The new USB JTAG Adapter from Altium allows you to fully experience the benefits of LiveDesign and interact live with your chosen development board, or product, via Altium Designer.
Connection using Altium's USB JTAG Adapter (or via the Altium NanoBoard) is the simplest method of interfacing Altium Designer with your design, either during development or in the field. The device plugs into a free USB port on your desktop PC or laptop, and delivers Hard and Soft Devices JTAG chain signals conveniently through a flying-lead cable, which then hooks into the board.
The adapter’s two sets of four JTAG signals simply connect to the relevant header pins on the development board, or to a custom connection on your final product. The full benefits of advanced JTAG access and LiveDesign are then available, which include:
• Interacting with sophisticated Virtual Instruments programmed into the FPGA
• Monitoring FPGA device pin status in real time
• Live power monitoring of devices and peripheral boards on the Desktop NanoBoard
• Interacting with development board hardware in real time
• Auto configuration in Altium Designer with NanoBoard hardware changes
• Real time hardware debugging, verification and testing
• Product reprogramming and interaction in the field via any laptop
Altium also provides information on, and support for, an extensive range of third-party development boards. This support covers specific instructions for connecting the board, constraint files and example projects that demonstrate the use of processor cores and virtual instruments.
For more information on third-part development boards and the USB JTAG adapter connection, check out the relevant section of the Altium Wiki at: https://wiki.altium.com/display/ADOH/USB+JTAG+Adapter
To see just some of the advantages of being able to connect into the heart of your design using the new USB JTAG adapter, take a look at the range of LiveDesign videos in the Altium DEMOcenter.
