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From: Andy Peters on 14 Jan 2006 03:55 Peter Alfke wrote: > I have struggled for decades to come up with enticing demo projects for > digital circuits, and I have made my rules: > It must be something that cannot be done with just a microprocessor. > That means it must be something fast. Audio, video, radio, robotics > come to mind. I can think of two ideas. One is an audio digital delay. A CODEC, some analog for the front and back ends, a rotary encoder, some buttons, an LCD and/or some LEDs for the user interface, an FPGA for the delay engine and the logic to handle the user interface, and a couple of SRAM chips for the delay memory. The delay engine is a pair of address counters and you need a state machine to handle the memory access, and a couple of shift registers to do the I2S interface. Hell, while you're at it, add a digital input level meter and blink some LEDs. A second is a simple logic analyzer. Of course, the hard part here is writing a Windows (or Mac OS X or Linux) host program. -a
From: Hal Murray on 14 Jan 2006 15:45 >A second is a simple logic analyzer. Of course, the hard part here is >writing a Windows (or Mac OS X or Linux) host program. USB seems like the obvious choice, but I don't think any of the low cost demo boards support that. Some of them have VGA connectors. If you have a spare monitor you could do the display output in the FPGA too. RS-232 is probably good enough to have a lot of fun. 115K works fine with not-long cables. 1000 points is a reasonably size. If you have 8 channels, that's 8K bits. Under a second. -- The suespammers.org mail server is located in California. So are all my other mailboxes. Please do not send unsolicited bulk e-mail or unsolicited commercial e-mail to my suespammers.org address or any of my other addresses. These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's. I hate spam.
From: Philip Freidin on 14 Jan 2006 23:08 On 12 Jan 2006 12:15:13 -0800, "Kevin Morris" <kevin(a)techfocusmedia.com> wrote: >I'm writing a feature article for FPGA Journal (www.fpgajournal.com) >about FPGAs and the re-birth of the electronics hobbyist. My theory is >that electronics as a hobby went through a "dark age" period, maybe >from the early/mid 1970s until recently becuase of the inaccessibility >and cost of designing with state-of-the-art technology. Radio Shack >shifted their focus from 50-in-1 project kits and hobbyist parts to >selling toys, cell-phones, and stereo equipment. I agree that electronics as a hobby is not as vibrant as it has been in the past, but not on your time line or for your reasons. My theory is that the decline started no earlier than late 80's and has not really recovered. But the projects that are now created are far more complex than those of yester year, but at a level comensurate with the technology available today. The decline has little to do with Radio Shack and 50-in-1 kits. While it is probably true that most electronic hobbyists have at some time owned and played with these kits, there are probably far more that had these kits, and after a few hours, they were put away never to be used again until passed on to some younger cousin. These kits were way too limited, had fairly poor educational content, and no direction as to how one might expand, experiment, and learn more. My theory is that the decline in the late 80's was driven by several things that started in the early 80's: - Reasonably cheap personal computers with sufficient software that hobbyists that may have become electronic hobbyists, instead became software weenies. The open-source movement now extends this to colaborative projects that are very challenging, and include the opportunity for others to use your work, and to get recognition for your contribution. I am not criticising the O-S movement at all here, just pointing out that it is an alternative path for potential electronic hobbyists. - Many of the things that electronic hobbyists used to build could be purchased complete and working for less than the raw components cost. There is not as much fun in building a 7 transistor radio that has mediocre reception in a cardboard box, versus a buying a walkman for the same price. Other projects just are not possible, such as build a CD player or cell phone. - Many of the components that you might want to buy that are used in commercial products were not available to hobbyists. - Many of the challenges that may have enticed an electronic hobbyists are now replaced by toys such as playstations etc.. that consume vast amounts of what would have been hobby time. Electronics as a hobby requires significant study to be able to do interesting projects. 150 channels of TV probably don't help either. - Mentors are in short supply. I think the pressures of work have increased (because electronic work projects are more complex) so the pool of mentors is diminishing. Their hair is getting thinner and grayer too. - Specialization. As the electronics profession has grown over the last 25 years, the amount of new stuff is such that few if any can master (or even be reasonably competent) in multiple sub-fields. This affects the mentor pool, and also the breadth of available literature that might guide a starting-out electronic hobbyists. This was driven home for me about 10 years ago when I met with a world renown Verilog expert, who had no clue that a 74LS74 was a flipflop! - Minaturization of packaging makes some products un-useable by hobbyists, or requires much higher levels of enthusiasm. Surface mount made the older wire-wrap no longer an easy solution for projects, as the availability of wire-wrappable sockets is far more limited, and the latest packages such as QFN and BGA are beyond almost all hobbyists. I am not saying that this kills the hobby, but it certainly raises the bar. >Now, with the emergence of low-cost, high-capability FPGAs, development >boards, and design software, I see a new age of hobbyist activity >beginning (as often evidenced in this group). FPGAs on development boards http://www.fpga-faq.org/FPGA_Boards.shtml go along way to allowing any hobbyist to start playing and experimenting with FPGAs, HDL, simulation, hardware design and interfacing to the real world. Best of all, there are many low priced boards available, and all of the software for the low end products are available free to anyone with a computer and an internet connection (and a few gig of disk space). While this re-enables electronic hobbyists to work with current technology, and pursue it with tools that are similar to what professionals are using, I don't think this is going to get anyone to put down their XBOX-360 and start writing VHDL. >I'm looking for a few people that would be willing to express views on >this topic for the article. This group is full of them. I've been an electronics hobbyists for over 40 years. Sometimes I get to be paid for it (employment), and sometimes not. Cheers, Philip Freidin Philip Freidin Fliptronics
From: spammersarevermin on 15 Jan 2006 00:15 On 12 Jan 2006 12:15:13 -0800, Kevin Morris blurted: I don't feel qualified to comment on the dark ages, but in the last several years have moved from the software side into hardware. I keep a blog about some of the stuff that I'm doing (www.dtool.com) & read this group regularly - understanding about 5% of it. I am playing w/ a Digilant Spartan3 board, & when the Xilinx software doesn't crash, am making slow progress in understanding how to move from, say a hardware-based ethernet, to one designed w/ logical tools. I don' get paid for this stuff - it's just very cool. My wish is for more tutorials & even more access to free software (Chipscope for more than 60 days for example), as buying all of the ancillary tools, chips, hardware, scopes, probes, etc. can get expensive after awhile. My $.02, Tom Spamming this account signifies your unqualified consent to a free security audit
From: Hahnsolo on 15 Jan 2006 10:23
Well, I guess I would be one of those "rebirth" hobbyists. I am younger and just "discovered" the fpga. I was under the impression that things like this were very expensive, but when I see starter kits for $150, I had to snatch one up and try it out. For the last 5 months I have been feverishly programming and learning with Webpack 7.1 implimenting different ideas on codecs, processor cores, and so on. Now I that I have a handle on whats available and possible on most platforms I bought my first dev board a couple of days ago. I can't wait for sun to open up there sparc cores. So many ideas so little time!! I can't believe I went through my undergraduate education without trying fpga's out, and my focus on RF and optics was not very close to VLSI or control. After 5 months though there are a ton of optics processing problems that can be sped up with fpgas. Like I said, can't wait to start debugging!! So much to do, so little time... new Hobbyist |