Lab 4 - Convert 8-Bit Binary to BCD Display

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ECE2029: Introduction to Digital Circuit Design
Lab 4 - Convert 8-Bit Binary to BCD Display
1. Objective
The objective of this lab is to build complicated combinational logic circuits, such as the binary
to BCD converter. This lab will also be a transition from combinational logic to sequential logic
circuits, such as counters. We will also apply the techniques learned from lectures on
multiplexers and decoders to implement 4-digit 7-segment LED display.
The lab signoff is to use 8 dip switches to input a binary number and the 7-segment display
shows the corresponding number in 4-digit decimal format. It is fine to have leading 0’s in
display, e.g. 810 is shown as “0008” in display. The input number range is (00~FF)16 and the
decimal number on display is (000~255)10.
2. Understand how multiple 7-segment LEDs work on Basys 3 board
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From your experience in Lab 3, all 4-digit of 7-segment display the same number. This is because
all of their inputs a~g are tied together. We can turn each individually off by set the AN0 or AN1
or AN2 or AN3 to 1. Then how can we display 4 different numbers on this display?
The idea is to “trick your eyes”. You will display one digit at one LED for a short period of time,
by turning on only 1 LED and turn off the other 3 LEDs. Then you repeat for the next digit. If
you do this fast enough, human eyes cannot catch the on/off switching activities. The following
information is extracted from the Basys 3 reference manual on page 16.
A scanning display controller circuit can be used to show a four-digit number on this display. This circuit drives the
anode signals and corresponding cathode patterns of each digit in a repeating, continuous succession, at an update
rate that is faster than the human eye can detect. Each digit is illuminated just one-quarter of the time, but because
the eye cannot perceive the darkening of a digit before it is illuminated again, the digit appears continuously
illuminated. If the update or “refresh” rate is slowed to around 45 hertz, most people will begin to see the display
flicker.
In order for each of the four digits to appear bright and continuously illuminated, all four digits should be driven
once every 1 to 16ms, for a refresh frequency of 1KHz to 60Hz. For example, in a 60Hz refresh scheme, the entire
display would be refreshed once every 16ms, and each digit would be illuminated for ¼ of the refresh cycle, or 4ms.
In this lab, we will only need 3 decimal digits for BCD display. So the left most LED is
actually turned off by setting AN4 = ‘1’. We will design a decoder and a mux module to
implement the switch of data and AN signals simultaneously.
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3. System Block Diagram
Figure 1. System diagram for BCD display on 7-segment LEDs
Among the blocks in Fig. 1, the binary-to-BCD is given and tested in the prelab. The binary-to7segment display decoder was built in Lab 2. If you did not complete Lab2, you can use the
following Verilog code to implement the binary-to-7segment decoder.
module bcd7seg(input[3:0] Y,
output reg[6:0] disp);
always@(Y)
begin
case(Y)
 0: disp=7'b0000001;
1: disp=7'b1001111;
2: disp=7'b0010010;
3: disp=7'b0000110;
4: disp=7'b1001100;
5: disp=7'b0100100;
6: disp=7'b0100000;
7: disp=7'b0001111;
8: disp=7'b0000000;
9: disp=7'b0000100;
10: disp=7'b0001000;
11: disp=7'b1100000;
12: disp=7'b0110001;
13: disp=7'b1000010;
14: disp=7'b0110000;
15: disp=7'b0111000;
endcase
end
endmodule
Switches
SW7~SW0
Binary-toBCD
converter
4-to-1
Mux
Binary-to7Segment
Decoder
2-bit
Counter
CLK
(100Hz)
4’b0
//Here 7 bits represent 7 segments (a to g) on the display. Remember we
provide active-low logic to the display. To display 0 , all segments (or
bits) are set to 0 except for g. To display 1, b and c are set to zero, and
rest are all 1s.
//Describing an event that should happen to Y when a certain condition is met.
//The case statement is a decision instruction that executes the statement.
//Declaring outputs as register.
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4. Slow Clock at 100 Hz
In order to rotate the LED display properly, we need to generate a slow clock. As stated in the
Basys 3 reference manual, the refresh clock should be in the range of 60 Hz to 1 KHz. As you
can experiment later in this lab, the LED display is not stable if switching too fast. If the switch
frequency is slower than 45 Hz, you can clearly see the “shifting digits”. We opt to use a slow
clock at 100 Hz, or a clock period of 10ms. The default system clock on the Basys 3 board is 100
MHz or a clock period of 10ns. The following code implements a counter to count the numbers
of clock cycles to 500,000 that is equivalent to a time period of 5ms. If we hold the output signal
‘0’ for 5ms, ‘1’ for another 5ms and repeat, we generate a 100 Hz output clock.
