9
Chapter 2
Control Panel
The Cyclone V GX Start board comes with a Control Panel program that allows users to access
various components on the board from a host computer. The host computer communicates with the
board through a USB connection. The program can be used to verify the functionality of
components on the board or be used as a debug tool while developing RTL code.
This chapter first presents some basic functions of the Control Panel, then describes its structure in
the block diagram form, and finally describes its capabilities.
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The Control Panel Software Utility is located in the directory
“Tools/
ControlPanel
” on the Cyclone
V GX Starter Kit
System CD
. It's free of installation, just copy the whole folder to your host
computer and launch the control panel by executing the “C5G_ControlPanel.exe”.
Specific control circuits should be downloaded to your FPGA board before the control panel can
request it to perform required tasks. The program will call Quartus II tools to download the control
circuit to the FPGA board through the USB-Blaster[USB-0] connection.
To activate the Control Panel, perform the following steps:
1.
Make sure Quartus II 13.0 or a later version is installed successfully on your PC.
2.
Set the RUN/PROG switch to the RUN position.
3.
Connect the supplied USB cable to the USB Blaster port, connect the 12V power supply, and
turn the power switch ON.
4.
Start the executable C5G_ControlPanel.exe on the host computer. The Control Panel user
interface shown in
will appear.
5.
The C5G_ControlPanel.sof bit stream is loaded automatically as soon as the
C5G_ControlPanel.exe is launched.
6.
In case of a disconnetion, click on CONNECT where the .sof will be re-loaded onto the board.
