15$ ECP5 board kit

ECP5 is a great FPGA, it was reversed in Trellis, it’s bigger than ICE40 that was reversed before in icestorm project. And it have lots of cool stuff like

  • multipliers
  • serdes
  • 25klut min (85 max)
  • and lots of memory bits

But ECP5 board available on the web are little bit expensive (if you have nothing to do with it ;). Even the OrangeCrab will be about 80$ minimum (but with DDR3 and USB on it).

There is a rumor on the web that this leds display board include an ECP5 :

The Board as received

It’s really interesting, because this board cost only $15 ! With the dual SDRAM (M12L16161A) provided and its dual gigabit ethernet phy (Boardcom B50612D B1KMLG). For this low-cost price I order one of course.

Removing the sticker unveil an ECP5 25k !

I just received it and if we remove the sticker we see a Lattice ECP5 ( LFE5U-25F-6BG256C).

\o/ It’s a really lowcost ECP5 dev kit !

But without schematics. Mike Walter began to reverse it and document the board on its github project.

[Edit 1 March]

Anton Blanchard give the jtag+uart pinout on its twitter profile :

Jtag Uart pinout from Anton Blanchard (twitter)

I configured the FPGA with this adapter from seeedstudio (7.6$), which is a simple FT2232 adapter.

Connect and configure with openFPGALoader

ECP5 is available in openFPGALoader list as we can see :

$ openFPGALoader --list-fpga
IDCode      manufacturer  family         model               
0x81113043  lattice       ECP5-5G        LFE5UM5G-85F-8BG381 
0x100381b   Gowin         GW1N           GW1N-4              
0x20f30dd   altera        cyclone 10 LP  10CL025             
0x3620093   xilinx        spartan7       xc7s15ftgb196-1     
0x362d093   xilinx        artix a7 35t   xc7a35              
0x900281b   Gowin         GW1N           GW1N-1              
0x1100581b  Gowin         GW1N           GW1NR-9             
0x13631093  xilinx        artix a7 100t  xc7a100             
0x41111043  lattice       ECP5           LFE5U-25F-6BG256C   
0x612bd043  lattice       MachXO3LF      LCMX03LF-6900C   
   
$ openFPGALoader -cdigilent --detect
idcode 0x41111043
manufacturer lattice
model  LFE5U-25F-6BG256C
family ECP5

Open source synthesize and place&route tools

We can then load a simple blinker bitstream with openFPGALoader. But first, we have to synthesize one. Trabucayre gave me a simple blinker project I added to the BLP (Blinking Led Project).

This project require yosys, nextpnr and trellis to be installed. Installations instructions are given on trellis repository.

$ git clone --recursive https://github.com/SymbiFlow/prjtrellis
$ cd prjtrellis/libtrellis
$ cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr .
$ make
$ sudo make install

Then for next-pnr:

$ git clone https://github.com/YosysHQ/nextpnr.git
$ cd nextpnr
$ cmake -DARCH=ecp5 -DTRELLIS_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/ .
$ make
$ sudo make install

And finally Yosys

$ git clone https://github.com/YosysHQ/yosys
$ cd yosys
$ make
$ sudo make install

Synthesize blinker

The blinker projet can be found on this github repository :

$ git clone https://github.com/Martoni/blp.git
$ cd blp/platforms/colorlight/
$ make
...
ecppack --svf blink.svf blink_out.config blink.bit

Then, once JTAG is plugged we can download it with openFPGALoader :

$  openFPGALoader -cdigilent blink.bit 
Open file blink.bit DONE
Parse file DONE
Enable configuration: DONE
SRAM erase: DONE
Loading: [==================================================] 100.000000%
Done
Disable configuration: DONE

And see the orange LED blinking !

Some links

[this article will be edited as I progress]

15 réflexions sur « 15$ ECP5 board kit »

  1. HI,

    very nice article for starting with colorlight board.

    I followed it trough but when I get to downloading the blinker project to FPGA I get this problem:
    DirtyJTAG probe limited to 600kHz
    Open file blink.bit DONE
    Parse file DONE
    Enable configuration: FAIL
    displayReadReg
    Config Target Selection : 0
    Done Flag
    Std PreAmble
    SPIm Fail1
    No err

    Do you know what could be the problem?

    Regards

    1. Hi Filip,
      Your problem seems to come from a bug in openFPGALoader.
      Bug that has just been fixed.
      You should clone the last git head of openFPGALoader and test it.

      Tell me if it’s ok.

  2. Hello,
    I have an issue with the Colorlight:
    Info: [ 37376, 38679) |***********
    ecppack --svf blink.svf blink_out.config blink.bit
    seb@seb-MINT ~/blp/platforms/colorlight $ openFPGALoader -cdigilent blink.bit
    Error: device a0911043 not supported

    The board is correctly detected but model changes a bit:
    $ openFPGALoader -cdigilent --detect
    idcode 0x41111043
    manufacturer lattice
    model LFE5U-25
    family ECP5

    $ openFPGALoader -b colorlight -cdigilent /home/seb/simpleButton.bit
    Board colorlight has not default cable
    Unknown device family
    terminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::exception'
    what(): std::exception
    Aborted

    Could you please help me?
    Thank you a lot.

