGA for digital power and why the Zynq SoC in particular
* Key issues in digital controllers in programmable logic, such as the serial-parallel trade-off, fixed or floating point,      choosing sample rates and what precision to use
* Building blocks for digital control with ELMG’s licensable IP cores
* Using the ARM cores in the Zynq to your full advantage.

This webinar will be hosted and presented by Dr. Hamish Laird, ELMG Digital Power’s CTO and a Principal FPGA and Power Electronics Engineer. Hamish has considerable experience the design and implementation of varied digital control systems and IP for power electronics on FPGA platforms.

The webinar on Digital Control of Power Electronics using Zynq, which includes a short Q&A session, will be held on Tuesday 4th Pacific Standard Time at 10am and is available globally.

Spaces are limited.  

See you at the webinar.

Click here to register

Power Electronics Digital Control Webinar Schedule for 2018-2019

Tuesday, May 8th, 2018

We are pleased to announce the 2018 power electronics digital control webinar schedule for ELMG Digital Power.

These free webinars are the best chance to be among the best digital power electronics control engineers in the world.

The sessions cover the need to know details of Digital Control of Power Electronics and include a question and answer session after the webinar.

Power Electronics Digital Control Webinar Schedule

Make a note of the dates.

Tuesday May 1 Digital Control of Power Electronics using Zynq …[sign up here]
Tuesday June 5 What you need in a development platform for Digital Power Electronics…[Sign up here]
Tuesday July 3 Designing and Implementing Digital Integrators
Tuesday August 7 Using Simulation Tools effectively in Digital Power Electronics Development.. [Sign up here]
Tuesday September 4 Measuring Power Converter Control Transfers
Tuesday October 2 Basics of Digital Power Electronics Control – Where to Start
Tuesday November 6 How to choose your control processor for Digital Power Electronics
Tuesday December 4 Frequency Domain Control Design for Digital Power Using SciLab
Tuesday January 8 2019 Precision Correction in Digital PWM Modulators
Tuesday February 5 2019 Filter Structures for Digital Power Electronics Control
Tuesday March 5 2019 Fractional Step Digital Filters
Tuesday April 2 2019 Development Structures for Firmware and Software in Digital Power Electronics
Tuesday May 7 2019 Grid Synchronization with PLLs

We’ll remind you of the time, dates and where to sign up by e-mail.

The webinars will be presented by ELMG Digital Power CTO, Dr Hamish Laird.

Power Electronics Digital Control Webinar Schedule

Dr. Hamish Laird at the ELMG Digital Power Camarillo Office

Building U-Boot PicoZed

Tuesday, January 2nd, 2018

Recently I needed to build U-Boot for the Picozed.  Mainly because we needed to get our control platform running on another Picozed variant but also to de-risk part of our process. For those of you that don’t know the control platform (called the Fyfe) is made from our IP blocks is in the Zynq fabric with Linux running on the Zynq A9 cores as the software host.  This gives us dedicated FPGA speed real time control in the fabric and all the good things that Linux provides such as networking, scripting , python and the like.  We use a PicoZed as the System on Module (SoM) for our control platform.  So this is the first post in the article series Building U-Boot Picozed.

Building U-Boot PicoZed

U-Boot is the ubiquitous boot loader for booting Linux.  It can be used to boot other systems as well but I just needed to create a U-Boot that would get me up and running on the Picozed.  Building U-Boot had never been my thing but it was decided that I should build and learn it for myself.

U-Boot or more correctly Das U-Boot is supported and maintained by the people at  https://www.denx.de/wiki/U-Boot.

Submarines

As an aside I think that the name Das U-Boot is a reference to the 1981 movie Das Boot about a U boat submarine.  This is a great movie with superb German dialog version.  Check it out.  Information on the movie is here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Boot.  The German language version is the better version.

Help!

So as I have been doing this whole software development thing for a while and as always the first thing I did was ask an expert.  It is always good to ask an expert.  It actually doesn’t matter which expert as the experts generally all know each other.

I asked Adam Taylor from Aduivo Engineering and of Microzed chronicle fame.  He helps with tricky FPGA issues and also helps with our IP blocks and test-benches.  Adam, it turns out, is not a U-Boot guy but recommended a number of people.  He also put a LinkedIn post out for me.  And I got recommended through Adam T. to Matteo Vit.  Matteo is extremely helpful.

FSBL

So I need to fill in some of the story as to how I was constrained.  We have this one client who likes Vivado 2016.2 and so we have residual development and support requirements that are in Vivado 2016.2.  Vivado moves on regularly and it generally gets better.  At the moment on my Linux laptop I have Vivado 2016.2, 2016.4, 2017.1 and 2017.2 all installed and all with projects.  I also have SDK for all these Vivado varients also.  I run straight Ubuntu 16.04 and all the Vivado versions go.

The risks of updating to new versions or providing support with historic Vivado versions are really beyond what I want to get into here.  I hope to write another blog series about that later.

Before we built U-Boot we needed the FSBL.  Before I did this I asked about whether this was the best way to go forward.

