Hi I have questions

[traymond]

Hi all.

I have many questions:

I am new to FPGA and using:

Vivado Design Suite 2006 and have a FREE 30 day license.

Have Arty-7 Evaluation board

Are there beginner projects here for beginners that would work with Vivado and Arty?

Which beginners projects should I start with then?

Does Vivado have its own built in USB drivers for its cable?

Other than that I'm ready I just need to know how to start.

Thank you.

traymond

 

 

 

[JColvin]

Hi traymond,

I have moved your question to the FPGA section of our Forum. 

There are some beginner projects for getting started with the Arty board; they are available in the Arty Resource Center under "Tutorials" and "Reference Projects". I would recommend starting out with the either the General I/O Demo or Getting Started with Microblaze. Additionally, there are some materials for getting started with the Basys 3 on our Learn site that are easily adaptable to Arty here.

When you download Vivado, you will get an option to check a box that says "Install Cable Drivers". 

Also, do you happen to mean Vivado Design Suite 2016? I do not believe Vivado has a 2006 edition.

Let me know if you have any more questions.

Thanks,
JColvin

[D@n]

Have you looked into the Arty resource web-page?  There are several getting started tutorials there that are specific for the Arty.  One common first step for someone with a new board is to rebuild the demonstration firmware.  That's a big step, proving that 1) your Vivado is working, 2) you can load configurations, and 3) that your hardware is working.  That's important, because on every project after that you will be questioning whether it is your configuration at fault, or the hardware.  The demonstration projects will help to answer that.

I would not recommend the 30-day trial version of Vivado to a new beginner, at least not unless you intend to follow through later with purchasing the full version.  Instead, I would recommend the free Webpack license.  For you, however, since you have the 30-day trial version, you might wish to continue with it until it runs out, and then switch to the Webpack version.

You can find other valuable beginners resources at fpga4fun.com (my favoriate) and asic-world.com (a favorite of others).

As for my personal advice to a beginner: never underestimate the utility of a simple LED.  Your first design should turn an LED on, your second one should turn it off.  At that point, you know you can program your device.  Your third design should blink the LED on and off, helping you to understand the speed of the FPGA.  As you move to more and more complicated designs, such as using the UART port, the LED can still help you know what is going on.  For example, it could tell you if the UART ever received a character, or if the character received was a space, and so forth.

Hope this helps, and good luck!

Dan