FPGA Lab

Introduction

In this lab, the students performed a number of activities using the Xilinx Artix-7 chip on the Digilent Basys 3 development board.   Configuration was done by editing Verilog code and then synthesizing it using the standard Xilinx Vivado IDE.

Activities

(The lab write-up can be found here, and the Overleaf LaTeX source can be found here.)

The students began with a sample project that simply tied the 16 switches to the 16 LEDs on the Basys 3 board and also displayed the 12-bit value of the onboard ADC.  They  then

  • Used a variable resistor to generate an input voltage to the ADC to verify that its read out value was as expected.
  • Modified the code to do basic logic on some of the input switches and to display the output in decimal (BCD) rather than hexadecimal.
  • Modified the code to count input pulses from the pulse generator on the scope.
  • Measure the propagation delay from a pulse over threshold to an output trigger signal.

Lab Kit Inventory

The kit for this lab contains material for five complete lab stations, with the idea of setting of four stations and having one spare.   The complete contents of the kit.

  • 5 – Dell Latitude 5480
    • 8GB DDR4
    • 256GB SSD
    • Win 10 Pro
    • Minimum installation of Vivado IDE 2022.1
    • Two example Basys 3 projects
  • 5 – Digilent Basys 3 development boards
  • 5 – USB-A to micro-USB cables to connect development boards to computers.
  • 5 – FNIRSI-1014D 2 Channel 100 MHz digital oscilloscope w/function generator. Each includes
    • 2 probes
    • 1 BNC to alligator clip adapter
    • 1 USB power adapter
    • 1 USB-A cable to connect to computer
  • 6 – mini breadboards to wire circuits
  • 1 – box of jumper cables for circuit wiring
  • 12 – 10k trim pots, to use to set the DC level into the analog input.
  • 1 – Hard disk with Vivado installation software, Basys 3 example projects, and README.txt instruction file.
    • To be used if the software needs to be re-installed on these or other computers.
  • 1 – Hardcopy with login information for the laptops.  Please do not post this online.