Hardware

jAER Hardware

jAER uses USB to interface to the AER hardware, including (but not limited) to the following components

Tmpdiff128 retina

This silicon retina dynamic vision sensor sends events over a USB2 high speed (480Mbps) interface. See the silicon retina pages for more information. See http://siliconretina.ini.uzh.ch/wiki/doku.php?id=userguide for a detailed user guide.

Steps to use DVS128 or Tmpdiff128 silicon retina camera. (Windows XP platform only)

1. Install jAER software (see jAER software installation).
2. Plug in the camera, install the USB driver from drivers\driverUSBIO_Tmpdiff128_USBAERmini2.
3. Start jAERViewer.exe from the root jAER folder.
4. Choose DVS128 or Tmpdiff128 class from the AEChip menu item depending on your camera model.
5. Click the Biases button at the lower left corner of the viewer (or select from View/Biases menu item).
6. Load bias values for the retina from biasgenSettings\DVS128*.xml or biasgenSettings\tmpdiff128.xml. There are a variety of settings available; try different ones to see how they affect the operation.
7. The camera should now run.

USB2AERmini2

The board can monitor and sequence events over a USB2 high speed (480Mbps) interface. At the moment, it supports only point-to-point AER.

See the Documentation page or (even better, as the documents on this wiki are not updated as often) open the Userguide in the help menu of a jAER Viewer for more information.

The USBAERmini2 is NOT compatible with 5V devices. Please see this Xilinx document if you would like to interface to 5V.

Here you can download the free Xilinx webpack software, with which you can compile VHDL and download it to the CPLD

http://www.xilinx.com/ise/logic_design_prod/webpack.htm

SimpleMonitor

The original SimpleMonitorUSBXPress boards (these are the boards shown below) are also supported by the jAER software described here.. These boards are USB2.0 compliant but only transmit at USB full speed (12 Mbps), limiting monitoring rate to about 100 keps (thousands of events per second). The firmware was modified recently to support double buffered FIFO use allowing continuous streaming without pauses. Still, they are handy because they are so simple. They are further documented and the hardware design is fully open sourced here.

USBServo

This very simple little board costs about $10 to build (in quantity of 10) and uses a Silicon Labs C8051F320 (like the SimpleMonitor boards above) to control up to 4 servo motors. It goes with the interface ch.unizh.ini.caviar.hardwareinterface.ServoInterface and is represented by the ch.unizh.ini.caviar.hardwareinterface.usb.SiLabsC8051_ServoController class. It is being used in various robots, including a robotic goalie and a fast monster truck.