New OSHW iCE40 FPGA evaluation board project

iCE40HX1K-EVB is small 5×5 cm development board for Lattice iCE40 FPGAs.

For these who do not know yet, this is the only FPGA which has Open Source tools -> Icestorm which allows you to program iCE40.

Above you can see the preliminary PCB component arrangement. Here is the schematic:

The development board have these features:

• iCE40HX1K-VQ100
• 16Mbit Serial Flash for the FPGA configuration and user data
• SRAM 256K x 16 bit
• two LEDs
• two buttons
• 100Mhz Oscillator
• power supply with DCDC 1.2V/1A and 3.3V/1A
• Male EXT connector with 34 pin containing 24 FPGA signals, 5V, 3.3V, CLK, 2x LEDs
• Programming 10 pin adapter

The purpose of the male right hand 34 pin connector is to allow additional expansion modules to be connected.

The additional modules with have FEMALE 34 pin connector on left hand side and MALE 34 pin connector with all signals on the right hand side, so many modules could stack together.

We work on these modules now:

• 2×5 centimeter fast ADC board with ADC08100 100Msps 8bit ADC, as we will make ADC addressable, many ADCs could stack together to make multi channel fast ADC digital storage oscilloscope
• 2×5 centimeters fast DAC board with THS5641A 100Msps 8bit DAC, also addressable
• 4×5 centimeters board with VGA and PS2 for experimenting with video generation and keyboard inputs
• 2×5 centimeter board with level shifter 1.2-5.5V with adjustable levels 8/16 bit for logic analyzer with wide working levels
• 4×5 centimeter board with buttons, LEDs for user interface

The main board is already uploaded on GitHub

The FPGA programming on original Lattice icestick development board is done with FTDI USB to SPI converter, but we avoid this unreliable company in our designs.

You can run the Icestorm on A20-OLinuxino-MICRO and we preparing patch which to allow iceprog to run on OLinuXino and program the iCE40 via the UEXT connector.

For these who want to use USB programmer we prepare patch for using OLIMEXINO-32U4 (or any other Arduino) as programmer, sure OLIMEXINO is most convenient to be used as programmer as already have UEXT connector which to wire directly to iCE40 10 pin programming port.

 

EDIT: At TuxCon in July we will have FPGA workshop with this board – we will teach you FPGA basics, how they are programming and first steps with verilog, at the end you will make your own first Verilog program and program it at iCE40HX1K-EVB. We are going to prepare examples how to use the ADC/DAC/VGA/PS2 etc add-on boards.

We work on A64-OLinuXino the first Open Source Hardware 64-bit development board

A64 was announced January this year by Allwinner. It’s a quad core 64 bit Cortex-A53 processor targeting tablets.

Some features are:

• H.265/H.264 video decoding in hardware
• HDMI 4K display support
• DDR3L memory with lower consumption is supported
• eMMC 5.0 support

Last week we got notice that Allwinner have already A64 in production and we will get some chips with the software SDK for Android 5.1 based on Linux Kernel 3.10 by the end of the month (yes they finally escaped from Kernel 3.4 🙂 ), so we started to work on our A64-OLinuXino.

This chip is with humble peripherials, as Allwinner target and announcement is to sell it for $5 in volume (obviously not for mortals as we have to buy the first chips at higher than this price).

• LCD parallel RGB, LCD LVDS, MIPI and HDMI video output
• Camera interface
• One USB Host
• One USB-OTG
• Two SPI
• Four I2C
• Six UARTs

As you can see no Ethernet, no SATA, no PCIe, but this is what you get for $5 right ?

What we found is also that although being 64-bit ARM the A64 memory bus is just 32-bit wide, we guess to make BOM smaller.

This will hurt the performance, so we have to see how it will behave compared to A20 and H3 for instance.

A64-OLinuXino initial specs will be:

• A64 4 core Cortex-A53
• AXP803 PMU + Audio support
• 1GB or 2GB DDR RAM
• 4GB NAND Flash oe eMMC
• micro SD card connector
• micro USB-OTG
• 2Mpix Camera on board
• USB-HOST
• HDMI 4K output
• Audio Output, Input
• LCD connector to connect with all our LCD-OLinuXino 4.3″ 7.0″ 10.1″ 15.6″
• RTL8723BS WiFi + BT4.0 on board for connectivity
• GPIO connector with access to all processor resources
• 5V power input

This will be our first 64 bit ARM board and also the first OLinuXino we make completely with KiCAD.

If everything goes smoothly we will have first prototypes by end of November and depend on how fast we can test the software we may have these run in production for Christmas 🙂 the goal is to make 64-bit ARM with EUR 64 retail price!

As I expect A64 with 4 cores Cortex-A53 will behave well running Desktop Linux so we are evaluating the option to find some Chinese laptop manufacturer and ask them to supply us just with some light laptop body with decent 10.1-11.6″ LCD display, camera and keyboard with touch-pad. We can re-design A64 board to fit inside this laptop body and to make light under 1 kg laptop running Linux.

