Development Boards for Intel SoC -FPGA allow often only a simple access to FPGA I/O-Pins. The only way to use HPS-Hard-IP Interfaces with these boards is the routing over the FPGA fabric.

For example, the Terasic DE10-Nano development Board with an Intel Cyclone V SoC -FPGA has an Arduino UNO compatible socket. This is a nice feature, because it is possible to use nearly any Arduino Shield from the huge Arduino community with SoC -FPGA’s. Here are also all digital Pins connected to FPGA I/O Pins. With the Intel NIOSII-Softcore processor and some Soft-IP it is not too complicated to interact with these shields. But if the target applications require the connection of the capabilities of an embedded Linux system, running on the HPS, it will be. One reason is, that I only could find one official guide (AN 706), with a golden reference design witch shows only a chapter of the development process.

With this following step by step guide I will give a complete description and I will also shown as an example, how to transmit CAN-Bus Packages with a simple Linux Python script running on an embadded Linux by using an Arduino Shield with the Terasic DE10-Nano board.

This project is a part of my rsYocto embedded Linux system, that I developed during my master study and I use it here as a reference.

Note: This project is a bit out of date.... I completely redesigned the rsyocto build system (part 2-6). Please follow Part 1 and consider my custom rsyocto version guide. Then you can continue with part 5 to create your Device Tree and with part 7+. In the future I will update this guide... Many Thanks.

Table of contents

1. Part: Creating the FPGA configuration

2. Part: Building of the primary bootloader with Intel EDS

3. Part: Development of the secondary bootloader (u-boot)

4. Part: Using the Yocto project to build a custom embedded Linux

5. Part: Building the Device Tree for the embedded Linux

6. Part: Generating a bootable Linux image

7. Part: Flashing the image to a SD Card and booting Linux

8. Part: Unsing the i2c-tools and minicom to interact with Adrunio shilds

9. Part: Writing a python script to transmit CAN-packages

Application Target

This step by step guide show how to route UART,SPI,CAN and I²C to the Arduino Shield of the Terasic DE10-Nano board:

Also it is shown how to transmit CAN-packages by a python script and Visual Studio Code Insider:

The complete step by step guide with source code is available on my GitHub repository!

Author

• rsyocto; Robin Sebastian,M.Sc. (LinkedIn)

  rsyocto and HPS2FPGAmapping are a self-developed projects in which no other companies are involved. It is specifically designed to serve students and the Linux/FPGA open-source community with its publication on GitHub and its open-source MIT license. In the future, rsyocto will retain its open-source status and it will be further developed.

  Due to the enthusiasm of commercial users, special features for industrial, scientific and automotive applications were developed and ready for the implementation in a highly optimazed closed commercial version. Partnerships as an embedded SoC-FPGA design service to fulfil these specific commercial requirements are offered. It should help, besides students with the rsyocto open-source version, commercial users, as well.

  For commercial users, please visit the rsyocto embedded service provider website: rsyocto.com