Remember the little foot of the thumb-up FPGA development board that is hot in all colleges and universities?
Little foot FPGA development board evaluation
Just as the pavilion is written before evaluating the article, the little foot FPGA team is building a self-funded ecosystem belonging to his own FPGA. This is not, the team recently launched a lot of peripheral function expansion boards based on small feet FPGAs, including Sensor external plate, LED dot matrix plate, keyboard external plate, etc. In addition, there is a message saying that the little foot will hit a 10,000-person FPGA competition, which is worth looking forward to (forced advertising).
This article Original Address: https://www.eeboard.com/evaluation/stepfpgaforpiano/
Returning to the topic, today, let's talk about one of the works of the FPGA team - the electronic piano application, personal feelings more interesting. The entire electronic piano application kit has 3 components, which are FPGA motherboards, extended backplanes, and docking. The plate structure is reasonable, even if the three plates are assembled together, it is very small, basically the size of the Raspberry 3B.
3 boards can also be uniformly assembled, of which the small foot FPGA development board can be used independently, and the extended bottom plate can only be used with small foot FPGA, and the peripheral function board requires the above two boards to fit, if only the electronic piano Application is really troublesome, but as a whole ecosystem, such a design also has its truth, and the extended bottom plate can be further mentioned above and the functions that may continue to be developed in the future.
Extended bottom plate
The extended backplane that is taken is STEP PCIE Board for RPI, as the name suggests, is a PCIe extension interface, and supports compatible with the current popular Raspberry 40Pin interface. In fact, the extension of the small foot FPGA is not just this, and STEP PCIE Board for Arduino, which supports the Arduino Expansion Interface, and full-featured floor Step-Baseboard, which has the opportunity to introduce later, Let's take a look at the back of the author to support the backplane of the Brobes.
As shown in the figure above, the interface on the extended floor mainly includes a DIP40 PIN interface for connecting a small foot FPGA; 3 PMOD interfaces, you can use the PMOD module on the market; 1 interface with 40pin with a compatible barberry. The above interfaces can be used in conjunction with a small foot, which is very convenient; and the most special place is to extend the PCIe interface slot on the bottom plate, which is to implement another functional external board to implement the function, such as this article will introduce the electronic piano introduced. Set up a function board. So, the overall looks although there is no content in the expansion of the bottom plate, but it greatly facilitates the expansion of the user's popular peripheral, and it has improved the compatibility of the small foot pavement card, and saves the user a certain amount of cost.
The back surface of the bottom plate is a screen description of some pin signals. Of course, due to space limit, PCIe interface shows that there is no silk screen, but in fact, it is not necessary, after all, this specific PCIE interface can only be inserted with PCIe function board If there is a demand for DIY external board, you can directly view the schematic, after all, these are open source.
Keyboard peripheral function board
The keyboard peripheral function board is required to support a small foot fpga development board and extended backplane. The structural design is very intimate through the PCIe interface, the structural design is very intimate, and it is very secure after fixed, and it is very secure.
The electronic function of the electronic function is mainly to control play music by touch button, so the board is equipped with the basic device of the touch IC, buzzer, and touch buttons. In addition, the power indicator on the board and the touch indicator can be very It is very intimate when the board is working properly.
The board is equipped with the touch chip of Microchip, with an 8-way touch button driver and the 8 LED driver corresponding to it. I didn't pay attention to the start of the board. I thought it was used for two. Touch the chip.
The result was found to find the face, the 16 touch button driver and 16 LED drivers realized by the two touch chips were all used. The touch button except for the note button, and additional MODE and the selected touch button were added. That is, the user can choose to play the existing songs that can be played by these buttons or to automatically play existing songs. From these fine function points, when it is true to use, the ability of the two touch chips on the plate is pressed.
Used
Below, you will be able to experience the electronic pirate function based on the piking FPGA based on the actual experience of Diamond's free EDA design tool.
Lattice EDA tools can download directly (Diamond official download address), support Windows and Linux systems, downloading faster using download tools.
The official Lattice FPGA family can support the Lattice FPGA series including MachXO3, Machxo2, Machxo, LatticeXP2, LatticeECP2 products, and the little foot FPGA development board uses Lattice's MachXO2 series, so you can completely use the Diamond EDA tool.
This tool supports the Synopsys Synplify Pro integration tool for the Lattice device and the Aldec Active-HDL Lattice version II mixed language emulator.
Support for mixed Verilog, VHDL, EDIF, and schematic source files
Allows the design under one project to have multiple implementations, easy to design exploration
Implementation strategies can be used in any implementation in a project or share it in multiple projects
Manage and select files for constraints, timing analysis, power consumption, and hardware debugging
Use the Run Manager view for multiple implementation of parallel processing to explore different design methods to seek the best results
The source code for the electronic piano application is a small foot FPGA team to provide users with free users, and can be used directly, and can be loaded directly through Project.
The keyboard application includes a combination of multiple functions, such as touch screens, buzzers, digital tube display light function modules
Some key grammatical departments have Chinese annotations, so that users can better understand the implementation of the functional module, so it is very suitable for beginners to learn.
Because the code is directly passed through the little foot FPGA team, it has been synthesized, all the layout line output work has been completed, and we can use it directly to use it.
Download the file directly by the small foot FPGA onboard USB to serial port downloader.
The small foot FPGA is used in conjunction with the peripheral function module to achieve the keyboard application. From the previous code, it can be seen in the previous code. In addition to the basic performance of the keyboard, there are two shortcomings "Liang Zong Die" and "Happy" can switch During playback.
For the performance of the keyboard, touch the corresponding touch button, the corresponding LED will also illuminate, so that the user knows whether the function is normal. However, since the touch button is small, it is very easy to incorporate, but this is a relationship, remember, this is just a Demo application, used to reference and learn.
summary
As a top-going FPGA, the small foot FPGA development board has a very high cost performance and the more mature perfect surrounding, making beginners easier to get started, easier DIY functions. The FPGA is an important "hard weapon" in the next type. If you do have a way to learn about FPGA, the little foot development board is indeed a good thing to get the FPGA, the price is not expensive, you can say that it is cheap compared to many MCU boards. If you buy an experience, you will never have a loss. If you feel it, you can also open a new door for you.
In addition, the strong advertisement is implanted, and then there is a 10,000-person FPGA competition based on the small foot FPGA development board. Here, you can not only get the small feet FPGA development board with almost free prices, but also accept the guidance of a teacher, further Improve the relevant knowledge of FPGA, it is more likely to get exceeded your expected reward, why not!
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Original declaration: This article is originally created by the panel network, declined!
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