Please, please, please continue making FPGA videos Dave

I've been working with Quartus for almost 2 years now. Your video taught me some nifty things I did not know about. Thanks Dave!!

Fast forward to 2019, DE10 Nano is now used as the board for the MiSTer project (Minimig amiga/Atari ST). There is a big community of programmers and FPGA devs working together. The opensource project has FPGA recreation of old gaming consoles. Many classic gaming systems - SNES/Genesis/Apple II/486/TG16/C64/Amstrad/NeoGeo/Many arcades etc.

"That is a real bobby dazzler" haha I always get a kick out of the terms you Aussies use...

Great one, Dave! I would love to see more FPGA videos on your channel

Thank you very much Dave! You seems to know what i want from a good elettronic video channel! From Italy :)

I use the heck out of these FPGA demo boards in teaching digital electronics (primarily the Digilent Nexys2 a Xilinx Spartan 3E based FPGA). The pay back per unit time is very nice. After a brief intro to VHDL and the Xilinx ISE Webpack environment a student can take a board home and experiment on it or use it to accompany their studies. Alex at Digilent was a great resource for our school as we moved from older TTL based instruction (seriously) to modern programmable logic devices. The range of peripheral modules they offer for advanced projects is great.

I wanted to go cheap... But then hey! Here's a Dave Jones edition Demo Board! And I was like, Whooo!!! Now I got to get one of them! Damn it, Dave! :)

17:10 got some audio weirdness ... was it just me ?

Ahh, we use these TerasiC FPGA's in our university (Vilnius Gediminas Technical university) for beginners. They're quite awesome to start with. Also a really neat thing is PSoC later versions, cause it's an MCU + FPGA, very nice thing for learning.

Nice video thanks for share. I have the DE0-Nano development board and it's very practical FPGA.

The de0_nano is an all time favorite of mine. It is soooo cute, and so small and very capable for many projects, which does not require me pull out the big boards.

I was actually thinking about getting a papillo 1 so im glad im watching!

Great Job, keep on this interesting topic please.

I recently got DE2-115 that is going to be fun to figure out. It's got a ton of stuff

Nicely done video Dave, great boards ( I own a Basys 2 with 250k gates and a Waxwing). I would also recommend the spartan6 based Waxwing module from Numato labs - although not for beginners. Also a DSP demo board review would be nice.

3:45 "I think this one is like, something crazy like eight dollars delivered or something ridiculous like that" Nowadays, there is a newer version of the USB blaster for 3 dollars delivered. How crazy is the world.

Thanks for this video Dave! I'm still interested in more information on FPGA's especially for beginners but i get from your video that it's pretty hard and takes a lot of time. Any suggestions on where to start and where to find good information about FPGA's?

A free softcore you should look into is OpenSPARC, originally open-sourced by Sun Microsystems, based on the UltraSPARC T1 and T2.

please make more videos on FPGA!!!!

Keep going Dave!

Dave, thanks so much for these videos. I've been watching your vids for years now. Thank you for your time and effort. I recently graduated with a BS and my curriculum didn't cover FPGA, so I've been wondering how to learn them without spending thousands of dollars. Lots of jobs I've found in my area want microcontroller + FPGA experience. I wasn't aware of these less-expensive options and am very excited to try one of them out. For the job market, do you think it is worthwhile to learn Spartan3? Do I need to spend more and learn the MicroZed to be marketable? Furthermore, would learning on the papilio or DE0 Nano boostrap me for using higher-end FPGAs? I should mention that I'm hoping to kill two birds with one stone and learn embedded linux as well. Thanks again. -Dave (yes, it's a good name!)

I have a Basys2 board at home. It a great little board with only 1 drawback. The voltage supply is not stable, therefore the oscillator is not stable and your VGA output will be bad. Fortunately it comes with a option for a external oscillator so it's an easy fix.

just came here to hear you say BEAUTY, i love that accent

The schematic capture package that the Terasic board is using looks like Orcad In my opinion it is the best schematic and layout package around

check out the open source Xula boards from Xess. He's got some good beginner stuff there as well, i had it blinking!

Great Video!

Dave disabled the "Talkback" feature in Altera Quartus during installation. This may be the intuitive thing to do, but you actually want to enable talkback! In return for enabling talkback, altera gives you the "Signal tap" tool for free. And you absolutely, positively, NEED the signal tap tool. "Signal tap" is what allows you to debug the design in hardware. And secondly, the ECAD package to create the schematics for the evaluation board is Cadence.

"Bugger off Avast" Hahaha, before you said that I thought it was mine and went to close it.

Dave - Can you talk a bit about the differences between VHDL and Verilog and which one a beginner to FPGAs should tackle first?

Audio problems... : (

Just got a DE0 Nano ! Can't wait to start breadboarding then mess around with a gameboy advance

Oh look, Basys2, actually made a few projects on that.

