Opal Kelly Blog

FrontPanel 5.1 Release

FrontPanel 5.1.0 is now available on the Pins Downloads page. Remember that you need to be logged into Pins to see and access the FrontPanel SDK downloads.

FrontPanel Profiles are a great way to jump start a project with the FrontPanel SDK. With simple XML syntax, you can create basic graphical user interfaces quickly to interface to your FPGA gateware and the hardware beyond.

With FrontPanel 5.1.0, we have added event-based script capability to FrontPanel Profiles. Scripts can respond to both user input such as button presses and entry changes as well as FPGA events such as wire out (asynchronous value changes) and triggers (synchronous events). These simple scripts provide extensible software capabilities to your hardware interfaces without having to build a full application in C++, Java, Python, etc. Consider FrontPanel scripting to…

  • Perform preprocessing on numerical entries.
  • Format outputs for human-readable display.
  • Evaluate and process data blocks from pipes.
  • Perform closed-loop processing.

Release Highlights

  • Support for embedded scripting in FrontPanel XFP Profiles.
  • New product (XEM7310MT and XEM8350) support has been added.
  • Added support for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (64-bit only).
  • For more details, visit the FP 5.1 Release Notes.

Operating System Support

  • Windows 7, 8.1, and 10 are supported in 32-bit and 64-bit architectures. (Microsoft EOL for Windows 7 is January 2020. That will be ours as well.)
  • macOS version 10.10+
  • Ubuntu 18.04 LTS is now the primary Linux support platform and is supported in 64-bit only until the EOL date (Q2 2023).
  • Ubuntu 16.04 LTS has been updated in both 32-bit and 64-bit releases. This is our final 32-bit Linux distribution. EOL for 16.04 LTS is April 2021.
  • Ubuntu 12.04 LTS has been updated in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. EOL for 12.04 LTS was April 2017. This is our last (unpaid) release on this distribution.
  • CentOS 7.x (7.0 in this release) is available for this release.
  • CentOS 6.x (6.9 in this release) remains as a legacy platform (EOL for CentOS 6 is Q3 2020).
  • Several Linux ARM targets are also available and supported as time allows: nVidia Jetson TX2, nVidia Jetson TK1, Raspberry Pi. See Pins Downloads for details.
  • Windows Python support is Python 2.7 and 3.6.
  • Linux Python support is for whichever version is installed natively with the respective distribution.