Hey Road Testers!  What product(s) would you love to get your hands on?

A while back, I evaluated the Altera NIOS II development kit for  Element-14, and my conclusion was that it was undoubtedly a great board, with an onboard touch LCD and video/audio I/O but seriously let down by the lack of basic I/O with which to interface it to the outside world.

The other day, I came across a product that I think will interest a lot of people. It is the Altera "DE0-Nano Development and Education Board" (also built by Terasic, who make the NIOS dev board) which hosts an Altera cyclone IV FPGA, SDRAM and ROM, and lots and lots of standard 0.1" I/O headers. This board looks perfect for hobbyists and professionals alike, and looks like it is pretty cost effective too (i.e. cheap). Many FPGA development kits make the mistake of either being too complicated, or over-simplified and useless. This looks like it is just right.

(I have no connection with Altera or Terasic)

http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?Language=English&CategoryNo=139&No=593

A while back, I evaluated the Altera NIOS II development kit for  Element-14, and my conclusion was that it was undoubtedly a great board, with an onboard touch LCD and video/audio I/O but seriously let down by the lack of basic I/O with which to interface it to the outside world.

The other day, I came across a product that I think will interest a lot of people. It is the Altera "DE0-Nano Development and Education Board" (also built by Terasic, who make the NIOS dev board) which hosts an Altera cyclone IV FPGA, SDRAM and ROM, and lots and lots of standard 0.1" I/O headers. This board looks perfect for hobbyists and professionals alike, and looks like it is pretty cost effective too (i.e. cheap). Many FPGA development kits make the mistake of either being too complicated, or over-simplified and useless. This looks like it is just right.

(I have no connection with Altera or Terasic)

http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?Language=English&CategoryNo=139&No=593

Hi Mike,

Did you see my review of this on DesignSpark ( http://www.designspark.com/content/de0-nano-fpga-development-kit-review-terasic ).

This is by far the best dev kit I have ever tested and used. Its the silk of dev kits in my view! Would be great if element14 (and others) listed these.

Nicole - this or any of trasic's products would be really good as I'm seeing lots of people asking for FPGA stuff here.

Hi Paul,

Yeah I saw your review of it. It looks pretty good. The only drawback is inherent in any FPGA platform - and that is the software is both limited and way over the top at the same time. Limited because they don't like giving away expensive software, so they impose restrictions on having to run it tethered, or similar limitations. Over the top because it is a huge one-size-fits-all package designed for trained and experienced pros. Not much that can be done about that though as most manufacturers seem to be similar.

Mike