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sfillingim's avatar
sfillingim
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16 days ago
Solved

Arria 10 SoC FPGA

I have a Arria 10 SoC FPGA.

From the board, I am connected to the ethernet port, HPS debug UART, and USB blaster cable. From a PC I am able to communicate to the board across all three interfaces. The HPS sends serial data and I'm able to write basic scripts to modify the LEDs and the LCD along with the push buttons using either the actual memory locations for name based locations under /sys/class/...

I have a Furuno GT-100 GPS connected to the HPS-USB port. It uses a USB-C FTDI cable to output serial information. When connected to a linux PC, I'm able to see the serial output just fine setting the device accordingly. 

But, I am unable to see any serial information on the Arria 10.  The arria 10 itself does NOT identify the USB/COM connection when connected as the PC does.

This does not allow me to open the device under tty. But, from the dmesg, the kernel does identify the device as a USB 2.0 but doesn't assign any device.

I've tried modifying the device tree and added the Furuno to the compatible devices and I've also attempted to access the memory directly using the base address of the USB(s) without any luck.   

The serial uses the standard baud of 115200 which I also added to the device tree.

My overall goal is to read the serial data, parse the coordinates and display to the LCD. The latter of the two I've already done so to speak, but I haven't been able to read the data.

My HPS-USB cable is connected to J4 on the board. 

I've also modified some of the jumpers to see if that was the issue but I don't believe so. The HPS-USB is able to identify a standard flash drive without any problems.

embedded peripheral
Hps Debug
  • ProFromDover_Altera's avatar
    ProFromDover_Altera
    15 days ago

    From what you've described, it sounds like you're basic device presents itself as a USB serial device based on an FTDI chipset, correct?

    You said "the kernel does identify the device as a USB 2.0 but doesn't assign any device". This makes me wonder if your Linux kernel has been compiled with the appropriate drivers or not. I believe the ftdi_sio driver is what is generally used to support an FTDI chipset for USB serial operation, do you know if that is present in your kernel?  I believe at a minimum you need the CONFIG_USB_SERIAL and CONFIG_USB_SERIAL_FTDI_SIO kernel configs enabled in your kernel.  If the ftdi_sio driver is compiled in as a loadable module, you might check to ensure that it is installed on your root filesystem properly.

    I don't believe you should require any custom udev or mdev rules to enable a basic USB serial connection. Are you running a defauilt binary image of the GSRD example on your Arria 10 SoC dev kit?  Or are you running a custom software configuration?

    The latest GSRD binary image released on releases.rocketboards.org does not appear to have CONFIG_USB_SERIAL enabled by default:
    https://releases.rocketboards.org/2025.10/gsrd/a10_gsrd/sdimage.tar.gz

    The u-boot-spl banner prints with this build date:
    U-Boot SPL 2025.07 (Sep 25 2025 - 01:10:31 +0000)

    The u-boot banner prints with this build date:
    U-Boot 2025.07 (Sep 25 2025 - 01:10:31 +0000)socfpga_arria10

    Once in Linux you can see this kernel build date:
    root@arria10:~# uname -a
    Linux arria10 6.12.33-altera-g96a033bc584c #1 SMP Thu Sep 25 06:05:32 UTC 2025 armv7l GNU/Linux

    Then if you inspect the kernel configuration you see that CONFIG_USB_SERIAL is not enabled by default:
    root@arria10:~# gunzip -c /proc/config.gz | grep CONFIG_USB_SERIAL                                                  
    # CONFIG_USB_SERIAL is not set

    If this is the environment that you are using, you will need to recompile your kernel to enable this functionality.

1 Reply

  • ProFromDover_Altera's avatar
    ProFromDover_Altera
    Icon for Occasional Contributor rankOccasional Contributor
    15 days ago

    From what you've described, it sounds like you're basic device presents itself as a USB serial device based on an FTDI chipset, correct?

    You said "the kernel does identify the device as a USB 2.0 but doesn't assign any device". This makes me wonder if your Linux kernel has been compiled with the appropriate drivers or not. I believe the ftdi_sio driver is what is generally used to support an FTDI chipset for USB serial operation, do you know if that is present in your kernel?  I believe at a minimum you need the CONFIG_USB_SERIAL and CONFIG_USB_SERIAL_FTDI_SIO kernel configs enabled in your kernel.  If the ftdi_sio driver is compiled in as a loadable module, you might check to ensure that it is installed on your root filesystem properly.

    I don't believe you should require any custom udev or mdev rules to enable a basic USB serial connection. Are you running a defauilt binary image of the GSRD example on your Arria 10 SoC dev kit?  Or are you running a custom software configuration?

    The latest GSRD binary image released on releases.rocketboards.org does not appear to have CONFIG_USB_SERIAL enabled by default:
    https://releases.rocketboards.org/2025.10/gsrd/a10_gsrd/sdimage.tar.gz

    The u-boot-spl banner prints with this build date:
    U-Boot SPL 2025.07 (Sep 25 2025 - 01:10:31 +0000)

    The u-boot banner prints with this build date:
    U-Boot 2025.07 (Sep 25 2025 - 01:10:31 +0000)socfpga_arria10

    Once in Linux you can see this kernel build date:
    root@arria10:~# uname -a
    Linux arria10 6.12.33-altera-g96a033bc584c #1 SMP Thu Sep 25 06:05:32 UTC 2025 armv7l GNU/Linux

    Then if you inspect the kernel configuration you see that CONFIG_USB_SERIAL is not enabled by default:
    root@arria10:~# gunzip -c /proc/config.gz | grep CONFIG_USB_SERIAL                                                  
    # CONFIG_USB_SERIAL is not set

    If this is the environment that you are using, you will need to recompile your kernel to enable this functionality.