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Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
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18 years ago

How to display a picture from de2 8mb ram to terasic LCD daughter card

Hello,

I'm a student and I'm trying since almost 3 weeks to display a picture stored in the 8mb ram module of the DE2 altera board, to the terasic's LCD daughter card.

First I tried to understand the verilog source code provided with the LCD module, but I actually learn the VHDL language. Verilog is not impossible to understand and I managed to initialize the lcd with a part of the verilog code.

But it wasn't sufficient. I tryed to synthetize my own code to initialyze the lcd module, by reading the lcd datasheet, I found informations, but it seems to be too hard for me to communicate correctly with the lcd module.

I understood I had to initialize first the lcd register but I don't know how (in fact I know, by a 3 wires communication, that I don't understand, with PLL's,.....but I don't have the skills to do that).

Finally I found on altera's site the VGA core module for SOPC builder and thought I was on the right way. But despite the TRDB_LCM option available in the vga core settings, I can't display anything on the lcd. By reading the vga core's datasheet, I can see some instructions usable in NIOS 2. But it doesn't seem to work.

Is there someone to help me please ? Thank you

3 Replies

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

    Hello,

    the TRDB examples are actually hard stuff. Basically the provided code components are missing any documented interface, common to all Terasic examples i have seen yet. That's really unfortunate cause Terasic is targetting to the educational field with these boards. I think the EPhoto application should be very near to what you are trying, but it doesn't help much if you can't utilize it.

    The modules are basically understandable, but it may require some work to postdocument the interfaces.

    Regards

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

    Hello FvM,

    I don't know EPhoto, i'll take a look on it.

    Actually the display on LCD panel is a school project, so i'll continue my search. If I find something interesting, i'll post it here.

    Thank for your answer !
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    17 years ago

    Hi

    You are right, the terasic code is not easy to understand since there are no documentation, but the code is quite good and is already tested, so you should start from this code.

    If you just need to display an image in sdram using the terasic reference design, you must use the DE2_Control_Panel.exe to load that image in sdram, maybe you may need the ImgConv.exe to adapt the image format.

    I don't know if you want to work with a Nios processor. In that case you must use a SOPC Library component for the LCM, which is not available. So, you must create it, but it will take you a long time. You can start reading the following documents so you can have a basic idea of what is required.

    http://www.altera.com/literature/man...valon_spec.pdf (http://www.altera.com/literature/man...valon_spec.pdf)

    http://www.altera.com/literature/hb/qts/qts_qii5v4.pdf (http://www.altera.com/literature/hb/qts/qts_qii5v4.pdf)

    Regards

    rbviera