It is becoming fashionable. After the Apple computer there came the Raspberry and Banana Pi and now the Red Pitaya.
The pitaja (also known as pitahaja or dragon fruit) is the fruit of various types of cacti, in particular the genera Hylocereus and Selenicereus. These plants occur naturally in Mexico, Central America and South America. They are also cultivated in South-East Asia in countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand and the south-east of China and Taiwan.
There are three types of pitaya that are grown commercially for their fruit:
• Hylocereus undatus with white flesh and a pink-red skin
• Hylocereus polyrhizus with red flesh and a pink-red skin
• Selenicereus megalanthus with white flesh and a yellow skin
Download the Latest Version. FlexRadio announces the availability of SmartSDR for Windows version 3.1.8, which is a SmartSDR general release containing new features and software defect fixes. The OpenHPSDR Project is a modular, open source hardware and software platform for development of all components of a Software Defined Radio. It is also a group of volunteers dedicated to the building of a pool of open-source Software Defined.
The pitayas with the pink skin have relatively little flavor, this is because the fruit is generally harvested too early in the country of origin and the fruit does not continue to ripen, unlike bananas for example. In contrast, the yellow pitaya from Colombia always tastes sweet, the taste does somewhat resemble that of kiwifruit. The pitayas can be cut in half and the flesh removed with a spoon, it is also possible to peel it before eating. The seeds can be eaten too. Many actually appreciate the seeds when consuming the fruit.
Source: Wikipedia.
The Red Pitaya
The Pitaya that is the subject of this blog is, however, something completely different. Not edible, but measurable.
Red Pitaya is an open source project developed around a re-configurable measurement instrument the size of a credit card. It can replace many expensive laboratory measurement and control instruments.
The users can start using the applications available within the ‘Bazaar’ free of charge marketplace. This can be achieved with a single click. At the same time they can view and modify the published source code in order to develop new applications and share their results with the community.
The Red Pitaya unit is a network attached device based on Linux operating system. It includes Radio Frequency signal acquisition and generation technologies, FPGA, Digital Signal Processing and CPU processing. Red Pitaya enables everyone to start using technologies, which were previously available only to advanced research laboratories and industry.
Source: http://wiki.redpitaya.com/
Why Red Pitaya?
Now with that knowledge we’re are already a long way in the right direction. But why is the Red Pitaya now considered so ‘hot’ by various amateur radio enthusiasts in the Netherlands? I think a number of developments are responsible for that:
• There has been a lot of activity in the open-source world to make the Red Pitaya measurement platform also suitable for SDR (Software Defined Radio). With thanks to Pavel Demin.
• The Red Pitaya has been halved in price. According to the January 2015 brochure from Reichelt, at that time the board cost twice as much as what it costs now (end of 2015).
• Heated debates on 3630 kHz about the various SDR solutions (FlexRadio (old and new), ANAN, HackRF, ELAD, ZEUS etc.).
And there are probably even more reasons. However, my interest was triggered because Onno, PA0ONO was already operational with a Red Pitaya transceiver and then, well, as an SDR man I did not want to be left behind. As one of the first users of the FLEX-1500 in the Netherlands and the promoter since 2006 of the various SDR receivers, I was keen to take a closer look at the Red Pitaya. Because I know from experience that Reichelt are very quick to deliver, I therefore ordered the Red Pitaya from them, and it was delivered by UPS within 2 days. Including the enclosure.
Unpacking Red Pitaya
I was actually planning to spend the next few weeks quietly experimenting with my new toy and to try various things. But as usual, enthusiasm got the better of me and so full-speed ahead. Embracing simplicity, here is a summary of what you need to do.
NB: These are instructions of how to install a fully fledged transceiver straight away. There are also other other solutions available for receive-only, using the programs SDR# or HDSDR.
• Make sure that you have a USB power supply (5 Volts, 2 A) with micro USB connector
• Buy a micro SD cart with at least 4 GB capacity
• Go to this website: http://redpitaya.com/quick-start/
• Download the Image and copy it to the SD card using Win32 Disk Image
• Follow the subsequent instructions on the quick-start website.
Once you have completed all this and have entered the MAC address you will, if all is well, see the page shown below in your browser:
(perhaps you still have to register and log in at the Red Pitaya.com website)
InferX™ X1 is the fastest and most efficient Edge AI Inference Accelerator
Flex Logix™ is the leading provider of embedded FPGA IP and software.
Top throughput on tough models.
More throughput for less $ & less watts.
Accelerate workloads
& make your SoC flexible for changing needs.
Flexradio/openhpsdr.org/acquisition Logic Driver Download Software
eFPGA proven on 12, 16, 22, 28, 40 & 180nm.
Superior Interconnect
Inference and eFPGA are both data flow architectures. A single inference layer can take over a billion multiply-accumulates. Our Reconfigurable Tensor Processor reconfigures the 64 TPUs and RAM resources to efficiently implement a layer with a full bandwidth, dedicated data path, like an ASIC; then repeats this layer by layer.Flex Logix utilizes a new breakthrough interconnect architecture: less than half the silicon area of traditional mesh interconnect, fewer metal layers, higher utilization and higher performance. The ISSCC 2014 paper detailing this technology won the ISSCC Lewis Winner Award for Outstanding Paper. The interconnect continues to be improved resulting in new patents.
Superior Scalability
We can easily scale up our Inference and eFPGA architectures to deliver compute capacity of any size. Flex Logix does this using a patented tiling architecture with interconnects at the edge of the tiles that automatically form a larger array of any size.
TIGHTLY COUPLED SRAM AND COMPUTE
SRAM closely couples with our compute tiles using another patented interconnect. Inference efficiency is achieved by closing coupling local SRAM with compute which is 100x more energy efficient than DRAM bandwidth. This interconnect is also useful for many eFPGA applications.
RECONFIGURABLE TENSOR PROCESSOR
Our reconfigurable tensor processor features 64 one-dimensional tensor processors closely coupled with SRAM which are reconfigurable, using our proprietary interconnect, enabling implementation of multi-dimensional tensor operations as required for each layer of a neural network model, resulting in high utilization and high throughput.
Flexradio/openhpsdr.org/acquisition Logic Driver Download Windows 10
software
Our inference compiler takes Tensorflow Lite and ONNX models to program our inference architecture using our eFPGA compiler in the back end. A performance modeler for our inference architecture is available now. Our eFPGA compiler has been in use by dozens of customers for several years. Software drivers will be available for common Server OS and real time OS for MCUs and FPGAs.
PCIe CARDS
Flexradio/openhpsdr.org/acquisition Logic Driver Download
Flex Logix chip products will be available in PCIe Card format for Edge Servers and Gateways. M.2 is in development.
Openhpsdr Thetis
Superior Low-Power Design Methodology
Flexradio/openhpsdr.org/acquisition Logic Driver Download Free
Flex Logix has numerous architecture and circuit design technologies to deliver the highest throughput at the lower power.