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

rscasny

The community does a ton of projects with MCUs. If they do the job for you, that's great. But the element14 community is about learning, experimenting and roadtesting. In this spirit, I am proposing that you should try building your next project with an FPGA (SoC), if it suits the application, of course. What's stopping you? Oh, some members have voiced the cost issue. Granted, some FPGAs do cost a lot. But chip manufacturers are rolling out economical chipsets that most makers, pro-makers or experienced hobbyists can afford. (If you can't, then apply to a RoadTest and if you win you can get a dev board for FREE.) I think FPGA / SoCs will move into a more important place for electronic designers, especially for IoT applications. Perhaps it's time to experiement with one. What's stopping you?

 

Here's a link to a current roadtest:Digilent ARTY S7 Dev Board (Xilinx Spartan 7)   Apply today!

 

Randall Scasny

RoadTest Program Manager

  • in reply to ntewinkel

    >Adding an FPGA to your trailer is just skitting

    (I had to google that )

    Actually I meant "skite"

    noun: skite; plural noun: skites

    1.  

      1.
      Australian/NZ a boaster.

       

      •  

        boasting; boastfulness.

         

     

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

    HAHA ... that's until Apple decide to slow it down .. image

     

     

    Besides some clever person sent you the code, so all you need to do is arrange some diodes to power it.

     

    Mark

  • in reply to mcb1

    Both words make sense LOL. Hilariously boastful image

  • in reply to mcb1

    (re DigiSpark)

    >Besides some clever person sent you the code, so all you need to do is arrange some diodes to power it.

     

    True, and no timing issue - it won't read the inputs until after it has powered up.

     

    And I guess I'd have to use a couple of DC-DC voltage reducers, but they are tiny. And I think I have a couple of those already.

  • in reply to ntewinkel

    And I guess I'd have to use a couple of DC-DC voltage reducers

     

    Digispark has an decent sized 7805 regulator, should handle 12v okay.

    I have been known to run the power through a 7808 (8v) regulator first.

     

    True, and no timing issue - it won't read the inputs until after it has powered up.

    The worst case scenario is the Indicator only ... there will be a small delay before the output contol is activated.

     

     

    I'd also look at using LED tailights (replace the lamps, or the whole fitting) and you have more options to drive them.

    There are some excellent LED lamps I found here. What went wrong

     

     

    Mark

  • in reply to jc2048

    We did!

    One could try to use a suitable RLL scheme.

  • in reply to DAB

      wrote:

     

    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.

     

    I wouldn't recommend PSoC as a good starter device.  PSoC is really an on-chip collection of devices, which are connected by a routing network.  Those devices include a CPU (ARM Cortex M0/M3 for PSoC 4/5), a bunch of PLAs, a bunch of 8-bit bit-slice ALUs, a bunch of analog, and so on.  You don't need to learn about all the devices, but at the very least you need to learn about the CPU and the logic if you want to do FPGA-like things.  So it's at least two learning curves.

     

    For starting out, I'd go with a pure FPGA board like the Lattice iCEstick, which has a built-in USB programmer, 5 LEDs, UART connections, and enough header pins to get started.  It seems to be readily available these days for around $25.  There are plenty of other choices as well: Not-as-expensive FPGA Boards

  • in reply to mcb1

    >I'd also look at using LED tailights

    They are LED, which makes them respond much faster, so a small logic delay probably wouldn't even be noticeable in real life.

     

    I'll look into the regulators. Sounds like a simpler approach, thanks image

     

    -Nico

  • in reply to johnbeetem

    I almost agree, I wouldn't go to PSOC to learn about FPGA and the Lattice FPGAs are nice and simple, cheap and easy to understand .......

     

    but recently I've been using Altera and the free tools and the documentation are just so much better.

     

     

    So now I think its an even call between a cheap Altera MAX10 board or a Lattice ICE40 board.

     

    If you think you'll get as far as making your own boards the parts are sufficiently different that in any given project one will be  abetter call than other.

     

    MK

  • in reply to michaelkellett

    Michael,

     

    The MAX10 family look like good parts.  I might consider them for a future project.  Please let me know if you hear about any open-source tools for Altera parts or reverse-engineering projects.  I had a good experience with Intel UV-erasable CPLDs circa 1990 (Intel was a second-source for Altera parts) and good experience with Altera 6000 series circa 2000.  They still had AHDL (Altera HDL) which I liked a lot better than Verilog or VHDL.

     

    I can't speak for or against the Lattice iCE40 tools since I've only used the open-source IceStorm suite.  They're simple command-line tools with no GUI and minimal documentation.

  • Since I've never designed anything using FPGAs, I don't know how they can be useful to my projects.

     

    Scott