Episode 169: Ben Heck's FPGA LCD Driver Hack Episode

I have recently started trying to reproduce this experiment with a different LCD (LTA149B780F) and a DE0-Nano

I have not been successfull so far. I get nothing at all on the screen

I am wondering if I wire the Vdd correctly (i use a 5V DC witha simpe voltage divider and my output in in the accepted range.

I am kinda confused by the 'note 1)' I don't have an oscilloscope atm so I can't check if there is actually a power cycle on the Vdd when I use the driver board

At one point my goal was to use a beaglebone black as the core for my diy Pinball machine too. There is an existing FPGA Cape called 'logibone' but I have never found anywhere to buy it.

If you search for 'Medieval Madness Remake' on Internet you will find some picture of the internals of the machine and you will see they use a beaglebone black as the core. They drive the lcd screen directly with the hdmi output of the board (connected to an lcd controller board) not the most efficient way IMO.

http://www.planetarypinball.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/MMRCTRL.jpg

This episode has been one of my favorites.... it got me to spurge on dev boards as I scrounge for displays in the scrap heaps around the area.

Suggestion, kind of in line with first comment about the logic analyzer, and this has to do with a recent project of mine.  I needed to decode the rf signal from my woodshop dust collector remote so I could make a bunch of cheap remotes for my shop and for friends with similar dust collectors.  I used channel 1 of my scope, similar to how you decoded the video signals in this episode.  It was tough for me to gather the info I needed to replicate the binary code from looking at channel 1.  So I tried a logic analyzer and that greatly improved capturing and analyzing the signals - I captured and dumped the data into a spreadsheet for analysis.  This method helped me rapidly decode and replicate the signals.  Below is a pic of my setup with a spreadsheet print.

Another suggestion, this is for your pinball machine.... I might try building this myself.... video capture for the fpga system.... so, when someone triggers a significant event on the pinball machine the fpga system would rapidly capture facial expressions of the player using some pic/video camera and flash them on the display during intermissions or for high score images.

I look forward to watching your show every Saturday morning.  Thank you for all that you do!

I actually understood this.... Very cool. - B

muy bueno el video y con toda claridad de la explicacion

You could use the Saleae logic analyzer 8 channel as you said.

For the people who are interested:

https://www.saleae.com/logic/

EDITED:
For people with less budget, there is a cheaper clone what does almost the same thing (expect analog logging if I'm not mistaken) -->

Compatible with Saleae USB Logic 24MHz 8CH Logic Analyzer for Arm FPGA | eBay

It's also a 8 channel at 24 MHz Logic Analyzer, and the software from Saleae is (still?) compatible with this hardware. You can also use open-source software called sigrok! See:
Downloads - sigrok

Although Saleae don't like the clones hehe... and I understand that.

Assuming that Ben Heck himself is able to read these comments, I would like to mention the following, if I may:

In episode 115, you mentioned the possibility of using the BeagleBone Black to drive the same LCD display featured in episode 169 in order to create a pinball machine display. Granted, it would probably cover the same subject matter as episode 169, but it would be interesting to see other projects being built with the BeagleBone Black.

Regards.