Connecting RFSoC to a MacOS computer

Support
1

I’d like to use PYNQ from a MacOS computer. The board I’m using is a ReadDigital 4x2. It comes up with a fixed IP address, 192.168.1.3.1 using a USB3 connector. I tried it on a MacOS iMac running Monterey and of course it didn’t find it. Must be something simple! Anyone have a method that you can share?

Thanks,
Drew

1 Like
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Did you connect your board to a network via the eternet port of the board? Is an IP address displayed on the screen of your RFSoC 4x2 when it is turned on?

What you could do is connect your RFSoC 4x2 to a router via a eternet cable, and then connect your MacOS machine to the router via a wireless connection.

2 Likes
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Hi @drewphysics,

Welcome to the PYNQ community.

@matthew is asking the right questions, answering those would help to solve the issue.

I noticed that the IP you are reporting is incorrect, if you’re using the USB gadget, you should connect using 192.168.3.1:8888/lab

Mario

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Thanks!

What I’d like to be able to do is connect the board to the MAC directly, just like I do with the PC. I don’t have a wired network to use, unfortunately, and even if I did, the campus network people will probably not allow it as they are getting very strict with IOT, which is what they consider this board to be.

I tried connecting the board to the MAC directly with an ethernet cable, and when I booted it up the display says “No IP detected”. When I look at the MAC network settings, it does show ethernet connected, so the computer sees the board. I configured Ethernet on the Mac to have the following settings:

Configure PIv4: Manually
IP address: 192.168.3.2
Subnet Mask: 255.255.0.0
Router:

I’m just not that good with networking to know how to do this, and maybe it’s not possible?

Thanks!
Drew

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Sorry, I should have added: after trying that configuration, I opened up a browser and tried to go to http://192.168.3.1:8888/lab but no dice.

Drew

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“What I’d like to be able to do is connect the board to the MAC directly, just like I do with the PC.” Did you already successfully connect your board to a computer?

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Hi @drewphysics,

Have you followed the getting started video?

Check this video, this is the easiest way to get connected.

Mario

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Yes, it connects to a PC running Windows 11 just fine. What I’d like to do is connect to an Apple computer running MacOS and use it to send python commands but not to run Vivid or anything like that.

Drew

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Yes, thanks, but it doesn’t tell me much about how to get it to work with an Apple computer. If that’s at all possible, that is!

Drew

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One more test I did that did not work: I took a router (wired) and plugged the MAC and the board into the router. The Mac comes up with an IP address that the router gives it. Then I boot up the board, hoping it would then DHCP to the router to get an address. But it still says “No IP detected”. This makes me wonder, what is it looking for? I thought it already has a IP address 192.168.3.1 but if it has DHCP enabled, it should have gotten one from the router. So I guess I’m confused about exactly what the 4x2 ARM chip is doing when it boots up. Is there documentation about this perhaps?

Thanks again, sorry for all the SPAM!!!
Drew

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I saw in the FAQs that one can connect a USB micro cable to the 4x2 USB prog/uart connection. The documentation seems to say that when the board boots up, it will stream status to that USB output. So I looked at the documentation here:

https://pynq.readthedocs.io/en/latest/faqs.html#how-do-i-setup-my-computer-to-connect-to-the-board

and it showed how to do this, using 115200 baud rate. I hooked it up, ran the “screen” app on the Apple computer, and rebooted. Da nada. I must be missing something (a lot of something apparently!)

Drew

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Sorry for all this spam, but I got the usb uart connection to work. There are actually 2 usbserial devices listed in /dev/ on MacOS, and both are tty and cu devices. Only one of them works, and then using tty not cu. So the correct command is

screen /dev/ 115200 -L

and that shows me all of the linux startup streaming, and gives me a terminal on the 4x2.

To get the 4x2 to talk to an Apple, it turns out to be easy:

  1. connect the ethernet cable between the 4x2 and the Apple computer
  2. go into the MacOS settings and click on Sharing
  3. click on “Internet Sharing” on the left, it will bring up a new screen. Select "Share your connection from: (in my case, wifi) and “To computers using:” and click on “Ethernet”.
  4. Then click on the box next to “Internet Sharing” on the left. It will give some warnings.
  5. Reboot the 4x2. It now says “PI Addr (eth0) 192.168.2.2” on the display window and I can run the notebook from the Apple computer

Drew

1 Like
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If I understand correctly, you can now access the Jupyter Notebooks in the board (these notebooks: RFSoC-PYNQ/boards/RFSoC4x2 at master · Xilinx/RFSoC-PYNQ · GitHub).

Can this request be closed or do you have another question?

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Yes, thanks, I’m good to go. No more questions. About this subject anyway! :grin:

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That’s great @drewphysics.

Thank you for sharing the solution!