Learn how to program an Fpga

Learn how to program a Fpga the easy way.

Knowing something about this following information, will make it easier for you to understand this course.

1. Know how to count in hexadecimal and in binary.

2. Have some digital circuit knowledge. Digital circuit examples are: and gate, or gate, decoder, flip-flop, binary counter, Rom, and Ram.

3. Have some basic electronic knowledge.

4. Have some programming knowledge.

5. Knowing how to wire up a circuit, will help you understand the code that is needed, to wire up circuits in an Fpga.

This course has 16 lessons. Each lesson has a digital circuit that is hardware programmed into an Fpga. The Fpga duplicates the inputs and outputs, just like the original circuit. An Fgpa can duplicate hundreds of circuits.

You will be using a $30.00 Fpga trainer board. The Fpga trainer board has switch inputs, and led outputs. Six press switches and a 8 position dipswitch are some of the on-board inputs, and 8 leds and a seven segment display, are some of the on-board outputs. The Fpga trainer board has a total of 39 I/O connector pins. Those pins come from the Fpga, and are used for external inputs or outputs.

Each video lesson starts with a circuit diagram that shows its inputs and the outputs. The video explains how the circuit works and then takes you to the Xilinx ise, where it displays the hardware code, for the lesson. After explaining each code in detail, the video shows the circuit being tested on the Fpga trainer board.

My code, for each lesson, is stored in a repository at github. The Xilinx ise opens up with the codes, for the lesson, when you go to github and download the file for the lesson. The student will then be able to examine the code one by one. Modifying the code, to make it do something a little different, is a great way to the learn code. When you make a small change to the code and it fails, it is a learning experience to figure out what went wrong. After you test and examine all 16 projects, you will have the skills be able to program your own code, and test it on the Fpga trainer board. If you have any trouble understand the codes, or building the projects in the lessons, or anything else, contact me and I will help you.