ECE 5760: Laboratory 2

Lunar Lander

Introduction.

You will produce a version of the classic video game Lunar Lander (example). The lander thrust will be controlled by an push button, and the lander attitude by button pushes. There will be a fuel limit. Display will be at VGA resolution.
Examples from 2013:

Procedures:

  1. You must handle the boards only on on the ESD mat. These boards are expensive and you must be careful of them.

  2. Make sure the Altera DE2 board is connected to power and to the PC as specified in the evaluation board description. Turn on the power supply with the red switch on the board. Make sure the toggle switch on the left edge of the board marked (Run/Prog) is in the Run position and leave it there at all times. The FPGA will program in the Run position. Putting the switch in the Prog position writes your design to flash memory, which you do not want to do.

  3. The default top level module for the DE2 defines all of the logical i/o signals.

  4. You can define the mapping from logical signal to FPGA pins (pin assignment in QuartusII) for all the pins at once by importing this file using the menu item Assignments... Import Assignments... and specifying the file name. There is no need to define pins one-by-one.

  5. The cpu you will use is either a NoisII or Pancake. Pancake is described on the stack cpu page. Use this code (hardware, source, zipped project) for your design. A compiler is also described there which uses a stack language. The cpu I built has a multiplier designed for 10:8 fixed point. To get solid VGA timing using Pancake you need to use the timing advisor (menu tools>advisors>timing) to optimize every chance for faster design. A student group in 2013 wrote a Brensenham line drawing routine (thanks Matheus Ogleari, Aadeetya Shreedhar, Chris Fairfax) for Pancake.
    The links for NiosII are given below.
  6. You are going to be programming in the equations of motion for the lander. Your controls will be attitude and thrust, so we will need to relate acceleration, velocity and position. Remeber that the video coordinate system has x increasing to the right and y increasing downward. If θ is the angle of the lander from the vertical (and measured positive counterclockwise) then the acceleration is:

    ax=-thrust*sin(θ) and ay=g-thrust*cos(θ)

    Computing the velocity change over a short time (by the Euler method)

    vx(t+dt)=vx(t)+ax*dt and vy(t+dt)=vy+ay*dt

    Computing the position change over a short time (by the Euler method)

    x(t+dt)=x(t)+vx*dt and v(t+dt)=y(t)+vy*dt

    The fuel level is

    fuel(t+dt)=fuel(t)-thrust(t)*dt

    Clearly, v, x and fuel all need initial conditions, which you will set, according the specifications below. I suggest scaling g and the thrust so that you can make dt=1, thereby avoiding the multiply. For speed, you may want to make a table of sines and cosines for the limited number of angles that the lander can assume.

--For NiosII See also:

--Setting up Altera Monitor System

  1. Altera moniotr is installed on the lab computers. On your own computer, download the executable from http://www.altera.com/education/univ/software/monitor/unv-monitor.html.
    Make sure that you choose the version that matches the version of QuartusII which is installed.
  2. Install the executable. You will not be able to run it unless you ave previously installed QuartusII and the NiosIDE tools.
  3. When you run the monitor program in the lab, it may tell you that QuartusII is not installed. If so, open control panel>system>advanced>environment variables and add a variable with name QUARTUS_ROOTDIR and value c:\altera\11.0\quartus.
  4. Follow the directions for setting up a new project in Altera Monitor Program. Choose the C option which uses program with device driver support.

