RFSoC 4x2 board turning off while BaseOverlay function is executed

Support
1

Hello,

I am working with RFSoC 4x2 board, and I have some troubles in programming the board.

When I execute the cell given below for Base Overlay, most of the LEDs on the board are suddenly turned off.

from pynq.overlays.base import BaseOverlay
base = BaseOverlay(“base.bit”)

This is the video showing how the board becomes after executing the cell given above.

After that, the following message appears, saying that there is a server connection error.

image
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Initially I thought there was a problem in the SD card of the board.

To my knowledge the poorly written image file in the SD card causes problems in most cases, so I tried to re-write the image file in the card three times (one for the 2.7.0 version image file, and two for the 3.0.1 version image file.)

However the problem was not solved.

By the way, if you look at the video, you can see that the green LED representing DONE sign on the board is not turned off.

I think this is also related to the problem I want to solve.

Could you leave some comments or advices on this situation?

Thank you for your concern.

Ben

2

Hi,
What image did you burn in your SD card?
Same question for your bitstream, your .bit file

3

I downloaded the RFSoC 4x2 image file from this website (the URL given below):

As I planned to use the basic functions of the board, I did not touch the bitstream file included in the PYNQ image.

4

How do you connect to your board? Did you connect your computer to the board via the ethernet cable?
When you turn on the board, is there anything displayed in the led screen?

You should see an IP address like in the solution’s picture of this previous request : RFSoC 4x2 Does not show any IP address in the Display
(The display is not related to the coaxial cables connections of that picture)

6

That is right. I connected my computer to the board through the ethernet cable.

When I turn on the board, the screen looks like this:

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As you say, there should be an IP address on the screen.

However, after I followed the procedure of the post you sent, there is no change in the screen on my board…

Since the initial setups for the board I use had been done previously, it seems that I can use the IP address “192.168.3.1/lab” to access the board.

But until now, no IP address appears on the screen of the PYNQ board.

7

Are you using a Mac to connect to the board? If yes, did you see that previous post( Connecting RFSoC to a MacOS computer)?

If no, Could you try to connect the board to a router via a wired ethernet connection, to see if the router gives an IP address to your board?

8

Actually, the OS of the computer that I use is Windows 10.

When I check the router of the computer, it seems that it properly gives an IP address to the board.

As I told you, I could access to the JupyterLab of the board using the IP address 192.168.3.1/lab.

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But as you can see in the figure above, I can also access to the JupyterLab with the IP address 192.168.1.78/lab.

9

Do you still have the turning off problem when trying to connect to each IP address?

If so, if you connect your RFSoC to the router you mentioned via an eternet cable (after having autorized the connection in therouter settings or your network settings), is an IP address appearing on the led screen of the board?

10

Though the IP address does not appear on the LED screen, the board seems to be connected well to the router.

My problem is that, when I execute the cell shown in the image below to load the overlay, the board is imediately turned off.

image

Though the board is turned on again right after that, the JupyterLab in my computer says that the connection is not established.

The video that I uploaded in first my question shows the operation of the board when the overlay code is executed.

To make a long story short:

  1. The board is connected well, though there is no IP address on the screen.
  2. When the BaseOverlay or Overlay function is executed, the board is turned off and rebooted imediately.
  3. Therefore, the connection cannot be established right after the overlay functions are executed.
11

The instruction that is crashing the board is trying to access the bitstream in the pynq image you use to boot. But it seems you used the correct official pynq image for RFSoC 4x2 (and you even retry 3 times).
Can you do in a jupyter notebook other instructions (like a simple calculation)? Or are any instructions in python crashing the board?

I asked about connection because not seeing an IP address in the led screen made me thought that your board is physically faulty.

Finally, do you have the base.bit file ans other “base” files somewhere in the folder “usr/local/share/pynq-venv/lib/python3.10 (it was my version) /site-packages/pynq/overlays/” ?