quickstart:

connect the rgbmatrix to the de0nano and the de0nano to your pc. The pinout is documented in https://github.com/dasdgw/rgbmatrix-fpga/blob/master/de0-nano/de0_nano.vhd

open a terminal and go to rgbmatrix-fpga/de0nano and run: make program start_server

start processing and open one of the *.pde files in rgbmatrix-fpga/processing folder. Press the play button. done

Note: in order to work quartus and processing have to be installed

Sometimes I had problems accessing my de0nano with signaltap after running one of the processing sketches. The solutions was to kill quartus_stp and try it again. killall quartus_stp

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Adafruit RGB LED Matrix Display Driver and Client Software

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This is a design that will enable use of the RGB LED matrix sold by Adafruit with an FPGA in order to achieve full-motion graphics across any number of panels in a variety of configurations. It is written in VHDL and is currently a work-in-progress.

Also included in this project is client software that is used to send data to the circuit running on the FPGA. There are two parts to it. The first part is a Processing library that provides an easy way to send images to the device. The second part is a small Tcl server script that interfaces with a ByteBlaster (through the Altera Tcl API) and provides a vendor-specific JTAG wrapper over a TCP/IP socket.

What's included:

• contrib Additional files not required for building the project
  • photos Photographs of the design and hardware in use
  • tutorial Tutorial on how to setup, build, and use the design
• de0-nano Files specific to the DE0-Nano FPGA dev board
• processing Client library with usage example
• tcl Server script to interface with the virtual JTAG
• vhdl VHDL source code for the design to use on the FPGA
  • megawizard Altera Megafunction IP code for the virtual JTAG
  • testbenches VHDL to use for simulation of selected entities

Features implemented:

• Read graphics data from RAM and display it on panel
• Support multiple panels
• Read video data from external device and fill into RAM
• User configurable pixel depth (brightness control)

Demo videos:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWirBxcCs2A
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=or1Qpbdxw2o
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Zrrlw3kZHA