Are you the proud owner of the Nios II Embedded Evaluation Kit, Cyclone III Edition?

If so, then this page is dedicated to you.

• Download way cool new demos on your SD Card!
• Download hardware designs and source code for new designs
• Post your own designs, tips and documents for the Nios II Embedded kit

Begginners Corner

Embedded Systems on FPGAs give so much more control and power over your design that this quickly becoming a the platform on choice for developing embedded systems. But if you find you are not a FPGA guru then dont worry, take baby steps. 

• NEW! Nios II Standard Processor System
  • Dont create a Nios II processor system for your UNEEK from scratch. This is a "starter" Nios II processor system that has already been put together for you using SOPC Builder. This is the processor system that boots up on your NEEK by default on power on. You can go ahead and start developing your own software application starting with a blank project or take the "My first Nios II Software Application" tutorial below. If you want to add or modify this processor system then simply open it in SOPC Builder and get started.

• My First Nios II Software Application Tutorial

  • New to writing software for Nios II processor? Take this simple software tutorial that will show you how to blink an LED. You will get a hang of some the basic software development flow. Have patience and remember: A journey of a thousand lines of code begins by blinking a single LED. 
    Download Tutorial (Version 7.2)

Developers Zone

 Full system designs build upon Nios II processor systems by providing a software application to go with the processor system. Usually the software is application focussed i.e. does something useful. By refering to the source code for these applications is a great way to see example of software drivers for various hardware peripherals on your board. 

• NEW! VGA Application Selector Updater
  • Now that you have the awesome Nios II Embedded Evaluation Kit, you are going to need to show off the cool demos that you and others have built to your friends and co-workers. Do it in a big way; USE A PROJECTOR! Simply download the updater to your kit, attach a VGA cable and off you go!
• Application Selector Utility
  • This handy dandy utility is the 'user interface' for the Nios II Embedded Evaluation Kit. With this design you can use the LCD touch panel to scroll through a list of designs stored on the SD Card and load your design of choice. (See VGA Application Selector Updater to get a VGA compatible version of Application Selector)
• Mandelbrot C2H Hardware Acceleration
  • The Mandelbrot is an organically beautiful pattern with seemingly infinite variation! The demo however, is more than just a pretty picture: the Nios II C to Hardware (C2H) Compiler has been used to accelerate the Mandelbrot algorithm in hardware performing billions of computations a second!
• Web Server/Remote FPGA Configuration
  • This design examples shows an HTTP web server application using the sockets interface of the NicheStack TCP/IP Stack-Nios^® II Edition on MicroC/OS-II to serve web content from your NEEK. The server can process basic requests to serve HTML, JPEG, and GIF files from the Altera^® read-only .zip file system or File Allocation Table (FAT) file system. Additionally, it demonstrates remote configuration over Ethernet to allow you to change the hardware and software configuration of the FPGA.
• Remote System Update
  • Did you know: Your NEEK is capable of running a web server that allows you to browse your PC for an FPGA image and reconfigure your board with a new FPGA image: all accomplished over Ethernet.  Find out more. 
• UNEEK Picture Viewer (v8.0 SP1 Now Available)
  • Built upon the Nios II Standard Processor System, this application takes JPEG images or bitmaps stored on the SD Card and displays them on the LCD Touch Panel.

Evaluators Zone

Decisions, decisions. What's a good operating system for my next application? Where can I find IP for my Nios II processor system? Here's something that will ease the evaluators dilemma. 

Ready to Run Demos: A Ready to Run demo is a quick and easy way to demonstrate and evaluate an implementation of a commercial application such as automotive graphics, consumer GUI, industrial control.  These demos can be easily selected and loaded using the application selector on your LCD touch panel. These demos are provided for demonstration and evaluation purposes. They are provided by Altera and Altera's partners to showcase commercial grade operating systems, middleware, IP and software tools.

So if you are looking to select a suitable operating system (e.g. Micriums uC-OS II or SLS's port of uC-Linux for Nios II), IP Cores (from simply SD Card cores to high performance Vector graphics engines), middleware librarys (Networks Stacks, Graphics Library) or graphics development tools ( PlanetWeb SpectraWorks, Altia Design) then you Ready to Run demos help you make your evaluation processor fun and easy.

Ready to Run demos are provided in binary format only (.FLASH), full Quartus II projects, source code, IP licensing etc can be obtained by contacting the provider of the Ready to Run demo

• Planetweb SpectraWorks Digital Photo Frame
  • Simply take your favorite JPEG Photos and watch them in your very own electronic photo album. This application , built using the amazing Spectraworks user interface platform displays your photos wither as a thumbnail or as a user configurable slideshow. Basic features include support for multiple albums, zoom, pan, rotate, transition effects and more.
• Planetweb SpectraWorks GUI Demo
  • What is the first thing you would like to see on this demo? >Hello World?
  • Or... Fabulous graphics and beautiful anti-aliased text!
  • Based on the SpectraWorks User Interface platform from Planetweb see examples of smooth animation, beautiful test in multiple typefaces, dynamically scalable widgets and the ability to re-skin any application without making any changes to the source code!
• IMAGEM Technology Demo
  • Evaluate Imagems Graphics and video capabilities in the most fun way possible; Play the game Tacquin!
  • Tacquin is a puzzle that you solve by touching squares on the LCD touch panel.
  • You can use your favorite pic or even Live Video as the puzzle
• TES D/AVE Graphics Accelerator Demo
  • Astonishing automotive demos using the TES D/AVE Graphics Accelerator. Witness first hand the power of hardware acceleration as the innovative rendering engine D/AVE IP performs Anti-Aliasing with Subpixel Accuracy, vector graphics, additive blending and much more.

Design examples available for download from the community

• See TryOutuClinux to find a Linux distribution bootable from the SD-Card