Build an FPGA Oscilloscope with VHDL and C#

In this hands-on FPGA course, you will learn how to build a simple USB-based PC oscilloscope from start to finish using VHDL and C#. The course uses the FPGA Explorer Development Board as the development platform.

The course begins by showing how to interface an FPGA with an on-board Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) using the SPI protocol. You will then design UART communication logic in VHDL to stream real-time ADC sample data from the FPGA to a PC through the development board’s USB-to-UART interface.

On the software side, you will develop a C# Windows desktop application capable of receiving serial data from the FPGA and displaying it as a live real-time waveform graph, creating a basic oscilloscope-style real time signal plotting interface.

This course is designed to provide practical experience with FPGA development and hardware/software integration while introducing several important embedded engineering concepts, including:

• SPI communication in VHDL
• UART transmitter design
• Real-time data acquisition
• USB serial communication
• FPGA-to-PC interfacing
• C# serial port programming
• Real-time waveform plotting

By the end of the course, you will have a complete working project and a strong understanding of how FPGA hardware and PC software can work together to create real-time measurement and visualization systems.

Whether you are interested in FPGA development, digital design, embedded systems, or hardware/software integration, this project-based course will give you practical skills you can build upon for more advanced designs in the future.