OV7670 based video camera to a VGA display

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Students

1. Sai Manish Sasanapuri
2. Shubhayu Das
3. Veerendra S. Devaraddi

(from left to right) Manish, Veerendra, and Shubhayu

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Course

VL504 - System Design with FPGAs - course project @ IIITB, under Professor Nanditha Rao

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Project

Displaying video on a VGA monitor using an OV7670 camera

For more details on the project, see the project report in this repo. Additional references are mentioned at the bottom of the report.

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Hardware requirements:

1. A Basys 3 development board. An equivalent is fine, but the pinouts will change.
2. An OV7670 module(without the FIFO chip)
3. A VGA monitor and VGA cable.
4. USB wire for programming the dev-board(comes with it).

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Instructions for running

Video over VGA using the OV7670

1. Create a new Vivado project

2. Add the following source files:

   • Add all the files in the src/ov7670_with_vga/ folder (including the src/ov7670_with_vga/ov7670/ folder).
   • Add all the files inside the src/vga/ folder.

3. Add constraints/ov7670_constraints.xdc file as a constraint.

4. Generate the bitstream.

5. While Vivado is generating the bitstream, make the following connections:

   • Connect a VGA monitor to the Basys 3 board
   • Wire the OV7670 camera module as per the mapping given in: ov7670_basys3_wiring.txt

6. Upload and run the program.

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Video over UART

1. Create a new Vivado Project

2. Add the following files as sources to the project:

   • All the files in the src/vga/ folder.
   • The file in the src/uart/ folder.
   • The src/vga_over_uart_controller.v file.

3. Add constraints/vga_over_uart_constraints.xdc as a constraint.

4. Install the following packages in Python:

   • Numpy
   • Matplotlib
   • imageio[ffmpeg] <-- this is the exact name
   • Pyserial

5. Generate the bitstream for the project in Vivado

6. Meanwhile, connect the VGA monitor to the Basys 3 board, plug in the programming cable and power on the Basys 3 board.

7. Find which COM port is being used by Basys 3. This will vary depending on your OS.

8. Open scripts/vga_over_uart.py. Edit line 10 to the COM port used by Basys 3.

9. If you are on Linux/MacOS, you need to give write access to the comport. This can be done using sudo chmod a+rw <COMPORT>

10. Run the video_over_uart.py program, and see the results on the VGA monitor. There are a variety of options in the script, which are well documented there. Feel free to play with them.

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Folder structure

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├── constraints
│   ├── ov7670_constraints.xdc          
│   └── vga_over_uart_constraints.xdc
├── images                  # All the images used for the report/project. The files name are self-explanatory
│   ├── report-images
│   ├── sccb-simulation
│   ├── us.jpg
│   ├── vga_from_ov7670
│   ├── vga-over-uart
│   └── vga-simulation
├── ov7670_basys3_wiring.txt        # Wiring diagram for the OV7670 module
├── scripts
│   ├── create_coe.py       # Script to generate a coefficient file
│   ├── data.py             
│   ├── downscale.m         # MATLAB script to generate a data file from an image file
│   ├── mapping.py
│   └── video_over_uart.py  # Sending video data over UART
├── simulation
│   ├── sccb
│   │   └── sccb_configuration_tb.v
│   └── vga
│       └── vga-tb.v
└── src
    ├── our-sccb
    │   └── sccb_configuration.v
    ├── ov7670_with_vga
    │   ├── ov7670
    │   │   ├── camera_configuration.v
    │   │   ├── camera_read.v
    │   │   ├── OV7670_configuration_rom.v
    │   │   ├── OV7670_configuration.v
    │   │   ├── SCCB_configuration.v
    │   │   └── top_camera.v
    │   └── top_controller.v
    ├── uart
    │   └── uart_rx.v
    ├── vga
    │   ├── h_sync.v
    │   ├── vga.v
    │   └── v_sync.v
    └── vga_over_uart_controller.v

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For implementation based queries, feel free to raise an issue.