Been there, got the T-shirt

[ajtravis]

Hi,

I gave a talk at the Mario Negri Institute (non-profit pharma research) in Milan last week and promoted Parallella as a potential scale-out option for Bioinformatics work: "High Performance Computing for Bioinformatics: Scale up or scale out?"

I met people from the Mass Spectrometry lab at MNI after my talk and they are very interested in using Parallella as the controller and DSP computer for a low-cost DIY mass spectrometer project they have designed for use in schools/colleges for teaching. At present they are using a Raspberry Pi. I think Parallella is a better alternative but we need to get the USB working properly to gain credibility with potential users of Parallella as a 'Desktop' computer or instrument controller. USB is not an issue for the RPi, but it still is for a significant number of people (including me) who are using Parallella.

The DIY Mass Spectrometer requires 12-bit D/A to control the deflection field and 12-bit A/D to detect the molecular fragments. Is this the sort of thing that could be done using the Parallella FPGA directly (with a few passive componenents) or would it be better to use a GPIO board designed for the purpose? Bear in mind that this needs to be a low-cost project for schools/colleges.

Bye,

Tony.

[G4GUO]

How you do it depends on the sample rate you require.

- Charles

[ajtravis]

[AndyC]

You could do it using the FPGA but a 1khz/12 bit two channel sample rate could easily be handled without involving the FPGA at all you could just run the code on the arm using a low cost ADC using the GPIOs. I guess this is what they are doing with the Pi.

I have gone the other way with implementing a Sigma Delta DAC implemented on the FPGA, it might be interesting to have a go at the reverse way. Would you like me to have a look?

[ajtravis]