PROGRAM YOUR FPGA OVER WI-FI...SORT OF?

I recently picked up a couple Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller boards and was thinking about what I'd like to do with them. Having used a parallel port for my Xilinx FPGA programming for quite some time, I decided to put together a Wi-Fi solution using it and an ESP-01 Wi-Fi module that uses the Xilinx Virtual Cable Driver from the Impact software.

If you are interested in the python code for this project, it can be downloaded in zip format and contains 3 files:

• main.py - Used as the entry point and main control

• esp8266.py - Controls the actions of the ESP-01 module

• JTAG.py - Controls the actions of the JTAG interface

It's not perfect and does still need some work, but it does function. Upload all three to your RP Pico in order for it to work correctly.

The one caveat though is that Impact is only able to program successfully when there is only one device in the chain. More than this and it will fail. There is a bug in the Impact software unfortunately and is likely to not be corrected.

You can see more information on the project and it's operation in the YouTube video above.

You can also see the original Parallel Programmer that I've been using.

WiFi Programmer

.zip

Download ZIP • 8KB