Introduction

Rhonda software specializes in developing video analytic algorithms, including hardware development for FPGA. Lattice HDR-60 Evaluation board was selected as a development platform. A typical development cycle consists of implementing all required modules in VHDL or Verilog programming language and then debugging them in a simulator. When debugging of individual components is complete, they are integrated and tested on actual FPGA hardware. If something is not working as it should, debugging the hardware video analytics algorithms on the actual hardware can be a challenge, especially if no soft-core CPU is instantiated. HDR-60 board has a camera sensor (input) and an HDMI output. So, many video analytic algorithms take input video signal from the camera, process it and send resulted output video stream to HDMI. If something is not working and the results you see are not what you expected, you have very limited means of debugging.

Recently, Rhonda Software took yet another step towards more power, area and cost effective solutions targeting broad range of embedded devices. In an effort to make one of our leading solutions myAudience-Count embedded-friendly, different possibilities were considered. Here is where FPGA technology came at hand.