Whats interesting is that 7 years later the price of some of these boards has increased by 300% in 2021.

Woow finally. You promised this video a while ago!

Have you tried the Lattice Dev boards? They are around £20 which is a far more approachable price, but do you lose out on something for that?

hi Dave, why you don't make a demo for Microzed ? thank you

For the DE-series boards, don't use the version of Quartus II included on the disc - there is a much newer and less buggy version freely available on Altera's website.

I remember my first attempt at a blinky on a cheap Chinese FPGA board. I was expecting the tool to configure unused pins as hi - but it connected them to a supply rail! This meant I had shorts on the board and the bugger got proper hot potato. FPGAs still bite me if I take my eye off the buggers.

My University uses the DE0-Nano's in the lab 👍

Hi There. Thanks for the video. I'm currently deciding if I should get the Nexys 4 or the Zybo Zynq 7000. In the university classes they use the nexys 4. Which of them should I get in your opinion? Thanks!

De0-CV so cheap now :D $99 academic price :D 49k LE and 3Mbits of embedded memory with Cyclone V... so good

Yes, audio problems for me as well.

Lattice also makes some great products. Very cheap and great free dev tools.

What is your wallpaper at 10:37 dave? It looks beautiful

cool, i got Zedboard, Dave, you must try this board, it's like Microzed, but wiht more performance in ARM processor, and PL ( programmable logic )

Hi Dave, this video reviewing FPGA starter kits is approaching 4 years old. Are they still the shiz? Maybe you could have an intern make an addendum?

great video, love your down to earth style. An aussie, I guess? I've done a very simple sound synthesis (karplus-strong) algorithm on 8-bit arduino uno. To improve the sound quality, the most important feature would be a 12 or 16 bit DA convertor. Looking around a bit, it doesn't seem to be a high priority for uc chips. Any suggestion for uc or fpga that is good for sound, ie all built in cos I don't much like etching pcbs? This is just hobby stuff.

Thanks!

Hey, where's you anti-static wrist strap ?

Audio is tearing a bit at 24 mins, may be encoding errors.

That is a double-density DVD, I think that is bigger than the Windows 7 install disk. 0_o

Guys, FPGA's are mostly for hardware designers, not software designers. You have to have a complete understanding of all the logic gates and you have to understand K-maps and Boolean logic. You are basically "wiring" up logic gates via software rather than physically wiring up gates to perform a specific function. If you understand the ins and outs of digital electronics, then FPGA's will be easier for you to pick up on. For software programmers you will need to study digital design and circuits.

The power of FPGA = Hardware Acceleration & Doing things in parallel real time.

I see fan pins and heatsink holes on the high-end one. Does that mean that it needs cooling?

Good one, Dave. I have been harping about FPGA videos for a while. Can we get into some super simple synthesis stuff? Show us a counter or something?

Is it just me, or does the video start crackling up around 16:10 and onward?

Could I use Cypress PSoC 4 instead of a FPGA

The older versions of Altera Quartus doesn't like Windows 7 or 8. The drivers usually doesn't install. Downloading and Installing the newer versions of Quartus doesn't have the problem. I believe 11 was the version they fixed everything.

Audio bugs? Anyway, an ardinuo is a the same concept as these right?

update please

What should i buy as an beginner , an arduino or one of the boards you mentioned , because both have advantages and disadvantages?

Hey, I have that Basys2 board :)

You need to install Quartus II as administrator, that is the reason for the permission errors. FPGAs are not for the faint of heart - you need to have excellent PC and software skills as well as a reasonable amount of electronics knowledge. I do think that it is very important to learn FPGAs as the majority of todays technology is based on them either in part, or altogether.

12:10 - Run as Administrator ;-)

Dave, why would you say beginners don't need Modelsim? As a beginner it is very important to be able and simulate your code, probably more important than actually compiling and downloading it to the FPGA. The simulator that is built in Quartus is not nearly as good as Modelsim.

Hi Dave. We 've recently started a new project in my company based on Cyclone 5 SoC (the Zinq competitore). It also as 2 A9 arm hard core and a large fpga fabric connected. Do you know the if there are some differences between the XilinX and Altera SoC hard processor? We choose the Altera one only beacase in our company there are a lot of code written in AHDL! AHH Awful!

its good to start with CPLD`s then FPGA`s that's what I was told.

Another very cheap alternative is the guzunty pi. It's a cpld but it works very similar (only much less programming space), but it's way cheaper: github.com/Guzunty/Pi/wiki

is it possible to use a generic usb-to-jtag device?

Dave Jones Ed.. wasnt he a singer?

Dave, Bob IS my uncle.

What's the difference between an fpga and cpld?

