Cyclone III Video Dev Kit

Hi there! I’ve just purchased Cyclone III Video Dev Kit from Bitec and want a bit of guidance from the experts ;) This kit includes a Cyclone III EP3C120F780 FPGA.

My experience with Altera FPGA’s and software is kind of low, so I have some questions for you.

1. Is there more design examples available online? The ones with the kit are “my_first_fpga”, “niosII_standard”, “pfl”, “power_demo” and “quartos_pinouts”. I first of all want to make a simple code that prints something on the LCD display (graphical or character). The tutorials with the kit/sw are rather simple …

2. With limited knowledge in FPGA’s I need some “pointers” to quickly gaining knowledge from Altera’s literature. What are the basic topics for a newbie like me? ;)

3. What kind of programming languages is most efficient VHDL (Quartus II) or C (NIOS II IDE) and does it matter what I use? I have some knowledge in both of the programming languages so that’s not the main challenge.

4. My ultimate goal is to develop a video-over-ethernet (real-time speed) using the Bitec HSMC Quad Video daughter card to capture from an analog camera (NTSC) and stream this over ethernet. Will a “soft implementation” using the NIOS II IP (and other necessary IP’s) be fast enough, what do you think?

Well that’s it :) I’m very excited about this and hope there is someone out there that will give me some guidance in the right direction with links etc.

Thank you all in advance