'FleaFPGA Uno' Starter board

Details

Hello hackers!

I have just finished design and testing of my own attempt at making a low-cost FPGA development board with 3.3V Arduino® shield compatibility.

Basically, FleaFPGA Uno is an Arduino®-compatible board with the following features:
- Lattice MachXO2-7000 FPGA with on-board JTAG and serial via microUSB
- Digital Video out.
- Configurable PS2 or USB host interface.
- 512KByte fast SRAM (Expandable to 2MByte)
- 16MByte user SPI Flash ROM
- Composite analog video and stereo audio (AV) out.
- Six high-speed ADC and also 16 x Digital GPIO.
- (optional) WIFI interface.

My main motivations for designing this board were:

1.) To create a hardware solution that was a huge step up from previous offerings both in terms of capability and flexibility

2.) As a platform for my own Sweet32 CPU as posted on opencores.org. I need to update my Sweet32 project page as it now includes C compiler tool chain as well as emulator support. More details to follow in a separate project page (coming soon).

I plan on doing a small pre-production build of boards very shortly. More details to follow. Please keep an eye out for further updates to this project and thanks for reading! :-)

Regards,
Valentin Angelovski

LEGAL DISCLAIMER: Arduino is a registered trademark of its respective owners. My project is not affiliated with them in any way.

Project Logs

Collapse

FleaFPGA Uno project retirement
Valentin Angelovski • 12/17/2016 at 14:27 • 0 comments

http://www.fleasystems.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=65
General project update
Valentin Angelovski • 02/04/2016 at 00:18 • 0 comments

Hello everyone,
After a short hiatus to take care of personal matters, I have returned! :-)
Now, about the FleaFPGA Uno availability problem: As I've previously stated, if there is sufficient demand then I will do a limited production run of boards. I have no need to make fifty boards just for myself :-)
Enquiries I have received via email while I was away have been encouraging. Enquiry volumes however could be best described as a trickle rather than a flood - but that is possibly because most people were put off by the 'out of stock' status etc. :-)
So, I have started talking to the assembly house again towards doing a follow-on production run. If you have a real interest in obtaining a FleaFPGA Uno board, kindly register that interest either here or via the 'enquiry' button on the http://www.fleasystems.com/fleaFPGA_Uno.html page. Many thanks.
Regards,
Valentin Angelovski
Mass production deferred - for now..
Valentin Angelovski • 12/26/2015 at 13:47 • 0 comments

Seasons Greetings Everyone!

I have some news regarding my FleaFPGA Uno project to date:
First off, the good news:
- All FleaFPGA Uno pre-production boards are now completely sold out.
- FleaFPGA Uno's User Manual is at a 'tried and tested' revision, thanks to feedback from FleaFPGA Uno members.
- F32c SoC for the FleaFPGA Uno platform has now been merged with the main F32c github repository.
Unfortunately, not all of the news is good. Recent personal events (i.e. 'life') have forced me to put my homebrew projects on hold indefinitely until I can return to some sense of normality again. These have also had the added drawback of placing major financial constraints on me going forward with respect to follow-on production runs etc..
To complicate matters, there was a far less than expected number of enquiries on the back of the recent and well-written Hackaday article. I was disappointed by this, but that's life..
Given the above, I am likely not going to make any decision on follow-on production until well into the new year.
Thankyou once again for all your interest and support of my crazy homebrew projects.

Happy Holidays - hopefully with some hacking involved! ;-)

Cheers, Valentin
General project update (and thanks..)
Valentin Angelovski • 11/17/2015 at 13:27 • 0 comments

Hello again :)
So, after a few distractions etc. I have finally managed to put up a dedicated FleaFPGA Uno project page. This includes links to project examples as well as the User Manual (with board schematics included). Feel free to check it out. Thanks! ;)
Thankyou to those of you who took a chance and bought my FleaFPGA Uno pre-production board. I am hopeful you will find them interesting, insightful and/or useful. :D
Going beyond the FleaFPGA Uno pre-production run: I have not yet decided what I am going to do with regard to possible mass-production of FleaFPGA Uno. Looking at all options around that currently. Assuming there is sufficient demand, I would at least consider doing a limited run of finished boards. I welcome any suggestions and/or ideas that you may have. Thanks again.
Regards,
Valentin Angelovski
'FleaFPGA Uno' Introductory video
Valentin Angelovski • 10/20/2015 at 00:20 • 0 comments

G'day folks!
For your entertainment, thought I'd get in front of a camera to talk about my 'FleaFPGA Uno' board. Cheers and Enjoy. Valentin.
FleaFPGA Uno starter boards now available!
Valentin Angelovski • 10/04/2015 at 06:21 • 0 comments

Hello again. :)
Good news! After passing several rounds of in-house testing, I am pleased to announce that I now have a limited number of FleaFPGA Uno boards available for ordering. Please either PM or contact me for order details if you haven't already done so. Thanks.
More to follow.. Thanks for reading!
Regards,
Valentin Angelovski
FleaFPGA-Uno highlighted on Dave Jone's EEVBlog
Xark • 09/20/2015 at 09:44 • 0 comments

I wanted to share a nice overview of the FleaFPG-Uno board done by Dave Jone's for EEVBlog when [Valentin Angelovski] ran into him at a trade show. I think it highlights the low-cost FPGA board nicely.
Skip ahead to 28:00 minute mark - HaD seems to strip the time from URL. Hmm, or try:
[www.youtube.com/watch?v=0omYGdhmZQQ&feature=youtu.be&t=1672]
Assembled Rev.E1 PCBs - first pics:
Valentin Angelovski • 09/09/2015 at 16:42 • 0 comments

