Continue to Site

Welcome to EDAboard.com

Welcome to our site! EDAboard.com is an international Electronics Discussion Forum focused on EDA software, circuits, schematics, books, theory, papers, asic, pld, 8051, DSP, Network, RF, Analog Design, PCB, Service Manuals... and a whole lot more! To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

Register Log in

Spartan 6 SP601 board .. Need to connect it to a monitor!

Status
Not open for further replies.
3

3Deye

Full Member level 2
Full Member level 2
Joined
Oct 7, 2009
Messages
125
Helped
3
Reputation
6
Reaction score
2
Trophy points
1,298
Location
EG
Activity points
2,159
Hi,

I'm going to buy the Spartan 6 SP601 development board since it's the board that I can afford and will fit my design but it lacks a VGA/DVI connector and to test my code, I'll need to send data to a monitor.

My question: Is there any USB/UART to VGA converters available so I can send the data by USB then it's converted to be shown on a monitor ?!

SP601 Product brief:
https://www.xilinx.com/publications/prod_mktg/sp601_product_brief.pdf

SP601 Page:
**broken link removed**

Thanks!
 

Re: Spartan 6 SP601 board .. Need to connect it to a monitor

For VGA, you only need a few resistors and a few digital outputs. For a very simple VGA, you can use 5 IOs, 3 for RGB, one fo HSYNC and one for VSYNC.

If you want to have more colors, then look into the solution done on SPARTAN3E board.
sbres_1257678178_0__.png


Here you have a simple example of a monochrome VGA circuit that only uses 3 FPGA IOs:

vga.png


You can also look at the for more info about the subject.

Using USB/VGA connection will be an amazingly complex solution since you have to write your own driver for Xilinx.

Cheers,
/Farhad Abdolian
 

Re: Spartan 6 SP601 board .. Need to connect it to a monitor

Cool, thanks Farhad.

I think this method is suitable when I am going to design my board using the spartan 6 chip, but in case I already have the board, how can I connect the IO to a VGA port ?! In Spartan 3E for example, there already exist a VGA port, but in SP601 it does not !
 

Re: Spartan 6 SP601 board .. Need to connect it to a monitor

It all depends on what you want to do, if this is only for proof of concept then you need 5 wires out of the FPGA, a few resistors and a VGA connector, then you have VGA support on your board. For that you can use the "8 User I/O (Digilent 2x6 Header)" on that board.
This connector is J13 on the board and it is very simple to use, I am sure you can get up to 800x600x3 bits out of those signals without major issues.

Best regards,
/Farhad Abdolian
 
  • Like
Reactions: mimouna

    3

    3Deye

    Points: 2
    Helpful Answer Positive Rating
    M

    mimouna

    Points: 2
    Helpful Answer Positive Rating
It's clear now :)

Thanks Farhad.

Points+3 ;)
 

Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

Part and Inventory Search

Welcome to EDABoard.com

Sponsor

Back
Top