Embedded Systems

Laboratory Exercise 1
Getting Started with Linux*

This is an introductory exercise in using a Linux* operating system on Intel’s Cyclone® V SoC devices. This
discussion assumes that the reader is using the DE1-SoC development and education board, but the lab instruc-
tions apply equally well if other boards are being used, such as the DE10-Standard or DE10-Nano. The DE-series
boards are described on the FPGAcademy.org website. Linux runs on the ARM* processor that is part of the
Cyclone V SoC device. During the operating system boot process, Linux programs the Cyclone V FPGA with
the DE1-SoC Computer system (or similar system for other boards). This system instantiates components inside
the FPGA to make it easy to use the peripherals built into the DE1-SoC board, such as the LEDs, seven-segment
displays, switches, and pushbuttons. For a detailed description of the computer system, please refer to a docu-
ment such as DE1-SoC Computer System with ARM, available as part of the Computer Organization materials on
FPGAcademy.org.

Part I
Read and complete Sections 1, 2, and 3 of the tutorial Using Linux on DE-series Boards. This tutorial is available
as part of the Embedded Systems material on FPGAcademy.org. These sections will guide you through setting up
the Linux microSD card, running the Linux OS on the DE-series board, and communicating with the board from
a host computer.

Part II
Section 3.3 of the Using Linux on DE-series Boards tutorial involves implementing a program that increments the
LEDR lights on the DE-series board. In this part you are to write another program that controls the LED lights in
a different manner, described below.

Your program should turn on one LEDR light at a time. First, the rightmost light LEDR0 should be on, then
LEDR1 , then LEDR2 , and so on. When you get to the leftmost light LEDR9 , the direction should be reversed.
Only one LEDR light is ever on at one time. The effect should be a single light sweeping from right-to-left, then
left-to-right, and so on. Use a delay so that the light moves at some reasonable speed. To implement the delay,
you can use a Linux system function, such as nanosleep(. . .). Documentation for the nanosleep function
can be found by typing man nanosleep in a Linux terminal, or by searching for it on the Internet.

Part III
Section 3.4 of the tutorial Using Linux on DE-series Boards shows how to implement a device driver using in-
terrupts for the KEY pushbuttons on the DE-series board. In this part you are to extend the functionality of that
device driver.

The existing KEY device driver initializes the LEDR port to (1000000000)2 , so that the leftmost light is on, and
then increments this value whenever a KEY is pressed. You are to augment this code to display the count of
pushbutton presses as a decimal digit, either on the seven-segment display HEX0 or on the Linux Terminal win-
dow. You only need to display the decimal value corresponding to the four least-significant bits of the count, and
wrap around to 0 when it exceeds 9. Always leave the leftmost LEDR light set to 1 as a visual indicator that
the device driver is present in the kernel. The count values displayed on the LEDR port should cycle through
1000000000, 1000000001, 10000000010, 10000000011, . . . , 1000001001, 1000000000, etc., and the correspond-
ing digits displayed should be 0, 1, 2, 3, . . . , 9, 0, respectively.

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To display digits on the HEX0 seven-segment display, refer to the diagram given in Figure 1. It shows the Data
registers in the parallel ports for displays HEX3−HEX0 and HEX5−HEX4. As shown in the figure, each segment
in each display is connected to a specific data-register bit.

If you are using the Linux Terminal window to display digits, then you may want to make use of some of the
Terminal window ASCII commands listed in Table 1. For example, the command \e[2J clears the Terminal
window, and the command \e[H moves the Terminal cursor to the home position in the upper-left corner of the
window. In these commands \e represents the Escape character. It can alternatively be specified by its ASCII
code, for instance using the syntax \033. You can send such commands to the Terminal window by using the
printk function. For example, the Terminal window can be cleared by calling
printk (KERN_ERR "\e[2J"); // clear Terminal window

Documentation for the printk library function can be found by searching on the Interet. Also, more Terminal
window commands can be found by searching on the Internet for VT100 escape codes.

Address

0xFF200020 Data register 0

31 30 24 23 22 16 15 14 8 7 6 0
... ... ... ... 5 6 1

4 2
HEX36-0 HEX26-0 HEX16-0 HEX06-0
3
Segments

0xFF200030 Data register

31 30 24 23 22 16 15 14 8 7 6 0
... ...
Unused
HEX56-0 HEX46-0

Figure 1: Diagram of the HEX display ports.

Table 1: Terminal window ASCII commands.

Command Result
\e[H move the cursor to the home position
\e[?25l hide the cursor
\e[?25h show the cursor
\e[2J clear window
\e[J clear window from cursor down
\e[1J clear window from cursor up
\e[ccm set foreground color to cc1
\e[yy;xxH set cursor location to row yy, column xx

Note 1: cc values are 31 (red), 32 (green), 33 (yellow), 34 (blue), 35 (magenta), 36 (cyan), and 37 (white)

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