Usually to program an iCE40 FPGA from Lattice Semiconductor you need an FTDI chip or some other tool like OpenOCD and a device capable of communicating over SPI. This has changed now with IcePython, a driver library for CircuitPython which allows you to program any iCE40 FPGA with a simple command.

Simply instantiate the IcePython class with a SPI object, a pin for chip select, and a pin for FPGA reset, and a filename, and you'r good to go. Calling program_fpga() then programs the FPGA with the bin file provided. Be sure to include all the required dependencies. For usage details, please see the example in the examples directory.

This driver depends on:

• Adafruit CircuitPython
• Bus Device

Please ensure all dependencies are available on the CircuitPython filesystem. This is easily achieved by downloading the Adafruit library and driver bundle or individual libraries can be installed using circup.

On supported GNU/Linux systems like the Raspberry Pi, you can install the driver locally from PyPI. To install for current user:

pip3 install oakdevtech-circuitpython-icepython

To install system-wide (this may be required in some cases):

sudo pip3 install oakdevtech-circuitpython-icepython

To install in a virtual environment in your current project:

mkdir project-name && cd project-name
python3 -m venv .venv
source .env/bin/activate
pip3 install oakdevtech-circuitpython-icepython

Make sure that you have circup installed in your Python environment. Install it with the following command if necessary:

pip3 install circup

With circup installed and your CircuitPython device connected use the following command to install:

circup install oakdevtech_icepython

Or the following command to update an existing version:

circup update

examples folder and be included in docs/examples.rst.

API documentation for this library can be found on Read the Docs.

For information on building library documentation, please check out this guide.

Contributions are welcome! Please read our Code of Conduct before contributing to help this project stay welcoming.