One of the problem is that A64 is quite new and no any Linux-Sunxi support, as nobody have seen A64 development boards yet. SO it may pass several months until A64-OLinuXino run anything else than Android 5.1

New PIC32-HMZ144 Open Source Hardware development board is in stock

PIC32-HMZ144 is low cost development board for the new PIC32MZ2048HCM144 processor from Microchip with these features:

• PIC32MZ2048EHC144 512KB RAM 2MB Flash
• USB-OTG
• uSD card
• ICSP for debug and programming
• JTAG pins exposed on 0.1″ step 6 pins
• EXT1 and EXT2 50 pin 0.1″ connectors for all PIC ports
• RESET and USER buttons
• PWR and STATUS LEDs
• LiPo battery charger and connector
• UEXT connector
• Dimensions: 77 x 52 mm

PIC32MZ2048HCM144 is high performance MIPS core processor from Microchip with 10-bit, 500 KSPS, 48-channel ADC module, MMU for real time OS support, CAN, UART, I2C, PMP, EBI, SQI & Analog Comparators, SPI/I2S interfaces for audio processing and playback, Hi-Speed USB 2.0 Device/Host/OTG, 10/100 Mbps Ethernet MAC with MII and RMII interface.

Another board with Ethernet and LCD is on the way, PIC32MZ2048 is good candidate to run RetroBSD

ESP8266 update – The Ultimate Development boards for ESP8266 are in stock

ESP8266 already got a lot of attention, but the problem is that this chip has more to offer than just UART to WIFI module, there is C compiler, SDK which allow you to write user program and have access to all GPIOs and resources of the chip so instead to add dumb microcontroller to ESP8266 module you will be able to put all your application in the ESP8266 itself.

The problem is that most existing modules do not allow access to all ESP8266 resources… until now, you see the untilate development board for ESP8266 now, it have access to all ESP8266 resources, GPIOs, bootloader etc.

The module MOD-WIFI-8266-DEV have UEXT connector footprint on the back so it can connect to all OLIMEX boards which have UEXT connectors, two rows of 0.1″ connectors for breadboarding and split pads which could be soldered directly to PCB.

For these who want to use ESP8266 just as SERIAL-to-WIFI bridge MOD-WIFI-ESP8266 is the better choice with smaller size and soldered female UEXT connector it direcly will plug to any board with UEXT.

Both boards are in stockMOD-WIFI-ESP8266 cost EUR 5.00 for single quantity,MOD-WIFI-8266-DEV  cost EUR 5.50 in single quantity.

MOD-WIFI-ESP8266-EVB with Relay, button, Power supply, GPIOs access is in production and will be available in couple of weeks! It have on it MOD-WIFI-ESP8266-DEV on socket.

New Product in stock: STM32-P405 development boards with Cortex-M4

STM32-P405 is based on our popular STM32-P103 board but we use now STM32F405RGT6 Cortex-M4 processor with 1MB Flash and 192K of RAM running at 168Mhz.

New Product in stock: STM32-405STK Cortex-M4 development board

STM32-405STK is based on our popular STM32-103STK board but we use now STM32F405RGT6 Cortex-M4 processor with 1MB Flash and 192K of RAM running at 168Mhz.

Do you have enough program memory for your next PIC project?

Do not worry PIC32-HMZ144 comes with PIC32MZ2048ECG144-I/PH microcontroller and:

• 2048KB (yeaaaaaaaaaaah 2 MB!) program memory Flash
• 512KB of data RAM memory
• x6 UARTs
• x6 SPIs
• x5 I2Cs
• x48 12 bit ADC
• USB OTG with power managment
• user button
• reset button
• pwr led
• status LED
• LiPo battery connector and charger
• micro SD card
• UEXT connector
• ICSP programming and debug connector
• 2x 50 GPIO connectors
• JTAG connector
• small form 77 x 52 mm

How much? We still have no confirmed price from Microchip but we guess preliminary that this board could be released for EUR 20

New Product: MSP430-G2744BP

MSP430-G2744BP is booster pack with the new Texas Instruments MSP430G2744 microcontroller in DIP40 package.

This is booster pack which plugs to MSP430 Launchpad and you can use the Launchpad to program and debug this processor.

Board have UEXT connector which allow to interface all our UEXT modules.

The Art and Philosophy of software development, written in the spirit of Zen kōans

I recently came across this incredible site: http://thecodelesscode.com/contents and was charmed from the very first tale  “The Small Stuff”

My recommendation: read these stories by one per day to extend the pleasure 🙂

50 PCS A13-OLinuXino-WIFI-DEV shipped today to developers

Today DHL pickup the first 50 pcs A13-OLinuXino-WIFI-DEV and in the next days they will reach the developers all around the world. We got developers from such far away places like Reunion island. Looking at the map this seems like paradise in the Indian Ocean, I may go there to develop when retire 🙂

We are looking forward for the feedback and the projects which you guys are going to do with A13. Please keep an eye at http://linux-sunxi.org what I hear is that the uboot now is complete and we will have decent Linux kernel running on A13 this month.

I have to appologize to the developers from Russia: all couriers we work with FedEx, TNT, DHL refused to take parcels to Russia due to the complex local import customs procedures, so we had to mail these by post. Our experience says the AIRMAIL parcels to Russia arrive in 1-2 week2, so there will be no significant delay with the A13 boards receipt.