Building Executables: An Arduino Programmer for the Fipsy FPGA – Talk & Open Lab

We are covering an applied example of a cross-technology project intended for end-users. Specifically, we are building a programmer that will work on Windows/Linux/Mac with an Arduino (connected by USB) to program a Fipsy FPGA (from a text file on the primary operating system). The Arduino and Fispy FGPA are connected by SPI. An example of how to do this already exists for the Raspberry Pi, but it depends on some operating system calls, and must be migrated to Arduino code.

The working code for this demonstration will be here:
https://github.com/MocoMakers/Arduino-Fipsy-Programmer

This code is still a work in progress, and will be updated as we go along. This talk covers a broad spectrum of software design and digital logic topics:
• SPI
• JEDEC files, used to program the Fipsy FPGA
• Turning python code into executables, for example .exe in Windows
• Building simple GUIs
• Working with Arduino
• Serial communication over USB
If you can ‘hack’ at the Arduino code, that would be nice. I’m looking to migrate the included Raspberry Pi code over to the Arduino code. We will also discuss level converters, since most Arduinos are 5V and the Fispy FPGA is 3.3V
If you don’t know about the Fipsy FPGA, check out: https://www.mocomakers.com/fipsy-fpga/