FPGA Media Player

This project is a FPGA based media player which is capable of playing Motion JPEG encoded video over HDMI or VGA on commonly available FPGA boards.

Features

• 1280x720 [720p50 / 'standard HD'] 25fps video (also supports 24fps)
• 44.1KHz stereo audio (I2S or SPDIF)
• Hardware accelerated JPEG decoding
• SD/MMC card interface (FAT16/32 support)
• MP3 playback (SW codec)
• JPEG stills display
• IR remote control

Rationale

Why? For the fun of it!
This project was an interesting test case for a number of my open-source digital IPs (RISC-V CPU, audio+video controllers), and also brings together various SW projects that I had written in years past (RTOS, FAT32 library).

Supported Hardware

• Digilent Arty A7 + PMOD I2S2 + PMOD MicroSD + PMOD VGA or PMOD2HDMI Breakout Cable + IR receiver

Cloning

This repo contains submodules.
Make sure to clone them all with the following command;

git clone --recursive https://github.com/ultraembedded/FPGAmp.git

Block Diagram

Project Files

The FPGA gateware for this project is constructed from various sub-projects;

• CPU - RISC-V
• Peripherals
• UART -> AXI Debug Bridge
• SD/MMC interface
• JPEG decoder
• Audio controller
• DVI framebuffer

On the firmware side, this project uses;

• Custom RTOS
• FAT32 Library
• MP3 decoder
• LVGL User Interface

Getting Started

The firmware needs to be built with the 32-bit RISC-V (RVIM) GCC;

# 1. Build firmware
cd firmware/app
make

# 2. Copy firmware/app/build.riscv.boot/boot.bin to a FAT32 SD card

The bootROM in the FPGA fabric will automatically load 'boot.bin' from the SD card root directory.
NOTE: The SD card must be formatted as FAT16 or FAT32 and not EXFAT!

Debug messages will be comming out of the ArtyA7 USB-UART @ 1M baud (8N1).

IR Remote

The project can be controlled via an IR remote (NEC protocol, currently).
The IR codes are device-specific but can be changed here;

// firmware/app/ir_decode.h
#define IR_CMD_RIGHT    0x20df609f
#define IR_CMD_LEFT     0x20dfe01f
#define IR_CMD_DOWN     0x20df827d
#define IR_CMD_UP       0x20df02fd
#define IR_CMD_BACK     0x20df14eb

Handily, the UART outputs any received IR codes so it is relatively straight forward to tune the controls to a new remote.