module slowclock (input clk_in,
 output reg clk_out);
reg [20:0] period_count = 0;
always @ (posedge clk_in)
if (period_count!= 500000 - 1)
begin
period_count<= period_count + 1;
clk_out <= 0; //clk_out gets 0.
end
else
begin
period_count <= 0;
clk_out <= 1;
end
endmodule
5. 2-bit Counter
In order to send the 4 BCD digits to display iteratively, we need to design a 2-bit counter. The
following code implements a 2-bit counter. We will cover the design of counters and more
complicated sequential logic circuits in class in the following weeks.
module my_counter(input clk,
 output [1:0] Q);
reg [1:0] temp = 0;
always @(posedge clk) begin
temp = temp + 1;
 end
assign Q = temp;
endmodule
//Clock input of the design, output clock
//We trigger the clock with respect to positive (rising) edge of the clock.
//Increment period_count by 1.
//If the statement is not true, period_count not equivalent to 499000.
//If above statement is true
period_count gets 0
clk_out gets 1.
//clk is input, two outputs Q[1]--MSB, Q[0]--LSB.
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The purpose of the 2-bit counter is to generate a control signal. Table below shows the function
of the counter in the mux and decoder.
2-bit Counter Output 4-to-1 Mux Output Decoder Output [3:0] AN
00 ONES 1110
01 TENS 1101
10 HUNDREDS 1011
11 THOUSANDS (4’b0) 1111
6. 4-to-1 Mux
In this section, you will design and implement a 4-to-1 mux as in the diagram.
There are many different ways to implement a 4-to-1 mux in Verilog. The following is an
example code for an implementation. You can design your 4-to-1 mux with different signal
names.
module mux4to1( input [3:0] A,
 input [3:0] B,
input [1:0] C,
input [3:0] D,
input [1:0]
sel, output
[3:0] Y);
assign Y = (sel==0)?A : (sel==1)?B : (sel==2)?C : D;
endmodule
Note that we only need 3 digits for BCD display in this lab (ONES, TENS and HUNDRES). You
can modify the 4-to-mux code to set one input signal D[3:0] to all 0’s. Alternatively, you can
map the input signal D to all 0’s when you connect the modules together at the top level.
sel[1] sel[0]
A[3:0]
B[3:0]
C[3:0]
D[3:0]
Y[3:0]
//selector switches decide
what data at the input data
lines go through to the
output (Y).
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7. Decoder
As we learned in class, we also need to build a 2-to-4 decoder to turn the 7-segment LED on/off
alternately. The following Verilog code is a standard 2-to-4 decoder.
module decoder2to4 (input [1:0] en,
output reg [3:0] an);
always@(en) begin
 case (en)
0: an=4'b1110;
1: an=4'b1101;
2: an=4'b1011;
3: an=4'b0111;
 endcase
end
endmodule
You need to modify the code above to turn the left-most LED permanently off. Then it only
shows 3 BCD digits in display. Hint: a very small modification will do the trick.
2-to-4 decoder
AN[0]
AN[1]
AN[2]
AN[3]
EN[0]
EN[1]
//When both en[0] and en[1] are 0, an[0] is 0, and rest of the o/ps are 1.
//When en[0] is 0 and en[1] is 1, an[1] is 0, and rest of the o/ps are 1.
//Declaring output (4, each used to enable each 7-segment display)
as registers.
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8. Put the system together
Finally, we will need to have a top-level design to put all. This will be your top module, add all
modules as sources to this as shown below:
module bcddisplay4(input clk, input [7:0] sw,
 output [3:0] an,
 output [6:0] seg);
parameter zero = 4'b0000;
wire clk_out;
wire [3:0] mux_out;
wire [1:0] counter_out;
wire [3:0] ones, tens, hundreds;
binary_to_BCD u0(sw, ones, tens, hundreds);
mux4to1 u1(ones, tens, hundreds, zero, counter_out, mux_out);
slowclock u2(clk, clk_out);
my_counter u3(clk_out, counter_out);
decoder2to4 u4(counter_out, an);
bcd7seg u5(mux_out, seg);
endmodule
The .xdc file (constraint file) is similar to Lab3, except for the addition of clock signal. It should include
8 input switches (sw[0] to sw[7]), clock signal (clk), 7 segment display (seg[0] to seg[7]), and 4 enables
(an[0] to an[3]).
Generate a programming (.bit) file and download your design to the Basys 3 board. Show the lab
TA that your completed design is working for sign-off.
//See Figure 1. Clock and 8-switches are inputs.2 outputs
(enable, one each for each 7-segment display, and; seg [6:0]
for a to g).
//Left most display is set to 0 because the range for 8-bit is 0 to 255.
//Declaring everything (all modules) that connects input and output modules as wires.