What's Stopping You Building Your Next Project with an FPGA? (Please, Don't Blame the Cost!)

How do you do that on an Arduino when 640x256 needs 20k of SRAM to hold the image?

For the 'vector' display, I was thinking of the FPGA rendering the vector data in real-time on each frame to get a raster.

Compress it a bit.  1920 bytes for 80 x 24 characters and store the bit maps (8 x ((10 or 11)) in Flash.

FPGA rendering a vector image is a challenge - You'll have to use Bresenham's Line and Circle Algorithms or similar.

When I designed Laser Printer controllers (30+ years ago) instead of Flash we'd use RAM and compile the programmable characters on the fly as the paper was feeding through the printer.

That way we could have some degree of graphics available from very limited memory available.

If the image couldn't be rendered with the limited memory available an error message was displayed on the printer to say so.

The Kamami Maximator board has HDMI socket. Its powered by an Altera MAX10 fpga and fairly cheap and simple.

I reviewed this board in a blog on E14 which you should be able to find.

If you try coding it in VHDL I'll possibly be able to help if you get stuck.

The link you gave is using Verilog. You won't find that VHDL looks any more obvious but its pedantic insistence on being told exactly what to do will save you from many traps that Verilog will entice you into.

MK

I'm not sure you've got time to 'decompress' if you're trying to keep up with a pixel rate that's not too far off the clock rate of the processor.

"FPGA rendering a vector image is a challenge - You'll have to use Bresenham's Line and Circle Algorithms or similar."

No, no. Nico will have to implement the DDAs - I was very generously gifting the challenge to him. It's a natural for an FPGA and with your mentoring he'll do it in no time; I'm just providing a little initial creative input.

For myself, I was wondering about getting the A2 version of the FPGA board that Workshopshed shows above and using it for bitcoin mining. Make my fortune in the new digital gold rush. Can't be too difficult, can it? The hash thing looks like it's just simple boolean stuff with a little arithmetic and a look-up or two thrown in.

I started to use FPGAs about 6-7 years ago.  I've read through the comments above and I would like to bring up two thoughts:

1. Motivation to start using FPGAs would be the application type: building something that cannot be built with a microcontroller like for example video applications.

2. It looks like some people are not attracted to start learning VHDL or Verilog. Well, if you are familiar with circuit design you can design complete FPGA applications without writing any line of code.  You can just draw schematics using the available logic block symbols in the tool library and create a fully functional schematic based FPGA application like this.   I have done this on Xilinx and Altera/Intel FPGAs using the vendor provided free design tools.

Anyone wanted to start using FPGAs feel free to contact me for more details on how I started,

Cosmin

Hehe, for the FPGA, I think I'll stick with brake light logic for now   Any HDMI project I'll do on the Raspberry Pi!

You do recall the Digisark bootloader can be changed to start instantly ...?

Adding an FPGA to your trailer is just skitting (edit ...the word is SKITE, not sure of the plural).

If I had a good project for FPGA's I would use them.

To give you a perspective, back in the 1970's I did Bit Slice design, which is kind of the precursor to FPGA's.

If I was a newbie, I would first buy a Cypress Semiconductor PSOC board and use their software to learn how to build complex hardware circuits using their programmable devices, both analog and digital.

You can consider the PSOC as a simple FPGA device.  It will give you a feel for the level of detail you need to understand and provide you with useful experience in implementing custom hardware.

After you learn the terminology and get a feel for the design process, then you can move on to a full FPGA with a better understanding of what you are getting into.

Make no mistake, you will have to be able to deal with a large amount of detailed information to go just beyond the tutorials.

Why bother?  The reward in capability is HUGE!  Once you get proficient, you can make all kinds of complex hardware devices within the FPGA constraints.  You are now in the upper echelon of makers.

If you are a good maker, have the basic electronics background and like to work on complex problems, then an FPGA can be very rewarding.  You will forever free from having to look for just the right chip.  You can roll your own.

DAB

>Adding an FPGA to your trailer is just skitting

(I had to google that )

Hahaha yeah, but the little bit of logic required is a good introduction to FPGAs. Not sure if HDMI is going to be biting off too much at once.

And yes, I recall the quickstart Digispark. That's also on my list of things to try. Also a heck of a lot cheaper and easier than an FPGA

ps, I did get the trailer logic working somewhat using 4000 series logic chips. It seems to now be down to a timing issue - it works when I power up the chips first and then apply the 2 inputs.

I also looked into replacing the logic chips with transistors. That's a lot more wiring but it appears to be quite doable.

And if that doesn't work, I'll just buy a MacPro to handle it

-Nico