---Setting up a new project in the NiosII IDE: USE THIS REFERENCE for version 10.0 EDS

  1. When using the IDE there must be no space characters in the path you choose to your workspace!
  2. Start the IDE and specify a workspace. When you designed the cpu and top-level module, the design was stored in a folder. In the Workspace selection dialog box, browse for that folder, then add the string \software to the folder path. This new folder will be used to store all of the software projects associated with the specific cpu you built in the SOPC. After you press OK, you may need to click on the workbench icon to do anything useful.
  3. Create a new software project. Select File>New>project. A series of dialog boxes will open.
    1. In the Altera NiosII item, choose NiosII C/C++ application, then click Next.
    2. Give the project a name, specify the ptf file from SOPC builder, use the default location, and specify a blank project.
      Then click Next.
    3. Select creat new system library then click finish.
  4. Back in the main IDE window, right-click on the syslib entry in the C/C++ Projects pane, then select Properties.
    1. In the dialog box, select system library on the left.
    2. Associate the desired device with stdout, stdin, and stderr. These will usually default to the JTAG UART.
    3. From the pulldown menu, select whether you are going to use single threaded or microC/OS. Note that the web-version of the IDE does not support the operating system.
    4. Select the memory location, usually defaults to SDRAM.
    5. Click OK to proceed.
  5. Back in the main IDE window, right-click on the syslib entry in the C/C++ Projects pane, then select Build Project.
    Wait for it to finish.
  6. Create header files using File>New>headerfile and C files using File>New>file. The project (not the syslib) should be highlighted before creating the new source file.
  7. In Run... menu item be sure that the download option points to the actual project (not the syslib project). In the Run... dialog double-click the NiosII hardware option to find the USB-blaster device and download to the software to the NiosII.
  8. If you get the following message when downloading your program to the NiosII (when using SDRAM for the program):
    Using cable "USB-Blaster [USB-0]", device 1, instance 0x00
    Pausing target processor: not responding.
    Resetting and trying again: FAILED
    Leaving target processor paused> 
    Then some suspects come to mind:
    1. You forgot to assign pins to the QuartusII project.
    2. There is an incorrect or missing PLL file for SDRAM delay (use the megawizard to rebuild or generate a new PLL module as described in the SDRAM tutorial.) Special Note: The component altpll has changed between release 7 and 8 of Quartus. When defining a PLL for the phase-shifted SDRAM clock c0 (as explained in the SDRAM tutorial), you need to add an c1 output to the PLL with zero phase-shift and use this signal for the NiosII clock! If you don't do this, the program will load normally, with no error messages, but the program will not run! A new, corrected project is zipped here.
    3. There is a misspelled control line in the Nios module interface, usually the clock or reset signal.
    4. The reset line is being held low/high by incorrect logic.
      Using reset=~KEY[0] will kill the processor! Whereas using reset=KEY[0] is fine.
    5. Check the size of the compiled hardware design. If the size is less than about 2000 logic blocks, then the Nios was probably optimized away. Check all the warnings to make sure no NiosII registers were reduced.

--Opening a downloaded, zipped project from the course site

  1. Unzip the file.
  2. Open the QuartusII project then:
    1. Regenerate the NiosII in SPOC builder.
    2. Close the SOPC builder.
    3. Resynthesize the Verilog design.
    4. Download the sof file to the DE2.
  3. Start the Nios II IDE. The path to the IDE is approximately C:\altera\kits\nios2_60\bin\eclipse\nios2-ide.exe.
    1. The folder heirarchy will have a folder with all the SOPC-generated stuff in it. In that folder will be a folder entitled software. In the Nios II IDE menu File, choose Switch Workspace... and point the workspace to the software folder. The Nios IDE will appear to close itself, then reopen in the specified workspace. Some folders should appear in the left panel of the IDE.
    2. In the menu Project, choose Clean..., and in the dialog box choose All projects. This action will remove any dependencies on older versions of the Nios IDE or libraries.
    3. Rebuild all the project parts by selecting the Run menu, choosing Run as..., and then NiosII hardware.

--Using QuartusII SignalTap tool to verify your design.

From the Altera Tutorial: The SignalTap II Embedded Logic Analyzer is a system-level debugging tool that captures and displays signals in circuits designed
for implementation in Altera’s FPGAs. SignalTap II can be used to capture and display signals in real time in any FPGA design (some M4K blocks are used).
You can:

 


Assignment

Your written lab report should include the sections mentioned in the policy page, and :


Copyright Cornell University April 3, 2013