Lab 1
FPGA and MCU Setup and Testing
The goals of this lab were to fully solder and set up our boards for the rest of the semester, and test that everything was working correctly. First, I soldered surface mount pieces, then the through hole technology to the PCB before testing that everything powered correctly. Then, I tested the LEDs and connections through a simple blinking program. Finally, I programmed a 7-segment display to display digits 0-F.
For this report, I will focus on the 7-segment display as the main design goal. Schematics are shown below.
To design the 7-bit display, I first looked at the datasheets to get acquainted with the 7-bit display we were provided with. I needed to get acquainted with the hardware pieces first, as I knew the coding bit of it would be relatively straightforward (just pushing 1s and 0s through to the segments based on switch inputs - an always_comb block). This proved to be the hardest step for me because I struggled to sift through the datasheet to understand exactly how things should be wired.
The coding was relatively straightforward. A block diagram is shown below. 
To verify that the design was behaving as expected, I simply used the switches to toggle through all 17 options. I had some problems with wiring in the exact correct way, so based off of this, I switched around some of the wiring to have the display be accurate. My debug method for the wires was mostly guess and check though, which would only be a reasonable approach for a project that is as small as this one.
The design meets all requirements. The 7-segment display light up according to bit switch inputs, and the LEDs on the side of the board also light up corresponding to and and xor gates.
As part of an excellence requirement, I inspected the datasheet further to find desired voltage and current for each segment, then performed simple V=iR algebra to find a resistor value that would make each segment light up at the same brightness.
Lastly, I forced all of the possible switch values to simulate that the 7 segment display was working correctly for excellence requirements.
I spent about 12 hours working on this lab.