arty - getting started and above

[MrKing]

Hi, 

I'm looking for tutorials to handle the arty board.

I allready keept an eye on the digilent examples. But I want a fast aproach with examples like this http://eb.dy.fi/2015/11/arty-hello-world/

Knows anybody good online resources to learn step by step how to create UART, SPI, I2C, analog dataloger (yes, i know, there is a XADC-sheet from digilent), ditgital datalogger, and so on?

 

[D@n]

@MrKing,

Have you taken a look at fpga4fun.com?  They have some wonderful beginner tutorials.

You can also find some fairly simple(ish) UART examples here that can be used to test the UART without requiring other parts of the board to be up and running.  Those examples have been tested both in simulations and on the Arty, so they are known to work.  That includes a simple hello-world example.  It's not a step-by-step tutorial, though, that can be found here on fpga4fun.com.

My own approach to the Arty has been to create a set of memory-mapped peripherals on a wishbone bus.  I've applied  this to the UART, the color LED's, block RAM, DDR3-SDRAM memory, Quad-SPI flash, Xilinx's Internal Configuration Access Port (allowing me to restart the FPGA from one of any number of configurations) a GPS timing peripheral (requires the GPS PMod), the ethernet MDIO and packet interface, an OLED interface (requires the PMod OLEDrgb), a wishbone scope (for debugging things), and even an SD-card peripheral (requires the PModSD).  While this makes peripheral generation fairly easy, newcomers tend to struggle with getting an initial bus up and running, and not necessarily knowing how to modify a (nearly empty) working bus to add new peripherals.  What makes the project worse is that setting up the DDR3 memory using the MIG was non-trivial, and having done it, I never made any screen captures of the process I went through to help newcomers (Yes, I need to do that).

Right now, the best help I've seen and found for young FPGA types has been the IRC chat-rooms on freenode.  In particular, ##fpga and ##verilog tend to be good forums.  I've seen several experienced engineers talk younger ones through their struggles, just ... no one is doing anyone else's work.  Other forums are more specific to what you are up to, such as the #openrisc forum  for those working with the OpenRISC soft-core, the #riscv forum for those working with the RISC-V soft-core, or even the #yosys forum for those who wish to learn how to use an open-source toolchain.  I personally handle Arty and ZipCPU questions on the #openarty forum, and personally help get people started ... should they wish to fire up my design.  If you've never used IRC before, be prepared to wait a while (24 hrs?) for someone to answer--not everyone is on the same timezone, and not everyone is at their desk 24/7.  (Sort of like this forum.)

Dan

[D@n]

@MrKing,

Looking back over my answer, I think I'd like to amend it with the following:

1. First, I didn't recommend these forums before.  I'd like to do so now.  Lots of folks working on their designs come to these forums for help.  The help and advice I've seen given here ranges anywhere from helping the very beginner get their first design up and running, all the way to more experienced engineers trying to build a commercial product.
2. You are more then welcome to come back and ask for help on Digilent's forum (here), and I have to imagine Digilent would be very thankful if you did: it raises the profile of their site, and hence their products.
3. Other beginners have asked for advice here, much like you, and rather than repeat that advice, I'd like to reference you to it.  It's not necessarily for the Arty, but often generic to any board:

Please feel free to come back with more questions if you have more.  I'd offer to help you get started, but ... I think the posts above outline how to go about that.  So, instead, write back if this is confusing, or if you have further questions,

Dan

[MrKing]

Thank you D@n,

you are a great help to me