roby2014/ecp5-ft232rl-example

Programming a Colorlight 5A-75E board (ECP5 FPGA) with FT232RL (via JTAG) using VHDL/Verilog/SpinalHDL and open source tools.

This repository contains a simple program written in different HDLs (Hardware Description Languages) for the Colorlight 5a-75e v8.0 board, using FT232RL as JTAG programmer. The goal is to provide an easy first setup for the Colorlight board.

The program is a simple LED controller, which turns ON the LED everytime the input signal is ON.

You can find more information on how to setup the hardware/toolchain on my blog post.

Dependencies

• FPGA toolchain
  • yosys – Yosys Open SYnthesis Suite.
  • nextpnr-ecp5 - A portable FPGA place and route tool (for Lattice ECP5 FPGA).
  • prjtrellis - Device database and tools for bitstream creation (fully open source flow for ECP5 FPGA).
  • openFPGALoader - Universal utility for programming FPGA
• git
• make

In case you want to run the VHDL example, you will also need:

• GHDL - VHDL 2008/93/87 simulator.

In case you want to run the SpinalHDL example, you will also need:

• Scala
• sbt
• Java JDK 8+ (tested on openjdk 19.0.1 2022-10-18)

Uploading to FPGA

> git clone https://github.com/roby2014/ecp5-ft232rl-example
> cd ecp5-ft232rl-example/[verilog/vhdl/spinalhdl]_example
> make
openFPGALoader --cable ft232RL --pins=RXD:RTS:TXD:CTS led_control.bit
Jtag probe limited to 3MHz
Jtag frequency : requested 6000000Hz -> real 3000000Hz
ret 0
Open file: DONE
Parse file: DONE
Enable configuration: DONE
SRAM erase: DONE
Loading: [==================================================] 100.00%
Done
Disable configuration: DONE

After running make, the bitstream should be uploaded to the FPGA and you should be able to control the LED via input button.

Information

When running make, this is what happens "under the hood":

1. yosys synthetizes the Verilog/Vhdl files, generating a json file with the RTL information.
2. nextpnr-ecp5 transforms synthetized RTL code and pin mapping (lpf file) into a FPGA config file.
3. ecppack generates bitstream from the configuration file.
4. openFPGALoader uploads the bitstream into the FPGA via JTAG.

In case you are running the SpinalHDL example, there is an extra step before all of the above:

0. All Scala files from src/mylib/ are compiled into Verilog files (inside gen/ folder).

In case you are running the VHDL example, there is an extra step before all of the above:

0. GHDL analyzes all .vhd files and elaborates the top entity module.