ice40HX8k-EVB + Olimexino Stm32

[NeoTech]

I got these two cards after using alternative fpga dev cards in the past (DE0-Nano-SoC)

And realized here that the SPI interface for programming seemingly is not made to be programmed (or there are no examples at least) for being programmed from something other than the Arduino platform atm.

1) Is there any good generic instructions for how the spi flash can be programmed anywhere?
2) Can the programming interface be reused as a normal IO and communicate with the Stm32 over spi once the fpga has read the spi?? Or is it dedicated to flash the rom ??
3) Could both of these be powered thru the UEXT cable if one connects the stm32 card to a USB power source?!? (would be handy).

Thanks in advance if anyone could shine some light on this.

Kindly // Andreas

[LubOlimex]

It is just easiest with Arduino because a lot of people have Arduino boards at hand. We've used a number of Arduino-comaptible boards instead of the Olimexino-32u4 in the example, like ESP8266 boards and Olinuxino boards. What is the problem with the Arduino platform?

There are instructions about how to program it via RPI and Iceprog software:

https://www.olimex.com/wiki/ICE40HX1K-EVB#Iceprog_with_Raspberry_PI

Could both of these be powered thru the UEXT cable if one connects the stm32 card to a USB power source?!? (would be handy).

iCE40HX8K-EVB has no UEXT. Also the UEXT has only 3.3V on it and iCE40HX8K-EVB requires 5V to generate +1V2. +1V2 is not generated when you apply 3.3V to the GPIO.

[NeoTech]

Problem is that i dislike Arduino and wanna make this boardwork in my workflow. And Arduino is not part of that workflow and never will be. I'm based around stm32 processors and thus avoiding the whole debacle that is Arduino.

But what you are saying, im on my own and have to figure it out because basic documentation is lacking and i see in the other threads you guys keep refering back to the examples you have instead of creating more "normal" examples for FTDI or similar that literally every other dev board has.

Too bad, its a great form factor on these boards.

[LubOlimex]

I don't know about FTDI, USB-serial converter is not sufficient for programming iCE40HX8K. You need SPI interface to program it.

You can use OLIMEXINO-STM32's SPI to program the ice40hx but I am not sure how easy would be to find compatible software. There are some projects that used STM32 chips for programming ice40hx tho. Maybe check the blackice project.

[LubOlimex]

Check here, someone did it previously:

http://cs.unibo.it/~davide.berardi6/post/20200604-1.html