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ZedBoard Hardware Design Step by step tutorial about VGA on a ZedBoard
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Step by step tutorial about VGA on a ZedBoard

Former Member
Former Member over 9 years ago

Hello,
I've been using ZedBoard for a few days and did some basic operations such as ligheting up a LED when pressing a button.

However, right now I want to use the VGA output of the ZedBoard to produce images on a screen. My idea is to create a very simple game that would turn on the Zynq FPGA and in order to do this, I need to first understand how can I produces images on a screen.

My problem is that I don't know where should I start from. I saw a lot of question about the matter on the internet but nobody seemed to give a detailed tutorial about how do we print an image on a screen in Vivado.

Can you please give me a link to a detailed explanation about with what should I do in Vivado to use the VGA of the ZedBoard to print images on a screen?

Thank you!

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  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 9 years ago

    Hello,

     

    I don't know of any good tutorials for using the ZedBoard VGA output. All of our material is based on the HDMI output. You can take a look at these HDMI based projects on the ZedBoard Reference Designs page here:

     

    http://zedboard.org/support/design/1521/11

     

    The ZedBoard Out of Box design does drive the VGA port and you may be able to request the source material from Digilent:

    http://zedboard.org/support/design/1521/11

    http://www.xilinx.com/support/university/boards-portfolio/xup-boards/XUPZedBoard.html#designs

     

     

    The Xillinux desktop uses the VGA output so you may be able to find some information there:

    http://microzed.org/content/xillinux-run-ubuntu-linux-desktop-zedboard

     

     

    And there is some information on this site:

     

    http://hamsterworks.co.nz/mediawiki/index.php/Zedboard_VGA_HDMI

    http://hamsterworks.co.nz/mediawiki/index.php/FPGA_VGA

    http://hamsterworks.co.nz/mediawiki/index.php/Async_VGA

     

    Otherwise I would suggest using the HDMI port. Let us know if you do find a good tutorial.

     

    -Gary

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  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 9 years ago

    Hi,

    The VGA screen of the Zedboard is just like any computer monitor of a PC running Linux. You can therefore apply any common UNIX programming technique to interact with mouse, keyboard, possibly joystick (also through USB) and generate graphics with one of the many graphical toolkits that are available.

    You could make your program based upon X-Windows, and make your software create a window. Or let it run on the root window, in which case it will work full-screen. Or do it without X-Windows, in which case you'd access the frame buffer directly.

    This is really a question on how to do graphics in Linux. Treat the Zedboard as just another Linux machine, and follow any tutorial you can find on the web on that topic. I would suggest giving priority to tutorials that are at least 10 years old, because the Zedboard has the processing power of what used to be a PC 10 years ago. More or less.

    Now your problem will be which of the gazillions of tutorials you'll find to follow. ;)

    Regards,
       Eli

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  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 9 years ago in reply to Former Member

    The VGA connector on the Zedboard is connected to the PL (FPGA fabric) part of the Zynq.

    In order to use any graphics toolkit on the VGA port you need to design or obtain HDL code for a VGA interface and a matching driver.

    Typically this will include a frambuffer interface where the driver will access the framebuffer using the AXI bus, and the PL HDL will generate hsync,vsync, and the RGB data based upon the content of the frambuffer.

    You need quite a bit of working logic and code before you can print "hello world" on the VGA monitor from Linux.

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  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 9 years ago in reply to Former Member

    Oh, please.

    All you need is to install Xillinux (takes less than an hour), write a plain C program (printf("Hello world
    "), compile it with gcc (included in the distribution) and run it.

    With or without X-Windows, depending on your taste.

    The VGA output is built in.

    http://xillybus.com/xillinux

    Regards,
       Eli

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  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 9 years ago

    The Zynq itself and the Zedboard does not have anything built in for VGA other than the wires going from the PL pins to the VGA connector.

    A distribution like Xillinux will need to include the hardware logic for the PL to drive the VGA signals and a matching driver (e.g. as in "obtain" above).

    There are HDL for several video generators available on the net which could be used if the OP would like to generate images directly from the PL.

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