TinyFPGA BX User Guide - stuck on programming

[James140877]

Hi Core Electronics community,

Followed the guide ok until I got to the part of uploading the code to the board. It is supposed to look like this:

But it looks like this:

I followed the guide as closely as I could however the guide does not explain exactly what I am doing by following this guide so I am not sure where I am stuck. For example the command line instructions do not specify where things are going just, do this step, then this step etc.

Any assistance would be appreciated.

P.S I am assuming the community has a way of visibly seeing these jpeg pictures because when I uploaded them they were automatically converted to the above text format.

Kind regards,

James Pasinski

[Robin57159]

From the looks of it, you have missed out steps 2 and 3 of the guide, and are running using the directory structure you downloaded. Note all the additional folders in the left panel, and file paths in the window title.

If you don’t understand what a command is doing, ask. The only stupid question is the one not asked.

Regards.

[James140877]

Hi Robin,

thanks for your message.

I will uninstall what I have done and redo the steps from scratch. If I have any problems I will ask again and be as specific as possible.

Kind regards,

James Pasinski

[Bryce]

Hey James,

No worries, make sure to let us know how you go. As Robin said, there are no stupid questions feel free to ask us whenever you’ve got questions. Have a great day!

Bryce
Core Electronics | Support

[James140877]

Thanks

I have done some comprehensive troubleshooting. For the sake of brevity, I will skip my attempts to program in mac os and discuss only the connection between the tinyfpga and my windows laptop at the moment. All the code I refered to in this troubleshooting was entered in command prompt. The following prior steps were successful (at least they appeared to be successful):

1. Install Python,
2. Install APIO and tinyprog, specifically “pip install apio==0.4.0b5 tinyprog apio install system scons icestorm iverilog.”

Currently I am stuck on this part of the code:
“apio drivers --serial-enable”

I get the following picture on my windows laptop.

I get the same pop-up window regardless of whether the TinyFPGA is connected to the usb port or not. The tinyFPGA is blinking when I have the micro-usb connected with the bootloader.
When I try to interact with the tinyfpga in anyway, basically any code beginning with “tinyprog” I get the following error message:
“TinyProg CLI
------------
Using device id 1d50:6130
No port was specified and no active bootloaders found.
Activate bootloader by pressing the reset button.”

I investigated my ports on my windows laptop ( it is a LENOVO_MT_80Q7_BU_idea_FM_Lenovo ideapad 300-15ISK) and I see the following screen:

The vibe I am getting is that this model of laptop has no ports to speak of but then why does the pop-up window say “no installation required”? Moreover I tried reverse engineering to find the port by typing “apio drivers–serial-disable” I was taken to this device manager pop-up window:

I was not able to find the virtual serial driver by looking at this list…

Thanks for reading this far. I would be grateful for any assistance in this matter.

Thanks.

Kind regards,

James Pasinski

[Bryce]

Hey James,

That’s quite interesting, I know it’s a simple fix, but can you switch out the connection from the board to your PC, I’m wondering whether there are any intermittent issues that are causing the serial connection to be interrupted.

Bryce
Core Electronics | Support

[James140877]

@Bryce

switch out the connection from the board to your PC

I am a noob, what do you mean by that? Do you mean just try a different Micro USB cable?

[Robin57159]

Some USB cables are power only cables, designed to be used to charge a phone or tablet. You need a full function cable that connects power and data.

Try a different cable, one that you know can transfer data to/from another device.

[James140877]

Thanks Robin. Ok I will do that