DE0-CV User Manual
8
www.terasic.com
May 4, 2015
Chapter 2
Control Panel
The DE0-CV 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 any 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” in the
DE0-CV
System CD
. It's free of installation, just copy the whole folder to your host computer and launch the
control panel by executing the “DE0CV_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 14.0 or a later version is installed successfully on your PC.
2. Set the RUN/PROG switch to the RUN position.
3. Connect the USB cable provided to the USB Blaster port, connect the 5V power supply, and
turn the power switch ON.
4. Start the executable
DE0CV_ControlPanel.exe
on the host computer. The Control Panel user
interface shown in
Figure 2-1
will appear.
5. The DE0CV_ControlPanel.sof bit stream is loaded automatically as soon as the
DE0CV_ControlPanel.exe
is launched.
6. In case of a disconnect, click on CONNECT where the .sof will be re-loaded onto the board.