Who is Interested in Experimenting with a Spartan-6 FPGA? If You Are, I have 2 Boards to Giveaway for Projects

RE: Who is Interested in Experimenting with a Spartan-6 FPGA? If You Are, I have 2 Boards to Giveaway for Projects

rscasny — Sun, 01 Dec 2019 18:29:03 GMT

This is closed.

Randall Scasny

RoadTest Program Manager

RE: Who is Interested in Experimenting with a Spartan-6 FPGA? If You Are, I have 2 Boards to Giveaway for Projects

mike-0rc — Mon, 18 Nov 2019 00:14:52 GMT

Sorry Randall for being late to the party lol, I would like one if they are still available for personal projects and practice on FPGA code.

I do have access to a Cmod A7 at work and we will be purchasing more in the future but I have to learn more on them.

Currently I have a lot of PIC related projects and one of which I have 5 Month dead line to design and manufacture.

I still have to lean the FPGA among so many other things, who knew it would take me a week to get my head around MODBUS RTU, TCPIP & USB lol.

I did manage to fumble my way around the Vivado to get the Cmod A7 to flash LED's and read a button press but it is much harder to learn that the PIC C code.

Well saying that it did take time to create drivers from scratch while not knowing any programming languages other than Basic, ASM and ladder logic on PLC's - takes me back to my schooling years...I love to learn new things and have a passion for electronics.

I found the setting up of the Vivado and corresponding fpga to be one of the most difficult challenges I have ever had to date but well worth the hard work.

RE: Who is Interested in Experimenting with a Spartan-6 FPGA? If You Are, I have 2 Boards to Giveaway for Projects

mahmood.hassan — Fri, 27 Sep 2019 18:04:17 GMT

Lots of useful modules for embedded application

https://www.digikey.com/eewiki/display/LOGIC/Home

RE: Who is Interested in Experimenting with a Spartan-6 FPGA? If You Are, I have 2 Boards to Giveaway for Projects

xeonaj — Tue, 24 Sep 2019 15:44:23 GMT

Very truly and simple!

I just want to learn to use it just somehow!

Am new to boards and I also have a deep interest in learning new things!

RE: Who is Interested in Experimenting with a Spartan-6 FPGA? If You Are, I have 2 Boards to Giveaway for Projects

rachaelp — Fri, 30 Aug 2019 15:14:37 GMT

Hi Randall

I'm not going to put my hat in the ring to get a freebie here as I think it's intended for newbies getting into FPGA design (and I do this in my job) and I don't have the time to take on another project at the moment anyway as I have slightly over extended myself with work commitments.... But thanks for raising awareness of these boards! I may well buy one of these or maybe the A7 version to add to the dev boards in my lab as I can see one of these being very useful.

I hope you manage to find some suitable candidates to do some fun projects with these! [View:/resized-image/__size/16x16/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-91d5b5f8-6696-4ae3-b4ff-2414ac3b02e6/5468.contentimage_5F00_1.png:16:16]

Best Regards,

Rachael

RE: Who is Interested in Experimenting with a Spartan-6 FPGA? If You Are, I have 2 Boards to Giveaway for Projects

rscasny — Thu, 29 Aug 2019 17:01:43 GMT

Last Call: Who would like to build a small project with these board? Who is available to do it?

I'd like to thank everyone who has commented.

I'd like to giveaway the boards this week.

Who is interested and available now?

Randall

-e14 team

RE: Who is Interested in Experimenting with a Spartan-6 FPGA? If You Are, I have 2 Boards to Giveaway for Projects

rdr91h — Tue, 27 Aug 2019 08:07:10 GMT

Last January I finished an OpenFPGA course, https://github.com/Obijuan/digital-electronics-with-open-FPGAs-tutorial/wiki

I used an opensource FPGA, the Alhambra board https://alhambrabits.com/alhambra/ , and I would like to try if I could use the same opensource software, Icestudio IDE https://alhambrabits.com/software/ in order to programm this FPGA.

If I could´nt use Ice Studio, I would try to reproduce some of the projects I did, for example connect the FPGA to an esp8266 an a NodeRed server to voice control with a cellular a little mobile robot.

Here there are the practices videos :

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNUG8km3AqKS3XxZrYxd5Uw/videos?view=0&sort=dd&shelf_id=0&view_as=subscriber

RE: Who is Interested in Experimenting with a Spartan-6 FPGA? If You Are, I have 2 Boards to Giveaway for Projects

ssimontis — Sat, 17 Aug 2019 23:48:26 GMT

Processor design fascinates me. I was fortunate enough that my extended internship at university was with a civil engineering firm which created traffic and transportation devices. Although I was mostly working in C# (we had a number of Windows embedded controllers and our central server was a C# app), I got exposed to the embedded world. As interns, we were responsible for loading firmware on all of the microcontrollers and they gave us a chance to try and fix RMAs before we shipped them off to our fab operation. There's something so satisfying about having a desk full of gadgets wired together.

