3rd Party/Other Boards and Kits

[brennanwatt]

I am attempting to write a small test program that will send data from the Atlys Spartan-6 FPGA board to a windows PC. My preferred method of doing this is by USB to USB. Can anyone give me any insight into this? All I really desire as an end product is something like: FPGA sends a 1, PC displays a 1 in terminal, FPGA sends a 0, PC displays a 0 in terminal.

Thanks,

Brennan

[eteam00]

Can you be more specific?  Are you asking how to write a Windows app which reads and writes characters to/from USB?

-- Bob Elkind

[brennanwatt]

Yes, that would be a part of it. I don't need to worry about writing, just reading from USB. I was told that a python script would be the easiest way of approaching this.

I found a UART demo project for the Atlys that transmits data. Would that be the best way of approaching it from the FPGA end? Data transmit speed is a priority

[joelby]

The Atlys has a serial-to-USB adaptor on board (see "USB-UART Bridge (Serial Port)" in the reference manual). Install the EXAR drivers on your PC, attach the UART peripheral of your choice to these pins (A16 and B16), and away you go. Note that this solution is not particularly high speed - the fastest typical serial speed is 115200 bps, but it'll probably go a few times higher than that. What exactly is your target transmit speed?

On this Digilent Atlys Resources page, there's a (slightly outdated) example of using PicoBlaze with the UART peripheral to implement a basic serial console.

If you require transfer speeds up to 25 MB/s, you could investigate MakeStuff FPGALink, which takes advantage of the "PROG" USB port.

For data transfer speeds of up to about 80 MB/s, you can use the gigabit Ethernet port. There's an example of this on the Digilent Atlys Resources page, too. A significantly nicer updated version with cleaned up code and packet receive support is coming soon.

[brennanwatt]

Ultimately I will be streaming video through this connection with a resolution of 640x480 and minimum FPS of 30, so I need a pretty fast datalink. Do you have any idea when the updated example for the Ethernet port will be available?

[eteam00]

Ultimately I will be streaming video through this connection with a resolution of 640x480 and minimum FPS of 30

Is this packetised video over ethernet, or simple HDMI video from a conventional video source?

Considering the Atlys design, this is a question worth asking...

-- Bob Elkind

[brennanwatt]

I'm not sure if I understand what you're asking... The FPGA will be processing images from a camera and then sending them to the PC where they will be displayed in real time on a GUI I will be designing.

[eteam00]

I'm not sure if I understand what you're asking... The FPGA will be processing images from a camera and then sending them to the PC where they will be displayed in real time on a GUI I will be designing.

You didn't make clear whether the video source was via the HDMI input port or via ethernet (or USB?).

There are both ethernet-connected and USB-connected video cameras, in addition to vidcams with HDMI outputs.

-- Bob Elkind

[brennanwatt]

Ahhh I see. We're actually sending it in through the VHDCI connector.