Digital Labs using the Altera DE2 Board

The Altera DE2 Board, featuring an an Altera Cyclone II^® FPGA, offers varied technology suitable for a wide range of design projects.

Mechanics of DE2 Projects

These projects cover the use of the switches, LEDs, and seven-segment displays on the DE2 board.
The first project discusses the mechanics of Altera DE2 projects, using Quartus and downloading programs to the DE2 board.

Project	Description
diglab1	The user can set a 16-bit value using toggle switches 15-0 and transfer this value to the first four hex digit displays by pressing KEY3.
diglab2	This lab illustrates the use of divide-by-N counters, decimal counters, and a simple hex counter.
diglab3	This lab implements a timer. KEY3 starts and stops the timer. KEY0 resets the count (and stops the timer)

References

• LEDs and switches
• 7-segment displays

LCD Display

Project	Description
lcdlab1	This lab writes two lines to the LCD.
lcdlab2	The project combines a timer (diglab3) with the LCD display (lcdlab1).
lcdlab3	The project controls the LCD, using code adapted from the VHDL code from Hamblen

Reference

DE2 LCD Module

Audio CODEC

Project	Description
audio1	This lab inputs stereo audio from the line-in phone plug, captures it for inspection (using Signal Tap II), and then outputs it to the line-out phone plug.
audio2	Generate signals using a look-up table and output the signal to the line-out phone plug.
audio3	Generate sine waves of specified frequency using direct digital synthesis (DDS)

Reference

DE2 Board Audio CODEC

PS2 Keyboard and Mouse

Project	Description
ps2lab1	This lab reads codes sent from a keyboard attached to the PS2 port.

VGA Controller

Project	Description
vgalab1	This project displays two different test patterns on a VGA display. The choice is made using the SW[0] toggle switch.
vgalab2	Project displays a character table from a 8 pixel wide by 16 pixel high bitmap font.
vgalab3	This project displays a 640 x 480 bitmap (1 bit per pixel) stored in on-chip memory. A MATLAB program is provided to generate the memory initialization file from an image file.

Memory

Project	Description
ramtest	Test the memory access actions of a simple computer.
sramtest	Test the SRAM chip on the DE2 board.

References

• Memory
• DE2 Control Panel

RS232 UART

Project	Description
rs232lab	Send messages in serial form from one DE2 board to another using the RS232 UART.

Reference

• RS232 UART

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Maintained by John Loomis, last updated 18 November 2009