Susan Nordyk
EDN
Prototypes developed with the Avnet MicroZed carrier card kit combine the MicroZed system-on-module (SOM) with the large ecosystem of Arduino shields for use in such applications as industrial control, remote sensing, embedded vision, and many other IoT systems. The carrier card provides an Arduino Uno R3-compatible shield interface that connects to the programmable logic I/O on the MicroZed SOM, allowing designers to custom-tailor interfaces between the shield circuits and the programmable logic.
In addition, the carrier card includes a subset of Arduino-compatible connectors for interfacing the MicroZed SOM to a low-power MCU evaluation board. The interface not only provides connectivity between the MCU and the processing system in MicroZed’s Zilinx Zynq-7000 all-programmable SoC, but also allows the MCU to control MicroZed’s power rails. This enables use cases where power consumption can be reduced by offloading routine tasks to the MCU, while reserving Zynq SoC operation for the functions that require its unique processing capabilities.
The Avnet-designed MicroZed carrier card kit for Arduino costs $89. The MicroZed SOM is sold separately.
