Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
105 lines (69 loc) · 2.98 KB

getting_started.md

File metadata and controls

105 lines (69 loc) · 2.98 KB

Getting Started with Humble iCE

hi

Thank you for purchasing Humble iCE!

Note: If your RP2040 firmware is missing or needs to be re-uploaded, please read the Customizing Humble iCE document first.

To get started, you need to first clone this github repo on your computer, and cd into the humble_ice directory.

Now make sure you have Python 3.x installed on your system. Next, install the pyserial module.

Next, let's make sure you can upload a bitstram to the board.

Linux

Here are instructions for Linux. In this case, I tested with a Raspberry Pi 4 running Raspberry Pi OS.

ssh into your Pi and run this command:

dmesg -w

Now plug in Humble iCE into a USB port. You should see something like this:

[59592.185060] usb 1-1.4: Product: Humble iCE
[59592.185077] usb 1-1.4: Manufacturer: Electronut Labs
[59592.185094] usb 1-1.4: SerialNumber: 123456
[59592.268464] cdc_acm 1-1.4:1.0: ttyACM0: USB ACM device
[59592.271225] cdc_acm 1-1.4:1.2: ttyACM1: USB ACM device

The first port ttyACM0 is what we need for uploading the bitstream.

Now run this from the shell:

python3 hiprog.py --p /dev/ttyACM0 --f bitstream/blinky.bin

Here's the output:

Starting serial_prog...
File size = 104090 bytes.
writing...
wrote 104090 bytes...
done.

If all went well, the red LED would have turned on briefly, and your blue LED has now started blinking at 1 Hz.

Windows 10

Now for Windows. Bring up Device Manager and plug in your board.

Device Manager

There doesn't seem to be a consistent way to identify the first port on Windows. In my case COM4 turned out to be one. In any case, it's easy enough to try both. Here's how you upload the bitstream:

python3 hiprog.py --p COM4 --f bitstream\blinky.bin

Note that depending on your setup, it can be python or python3.

Here's the output:

Starting serial_prog...
File size = 104090 bytes.
writing...
wrote 104090 bytes...
done.

Now you're ready to build your own FPGA projects.

Building FPGA Projects

The first step here is to install the amazing OSS CAD suite from YosysHQ. Go to their GitHub releases page and install the toolchain for your system.

I recommend that you install the OSS CAD suite on a Linux system (native, VM, or WSL on Windows). Once you can run yosys and next-pnr from a shell, you are ready to go. Also ensure that you can run make from your shell.

Now, cd to examples/blinky and type make. If all goes well, it will create a blinky.bin which you can upload to Humble iCE and get your first FPGA project going!

A lot more examples are coming, so keep an eye on this repo!