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All-in-one FPGA companion

This device is designed to be a highly versatile companion to any FPGA board. It allows programming of FPGA devices and is also useful interface to them.

In early developer it useful by providing virtual serial interfaces to easily start debugging.

In late development when loaded with custom firmware it provides a high speed (>30 megabytes/s) interface for getting data into and out of the FPGA which can emulate most consumer devices such as storage, camera or displays.

Basic Features

• Acts as a JTAG programmer compatible with both the NeroJTAG and XXXX protocols (allowing usage with libfpgalink and XXXX).

This device is very similar to the XXX logic analyzers but has two major differences,

• It uses the higher pin count FX2 chip giving hardware UARTs.
• It has the pins mapped suitable to JTAG and PMOD style headers for easy connection to an FPGA.
• The design and firmware are all open source.

BOM

• Cypress FX2 IC.
• EEPROM.
• Micro USB header.
• 5V to 3.3V regulator.
• Pin headers.
• Misc passives (decoupling caps, protection resistors, etc)

Features

JTAG header compatible with NeroJTAG (libfpgalink) / urjtag. Can program FPGAs, SPI flashes, etc.

The remaining FX2 pins are broken out onto "dual" PMOD compatible headers. Each PMOD header can act PMOD slave be talked to by an FPGA or other device, or as a PMOD host and talk to many PMOD expansion boards[1].

The I2C bus on the FX2 is mapped to an "I2C PMOD" compatible header. Note that I2C is used to boot the FX2 chip so if using this header care should be taken to not interfere with the boot process.

PMOD header XXX is mapped to the hardware UART in the FX2 chip. This PMOD header is able to operate serial protocols significantly faster then the other bit banging ports.

Any of the PMOD headers are able to operate as a TTL serial to USB converter however the speed is limited. The PMOD header XXXX is able operate in this mode significantly faster.

PMOD header XXX, XXX and XXX can be combined together and then custom firmware loaded onto the FX2 for a very high speed USB2.0 interface (>30 megabytes/s).

[1]: Compatibility with PMOD expansion boards depends on I/O voltages and speed required.

The device is compatible with the "XXXX" firmware allowing it to also be a generic, low speed logic analyzer.