Using Github Demos

Digilent provides several projects through Github that are designed to demonstrate different usages of our FPGA and Zynq boards. This guide will describe how to download and use any of these projects.

At the end of this tutorial you will have your demo project running on your board.

• A Supported Digilent 7-Series FPGA or Zynq Board
• USB Cables

• Xilinx Vivado 2016.X
  • Vivado 2016.4 is used in this tutorial
• Digilent Board Support Files
  • Follow the wiki guide on how to install Board Support Files for Vivado 2015.X

Projects Supported by this Tutorial

Platform	Project Name	Uses SDK	Wiki Link	Github Link
Arty	Pmod VGA Demo	No	Internal Link	External Link

1.1) From the demo repository landing page, select the release link.

1.2) If the repository has multiple releases, select Latest Release, then click on the project ZIP file included in the Downloads section of the release to download it.

Important

Make sure that you download the project-version.zip, not the source code archive.

1.3) All of the necessary files are included within each project folder, with relative file paths established, so as long as the files aren't moved around within the folder, you can move and run the project from any location.

Within the project folder there will be several subfolders named “hw_handoff”, “proj”, “src”, “repo”, and “sdk”. Go into the proj folder, right click the “create_project” file and select Properties. Highlight and copy the file's location.

3.1) Open Vivado 2016.4 and select the Tcl Console.

3.2) Open Vivado and find the Tcl Console on the bottom of the window. Enter the letters 'cd' (change directory) followed by the file path you copied earlier.

3.3) Enter the command “source ./create_project.tcl”, this will set up the project for you within the proj directory you previously cd'd into.

3.4) The project will now be open in Vivado and you can navigate through the Design Sources subwindow or select Open Block Design in the project flow manager to see how the project hardware works. (Not all projects will have a block design)

4.1) Click Generate Bitstream on the left hand menu towards the bottom. In the “Launch Runs” dialog, make sure Launch runs on local host is selected and click OK. In the “No Implementation Results Available” dialog, click Yes to run synthesis and implementation.

Tip

If your computer has multiple cores, you can increase the number of jobs to make this process faster.

4.2) When this process has finished, which may take a while, in the “Bitstream Generation Completed” dialog, select Open Hardware Manager and click OK. Other interesting options here include “Open Implemented Design” which will show how your project logic will be placed on the FPGA. “View Reports” will show a number of different statistics about your project, including how well it meets timing requirements and what resources of your board will be used.

5.1) Open Hardware Manager

5.2) Open New Target

5.3) Local Server

5.4) Finish

5.5) Program Device

Export Hardware - Include Bitsream

Launch SDK

Import?

Build All

Make sure that your board is turned on and connected to the host PC via both the JTAG USB port and the UART USB port.

On the top toolbar, click the Program FPGA button.

Click Program to program your FPGA with your hardware design.

Select your Pmods project and click the Run As… button. Select Launch on Hardware (System Debugger) and click OK.

Test

Important

Important thing here.

Tip

Use a tip box for tips.