Red Pitaya in Research

Red Pitaya platforms are now an essential component of many scientific research projects in the fields of physics, communication, materials and bioscience. Scientists and research engineers value their open source nature, flexibility to run custom code, performance, small form factor and very attractive price.

Red Pitaya platforms find a place wherever research applications require slow or fast signal acquisition, generation, real-time FPGA or CPU signal processing. Due to their ethernet connectivity, they also provide the possibility for remote measurements, which is very convenient since users can control and gather data from research experiments completely remotely.

Benefit from open-source software

The platforms’ software is open source and available on Github. Device functionalities and data can be accessed through MATLAB, LabVIEW, Scilab and Python APIs. The time needed to develop new applications is short thanks to the intuitive software design, many useful examples and detailed documentation. Users often get help from other users who share their knowledge on the Red Pitaya forum.

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Useful examples

Our team constantly works on enriching our information base. Check out the documentation, teaching materials and case studies.

Remote control support

Apart from the web applications, Red Pitaya can be controlled with MATLAB, LabVIEW, Scilab, Python.

Red Pitaya boards are outstanding platforms for both slow and high speed data acquisition applications.  At the same time they are multifunctional measurement instruments (oscilloscope, sig. generator, spectrum and logic analyser, LCR meter…) – a Swiss army knife for scientists, researchers and engineers.

EXPLORE BLOG POSTS RELATED TO RESEARCH

Read more and find out how Red Pitaya can support your research

Red Pitaya for Evaluation of Southern Hemisphere Radio Propagation

In the station room, the antennas are connected to the two preamplifiers and those to the inputs of the receiving system. The receiving system uses a Software Defined Radio (SDR) system with a Red Pitaya FPGA programmable measurement device. Due to the low electromagnetic noise caused by humans in Antarctica, the preamplifiers were tuned to a high gain – a remote adjustment up to 55 dB amplification is possible.

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Testing a new exercise at the JSI TRIGA reactor - Cherenkov radiation-based power meter

"At the Jožef Stefan Institute TRIGA research reactor, we employed a RedPitaya board to perform Cherenkov light intensity measurements in reactor pulse operation mode in the framework of a bilateral research project in collaboration with the French Atomic and Alternative Energy Commission (CEA). The RedPitaya board was an ideal tool for this task, thanks to its excellent performance and flexibility. "

Building a ground penetrating radar for drones with Red Pitaya

Red Pitaya was used by a research group from the University of Maribor to control a low-cost ground penetrating radar attached to a hexacopter with the purpose of detecting landmines. The project, which was in development for three years, uses Red Pitaya for onboard signal processing, radar manipulation and transmitting data to the host computer via the TCP/IP protocol.

Portable Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT)

A portable Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) system has been developed with Red Pitaya STEMlab for biomedical applications. The Red Pitaya STEMlab is a portable device to realize voltage generation and data acquisition for the EIT system. The EIT system includes a modified howland circuit as a voltage controlled current source (VCCS), a high speed analogy multiplexer module, 8-electrode array and a personal computer.

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Red Pitaya for fish counting

Red pitaya plays a big part in an IoT active acoustic system for fish monitoring with direct application in biodiversity preservation near hydropower plants and dams. The system employs a cost effective single board computer as central processing unit. The acoustic signal processing is performed at two levels: the first at the board level (embedded), to decide upon transmission of data to a server, and the server level to show the results of detection and the number of fish passages (acoustic signature analysis).

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A highly stable monolithic enhancement cavity for second harmonic generation in the ultraviolet range

An experimental setup uses a bow-tie power enhancement cavity for critical SHG with a Brewster-cut BBO nonlinear crystal, delivering up to 2,500 times more SHG output power than is possible in single pass configuration. The cavity geometry is suitable for all UV wavelengths, reachable with BBO.

Explore Red Pitaya products for Research

STEMlab 125-14

STEMlab 125-14 is our most versatile product and offers additional performance for more advanced users in mind.

SDRlab 122-16

SDRlab 122-16 was developed specifically for software-defined radio and more demanding RF applications.

SIGNALlab 250-12

SIGNALlab 250-12 is most sophisticated Red Pitaya product, built for more demanding industrial applications and research.

Red Pitaya boards for Research institutes

See the main differences between STEMlab 125-14, SDRlab 122-16 and SIGNALlab 250-12. 

STEMlab 125-14
2x IN 125Msps 14bit ±1V / ±20V
2x OUT 125Msps 14bit ±1V
DC coupling (0-60MHz)
jumper selectable gain
Zynq 7010 / 512MB DDR
SDRlab 122-16
2x IN 122.88Msps 16bit +-0.5V/+4 dBm
2x OUT 122.88Msps 14bit +-0.5V/+4 dBm
AC coupling only
fixed gains
Zynq 7020 / 512MB DDR
SIGNALlab 250-12
2x IN 250Msps 12bit ±1V/±20V
2x OUT 250Msps 14bit +-2V/+-10V
DC coupling (0-60MHz)
software selectable gains and coupling
Zynq 7020 / 1GB DDR
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