This week we worked on integration, debugging, and the final presentation that Alton will be delivering on Monday. The slides are mostly complete as of writing this report. We are largely on-schedule with more integration work to do, primarily with the networking subsystem. We are set up to begin testing all components of the system together, as we had only tested partial integration with the networking previously. There are no schedule updates to report.
In the end, it seems the “pixel rain” behavior is a combination of factors from VGA cable noise to the VGA pins from the FPGA being slightly unsynchronized with the monitor’s pixel clock. One of the reasons this is hard to accurately attribute is that the appearance of the “rain” is different between different compiled versions of the same board, or even the same version on different boards. Additionally, changing monitors can also affect whether the appearance or existence of this “rain”. The only consistent behavior is that it is usually there (but sometimes not) and that it is typically random vertical lines between defined color-spaces (the grids we are working with are seamless though).
https://photos.app.goo.gl/ffNnqcV1yRhVRtTs7
We have a working network! Linking because WordPress does not really have enough space to store video on the site. We are definitely still debugging minor parts but it seems we are almost at the end. The major parts of our design are now working (mostly).