Jetson DAC for non-audio Applications

Autonomous Machines Jetson & Embedded Systems Jetson Nano
1

Hi there,

I was looking to configure a Jetson to output a voltage signal which could be processed by some external circuit components. This voltage output would need to be an analog signal, so an external DAC would need to be used with the Jetson. This signal would be fairly high frequency, requiring sampling rates in the 500kHz range, and would ideally be a single voltage output, rather than the stereo output from most sound cards. I was wondering if anybody here has any experience using a DAC with the Jetson for a non-audio application, and could recommend any products which might work with this configuration. It would preferably have a 32-bit output as it will need a higher level of precision than most audio applications.

Also, due to the higher frequencies of this design, it might be limited by the transfer rate of the digital signal to the DAC. I was wondering what would be the fastest way to output the digital audio from the Jetson. I was looking at I2S and I2C, however I was wondering if there was some sort of parallel output which could set 32-bits at once, to maximize the digital output speed. Any help with this would be appreciated.

Thanks,
John

3

Hi,
The usecase looks special. Not sure if I2S isappropriate for it. There are some audio modules which can work with Jetson Nano. Please check development guide. You may use the working modules as reference and develop your usecase. Please give it a try.

4

Thanks very much for your response. To be a bit more clear, we are actually looking at a generic use case. Specifically, if we acquire a 16 bit or 32 bit output data from the Jetson, we can convert that into a quantized voltage level within a DAC. So to clarify my question, I am just wondering what output port would be ideal for retrieving data out of Jetson as a parallel bit stream.

5

Maybe SPI. If it were a Jetson with PCIe, then I might suggest a PCIe expansion. I very much doubt the i2s has the bandwidth you need.

7

Hi @john.mcinnis,
Did you find any DAC for non-audio applications for the Jetson?
A bit more specifically, I’m looking for a DAC such as MAX521 for the Jetson Nano, preferably with some python library. Any idea will be welcomed!
Thanks,
Roei