Recently I received an e-newsletter from Altium, introducing their newly launched NanoBoard 3000 which they label “smarter than your average board”. What caught my attention is the content highlighted in the e-newsletter that “it comes with everything you need to take your skills into programmable system design: the hardware, design software, IP that's ready to use and royalty-free, and retailing at only AUD495.00!”
Wanting to know more on this new NanoBoard 3000 from Altium, I clicked on the “Find out more” tab and was brought to the Altium Australia website. Being situated in Singapore, I found out from Altium’s homepage that I will have to contact their distributors (Farnell Components Pte Ltd and PCB Graphtech Pte Ltd) for local support. There is also an Altium Wiki (http://wiki.altium.com/display/ADOH/Home) in Altium’s website which is intuitive and contains all the needed information. I spent some time going through the Altium Wiki and the NanoBoard 3000 in Altium website, and look what I had gathered…………
Altium introduces the NanoBoard 3000 to provide an entry-point to explore the world of soft design in a low cost, accessible way which engineers like you & I will be glad to have. For starters, there is a choice of 3 different high capacity FPGAs (Xilinx SpartanTM-3AN, Altera
Cyclone III or fixed LatticeECP2
device) to choose from. I specifically like this variety of choices as this mean I can choose the most suitable FPGA for my design.
The NanoBoard 3000 includes a 12-month subscription to restricted version of Altium Designer Soft Design License, plus all software updates that are released during the 12-month subscription, including major releases. With this license, I am not bothered by licenses associated with FPGA development tool licenses: Altium Designer’s software eliminates the need for FPGA licenses. All of that will be taken care of by Altium. Neat!
Looking through the specification of the NanoBoard, I found out that it has features which are normally found in much more expensive kits such as rich I/O capabilities including TFT touch screen, USB hub connections, Wireless, SVGA interface, tri-color LEDs, ADC/DACs.
The high quality LCD display analog resistor touchscreen enables the designers to develop rich interactive applications. The 2.4 inch panel features 240x320 resolution & 16 bit colour with a range of software drivers provided. The high speed USB capability include a 3-way USB host controller which allows the designer to plug in to human interface devices like keyboard and mouse. The high speed USB port allows the NanoBoard to be controlled from a master device such as a PC, providing access to a range of powerful FPGA instruments and debugging tools.
The SVGA interface allows the designers to connect to any SVGA monitors. The 3 8-bit analog R, G & B output signals are obtained from a 24-bit digital RGB signal that can be generated with ease using Altium software SVGA controller & software controlled API. The 4 channel 8-bit ADC is accessible from the FPGA via the SPI and providing a sampling rate between 50 & 200K samples per second. D-A conversion is done by a 4 channels 8-bit DAC & again interface to the FPGA over the SPI bus. Both the ADC and DAC use 6-way screw terminals blocks, making external connectivity painless.
If wireless functionality is a must in your design, the wireless connection peripheral board will help you get there quickly with support to WIFI, GSM, GPS & Bluetooth. The software and FPGA software IP are provided as well to get the designer up & running fast, royalty free. The super bright LEDs come together with an easy to use controller & supporting software which make development & prototype in lighting application a breeze. The specification indeed looks good and I must say the NanoBoard 3000 is more bang per buck.
Wanting to know if I can migrate projects using Cadence OrCAD to Altium Designer, I called the technical support line of Farnell Components Pte Ltd but was informed by them that they only distribute the NanoBoards and not Altium Designer. However they have an interface called DesignLink which enables a designer working with Altium Designer to be linked to the Farnell’s online store and access to Farnell data relative to linked parts such as local pricing, stock availability, datasheets etc during the design process and produce a Bill Of Materials (BOM) which is current to the market. I was also told that Farnell is the only company in APAC that can provide local inventory and local pricing for the BOM generated via DesignLink in Altium Designer. With regards to my enquiries on migrating OrCAD to Altium technology and the upgrade of the Altium Designer license in order to utilise the Designlink functionality, I will need to contact Altium or their vendors and distributors. So I proceed to contact the other distributor but unfortunately they have closed for the day. With such I dropped an email to Altium’s support centre regarding my questions.
I must say I am very impressed with Altium’s response rate because I received an email form the Altium’s support centre which contains their reply to my questions the very next morning (maybe because Australia is 2 hours ahead of Singapore). They replied that migrating from OrCAD or PADS to Altium technology is a straightforward process with Altium Designer’s unified data and file transition features. Altium Designer’s translators import all documents in one operation and include specific support for both OrCAD and PADs design & library files. With a series of simple, interactive steps the import Wizard processes all files types to automatically create ready-to-use Altium Designer projects and integrated library files, while accurately processing essential design elements such as polygon pours, text positioning, simulation data, design rules, layer mapping, project structure, and schematic/PCB synchronization.
I am getting a NanoBoard 3000!