Sorry about the delay folks.. Here are the first pictures of my latest Rev.E1 FleaFPGA Uno pre-production boards in assembled form:
I have a bunch of these boards coming to my workbench on Friday and cannot wait to test them! ;-)
FleaFPGA Uno Pre-production has begun!
Valentin Angelovski • 08/10/2015 at 16:40 • 0 comments

Hello again!
After a few distractions, construction and assembly of a batch of FleaFPGA Uno Rev.E1 boards are now underway.
Changes from the previous Rev.D boards:
1.) Fixed some minor issues with my reset and DV out interfaces.
2.) Fixed (ie reversed) the order of the Analog Input channels on the PCB silkscreen layer (D'oh! :-)
3.) Minor cosmetic changes/improvements etc.
Looking at around four weeks before these arrive for testing. This gives me some time to prepare things like code examples as well as user documentation among other things. Thankfully I already have Revision.D boards on-hand that work so I won't be idle.
My next blog will likely focus on upcoming HDL and/or coding examples for my Uno.
Well that's all for now.. stay tuned for further updates and thanks for reading! :-)
Regards Valentin

View all 9 project logs

Discussions

helge wrote 02/04/2016 at 20:10

wanted to suggest upgrading to MachXO3L device family... saw they only come in BGA pages, gave up. MachXO2-7000 is a great device and a very useful and pragmatic choice.

Are you sure? yes | no

Valentin Angelovski wrote 02/05/2016 at 12:40

Yeah. For general purpose apps I saw no really good reason to pick an XO3 over the XO2. Besides, I was already familiar with XO2 from a previous project :-) Cheers.

Are you sure? yes | no

helge wrote 01/07/2016 at 23:54

Why haven't I heard from this project earlier? Looks like the nice version of the XO2-7000 breakout. Thanks for making it available!

Are you sure? yes | no

Valentin Angelovski wrote 02/02/2016 at 13:59

Thanks for your comment and my apologies for the late reply - I had been side-tracked with non-hobby stuff of late. Cheers.

Are you sure? yes | no

helge wrote 02/03/2016 at 19:40

So where are you going with this? I read that you had put the project aside.

Are you sure? yes | no

Valentin Angelovski wrote 02/03/2016 at 23:05

heige,
True, I did indeed put things on-hold to deal with some personal issues. Those aren't going away anytime soon, but at least I am now in a better position to decide what to do with FleaFPGA Uno..

I will post another log about it today, please keep an eye out for it. Thanks!

Are you sure? yes | no

Connor Neal wrote 11/18/2015 at 04:04

How long do you plan on keeping this board up for purchase?

Are you sure? yes | no

Valentin Angelovski wrote 11/18/2015 at 12:50

Thanks Connor for your question (and skull :-).

Answer: For as long as I possibly can, preferably (but not critical) with the help of somebody who has more time and resources than I do ;-)

Are you sure? yes | no

Valentin Angelovski wrote 11/18/2015 at 02:03

To Greg / Maxim,

Thanks your comments guys. As Xark noted FleaFPGA is already kinda taken ;-)
Would 'Fleaduino' or 'Fleatiny Uno' be a better naming choice?

Are you sure? yes | no

maxim.karpyn wrote 11/17/2015 at 23:47

Agreed ^

Are you sure? yes | no

Greg Kennedy wrote 11/17/2015 at 15:07

Suggest a name change to just "FleaPGA", it's shorter and much easier to pronounce.

Are you sure? yes | no

Xark wrote 11/18/2015 at 00:23

Good idea, but Fleasystems already has a board that is called that (similar FPGA, but with VGA and 32MB of SDRAM). :-)
See http://fleasystems.com/projects.html

Are you sure? yes | no

jim.tavacoli wrote 09/14/2015 at 23:52

XO2 comes in smaller, lower power options with CSI and DSI support. Wondering why you used such a large package.

Are you sure? yes | no

Valentin Angelovski wrote 09/15/2015 at 02:39

Hello and thanks for your question.

Basically, I wanted to leverage my previous efforts and borrow heavily from a proven design http://www.fleasystems.com/fleaFPGA.html According to Digikey, the TQFP-144 package variants seem to be the cheapest XO2 parts available in the -4000 and -7000 LUT counts. Further, TQFP parts are also easier to handle imho..

Selecting the HC variant eliminated the need for an external 1.2V regulator, which is fine since I was aiming for cheap and not ultra-low-power. That said, at 12mA static current draw even the XO2 HC variant isn't terrible on the juice given most of that 12mA is due to the presence of the internal 1.2V regulator.

As for CSI and DSI support, I've recently given some thought to a total revamp of my original FleaFPGA board using an FT256 XO2 device. I would then be able to throw in a RPi2 compatible GPIO header as well as CSI/DSI Support.. :-)

Are you sure? yes | no

Antti Lukats wrote 08/01/2015 at 10:39

any success getting HDMI/DVI out from XO2? ups I guess YES, did not look the gallery

Are you sure? yes | no

Valentin Angelovski wrote 08/02/2015 at 04:32

Hello Antti! Yep you guessed right.

Love your work by the way.. Followed! :-D

Are you sure? yes | no

Nate wrote 08/01/2015 at 09:12

Cool! Can it blink an LED?

Are you sure? yes | no

Valentin Angelovski wrote 08/02/2015 at 04:31

lol Sure it can! You can even control the on-board LEDs directly too if you want.. ;-)

Are you sure? yes | no

'FleaFPGA Uno' Starter board

Description

Details

Project Logs

Collapse

FleaFPGA Uno project retirement

General project update

Mass production deferred - for now..

General project update (and thanks..)

'FleaFPGA Uno' Introductory video