      1. $ openFPGALoader -cdigilent /home/seb/simpleButton.bit
        Unknown device family
        terminate called after throwing an instance of ‘std::exception’
        what(): std::exception
        Aborted

        Allways the unknown device familly issue

      2. Tested on Ubuntu 20.10 and same result:
        seb@seb-PC:~/blp/platforms/colorlight$ openFPGALoader -cdigilent blink.bit
        Unknown device family
        terminate called after throwing an instance of ‘std::exception’
        what(): std::exception
        Abandon (core dumped)
        seb@seb-PC:~/blp/platforms/colorlight$ openFPGALoader -cdigilent –detect
        idcode 0x41111043
        manufacturer lattice
        model LFE5U-25
        family ECP5

  3. Hello,

    Here with the -v option:
    seb@seb-PC:~/blp/platforms/colorlight$ openFPGALoader -v -cdigilent simpleButton.bit
    found 1 devices
    idcode 0x41111043
    manufacturer lattice
    model LFE5U-25
    family ECP5
    File type : bit
    Unknown device family
    terminate called after throwing an instance of ‘std::exception’
    what(): std::exception
    Abandon (core dumped)

    Sipeed usb jtag to TTL from seeedstudio
    https://scontent-lhr8-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/144306228_10158074383133348_5992723884657304088_o.jpg?_nc_cat=105&ccb=2&_nc_sid=0debeb&_nc_ohc=E_dEpXOH_bgAX8wpYr5&_nc_ht=scontent-lhr8-2.xx&oh=bf6e2914af1b84041f5395502bf9b15f&oe=60398E44

  4. Hello Fabien,
    Nice article thank you!
    I’ve got trouble to load the colorlight with an dirtyJTAG cable ;

    ~/blp/platforms/colorlight$ openFPGALoader -cdirtyJtag -v blink.bit
    DirtyJTAG probe limited to 600kHz
    found 1 devices
    idcode 0x41111043
    manufacturer lattice
    model LFE5U-25
    family ECP5
    File type : bit
    Open file blink.bit DONE
    Parse file DONE
    Lattice bitstream header infos
    Part: LFE5U-25F-6CABGA256
    IDCode : 41111043
    displayReadReg
    Config Target Selection : 0
    Std PreAmble
    CRC ERR
    EXEC Error
    Enable configuration: DONE
    SRAM erase: DONE
    Loading: [==================================================] 100.000000%
    Fail
    displayReadReg
    Config Target Selection : 0
    JTAG Active
    ISC Enable
    Write Enable
    Read Enable
    Std PreAmble
    CRC ERR
    EXEC Error

    Any hint?

  5. Ok, I figure out what was wrong… the colorlight board was powered with an external power supply (+5vcc) so I figured that I didn’t need to power the JTAG pin j33 with 3.3v. I was wrong!

    1. [From admin: comments have problems, here a message from Alexander Bleitner]

      Thank you for the comment. I was having the same issue!

      Before connecting 3v3 as well I got the error:

      $ openFPGALoader -cft2232 blink.bit -v
      empty
      Can't read iSerialNumber field from FTDI: considered as empty string
      Jtag frequency : requested 6.00MHz -> real 6.00MHz
      found 1 devices
      index 0:
      idcode 0x41111043
      manufacturer lattice
      family ECP5
      model LFE5U-25
      irlength 8
      File type : bit
      Open file: DONE
      b3bdffff
      Parse file: DONE
      bitstream header infos
      Part: LFE5U-25F-6CABGA256
      idcode: 41111043
      mismatch between target's idcode and bitstream idcode
      bitstream has 0x41111043 hardware requires 0xffffffc3
      Error: Failed to program FPGA: std::exception
      $

      and with openocd instead of openFPGAloader

      $ openocd -f colorlight.cfg
      Open On-Chip Debugger 0.11.0
      Licensed under GNU GPL v2
      For bug reports, read
      http://openocd.org/doc/doxygen/bugs.html
      Info : clock speed 25000 kHz
      Info : JTAG tap: ecp5.tap tap/device found: 0x41111043 (mfg: 0x021 (Lattice Semi.), part: 0x1111, ver: 0x4)
      Warn : gdb services need one or more targets defined
      svf processing file: "blink.svf"
      95% Error: tdo check error at line 17
      Error: READ = 0xffffffc3
      Error: WANT = 0x41111043
      Error: MASK = 0xffffffff
      Time used: 0m0s446ms
      svf file programmed failed
      $

      This log might help other people find the solution

      Best Regards from across the Rhine,

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