FrontPanel explanation

FrontPanel
1

Hi,

I’ve been working with FPGAs for about ten years or more, am looking into getting an Opal-Kelly board for the first time, and I am a bit confused about what FrontPanel is. Does it replace ISE/Vivado completely, or is it just an intermediate step which translates .bit files into something an O-K FPGA can use? I routinely go in and manually route paths and do other low-level more advanced things, will FrontPanel limit me in this way?

Is there a short video or something that explains exactly what it does, because my initial search has left me a bit confused.

Thank you,

Michael

2

You can learn more about FrontPanel from our website. In particular:

There are some examples of the API here:

And much more information here:
https://docs.opalkelly.com/display/FPSDK/FrontPanel+SDK

FrontPanel does not replace ISE or Vivado. These are the vendor-specific backend tools that are required to build a project that incorporates the FrontPanel capabilities. (i.e. turnkey connection from your HDL design to PC software)

3

So I can still use the FPGA in a normal manner (with Vivado for example) if I don’t want to use FrontPanel capabilities?

Also, the link to the examples on the FrontPanel website doesn’t work. It points to

https://opalkelly.com/examples/home

while the link you provided, which does work is