Any simple way to self-test FPGA card?

[dillon]

I'm attempting to create a simple self-test function for a populated 1042Q PXI chassis in LabVIEW. The DAQmx Self Test VI works for most of the cards, but a 7853R FPGA card is also present in the system. I'm wondering if anyone is aware of any straightforward way of conducting a self-test on that card?

[Dragis]

It depends on what you want to test. You can certainly design in self test routines into your LabVIEW FPGA designs. If you have a more concrete example of what the test routines are trying to evaluate we can try to help figure out a way to do it.

[dillon]

I was just wondering if there is some kind of simple go/no go test for the FPGA card. I know that I could loop back the I/O and write a program to conduct some level of testing, but I was hoping that there is some kind of internal diagnostic that could be conducted on the card without the need for external wiring or much new FPGA code creation. I figured if someone in the community has had a similar need, it could save me some development time. However if the FPGA device and it's host card don't have self diagnostic capability then I'll just have to create something custom to fulfill my need.

[Kilometers · Accepted solution]

There is not a simple built-in self test for an FPGA card like there is for a standard DAQmx card. The reason for this is that the DAQmx self test accesses the firmware of the card and runs some basic checks there. There is no such firmware on the FPGA card because the FPGA card allows you to build your own underlying software for a device. 

If you want to check on proper communication with the FPGA chip you could try compiling a blank VI to the chip. If you need to check IO functionality you will have to put some basic functionality in the VI, but this shouldn't take much development time.