I decided to specialize in computer platform architecture and networking for my specialties within Computer Science. Unfortunately, I began having my first major encounters with mental illness at this time. I loved learning C and building circuits in Logisim, but I was also laying in bed 18 hours a day and I should have had a 0.0 in that class if it wasn't for a TA who must have been able to read between the lines and gave me extra time to complete every assignment. I wanted to show up, but I just couldnt. When I finally saw a psychiatrist, things got better for a while. I excelled at my internship. The founder of the company was very intimidating for all of the interns, he was a South African navy veteran and had no patience for stupidity or self-contentedness. He kept asking me to do projects for him, and he became less frightening. He taught me everything I know about debugging to this very day, and things were only beginning to get exciting...

After I finished the extended internship, I received a call from him one night. He had sold the company because he believed that IoT and cloud computing were the future (this was 2012, for that industry he was incredibly forward thinking), and he said he'd appreciate it if I could help out with his vision too. It was kind of funny that a year ago I was terrified of this man and now we were having tea together in his living room, which had been converted into an office. I ended up writing a lot of SQL for him mostly, it was all rather boring. I was doing well in class, getting my work done, meeting deadlines, by all means I was on track to a wonderful future.

That next summer, I ended up working for him full-time the entire summer. This wasn't planned, I had discovered a certain white powder at university and within three weeks I didn't have a cent to my name and I hadn't been to a single summer class. I medically withdrew from school and called him up to ask if I could work all summer because I could no longer afford school. In spite of my life spiraling out of control, I created one of my greatest creations that summer. We were in a strategic partnership with a LED sign company that needed a controller system so it would integrate into our cloud system. The sign hardware was delivered to the office, from that point onwards, it was all up to me. I chose what additional hardware would be required, I designed the data exchange format for the controller to communicate with EC2 instances, I wrote the scheduling algorithm that uploaded advertisements to the sign via cellular modem or wi-fi and tracked play counts for billing. I spent my 21st birthday working until 4AM at night so that we could ship the signs out on time the next day.

Things got progressively uglier after this victory. I began having psychotic breaks. I will never know if I could have stopped the bipolar disorder if I wasn't spending every cent I had on cocaine, or if the cocaine was a way to escape the absolutely terrifying life that I no longer knew what was real. Several more medical withdrawals in school following completely mental breakdowns. I just had to make it one more year. The only CS curriculum class that I had left to take was CPU design, my other credits were all electives. The class sounded pretty awesome. You were given a textbook and a FPGA and you built a processor throughout the semester. On the first day of class we were given a test that the professor explained was generally a very accurate indicator as to if you would pass the class or not. I had evidently forgotten quite a bit about computer architecture, when I saw my grade and realized I was the only person in the classroom who bombed the assessment, I immediately left class. Every class was like that now. When I failed statistics for the second time in a row I finally decided to drop out of school. Not that I had a choice, I withdrew before they had a chance to kick me out.

Here I am today, 28 years old. I wish I could say my life was perfect at this point, but everything is a mess. I'm still alive though, which should be statistically impossible, Programming has saved my life, I am pretty sure I would have stopped fighting years ago if programming didn't mean so much to me. I'm a fairly successful C# developer, but I miss those early days. It's not easy when to find embedded work when you didn't graduate and you have a record. I'm playing with IoT devices and microcontrollers again, I have a vision to fulfill. I taught myself C# and everything else I know, why can't I teach myself to get back into the embedded world? If they won't give me a job, I will create my own!

We are several years away from that being a possibility. But I want to build that processor that I walked out on. I want to own my past, damnit. For my best friend Ross, who overdosed on heroin before any of the grand schemes we talked about many late nights could come to fruition, I want to build that CPU. I think he was the only person who believed in me that summer, that it was going to be a tough class but if I studied and put in twice the effort everyone else did, I could do it. A month later, I was calling his father to let him know that the coroner had found his body. I think I've told enough of the story that you get the point by now. There's nothing more to say in between the tears.

RE: Who is Interested in Experimenting with a Spartan-6 FPGA? If You Are, I have 2 Boards to Giveaway for Projects

neuromodulator — Sat, 17 Aug 2019 16:02:53 GMT

I got the CMOD S7 and the board is incredibly fun, even if you don't have prior FPGA experience (I didn't have any). Coming with very few connectors it will force you to learn even more by interfacing it with other stuff. I'm having a great time with the board and will soon post what I've done with it.

RE: Who is Interested in Experimenting with a Spartan-6 FPGA? If You Are, I have 2 Boards to Giveaway for Projects

balearicdynamics — Fri, 16 Aug 2019 10:34:42 GMT

Hey Randy, why everything in the same short time window?

I am very interested but I can't write anything on this device before the end of September when I can start testing on a project. I'll submit to your decision. Anyway if no one want this, I am ok to receive it [View:/resized-image/__size/16x16/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-91d5b5f8-6696-4ae3-b4ff-2414ac3b02e6/1803.contentimage_5F00_1.png:16:16]

Enrico

RE: Who is Interested in Experimenting with a Spartan-6 FPGA? If You Are, I have 2 Boards to Giveaway for Projects

karthickinb — Sat, 10 Aug 2019 18:00:34 GMT

Dear Sir,

I am happy to introduce you about myself that, I am Asst. Professor working in IIIT AP Academic institute, India, I am having basic knowledge on FPGA and programing with Xilinx Vivado design Suite using Zedboard, Nexys 3, Basys 3 trainer kits, I gained knowledge on attending hands-on sessions organized by various institutions. It was interesting to work on the FPGA to design the required logic's then which are available in Microcontrollers kits. My participation certificates were attached below for your reference which shows my interest from the past years. I would like to take this opportunity to design the projects on home automation, agriculture, industrial process monitoring, medical devices, etc.

