GM-STUDY-MAX education board for GateMate E1

Concept

GM-Study-Max is a FPGA trainer board designed for the Gatemate E1 evaluation board. In 2020, Cologne Chip launched a new FPGA product line, which uses an innovative FPGA blueprint with 8-input LUT trees. The MAX board is the successor to the earlier gm-study-e1 and gm-proto-e1 boards.

What functions does it have?

• 4x push buttons
• 16x DIP slide switches
• 16x LED
• 6x 7-Segment display modules (non-multiplexed)
• 1x 4 Khz buzzer
• 1x 3.5mm stereo audio jack
• J1 11-pin 2.54mm pitch header with 3.3 or 5V signal translation

The J1 pin header and pinout can connect 5V HD44780 character LCD display modules, or interface with breadboards for prototyping. There, the FPGA 2.5V IO signals are translated into 5V TTL levels, which can be used with an Arduino.

Pin Assignments

Hardware Constraints File (CCF)

Example Code

The following Verilog code examples demonstrate the board input/output components for quick verification. The code has been tested with the pre-compiled opensource toolchain released through the GateMate support site at https://www.colognechip.com/mygatemate/

• blink - blinks sixteen LED's in a alternating pattern
• count - counter for 1 byte, binary on 8xLED, hex/dec on six 7-Segment digits
• button - push button press changes LED frequency and light move direction
• switch - each slide switch turns its corresponding LED on or off
• sound - play a song on the buzzer, show notes on LED and 7-segment digits
• wavplay - play a wav file over the 3.5mm audio jack
• display - display "Hello World!" on a character LCD connected via header J1