NEEK VGA Design Examples Page

Display Nios II designs on a Monitor or Projector using VGA

Your one stop shop to get versions of Nios II Embedded Evaluation kit that support VGA.

Authors Note:
1) The design examples provided here are "as is" is as such unsupported
2) All Design Examples were targetted for the v7.2 release of the Nios II Embedded Evaluation Kit
3) All Design Examples have been compiled using v7.2 release of the Nios II EDS

Ready to Run demos for your SD Card

Add these ready to run demos to your SD Card and display them on a projector or monitor.
The following steps should take under 5 minutes to perform:

1. Click to download the following SD Card Ready Demos
   1. VGA Application Selector Updater (1MByte SD Card Ready demo)
   2. VGA Mandelbrot C2H (525KByte SD Card Ready demo)
   3. VGA Picture Viewer (642KByte SD Card Ready demo)
   4. VGA Spinning Cube (477KByte SD Card Ready demo)
2. Extract the zip files on your local disk
3. Plug the SD Card to your PC
4. Copy the extracted folders to the folder entitled "Altera_EEK_Applications" in the SD Card directory
5. Replace SD Card on Kit and Apply power
6. Connect a VGA cable from your kit to a projector or monitor
7. Scroll to find and load VGA Application Selector (The Updater will overwrite the original Application Selector in Flash)
8. Follow the instructions on the screen and ENJOY cool demos on the projector/monitor

The following downloads are for users who want to add VGA to their own designs. If all you wanted was to add the above ready to run demos to your SD Card then ignore the rest of this page.

Hardware Design Examples that support VGA

Add VGA capability to your own designs so you can show them to your friends, co-worker (or Manager) on a projector or monitor

These design examples contain full Quartus II Project files and Software sources.
Click on the links below to download:

1. VGA Application Selector Updater
   • Download Full Design Example (6Mbyte design example)
2. VGA design example using on board SSRAM Memory
   • Download Full Design Example (3Mbyte design example)
     • Download Ready to Run SD Card Demo (440KByte SD Card Ready Demo) 
3. VGA design example using on board DDR Memory
   • Download Full Design Example (5Mbyte design example)
     • Download Ready to Run SD Card Demo (456KByte SD Card Ready Demo)

Software Example Applications that support VGA

Now that you have the hardware design examples that support VGA (see above), you may want to download a few software example applications that run on the hardware designs. You can download the following: 

1. 1. VGA Application Selector Updater
      • Download Software Application Example (6MByte File)
   2. VGA Picture Viewer
      • Download Software Application Example (3MByte File)
   3. VGA Spinning Cube
      • Download Software Application Example (2MByte File)

VGA Factory Recovery Image

The VGA Application Selector Updater assumes that your kit has the original (non VGA) application selector in flash. It then goes ahead and overwrites it. But what if for some reason you didnt have anything in flash? Well you can install the VGA application Selector Utility directly into flash by following these steps:

1. Download the VGA Factory recovery image. This is essentially the VGA Application Selector Updater in .flash format.
   • Download the VGA FACTORY RECOVERY (835 KByte File)
2. With the Nios II EDS Installed, attach a USB cable from your PC to the Nios II Emb Eval Kit
3. Apply Power to the kit
4. Navigate to a Nios II Command Shell (Programs-> Altera -> Nios II EDS -> Nios II Command Shell)
5. In the command shell type:

nios2-configure-sof cycloneIII_embedded_evaluation_kit_application_selector.sof
nios2-flash-programmer --base=0x04000000 restore_vga_neek.flash