[View:/resized-image/__size/363x504/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-91d5b5f8-6696-4ae3-b4ff-2414ac3b02e6/contentimage_5F00_204207.jpg:363:504][View:/resized-image/__size/373x518/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-91d5b5f8-6696-4ae3-b4ff-2414ac3b02e6/contentimage_5F00_204208.jpg:373:518][View:/resized-image/__size/427x307/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-91d5b5f8-6696-4ae3-b4ff-2414ac3b02e6/contentimage_5F00_204209.jpg:427:307][View:/resized-image/__size/427x308/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-91d5b5f8-6696-4ae3-b4ff-2414ac3b02e6/contentimage_5F00_204210.jpg:427:308]

Before going deep into the projects I would like to test my knowledge on interfacing various types of components like LEDs, LCD, Switches, Hex keypad, diodes, transistors, capacitors, batteries, buttons, SD card, etc Sensors like Temperature, Hall, Humidity, Accelerometer, Gyro, Light, Magnetometer, IR, Photodiode, pressure, flow, weight, etc and Actuators DC motor, Servo Motor, Stepper motor, Relay, etc via I2C, SPI, WiFi, BT connectivity and process the data in ADC, DAC, GPIOs as PWM, Counters,etc. This will help to study the environmental conditions, vibrations, noise, motion, signal conditioning, video & image capturing, etc.

what you want to achieve with this little board?

CMOD S6 tiny board has 46 GPIO pins, 2 on-board clocks, 4 user LEDs and 2 user buttons so these are enough to design a basic 'n' number of projects which can be useful in small and essential applications. I would like to design Digital counter circuit, play with LED strobe lights, data read from Analog sensor, store data in Memory.

What's your goal in learning?

My aim was to understand the programming to FPGA and design the step-by-step interfacing steps to read and write sensor data on memory or display, control the speed of motors, interfacing the keypad to process, etc. The project demonstration will be shared to students in e-learning classes in our institution to improve their skills and help them to design innovative projects and involve them to post blogs and motivate them to get experience my participating in design contests. The blog post can also help the global community members to learn new skills. Like wise I would like to share the knowledge by receiving the CMOD S6 Spartan-6 FPGA Module.

What would you like to experiment with?
In the Microcontroller the register sizes are fixed and the process of execution takes serially and it take much wait time. And the tasks are executed one after the other so it take long time to process and are not suitable for real-time complex process in industries. FPGA can perform the task individually and many at a time as we can design the logic circuits according to our wish. Once the interfacing and signalling are learned with the basic designs then, I would like to test the performance of the DSP for the analog signal for audio/video which can be used for communication and data transfer. Apart from the data transmission, signal conditioning is used by designing filter to remove noise. FPGA are mostly used in radar for signal transmission and receiving time triggers, data processing, etc. CMOD S6 Spartan-6 FPGA Module is a tiny device so it has a possibility to design a wearable/handheld devices. It will be a good exposure to experiment with this tiny module and test the performance so that it can be extended with high configuration FGPA for future prospectus.

Through this giveaway I would like to take the opportunity to improve my programming skills on FPGA and learn the interfacing of various components, sensor and actuators. The interfacing can be exposed to students to improve their skills in FPGAs by teaching VHDL, Verilog, such kind of interactive classes help to students to create innovative designs in day to day life applications in various fields. Once they are learning programming to FPGA they can choose the modules for their final year projects.

My project title will be Industrial environment status monitoring with the temperature, humidity, pressure sensors.

RE: Who is Interested in Experimenting with a Spartan-6 FPGA? If You Are, I have 2 Boards to Giveaway for Projects

zamaliphe — Tue, 06 Aug 2019 19:51:37 GMT

I have allredy get a board last week not sure if can apply here but I just saw this post [View:/resized-image/__size/16x16/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-91d5b5f8-6696-4ae3-b4ff-2414ac3b02e6/contentimage_5F00_1.png:16:16]

RE: Who is Interested in Experimenting with a Spartan-6 FPGA? If You Are, I have 2 Boards to Giveaway for Projects

vimarsh_ — Tue, 06 Aug 2019 10:14:25 GMT

Hello,

Recently I am very intrigued by the field of FPGA. Recently I made a project with Arduino Vidor as FPGA but I couldn't hard code it the FPGA way because of lack of Intel Quartus beginner guides.

The Spartan 6 FPGA has a lot of beginner guides and a lot of documentation. The board will help me get into the actual FPGA. With the board after experimenting and learning, I would like to apply what I learned in building a device related to the railway safety system.

Thanking you,