icestick-uart

Lightweight UART sender and receiver for the lattice icestick. The default configuration can be found at hdl/uart_top.vhd. Every received word gets echoed back. The parameters are 115200/8-N-1 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8-N-1). However, sender and receiver can be used independently and the parameter can be modified.

Repository structure

• hdl: Contains the hardware design.
• sim: Contains a few testbenches.
• syn: Contains the scripts and constraints for synthesis.

Usage

1. Plug in your icestick
2. Synthesize the design and upload the bitstream: cd syn && ./synth.sh
3. Communication

When developing, two communication options were used:

• via terminal, for example putty:
  • Make sure your user is in the dialout group: sudo usermod -a -G dialout ${USER}
  • Start putty via: putty /dev/ttyUSB1 -serial -sercfg 115200,8,n,1,N
  • Type something. The received data from the icestick should be displayed in the terminal.
• via python: see sim/uart_tx.py

Resource usage

For the default configuration, the following resources are needed:

resource	absolute usage	relative usage
ICESTORM_LC	83/ 1280	6%
ICESTORM_RAM	0/ 16	0%
SB_IO	4/ 112	3%
SB_GB	1/ 8	12%
ICESTORM_PLL	0/ 1	0%
SB_WARMBOOT	0/ 1	0%