uart in vhdl send a string

Question

I am learning vhdl and fpga, I have a digilent board Nexys 4. I am trying to send via UART a string. I have been sucessful in sending a character every time a button is clicked on the board.

Now I want to send the whole string after every button click, but I don't get any output from the terminal (I use putty). What am I doing wrong?

This is the top module, I believe the problem may be here but I am not 100% sure.

library ieee;
use ieee.std_logic_1164.all;
use ieee.numeric_std.all;

entity UART_tx_top is
port(btnC : in std_logic;
      clk : in std_logic;
     RsTx : out std_logic);
end UART_tx_top;

architecture behavioral of UART_tx_top is

signal string_to_send : string := "Hello World!";
constant string_length : integer := 12;
signal tx_index : integer := 0;
type state_type is (TX_WAIT_BTN, TX_SEND_CHAR, TX_SEND_WAIT); 

signal state   : state_type := TX_WAIT_BTN;  
signal uartRdy : std_logic;
signal uartSend: std_logic;
signal uartData: std_logic_vector (7 downto 0);
signal initStr : std_logic_vector (7 downto 0) := x"41";
signal btnCclr : std_logic;
signal btnC_prev : std_logic;
  
component UART_tx_ctrl
generic(baud : integer);
port(send : in std_logic;
      clk : in std_logic;
     data : in std_logic_vector (7 downto 0);
    ready : out std_logic;
  uart_tx : out std_logic);
end component;

component debounce is
port(clk : in std_logic;
     btn : in std_logic;
 btn_clr : out std_logic);
end component;

begin
process(clk)
begin
if rising_edge(clk) then
btnC_prev <= btnCclr;
case state is
when TX_WAIT_BTN => 
    if btnC_prev = '0' and btnCclr = '1' then 
    state <= TX_SEND_CHAR; 
    end if;
when TX_SEND_CHAR =>
    if tx_index < string_length then
    uartData <= std_logic_vector(to_unsigned(character'pos(string_to_send(tx_index + 1)), 8));
    --initStr <= std_logic_vector(unsigned(initStr) + 1);
    tx_index <= tx_index + 1;
    --state <= TX_SEND_WAIT;
    else
       uartData <= (others => '0');
       tx_index <=0;
       state <= TX_WAIT_BTN;
    end if;
when TX_SEND_WAIT =>    
    if uartRdy = '1' then state <= TX_WAIT_BTN; 
    end if;     
end case;
end if;
end process;

uartSend <= '1' when (state = TX_SEND_CHAR) else '0';

SX : UART_tx_ctrl generic map(baud => 19200)
port map(send => uartSend, data => uartData, clk => clk, ready => uartRdy, uart_tx => RsTx);

dbc : debounce port map(clk => clk, btn => btnC, btn_clr => btnCclr);

end behavioral;

Answer 1

To me it looks like you are not waiting for every single character to be sent out. You are just updating the uartData on every clock cycle without checking the uartRdy signal.

So I assume the TX_SEND_WAIT state you commented out would be actually what you need. In that state (or create a second one) you just have to check if you're at the end of the string or if there are more characters to send.