SPL or not?

I also consulted with Charles M. who is a very good Linux and U-Boot guy, a really good consultant on flash memory usage and also he is great company.  He proposed that I take the SPL route to U-Boot.  The SPL approach is where the processor configuration is done by including the hardware specific initialization code (ps7_init_gpl) into the U-Boot build.  This SPL is not officially supported by Xilinx for the Zynq U-Boot release.  The Xilinx description of the process is here http://www.wiki.xilinx.com/U-Boot+Secondary+Program+Loader.  I did not pursue this SPL but I plan to go through this process in the future for completeness.

Which U-Boot version?

It’s clear when you look at it that the U-Boot version and the Linux version need not be the same.  This was a really big realization for me.  And an important realization for those building Linux systems.

U-Boot is a boot-loader and it moves the binaries of the kernel, ramdisk and device tree from storage media to memory.  That is all it does.  U-Boot isn’t actually a Linux specific program.

U-Boot for PicoZed – should just work right?

So some of you will be wondering why I am writing this as the PicoZed must have an off the shelf from the git repo U-Boot version that just goes?  I found that the answer to this is no.  The U-Boot build when I selected PicoZed for the make option from the repo I pulled from the xilinx git did not work on a PicoZed.  I also found that the defconfig used for the picozed (don’t worry if you don’t know what that is I’ll get to that in a follow up blog) was not correctly setup to support the flash memory on the PicoZed.

Well this was a surprise.

So as a relative new U-Boot software user I decided that I would build U-Boot for the PicoZed myself and share the process with you.  I take the FSBL approach so what I do is compatible with the Xilinx supported U-Boot.  And I got it working.  Over the next couple of months I will show you what I have learned in building U-Boot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

ELMG Digital Power INC In California

Monday, November 14th, 2016

ELMG Digital Power Inc has long held the ambition of being the best digital controlled power electronics design company in the world.

And, to that end, we are pleased to announce that we are extending our operations to include a development and support site in Camarillo, California.

ELMG Digital Power has established this base in Camarillo, California to allow us to be well-positioned to support the increasing growth of digital power electronics control in California and across the country.  The team of engineering staff will be available to meet the needs of nationwide clients, who will also have access to all the available expertise and resources of ELMG Digital Power’s global team.

ELMG Digital Pwoer Control Platform Technology enables real time logging and visualization of waveforms from around the world or across the lab via the ethernet.

ELMG Digital Power Control Platform Technology enables real time logging and visualization of waveforms from around the world or across the lab via the ethernet.

ELMG Digital Power is committed to the provision of support, technology, know-how and products that will enable our clients to be respected authorities and do great thing in the area of digital power control.

Our clients can certainly have confidence in ELMG Digital Power’s expertise and experience as for the past twenty five years we have been working on digitally controlled power converters in motor drives, industrial switch mode power supplies, reactive power compensation, medium voltage system, power quality systems, motor starters, appliances and telecom switch-mode power supplies. ELMG Digital Power places a high value on innovation, safety and sustainability. Quality is one of our cornerstones, and even as we seek to streamline, update and improve, maintaining quality and reliability remains paramount.

ELMG Digital Power’s Eco System Approach of design, development, know-how sharing through training and partnerships is our principal methodology.  We are proud of our successful Eco System of solutions, training, support and long term partnership.

Digital Controller logging implementation

Digital Controller logging implementation

Some of the companies involved in the control and measurement of electric power we have worked closely with include (Click for testimonial or details)

Dr. Hamish Laird at the ELMG Camarillo Office

Dr. Hamish Laird teaching a class at the ELMG Camarillo Office

As well as providing world-leading FPGA based digital power electronics controller technology, ELMG Digital Power have developed products used in a variety of applications all around the world. These include

  • power transmission,
  • off-shore wind turbine DC Connection systems,
  • grid scale energy storage,
  • internal combustion engine management systems,
  • traction systems for ships,
  • communication links for power electronics
  • solar inverters
  • high voltage motor starters and
  • high voltage UPS to name just a few.

More detail on ELMG product development and systems, our key know-how and technologies can be found on our website here 

zynq webinar presentation slides

ELMG Digital Power is a Xilinx Alliance Program member providing world leading FPGA based digital power control platforms

We are excited and pleased about this new venture and look forward to discussing and supporting your digital power electronics design and technology needs from our new location at:
601E Daily Drive, Suite 112,
Camarillo, CA 93010
Phone: +1 805 764 2027
For more information contact ELMG Digital Power INC in California:

Louise Jennings

enquiries@elmgdigitalpower.com

Zynq Webinar Presentation Slides

Wednesday, July 27th, 2016

Dr. Tim King presented the Digital Power Control on a Zynq webinar.

In the presentation Dr. King detailed how the programmable logic fabric of the Zynq was fantastic for low latency and high precision digital power control.

zynq webinar presentation slides

What to do with the ARM A9 Cores?

He also outlined how to make use of the ARM A9 cores

The Zynq webinar presentation slides

The slides are available here


Download presentation