Use Multi Touch Display Shield on Arty-Board

[Peter Chan]

Hello :

I would like to know how to use Multi-Touch Display Shield(MTDS) on Arty-Board. I've found the wiki page of the MTDS, but there are only some schematics and library documents.  Then I've found pmod-MTDS IP on digilent github , but don't know how to work with it cause My MTDS is a shield, rather than a pmod.   

I'm new to this, I would appreciate if someone can provide a sample project of "MTDS on Arty Board". That'll help a lot.

Thank you !

[D@n]

@Peter Chan,

Ouch!  Yeah, you're right.  The Digilent folks have usually been really good at documentation relative to their peers, but this looks like a significant oversight.  Pages with broken links to manuals, selling the product for the Arty and yet only providing a demo for the Arduino boards, yeah, it's a rough start.  (This particular MTDS page is particularly pitiful.) 

Still, you should have enough to get started. The arduino software (found linked from this page) appears to be complete.  Sure, I understand you are building for the Arty and not the Arduino, but ... with a suitable SPI transport core built, it should be possible to (re)implement those libraries for your processor of choice on the Arty, no?  You've also got the schematic, and ... you can usually look up the various IC's on those to get part numbers that can then be used to find spec's.  So, here's another ouch: none of the IC's have part numbers with them.    Ouch again.  

Looks like the sales staff got ahead of the product staff this time.

Dan

P.S.  I expect the Digilent staff will get to work on their documentation quickly ...

 

[jpeyron]

Hi @Peter Chan,

As it stands right now we only have the Arduino library that works with the MTDS as shown here. I'm not sure if this is on our future project list but I have passed on the suggestion to get this working on the Arty series as well. As for the PmodMTDS, it has not been released yet. If you keep an eye on our wiki and github, you can usually spot new info about upcoming boards/pmods before we officially announce them. This is because we develop most of our documentation and materials on these public tools/servers.

cheers,

Jon

[D@n]

@jpeyron,

Thanks!  I had misunderstood the question to suggest you had been selling these already.  What I saw while browsing makes more sense if it is a work in progress and the device hasn't sold yet.

Dan

[Peter Chan]

On 2017/4/12 at 7:22 PM, D@n said:

@D@n

Thanks ! Since I cannot find any sample project about "MTDS on Arty-Board",  the only thing I can do now is  to overwrite the SPI tansport function and try to establish the SPI communication between Arty-Board and MTDS.   If done, the function can be added to the MTDS library's hardware layer.     But... that will be kinda time-consuming

 

[Peter Chan]

@jpeyron

Thanks! The reason why I bought the MTDS is that I thought it can work with my Arty-Board quickly.  I've found the introduction of MTDS, which says : The libraries are supported in Arduino IDE and Xilinx SDK, and have been tested with Arduino, chipKIT, and Arty host boards.   Now that the MTDS library has been tested with Arty host boards, why not share the test codes or projects on the websites ?

 I hope the digilent stuff can notice it  and upload the test projects,   customers will appreciate it cause it will save plenty of time to get started with "Arty and MTDS". 

[D@n]

@Peter Chan,

I was lead to believe by @jpeyron's answer that they hadn't shipped these boards yet.  Do you actually have one?

Not sure if this will help, but the OLED devices communicate using a SPI protocol without the return data path.  I've got an OLEDrgb PMod, and you can find my OLEDrgb code here as part of my own Arty work.  It's at least a starting point, although I don't know how useful it will be.  (There's even simulation code that'll build a window on your host computer, showing the graphics you are sending to your OLED, although as built it can be painfully slow)

Dan

[jpeyron]

@Peter Chan and @D@n,

I'm sorry about the confusion. The PmodMTDS is not for sell yet but there is a somewhat new addition to what we have working for the MTDS. Looking further into the PmodMTDS IP core it was made to work with the MDTS as well which is described here. The text describes what you need to do when setting up the block design. There is a read me text file in the PmodMTDS IP core that describes the SDK process as well as the fact that you need to have a microSD card that you copy some files  onto and insert in the MTDS's SD card slot. I am in the process of doing this currently and will let you know here when i have complete the project. 

thank you,

JOn

[D@n]

@jpeyron,

Ok, so we are clear, the multi-touch-display shield (MTDS) is a featured item on the Digilent store's main page. A link from that page leads to the reference page for the MTDS.  At the bottom of the table on the right of that page is a link to the schematic for the board.  This schematic is dominated by a part labelled as ICP3, but which is never identified further.  Let me suggest that you place the part number of this part on the schematic, instead of just the generic reference ICP3.  The same can be said for the TFT display that isn't identified within the schematic either.  Further, there is no example design for an FPGA.  (Not a problem, just something to note.)  Building such a design for a microcontroller within the Arty shouldn't be too difficult given the links you've given and the open source ChipKit library.

It also looks like you've fixed the link to the reference page (a second reference page?) linked from the previous reference page (was it supposed to be labelled as a resource page?).  I'm at least no longer wandering to into the pmodmtds page which, if I understand correctly, is the product you haven't released yet.

@Peter Chan,

Looks like you have a fun project ahead of you.  Holler if/when you need help,

Dan

[jpeyron]

Hi @D@n and @Peter Chan,

@D@n You are correct. We have the MTDS(released) and the PmodMTDS(not released). I have passed your suggestions for the MTDS schematic on. After looking more at the MDTS page here today it describes that the PmodMTDS IP works with the MTDS as well. Yesterday i tried to use the PmodMTDS IP but did not realize there was information provided on this page about the SDK process and that I need to read the README.txt to get the MTDS to work . @Peter Chan i just finished the project and it works fine. In vivado i followed the getting started with microblaze tutorial and where you add the uart i also added the pmodMDTS. Easiest way to do that is in the board selection right click on the spi connector J6 and as long as you have added the vivado library to the ip repository manager the PmodMTDS will be an option.  Then continue the tutorial until you launch SDK. Then use the ReadME.txt file in the PmodMTDS IP folder for the SDK portion of the project. I have included screen shots and my project done in Vivado 2016.4.

cheers,

Jon

MTDS_arty.zip

[D@n]

@Peter Chan,

Let me know if you want to get the MTDS going without microblaze. 

Dan

[Peter Chan]

@D@n @jpeyron 

             Thanks you guys a lot !   Your advice true helped！

[Peter Chan]

On 2017/4/15 at 4:07 AM, jpeyron said:

Hi @D@n and @Peter Chan,

@D@n You are correct. We have the MTDS(released) and the PmodMTDS(not released). I have passed your suggestions for the MTDS schematic on. After looking more at the MDTS page here today it describes that the PmodMTDS IP works with the MTDS as well. Yesterday i tried to use the PmodMTDS IP but did not realize there was information provided on this page about the SDK process and that I need to read the README.txt to get the MTDS to work . @Peter Chan i just finished the project and it works fine. In vivado i followed the getting started with microblaze tutorial and where you add the uart i also added the pmodMDTS. Easiest way to do that is in the board selection right click on the spi connector J6 and as long as you have added the vivado library to the ip repository manager the PmodMTDS will be an option.  Then continue the tutorial until you launch SDK. Then use the ReadME.txt file in the PmodMTDS IP folder for the SDK portion of the project. I have included screen shots and my project done in Vivado 2016.4.

cheers,

Jon

MTDS_arty.zip

@jpeyron 

I downloaded your project and tested successful!   Thank you so much !