It's great that Lattice is coming out with even cheaper FPGA dev board options. The bare-bones student dev kits from Altera and Xilinx are typically around $70, but $25 is a low enough price for hobbyists and beginners to begin experimenting as well.<p>I'm not too sure about the USB stick form factor, though. I have Texas Instrument's F2013 dev board[0], which is also a USB stick-type device. It's adorable; it's cute; and it has everything you need on-board (both the emulator and target), but you end up not being able to do anything very useful with it (unless you get very creative[1]). Hack-A-Day seems to agree[2].<p>Part of the reason this eval board is so cheap is that most FPGA evaluation boards have a bunch of peripherals that you can toy around with. My worry is that the lack of peripherals, low number of I/O pins, and the USB form factor might work against the product. That said, it does have an IrDA transceiver, which should enable some cool demos like acting as a TV remote.<p>If you're looking for a cheap FPGA board to use as part of a greater project, take a look at Lattice's iCE40-HX8K Breakout Board[3]. It's double the price, but it has all the basics and has tons of I/O to use. You can see Mike from mikeselectricstuff use it in his iPod Nano LCD project here: <a href="http://youtu.be/IIR1Bw8T_vM" rel="nofollow">http://youtu.be/IIR1Bw8T_vM</a> .<p>[0]: <a href="http://www.latticesemi.com/en/Products/DevelopmentBoardsAndKits/iCE40HX8KBreakoutBoard.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://www.latticesemi.com/en/Products/DevelopmentBoardsAndK...</a><p>[1]: <a href="http://forum.43oh.com/topic/248-ezprobe-ez430-based-logic-probe/" rel="nofollow">http://forum.43oh.com/topic/248-ezprobe-ez430-based-logic-pr...</a><p>[2]: <a href="http://hackaday.com/2011/01/30/hands-on-with-ez430-f2013/" rel="nofollow">http://hackaday.com/2011/01/30/hands-on-with-ez430-f2013/</a><p>[3]: <a href="http://www.latticesemi.com/en/Products/DevelopmentBoardsAndKit/iCE40HX8KBreakoutBoard.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://www.latticesemi.com/en/Products/DevelopmentBoardsAndK...</a>
Specs:<p><pre><code> • 1280 Four input LUT logic cells
• 64Kbit of RAM
• 32Mbit flash
• a PLL
• Two sets of 8 digital I/O pins
• One Pmod connector (2x6 0.10" socket, some sort of digital interface)
• 5 LEDs
• An IrDA transceiver
• USB dongle form factor, programmed from USB, can look like a UART from FPGA to PC
</code></pre>
The design software appears to only function on the Windows operating system.
Does anyone have any experience with this tool chain? Would this be a good way to - from a hobbiest standpoint- get started with fpga and logic synthesis?
Nice, they have both Windows and Linux support. I got a Papilio Pro some time ago and it's fun to play with. There's also a few other boards based on the same Spartan 6 series with more gates/ram and cheaper.
I actually have one of these on my desk. The chain is a bit of a task to install. The licencing is kind of weird on it. The chain it self isn't bad to work with. I just with they would give more resources and tutorials for it. They give you a blinking LED example and send you off on your way...
I'm interested in doing some audio work on fpga. At a minimum this requires a decent dac/adc. Can anyone recommend a cheap board that provides this onboard? Seems most kits with audio also contain video and got for around $400 AUD
Went to order one, but they want $20 for regular ground shipping.<p>May as well sell it for $45 and ship it for free. At least then I'd be less likely to whine about it.