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Program Xilinx CoolRunner II CPLD board from Digilent in Windows 7.

March 28th, 2012

kiran

Recently I got an opportunity to put my hands on the Cool Runner II CPLD board which contain a XC2C256 device. The reason for this post is because it is not possible to directly program Xilinx CoolRunner II CPLD board using inbuilt Xilinx ISE iMPACT without an additional JTAG programmer device from Windows 7. If you buy the board there is a CD included which contain a coolrunner-II utility window program for programming the device. Unfortunately, I did not get this CD and I was trying to program this board in Windows 7 with various ISE versions. Later I found out that this one only works with Windows XP and I think Vista too, but not with Windows 7.

CoolRunner-II XC2C256 Starter Kit

SignalTapII Logic analyser in Quartus II using Altera USB blaster

February 23rd, 2012

kiran

I have made a video tutorial for working with SignalTapII logic analyzer tool in Altera QuartusII software. This is an easy method to embed a logic analyser to your FPGA design using unused logic elements in the FPGA. To use the feature you need to turn on the Talk back feature in QuratusII software. For the tutorial I have used the PWM VHDL code that I have published previously. To use this logic analyser tool, you only require an Altera USB blaster and Quartus II software. The advantage is that, there are no need to connect any wire or probe to the circuit. Every signal rooting is done internally. Here is the short video tutorial for the inbuilt logic analyzer comes with QuartusII software. Towards the end of the video, while running the SignaltapII analyser one can clearly see and analyse the PWM waveform.

Frimware update 1 for Open Source PIC18F14K50 USB Joystick

February 9th, 2012

kiran

It took some time for me to get back to posting. Yeah, the good news is that a firmware update for USB joystick is ready (technically the first working firmware for my design). All the 10 buttons are mapped to the GPIO and it worked great. The firmware for the analog stick will roll out on the next update. I have uploaded the files to git-hub (only the files that I changed). Here are the finished PCB pictures. The joystick can be tested using joytester.exe application included in Microchip Application Libraries v2011-10-18 for Windows.

open source hardware:usb joystick using pic18f14k50

Assembled board

FT2232H JTAG debugger – Bus Blaster V3.0 PCB from DP

November 29th, 2011

kiran

Future Technology Devices International aka FTDI is the master of USB interface devices. Every major chip giants are using their IC for USB interfaces and programmers. TI, Altera, Xilinx are some of them. If you look in the market, most of the major JTAG programmers are based on FTDI FT2232 IC.

After I finished the bus pirate v3.5 PCB, DP send me another PCB in just a week time. This time, I have opted for Bus Blaster V3.0 PCB. I was thinking of making an FTDI JTAG board, mainly Bus Blaster for so long. I was thinking of making my own PCB since the Bus Blaster PCB was not available in the DP free PCB store. Recently they put a new bunch of PCBs and I grabbed one. This time they also added the new dangerousprototypes sticker they designed with their logo in the mail pack. The PCB is of excellent quality made through Seedstudio fusion PCB service.

Bus Blaster is an open source JTAG debugger using FTDI FT2232H USB Hi-Speed (480Mb/s) to UART/FIFO IC. The design is based on the reference design provided by FTDI. DP integrated reprogrammable buffer with the reference design using Xilinx Coolrunner CPLD.

Bus Pirate – Multi protocol debug tool.

November 23rd, 2011

kiran

Finally I finished populating the free Bus pirate v3.5 PCB I received from DP and loaded the firmware. Bus pirate is an open source all in one interfacing tool which can handle a bunch of communication protocols used in embedded systems. The list includes 1-Wire, I2C, SPI, JTAG, asynchronous serial (UART), MIDI, PC keyboard, HD44780 LCDs. Apart from this, additional features are

USB interface, USB powered
5volt tolerant pins
0-6volt measurement probe
1Hz-40MHz frequency measurement
1kHz – 4MHz pulse-width modulator, frequency generator
On-board multi-voltage pull-up resistors
On-board 3.3volt and 5volt power supplies with software reset
Macros for common operations
Bus traffic sniffers (SPI, I2C)
Transparent USB->serial bridge mode
10Hz-1MHz low-speed logic analyzer
Custom support in AVRDUDE , Flashrom , OpenOCD
AVR STK500 v2 programmer clone
Scriptable from Perl, Python, etc.
A bootloader for easy USB firmware updates
Open source (CC 0)

Quick Serial Port Viewer tool in MS-DOS

November 18th, 2011

kiran

Today by 1.00pm I got a mail. I was not actually expecting any mails so I was thinking what would be that. Aha!! It was the USB 2.0 to UART TTL 6 Pin COM Module Converter CP2102 that I ordered from ebay. That was pretty quick!! It came from China in just about a week.

So I was checking that little board. It is very cheap and it does the work pretty good. It has even a 3.3v output supply.

While working with serial modules, one irritating thing that most developers hate to do is to open up device manager and to find out the serial port number of the module. Especially if there are multiple serial ports it is a real confusion. So I thought of spending little time to write a batch file which lists all the serial ports in the PC through the command prompt. Just do a Win+R keystroke and enter a command to view the serial ports. The batch file is uploaded to github .