JuKu’s new Altium NanoBoard FPGA dev-board

JuKu got his hands on an Altium NanoBoard 3000. It’s a FPGA development board that goes with Altium Designer software. You get a choice of Xilinx, Altera, and Lattice FPGAs. One down side is that the license provided for the software expires in a year.

This will be the basis of several projects I have in mind. There is enough connections and the software is is just amazing. First project will be a multichannel i2s audio bus level meter. I’ll post a review some day, but as an example of the quickness of development: First try was running a ready made example to see that the connections and workflow works. As my first hello world program I built a dip switches value -> FPGA pass trough -> bar graph on PC screen -system in 20 minutes or so. Now when I know where everything is, that would be 5 minutes or so. Just thinking about how much work that would be with some other tools, like a USB micro talking to a custom Visual X program… So far, I am very happy about it. Somewhat expensive (325€ + tax), but extremely good value.

We’ve listed some features of the board below.

• Integrated color TFT LCD panel (240×320) with touch screen.
• High-quality stereo audio capabilities including: Line in/out/
  headphones, audio CODEC with I2S-compatible interface, analog
  mixer, and an audio power amplifier.
• High-Speed USB hub, providing connection of up to three USB 2.0 devices.
• SVGA interface (24-bit, 80MHz).
• Standard communications interfaces: RS-232, RS-485,
  PS/2, 10/100 Fast Ethernet, USB 2.0, S/PDIF, and MIDI.
• Dual SD card readers – for use by user FPGA and Host Controller.
• IR receiver.
• Programmable clock (6 to 200MHz) and fixed clock (20MHz).
• 4-channel 8-bit SPI ADC.
• 4-channel 8-bit SPI DAC.
• 4x isolated IM Relay channels – each channel providing a 5V nonlatching
  DPDT relay with one coil.
• 4x PWM power drivers.
• 8-way general purpose DIP-Switch, 8 RGB LEDs, 5 PDA-style push
  button switches and a Test/Reset button.
• User prototyping area.
• Dual 18-way (20 pin) I/O expansion headers, with
  power supply selection links.
• On-board memories accessible by user FPGA
  – 256KB x 32-bit common-bus SRAM (1MB),
  16M x 32-bit common-bus SDRAM (64MB),
  8M x 16-bit common-bus 3.0V Page Mode Flash
  memory (16MB), dual 256KB x 16-bit independent
  SRAM (512KB each).
• Four 8Mbit SPI flash memory devices.
• SPI Real-Time Clock with 3V battery backup.

Now that’s a list that makes our mouth water.

Via the forum.