PT-BR: Oi Dave! O que é isso em cima da sua mesa? É E V A ? Aqui no Brasil dizemos: E V A! Nos vídeos depois deste, parece que você trocou a cor! Obrigado! Gosto muito de seus vídeos! Translated by Google translate: Hi Dave! What's that on top of your desk? Is E V A? Here in Brazil we say: E V A! In the videos after this, it seems you changed color! Thank you! I love your videos!

Can I program a dos VOICE procesador alesis

0:53 IDK Dave i would be careful, this black graphic suggest it have anomalous properties.

It's sad to see such a vicious industry, riddled with proprietary stuff, multi gigabit bloated software, unintuitive interfaces, overly expensive dev tools, which become obsolete as soon as they get out the fab, Im tempted to compare it with the software industry, back in the 90 they both where pretty similar, but look at it today, there are little to none proprietary tools, linux is mainstream, the SW community is free from corporations and able to drive innovation with little investment, that's why SW startups survive and make a profit, I dare anyone to give me an example of a modern HW startup that came out of a garage.

I'm kinda confused and disappointed with FPGA CAD. I expected it to be something like visual programming IDE or even Visio diagram software providing very friendly environment for designers where they can just draw the logic of device with common logic blocks like NOR, NAND, triggers etc. And then just press 'generate' button to convert this logical structure into FPGA native microcode.

Reasonably priced? You have GOT to be kidding.

I had to use the Quartus II thing at college. It was an awful experience. Super complex, really bad editor (complete-fail auto-complete, 3 color syntax highlight, annoying format helper).

Is it HI or High ??!!..... 8 yrs after

Not watched the whole video yet.. but I'm guessing you don't discuss any boards other than the ones introduced at the start... For people just starting with FPGAs that just want to compile some VHDL or Verilog and see some LEDs blinking get a cheap $30 board and JTAG pod from ebay. Get a better Digilent or whatever board when you need stuff that is never quite right on Chinese boards like HDMI in/out etc. The basic boards from the brand names will be 2 or 3 times the price of one from waveshare or whatever and you'll usually get a much smaller FPGA.

Greetings Dave. Im watching this topic (about to view previous videos with interest). I just got one of these Logi-Pi boards. valentfx.com/logi-pi/ - Spartan6 on a shield for a Raspberry-Pi (also available for the BeagleBone). It supposed to make using a FPGA a lot easier by handling all the support functions you mention, as well as giving you a network interface, shell and gui and tools via the Pi, as well as being Arduino shield compatible and all sorts of useful sounding tools. I would be interested to see what you think of the idea. It seems a good way to get a leg up into FPGAs without having to buy more expensive development boards (assuming you have/want a Raspberry Pi already). I hope what you are going to cover is applicable :)

There is also this one : open-source, a growing community and a Spartan 6 ! The Mojo by Embeddedmicro.com/ embeddedmicro.com/products/mojo-v3.html

shocking audio but great video

Hey you need to redo this video

Windows standard speed of a dead sloth rats me off.

you voice is a bit distorted dave

OMG BEST Day of My life !

hi Dave check this article on xilinx website, they talk about this video, with some notes forums.xilinx.com/t5/Xcell-Daily-Blog/EEVblog-reviews-affordable-FPGA-Dev-Kits-including-Zynq-based/ba-p/484418#feedback-success

I want to support Dave and all that, but why would anyone want to buy the Dave Jones board? Huge CPU power, but absolutely no usable I/O? Surprised he allowed his name to be used with that. I would disagree about not downloading the dev software, even if it is several GB. Bundled software is notoriously out of date! I have a NIOS II Eval Kit, foolishly installed the software and then ran online updates - it comprehensively broke itself. Uninstalling and downloading the dev software from the manufacturer's site worked smoothly. Be aware that the free software can have constraints. For example, the NIOS II (and any other Altera Open Core software) will only run while tethered to your PC via JTAG.

YOUR rec mic, makes ugly Noisés.... BUT thanks

HOLY SHIT IM FIRST !

you show your external IP in this video.

Sorry, I meant the audio goes screwy around the 15-18min mark. got so bad I had to stop watching!!

You do peeve me off with your negativity. For. Instance one comment you made irt the circuit diagram for one of the boards in review was about the schematics, beautifully drawn but you say "... across a few pages which is particulalry annoying..." yet if the pages we not so neatly laid out and all on one page you would propbably have made another comment about it being all cramped up. Sometimes you are very difficult please for simple reasons....

Dude, what language do you speak? It's definitely not English!

Get Camtasia, your screen capture tool is crap! Audio issues, the annoying effects, etc.

688kb for just a fucking gsensor? HOW MUCH CODE IS THIS? fpga are really pain in the ass.. ok its fast but its stupidly complicated for just blinkin led's or g-sensor readout a cheap µC will do the job