DIPSY

Taking years go get myself together and refund the iGOGO project supporters. I should have done this ages ago, I know. The money was collected to company account - I would refund from my household money. Sorry folks.

DIPSY has successfully landed in Japan and is right now watching the N700 Shinkansen passing by. Our apartment is in nearby Yokohama, thus we ourselves don't have to travel neither fast nor far.

Measurements in millimeters!

1. WS2812B compatible footprint
2. DIPSY ICE COOL FPGA
3. 256KByte SPI Flash with multiboot option
4. 2x LDO (Core and VIO)
5. One use LED

Using DIPSY-EPT Emulator Programmer, but the HDL code should equally well work on DIPSY too. Just got the basic SD card working, Windows does show that there is new drive with README.TXT on it..

There is still nice piece of work to optimize the HDL code to be bit smaller and then need add functions to REFLASH the SPI, and to issue WARM BOOT.

Then a DIPSY with spi flash connected "as SD card" would be full self contained FPGA dev system, connect "AS sd card" reflash the second image, and "restart hardware with new hard app" !

CMD55 and response seen in LA, while README.txt is read out from ICE FPGA BLOCK RAM..

It's saturday, I am on the way to ONION-Market with my son Andre. Hey lets go via the office, maybe I can draw some PCB there? OK!

I had the schematic and PCB template halfway ready.

I explaining my son, that MOST of the components are in the schematic, he looks a sec and says the capacitors are missing? Right there was no power supply cap in the schematic, I add two, and Andre finishes the PCB (routed 100% as per actual schematic).

Done :) the routing can of course be optimized, but it is already functional as it is. Andre is 13, I must discuss with him more about the use of DIPSY in school, what they do there is so boring.

I would like to write more and well more about the HaD meetup in Zurich, but: on my way back home in the german highspeed ttrain ICE, my backpack was stolen from the shelf about my head.

I have still 3 DIPSY units on my desk, the remaing ones I had in the packpack. There was a lot in that backpack. Direct value between maybe bit above 3KEUR (maybe more).

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/dipsy-the-book/x/4524007#/story

you can support DIPSY, if you can do so please.

PS. DIPSY production units will be available in time before christmas, not exact ETA but they will be done with our real production machines and available in any quantity needed.

The SD card emulation IP Core, is not yet tested but at least compiled with ICEcube, and there are enough resources, so that is a good thing! Now just a bit time and it will work.

heading out to zurich in 7 hours so see you there?

This is really not that we should do in the kitchen, but if needed BGA's can be soldered easily with any heat source:

The magic is really in the flux. Any other BGA is easier than this one, to get this right you really need to have alignment precison below 200 microns. The BGA will self align itself but this tiny thing still has to be placed very accuratly.

We tried 3 times, first time the BGA was soldered perfectly but 180 degrees wrong, the second one was possible also perfect soldering, but I did drop it, and as it was still hot the BGA did come off.

The 3r one I did bake too short, so it did not stick, so she had to place it 4th time, and well the solder was OK and the board actually works.

All normal BGA packages are easy to handle - do not be afraid - 0.8 and 0.5 aligne itself much better than this small thingie..

more CAD sources, DIPSY spi tool software sources etc commited to main github repo.

I have received product samples and free development boards from Silicon Blue and from Lattice Semiconductor.

Giving something back sounded like a good idea - so I sent DIPSY and DIPSY EPT (emulator programmer tool) to Lattice.

As an hint from Hackaday team I did not include this video in the DIPSY best product finals video.

But I like it anyway!