Cyclone III / Bitec Video Dev Kit

Hi

After a lot of different test I now have sample to work :)

The real promlem was that I had to dowload the sof file before I right clik and say run as NIOS hardware ... then the verify error are gone... so far so good

Now to what I really want to achieve

I want to be able to run the Clyclone III with the Bitec DVI in / out for 1024x768@60 or higher

The input video should be scaled down in size to like 25% and the been shown on the output DVI as 3 small windows (the rest are black)

The window at the left should be rotated 90 deg CCW and the window to the right should be rotatec 90 deg CW and the one in the top should not be rotated

Can someone recommend the best way to have this to work from some of the sample avaible?

Or if you have other sugestions

http://www.tech2net.dk/media/input.jpg

http://www.tech2net.dk/media/output.jpg

Best regards

Wiljan

Hi

A bit more progress

To better understand how stuff works I have done the following

On a XP installation I have Nios 8.1 and Quartus II 8.1

from

http://www.bitec.ltd.uk/ciii_video_dev_kit.html

I have taken the Quad demo

http://www.bitec.ltd.uk/outgoing/bitec_hsmc_quad_video_28mar08.zip

This demo do genererate a VGA out 640x480

and you can input 4 composite video which will be scaled and you can see up to 4 live input at the output like a quad split

First I do copy all the files from the demo to C:/altera/Bitec/bitec_hsmc_quad_video

I now follow the instrucrion in the pdf file

Now it all works fine as described in the doc

I have managed to mod a bit on the position of the input to the frame buffer

and if I connect the 3 input in parrallel with some wire I do see the same video in 3 windows on the output

http://www.tech2net.dk/media/still_01.jpg

So instead of having the wire parrallel I now mowe to Quartus II and select open exsisting project and browse to

C:\altera\bitec\bitec_hsmc_quad_video\QuartusII_7.2\hsmc_qvideo_C120_dev_kit_mosaic_dvi.qpf file and open it

Before I try to modify anything I do a start compilation and after long time I do have some errors like

Info: Type bi-directional pin membot_dq[18] uses the SSTL-18 Class I I/O standard

Info: Type bi-directional pin membot_dq[2] uses the SSTL-18 Class I I/O standard

Info: Following pins have the same output enable: nios2:inst|i2c:the_i2c|oc_i2c_master:the_oc_i2c_master|i2c_master_top:i2c_top_inst|i2c_master_byte_ctrl:u1|i2c_master_bit_ctrl:u1|iscl_oen (inverted)

Info: Type bi-directional pin SCL uses the 2.5 V I/O standard

Info: Following pins have the same output enable: nios2:inst|i2c:the_i2c|oc_i2c_master:the_oc_i2c_master|i2c_master_top:i2c_top_inst|i2c_master_byte_ctrl:u1|i2c_master_bit_ctrl:u1|isda_oen (inverted)

Info: Type bi-directional pin SDA uses the 2.5 V I/O standard

Error: Quartus II Fitter was unsuccessful. 2 errors, 22 warnings

Error: Peak virtual memory: 331 megabytes

Error: Processing ended: Sat Jan 24 17:47:37 2009

Error: Elapsed time: 00:00:16

Error: Total CPU time (on all processors): 00:00:15

Error: Quartus II Full Compilation was unsuccessful. 4 errors, 15 warnings

So now I would like to know what I do wrong

Pleae let me know if you have sugestions

Thank you

Wiljan

Hi

And now a bit more progress...

I did install the Nios and Quartus II v 7.1 on my XP

Nios part compiled fine as in 8.2

and now so did the Quartus part... After 1H 36M and it did compile without Error :)

Now I did make a small change to the top evel design so I expected the video to all 3 hannels to come from input 1

Hit start compiling...... 1H36 minuttes later no error and I did download againg to the Cyclone III and loaded the soft from Nios... black screen :(

It seems imposible to me to do develomping if I have to wait so long time after every change to see if it work or not

So there must be some adjustment which make this compilation quicker... so the design are not optimized for picoSeconds.... any hint?

Also I do still look for hints to rotate the video 90 deg

Please let me know if you have ideas

Wiljan

hello wiljan,

thanks for posting pictures of your project, its neat to see what people are doing. incremental compile should be able to shorten your compile times.

can you post more from your compilation you posted on January 24th, 2009, 09:31 AM? i can't see the actual errors.

Hi

thepancake thank you for feedback here you have the error log from Quatrus II 8.1 on my Vista PC

I would realy hope I can work on this PC since it's quad core and pretty fast compared to my XP laptop

Error: wrong# args: should be "post_sdc_message msg_type msg"

while executing

"post_sdc_message -type critical_warning "Could not find correct number of DQ pins for DQS pin $i. Found [llength $dq_p] pins. Expecting 8." "

(procedure "get_ddr_pins" line 15)

invoked from within

"get_ddr_pins $instname pins"

(procedure "add_requirements_for_instance" line 16)

invoked from within

"add_requirements_for_instance $corename $inst t $ddr2_32bit_phy_use_high_performance_timing"

("foreach" body line 3)

invoked from within

"foreach inst $instance_list {

post_sdc_message info "Adding SDC requirements for $corename instance $inst"

add_requirements_for_instance $corename $..."

(file "ddr2_32bit_phy_ddr_timing.sdc" line 365)

Error: Can't fit design in device

Error: Quartus II Fitter was unsuccessful. 2 errors, 23 warnings

Error: Peak virtual memory: 324 megabytes

Error: Processing ended: Tue Jan 27 21:00:25 2009

Error: Elapsed time: 00:00:14

Error: Total CPU time (on all processors): 00:00:14

Error: Quartus II Full Compilation was unsuccessful. 4 errors, 248 warnings

If you like you can try yourself ... grab the code here

http://www.bitec.ltd.uk/outgoing/bitec_hsmc_quad_video_28mar08.zip

Best regards

Wiljan

looks like problems in the sdc file associated with the DDR memory.

try looking at the Quartus release notes:

http://www.altera.com/literature/rn/rn_qts.pdf

search for the following line: "The SDC and Tcl scripts generated in Quartus II software versions". you should just need to regenerate the DDR cores in Quartus 8.1.

Hi

@ thepancake, thank you

Now the Quartus 8.1 do do compile totaly :) on my Vista PC in 15m 22s quite some big difference.

I do still have 1 problem on my Vista setup. In Quartus II 8.1 I can start the Quartus programmer and download the sof all works fine

When I use the Nios 8.1 have some soft I want to test on the board you typical say "run on Nios hardware"

With the Sof file in place I only see the app resets not doing any changes which are in the software.

If I try start the Quartus Programmer from the "Tools" in the Nois software I get a prograsbar saying "Initializing the Quartus II programmer" ...

Hanging forever at 30% or so..... I did never see this in XP

Any good ideas?

btw. I still need a good idea how to rotate the video... anyone?

Wiljan

15 minutes compared with 1 hour and 36 minutes? that's great.

i don't know about the NIOS problem.

rotating the pixels you'll probably need to write some HDL. if you do it right you can use it in SOPC builder. rotation of an image is "just" an address remap. some good planning and a couple of counters should do it. ;)

Thepancake

The Nios problem have to wait a bit... I can easy do some testing whan I use Quartus now

I have realy tried to understand a way to do some rotating but I'm still stucked.

The video goes to the FIFO which does hold 1 line of RGB then the DMA do transfer it to the RAM ....but I do not see a way to tell it to put data on every 640*X instead of a block (row) from the pointer

I also didi think of making 2 counters and just read 1 byte at a time and put it where it need to go... but I belive thes will way to slow

If you have more details it would be great

Wiljan