Understanding SDI video data format

[Yansi]

Nothing major, just a polygon got poured improperly and is not making contact.  God knows how that happened, as I always run the DRC before generating manufacturing data. 

[Yansi]

Good news everyone!

I have soldered the FPGA and necessary circuitry around it. Successfully connected via JTAG, identified, configured and programmed the conf FLASH. Awwwsome, I am one satisfied person now. 

Now let's solder the rest of it.

[Wiljan]

Great 👍

[Yansi]

Now waiting for the rest of components to arrive, I could only do that much. I have decided to give  LCSC.com a try, however, I have found quite a few issues with that. I have done so due to thinking (and reading everywhere) about how one could combine shipping of JLC PCBs with LCSC. But that is no longer the case.

The pricing of the regular components isn't that much better compared to local distributors, if you are not looking for the cheapest of the cheapest. Well, I wouldn't mind that - as that may be the obvious. But later on, you will find about what bullshit shipping prices are set at.   The shipping price seems to be constantly inflating with the sum of the components, making the total price almost twice in size. By adding the VAT and customs fees to it, you end up with even bigger sum. 
That way, it is no longer that much favorable to order from LCSC, I can order locally for almost the same price - with one exception - I get the parts FAST.

Although, I have the boards already at home delivered (I'd say within a pretty normal timespan for JLCPCB), seems the package of components haven't even left Shenzhen yet, according to the tracking information provided. 
And I was tricked into selecting the most expensive shipping option, to have it "fast".  I am very disappointed now.  The shipping of components was more expensive by itself, than the whole order of PCBs.

Unfortunately, few key components, such as the MCU is in that order.   

[Wiljan]

So bad when you have expected 1 shipping (1 cost) special if in the EU due to taxes, on the other hand sometimes it's cheaper to buy stuff eg from ebay in 2 individual orders (if free shipping)  to be "below" the tax trigger amount.

At lest you have the FPGA running and can do some testing even if you do not have the MCU mounted, you mentioned you had the I2C connected to the enc/dec and FPGA you could try a I2C interface and see if you can have it up running to see the reg correctly

[Yansi]

The I2C is available even on the IO expansion pinheader, so I can "hack it" from outside easily. Currently, I am busy with some work related stuff, more soldering in the evening.

EU tax is fine, I have the understanding that VAT has to be payed (no customs % on electronics import yet, luckily). I do even understand they want the VAT payed on every piece of package from 2021 forward.  But as always, the style how laws are made in the EU, is downright wrong.  How is that even possible, that it is legal that a shipping company can parasite on the VAT you pay with their own fees? How's it is even possible or legal, that for a 22€ package I pay 4.6€ VAT to the state plus another 20€ fee or even more per package to a shipping company that delivered the package?  As an end cutomer, I don't give a rat's ass where the money from the fee goes, what matters, is that I have payed  100+% of the total price import fee for that pacakge. So I have overpayed the package more than twice! Fucking stupid.
And sure, there is no way to avoid these "additional fees", as they seem to be just legal. Every company, including the state post company parasites on this, legally.

But enough rant, this would give for a whole and inappropriate topic here.

[Yansi]

LCSC components arrived late Friday (yesterday)... phew... Almost thought I will get it Monday.

Finally all soldered, except the missing CLC001 cable driver, I could not get.  So it indeed took 2 weeks from designing the PCB up to having one soldered. Whatever...  Better than wrestling intermittent arduino wires and piss-poor signal integrity.

Board seems working well so far.  FPGA tested - can be programmed, including the config FLASH, now blinking the onboard LEDs.

The USB microcontroller works fine too, although I couldn't get the same one with larger flash, so it may need an upgrade. <6kB FLASH and <3kB RAM free, after the USB-CDC stack implementation. USB works too.

Now I need to massage the I2C a bit and try to communicate with the TVP5150 and ADV7391. Then try to shovel the video data through the FPGA and pull the video through the board.

[Wiljan]

Looks very nice, good job 
And done very fast, hope it works first time 

[Yansi]

I fucking hate the I2C bus! 

Seems I can't get an acknowledge from the ADV7391 when trying to read from it.

But if I control this new board from an external kit with different MCU (the one I have used in the previous attempt where the small modules were interconnected by wires - using the same original software) it just works and the ADV7391 responds to read.

What the hell is going on there? Why don't I get an ACK on the read address 0x55?

It clearly responds on 0x54 for write and even works (I can even set the ADV7391 to produce PAL color bars). But I can't read from the ADV7391 with the onboard MCU. Strange... Very strange...

//Scope image below shows an attempt to read the value in reg 0x82.

[Yansi]

Sure, just have confirmed again, if I hack on the bus external kit with MCU (however, quite different one), I can read from the ADV7391 no problemo.

But I don't seem to find anything wrong with the waveforms captured above, do you?

[Wiljan]

Just to be sure, the I2C does need to have do you have pullup resistors 2x4k7  at the SCL and the SDA bus, what do you have ?

[Yansi]

2x 1K5  (this is 3V3 logic and I want some speed too )

I have solved the issue - by shuffling a bit with the vendor I2C libraries on the MCU. Not sure what has changed, the waveforms look exactly same to the human eye. Just used a bit different functions to exercise the I2C.

So I suspect it was a timing issue. But hard to tell what timing, the I2C is running 30kHz. That'/s hardly SPEED. The I2C peripheral works fine, even clock stretching works (I have accidentally discovered that the TVP5150 uses clock stretching!)
What's interesting is that I could read the TVP5150 through the I2C no problems even before toying with the I2C libraries.

Then, after seeing this:
https://ez.analog.com/video/f/q-a/114768/adv7391-adv7393-i2c-problem
I am not sure what to think about it. It is always an IC from ADI, when the MCU communication port is crippled or badly executed. Already seen quite a few ICs from ADI with strangely behaved interfaces. But I am not here to judge the I2C interface. Lets go on with the FPGA!

So it seems the whole board should be now working. Tomorrow I will cobble some simple VHDL code to test if I can get video realiably through.

[Wiljan]

So it seems the whole board should be now working. Tomorrow I will cobble some simple VHDL code to test if I can get video realiably through.

Long time  I like the SDI on FPGA project and normally you are very fast, any success yet?

[Yansi]

I am sorry, a lot of other stuff kept me busy and we are slowly starting to work again as restrictions are lifted in our country, so I'll have less and less free time from now on. 

At least now I got two or three days off, so I can probably move forward with this project.  I'll report back later, I hope I can toy with it today afternoon or in the evening.

//EDIT: Did not have any spare time today either, but I swear tomorrow I will . :-/

[BrianHG]

We are just beginning to tackle an I2C interface right here:

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/fpga/adc-in-altera-cyclone-fpga/msg3073112/#msg3073112

But we are doing it in Verilog.  Depending on the OP's speed, it should be at it's second level with even eeprom read & write support within 10 days.

[Yansi]

Thanks for posting, unfortunately I am still too busy to do anything past writing a few posts here and there.

Currently left all I2C weightlifting to the onboard MCU, but sure I would like to learn more.