Back in April, I attend an outstanding talk by Jack Gassett at The specified item was not found. entitled:
Designing an Open Source Arduino/FPGA Development Board
The Papilio is a low-cost, open-source FPGA development board intended for education, hobbyists, engineers, or anyone interested in learning digital electronics in general and FPGAs in particular. Add-on application modules called "Wings" help make the Papilio an easy-to-learn platform for beginners and a powerful design and prototyping tool for engineers. Of particular interest is that the FPGA on the Papilio can be configured with a soft Arduino processor core, thereby allowing the Papilio to run Arduino programs.
In this session, the creator of the Papilio – Inventor Jack Gassett –will present a technical tour describing how the system is implemented and discuss the design decisions he made along the way. Also discussed will be the ways in which users can plug their own peripherals into the system using VHDL or schematic entry; also how users can take existing cores from sites like OpenCores.com and integrate them into the Papilio's Arduino soft processor core.
Jack was kind enough to give a Papilio board to me along with a "MegaWing" daughterboard:
The Papilio is an Open Source FPGA development board based on the Xilinx Spartan 3E FPGA (datasheet). It has 48 I/O lines, dual channel USB, integrated JTAG programmer, 4 power supplies, and a power connector. It provides everything needed to start learning Digital Electronics.
The LogicStart MegaWing provides everything needed to get started with VHDL and FPGA development on the Papilio with one convenient and easy to connect circuit board.
Learn VHDL with Mike Field's free book written specifically for the Papilio and LogicStart MegaWing. Step by step examples and full source code walks you through using all the peripherals on the LogicStart.
Dive into the exciting world of customizable Soft Processor's with the ZPUino. Custom peripheral's such as a ZX Spectrum compatible VGA adapter and classic audio chips are just a few of the exciting possibilities. The LogicStart gives you peripherals to experiment with!
I thought I would pass on the favor to another member of element14 Community. I'm going to give both of these boards for free it to one lucky Community member (sorry, no minors, you must be 18 years of age or older):
- Reply to this post with a short description of why you are interested (1 to 2 sentences is fine)
- I'll will pick a winner at random on Tuesday, Septemeber 10th, at 7pm US CDT.
Note: I'm located in Chicago and will ship it for free to the winner using the lowest cost option available. If the winner is located outside the US, then the winner will be responsible for paying any customs fees or duty that may apply. I will list the value as $78 USD.
Cheers,
Drew
