Sending 16-bit values over RS232 - might be useful

[hamster]

This little module might be of use to somebody - it sends 16-bit values to an external serial device, as four ascii hexidecimal digits (eg "12AB"), with new lines and carriage returns.

http://hamsterworks.info/index.php/Hw_tx_binary_as_ascii

The sample design send the settings of the 16 slide switches every time the center button is pressed.

[zygot]

@hamster,

If anyone gains some experience doing FPGA development they will find that having a few debugging tools in the toolbox is a great time saver. While simulation is a requirement and ISE and Vivado ILA tools are helpful, spitting out values to a USB serial port, when what you want to observe is intermittent or at a low data rate, or you need to capture data involving multiple clocks that are orders of magnitude apart in frequency, is a really nice thing to have. An extra bonus is that you can have most serial terminal programs log the out put to a text file or better yet use Python to capture data and write it to a text file. If you have a high data rate to capture a USB parallel data port is better though requiring a bit more work on the software side.

I've been working on a project using the old Genesys and Atlys boards to demonstrate a fast inter-board communication path and wanted to debug the incoming scan codes from the Genesys PS2 keyboard inputs. I wrote a similar debug tool. Since I don't like to reinvent the wheel my code has parametrized data length in 4-bit characters and UART baud rate. Also it has a write enable included on the input port to simplify writing n-bit words to log. Sometime you want to leave design choices to a higher level but with debugging tools I've found that making them self-sufficient is better... you'll want to instantiate them quickly with as little fuss as possible. Lastly, documenting how to use them in your code is essential.

Such tools are gifts ( whether or not you write it yourself or get it from someone else ) that keep on giving if done correctly.

PS, I was going to post a short tutorial about my keyboard/LCD debugging adventure and post my UART ASCII writer but you got the drop on me as far as the debug code goes. Kudos. Also, I like to see that you are warming up to the idea of including a wee bit more documentation in your code.... this is helpful to anyone using it... including yourself when using code written a few years back and you don't remember exactly what it is that you did.