Science Fair Project, miniLA, FPGAs
My Science Fair project on the “Embedded Secure Network Bridge” was definitely a success. I am continuing work on the project to hopefully have a new version of the device by June, this time implementing the networking and cryptography. I fixed up the SPI line mix ups and various other blunders (such as incorrect package) in the schematic, but I’m still working on updating the board design in Eagle. It seems I have to make these changes manually in Eagle, which is why it is taking some time. The project report is privately available: feel free to contact me at vsergeev at gmail dawt com for an electronic copy.
“g1powermac” from the ##microcontrollers IRC channel on Freenode has organized a group PCB and components buy of the “miniLA” mini logic analyzer, freely available at http://minila.sourceforge.net/ . This will be an invaluable tool for FPGAs and CPLDs, which I’m looking to getting into. The device itself has some very impressive features: 32 channels, 100MHz, 128Kb memory for *each* channel, compatible with 3.3v and 5V, and it is of course free. The price will probably end up being under $70 as well. There is also a simple parallel port to USB converter designed for the miniLA, and it looks relatively easy to build.
I’ve been researching several FPGA and CPLD development boards with another fellow member on the Freenode ##microcontrollers channel, “Plugh”. After extensive research we have decided to go with the Xilinx FPGA and CPLD Starter Kit for $99 (the HW-SPAR3-CPLD-DK), just because it is a very very good deal. The included FPGA board has a Spartan3 FPGA with 200K gates (a little bit low for some IP cores, but very decent for this deal) and a separate CPLD board (CoolRunnerII and XC9500-XL) is included in the entire package. There really isn’t a better deal for $99. However, it’s proving to be rather difficult to find this kit in stock.
The Spartan-3E development board by Xilinx also looks tempting, but it has so many peripherals onboard I figure it would take several months just to figure out how to interact with these parts, but my primary goal is to learn VHDL or Verilog and gate design. If I can’t find the $99 Xilinx FPGA and CPLD Starter Kit in stock somewhere, I guess it will be back to square one.
