An Overview Of The FPGA RS232 Interface
The solution that this project offered for an RS232 interface inside of an FPGA worked without any real issues as was demonstrated in the previous video. However, the module only works with 9600 baud communication and is fairly rigid. While we celebrate the fact that the design worked, it's hard not to look to the future and see what we could do for a re-design of the VHDL (or Verilog) inside of the CPLD to enhance what we built. But we had success and the communication interface worked, so let's celebrate that for the moment.
What To Do Now
Since we only implemented reception, the next step would be to build a VHDL (or Verilog) module that supports transmitting data back to the host. Two-way communication is a must for any system that wants to be redundant and fool-proof. Similarly, an actual state machine design would be very welcome to clean up how the current design works.
Conclusion
This article was meant to present you with a way to build a simple yet functional RS232 interace module block inside of a CPLD. In that goal it was definitely successful. However, the unexplored avenues are countless and so this project begs to be worked on more to expand the capabilities of the simple module built. RS232 is an antiquated communication protocol, however for first time learners it is great because you can still find computers that have RS232 serial ports and test out building interfaces with them. Then you can move to more complicated protocols of I2C, SPI, USB or CAN.
If you have any further questions, I implore you...don't be shy, take a look at the forums or ask a question there. I check them out regularly and love getting comments & questions.
The solution that this project offered for an RS232 interface inside of an FPGA worked without any real issues as was demonstrated in the previous video. However, the module only works with 9600 baud communication and is fairly rigid. While we celebrate the fact that the design worked, it's hard not to look to the future and see what we could do for a re-design of the VHDL (or Verilog) inside of the CPLD to enhance what we built. But we had success and the communication interface worked, so let's celebrate that for the moment.
What To Do Now
Since we only implemented reception, the next step would be to build a VHDL (or Verilog) module that supports transmitting data back to the host. Two-way communication is a must for any system that wants to be redundant and fool-proof. Similarly, an actual state machine design would be very welcome to clean up how the current design works.
Conclusion
This article was meant to present you with a way to build a simple yet functional RS232 interace module block inside of a CPLD. In that goal it was definitely successful. However, the unexplored avenues are countless and so this project begs to be worked on more to expand the capabilities of the simple module built. RS232 is an antiquated communication protocol, however for first time learners it is great because you can still find computers that have RS232 serial ports and test out building interfaces with them. Then you can move to more complicated protocols of I2C, SPI, USB or CAN.
If you have any further questions, I implore you...don't be shy, take a look at the forums or ask a question there. I check them out regularly and love getting comments & questions.