Connecting the Nexys A7 board to an IoT Service Through the Ethernet Port

[Jonno]

Hello all,

I'm interested in trying to send some data from the temperature sensor to an IoT service like Microsoft Azure through the Ethernet port.

I'm trying not to get ahead of myself, so I started focusing on using the Ethernet port first.

I've looked around old guides and forum posts like this one:

From what I gathered, I need Vivado version 2019.1 or older to properly use the Ethernet port, but getting some IP's from vivado 2019.1 and using it in vivado 2019.2 and newer versions might also work?

I'm wondering if there is an updated method to using the Ethernet port in vivado 2020.1?

Thank you.

Edited May 30, 2022 by Jonno
Added tags

[zygot]

What you want to do is, from a security viewpoint, very dangerous. Microsoft can't even figure out how to harden it's own Windows OS against bad actors using the internet to abuse its users. One might assume that the 'cloud' is safe. One should probably stop assuming that. There are just too many point of entry, not all of which are obvious.

FPGA software tools for Xilinx OS for ZYNQ and MicroBlaze simply ignore this aspect of internet connected devices. If you are using a ZYNQ platform you could run a custom version of Linux and have that as a potential way to do this a bit more safely, but Linux has become a prime target because of the prevalence of Linux based IoT connected devices. In theory, one could harden Ethernet in logic to mitigate external threats, but this would require a lot of expertise and effort.

An easy way to do what I hope you will decide not to do is to use a chip based interface like the ESP32... but again you are back to a processor running code that is open to being abused. I get the attraction and glamor of internet connected custom hardware but I don't appreciate the consequences of having so many poorly thought out, poorly implemented, and out of date devices posing such a threat to everyone's health and well-being.

I wish that things were different, but economic considerations will always be on the side of evil until connectivity comes in a very different form... given the way that the world is headed the next internet will likely be worse for the common user.

I do a lot of processor-less FPGA based Ethernet connectivity, using even the latest version of Vivado ( the IP is less friendly to the HDL design flow ). I (almost) never allow any of my platforms be exposed to the internet even when there's nothing there to exploit, as is the case for all logic Ethernet. Edited May 30, 2022 by zygot

[Jonno]

On 5/31/2022 at 2:46 AM, zygot said:

What you want to do is, from a security viewpoint, very dangerous. Microsoft can't even figure out how to harden it's own Windows OS against bad actors using the internet to abuse its users. One might assume that the 'cloud' is safe. One should probably stop assuming that. There are just too many point of entry, not all of which are obvious.

FPGA software tools for Xilinx OS for ZYNQ and MicroBlaze simply ignore this aspect of internet connected devices. If you are using a ZYNQ platform you could run a custom version of Linux and have that as a potential way to do this a bit more safely, but Linux has become a prime target because of the prevalence of Linux based IoT connected devices. In theory, one could harden Ethernet in logic to mitigate external threats, but this would require a lot of expertise and effort.

An easy way to do what I hope you will decide not to do is to use a chip based interface like the ESP32... but again you are back to a processor running code that is open to being abused. I get the attraction and glamor of internet connected custom hardware but I don't appreciate the consequences of having so many poorly thought out, poorly implemented, and out of date devices posing such a threat to everyone's health and well-being.

I wish that things were different, but economic considerations will always be on the side of evil until connectivity comes in a very different form... given the way that the world is headed the next internet will likely be worse for the common user.

I do a lot of processor-less FPGA based Ethernet connectivity, using even the latest version of Vivado ( the IP is less friendly to the HDL design flow ). I (almost) never allow any of my platforms be exposed to the internet even when there's nothing there to exploit, as is the case for all logic Ethernet.

I see.

 

Thank you for replying and I informing me about the risks.

 

I'll settle on my safety being my priority.