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Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
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9 years ago

Streaming data from FPGA to PC--Cyclone V GT Development Board

I have the cyclone V GT dev kit. I would like to continuously stream data from the FPGA to my PC so I can save it. The stream doesn't need to be especially fast (only 10 KB/s or so). The board has both an ethernet port and the USB blaster, and I would be fine with using either of these to transmit the data, although I would prefer to use the USB blaster.

Does anyone know of a good reference/demo that might be able to help with doing this? I can't seem to find anything in the documentation about getting data from the FPGA to a PC.

One design constraint is that I'm not currently able to use the PCIe connection.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

3 Replies

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    9 years ago

    UART suffices your need and you can either use USB-UART adapters or serial port on PC.

    It is simple to write a program (In C, MATLAB, etc) to store your incoming stream.

    There are many terminal emulators which save the serial port stream to files.
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    9 years ago

    --- Quote Start ---

    UART suffices your need and you can either use USB-UART adapters or serial port on PC.

    It is simple to write a program (In C, MATLAB, etc) to store your incoming stream.

    There are many terminal emulators which save the serial port stream to files.

    --- Quote End ---

    Thanks for your reply!

    I'm not too familiar with UART, and I can't seem to find documentation on it in the cyclone V GT development kit manual. There doesn't seem to be a UART port on the dev kit, so what port on the dev kit would I use?
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    9 years ago

    On the kit there is no UART port.

    You can use GPIO pins for tx & rx signals and use an adapter (USB to UART with appropriate voltage levels) which connects to USB port on PC.

    There are also USB ports on the board. You may set it up and use it, though it requires more work.