Category Archives: dev boards

CPLD dev-boards arriving now

The CPLD development boards are starting to arrive worldwide. jbeale took the XC2C64A board for a spin: Very happy to report that my first try at a Coolrunner II CPLD project works! This is the 16-bit timer with start / stop pulse inputs. It is only tested so far up to 4 MHz, using the […]

CPLD development board package v1.1

Package v1.1 for the CPLD development boards is now available for download.  It includes: Schematic tutorials Verilog tutorials VHDL tutorials Bus Pirate XSVF programmer firmware and application PCBs Programming instructions for the Bus Pirate and Bus Blaster have been freshened. An updated ISE (X)SVF export tutorial will help you get started with your own projects. […]

Sparkfun IOIO Android interface

SparkFun has announced the upcoming release of their IOIO for Android Board. The IOIO (pronounced “yo-yo”) is a board specially designed to work with your Android device (OS versions 1.5 and greater). The board provides extensive and robust connectivity to an Android device via a USB connection. The IOIO is fully controllable from within an […]

Other CPLD dev boards

Kamani Development Tools has the ZL4PLD_9572 dev board, which features an onboard voltage regulator and ISP connector. The preassembled board is designed in a 40 pin DIP breadboard compatible form, and sells for €13.36, plus €30 for shipping to EU countries. AWC sells the PBX84 Xilinx Prototyping Board, in several different configurations beginning at $49.95 […]

REVIEW: Sure electronics WiFi web server module

We covered Sure’s WIFI web server module previously. This board has a MRF24WB0MB wireless module and a PIC24FJ256GB106 with USB (host and slave) capabilities. As a bonus the board also has a mini-sd connector for storing webpages. At a first glance the board looks very clean and well designed with a nice silkscreen. Cost was $59.90 […]

Kinetis KWIKSTIK development board

Drone tipped us to the cheap development board for Kinetis MCUs: Freescale has a neat looking “Kinetis KWIKSTIK” dev kit for $29 USD. This looks like an ARM Cortex M4(?) with LCD, audio out, IR, Mic, buzzer, SDCard, JTAG, & USB. The dev tools don’t look exactly FOSS though (typical). Looks kinda’ cool. Would be […]

Bus Pirate based RFID development board

Stefano writes: I’ve made a custom RFID programmer for ST’s SRIX4K chips picking as a base design your Bus Pirate.  It uses the CRX14 chip, via I2C. With a custom software you can easily read/write/modify the tag memory. I’m implementing a plugin structure in the software, I will release it asap. Via the contact form. […]

NEW PROTOTYPE: XC9572XL CPLD development board

Ever get stuck choosing the right logic chip combination or voltage level translator? Give up the hunt and create your own custom logic chip. CPLDs can give you the logic you need, with the pinout you want, while saving board space and board revisions. The Xilinx XC9500XL family has some of the cheapest and readily-available […]

NEW PROTOTYPE: CoolRunner-II CPLD development board

Ever get stuck choosing the right logic chip combination or voltage level translator? Give up the hunt and create your own custom logic chip. CPLDs can give you the logic you need, with the pinout you want, while saving board space and board revisions. The CoolRunner-II XC2C CPLD has two separate banks of pins that […]

ExpEYES: new open source learning initiative

ExpEYES is an open source hardware/software learning initiative from the PHOENIX project of Inter-University Accelerator Centre, New Delhi, India. It is a framework for developing science experiments, demonstrations and projects and learning science and engineering by exploration. The expEYES hardware, based on an Atmega32 clocked at 8 MHz and interfaced to the PC via an […]

FEZ Mini .NET ARM development board

TinyCLR is the newest designer to release a project through Seeed Studio: FEZ Mini is a tiny board running Microsoft .NET Micro Framework. This means you can write code with much more efficiency using the C# programming language under free Microsoft Visual C# express. The pinout is BasicStamp2 compatible. Includes USB cable. Many libraries are […]

DEV.BO MSP430F5510 dev board

Nicholas J. Conn of NJC’sMSP430 Launchpad wanted to design a small footprint dev board based on the new MSP430F5510 from TI. His finished product which he calls the DEV.BO appears above. Features include a max clock speed of 25MHz, integrated 32kHz crystal, 25K of flash memory, 1 USCI_A (UART/LIN/IrDA/SPI), 1 USCI_B (I2C/SPI), a 10-bit SAR […]

STATUS UPDATE: Bus Blaster v2

We’re trying a new Monday post with status updates on new projects currently in production. This will cover project development, and gritty details like last minutes changes and production problems. Bus Blaster v2 is going to rock! The design is so flexible and fun, we can’t believe it wasn’t the standard FT2232 JTAG debugger design […]

PROTOTYPE: xQFP protoboard with SOIC, SSOP, 0805 footprints

Today we’re super excited to announce a new QFP prototype board for SMD parts, the newest addition to our Dangerous Protoboard collection. This giant protoboard has a xQFP breakout footprint, along with a score of other pads for SMD parts. Great for getting started with a new microcontroller. Dangerous Protoboard: xQFP. Prototype board for working […]

FTDI VNC2 Vinculum II toolchain issues

Lots of people have been experimenting with the new FTDI Vinculum II USB host chip. We covered the Vinculum II board here and here. It looks like the hardware and firmware are still a little rough. jpieper has documented a number of bugs, including issues with interrupts and the compiler. If you’re starting a new […]

FPGAs used to trade stock

Here’s an example of FPGAs being used in a serious application: high-frequency trading (HFT), the execution of computerized stock trading strategies. The device pictured above is the HFT-X Development Kit by Stone Ridge Technology. Under the hood this device sports one Xilinx PCIe Bridge FPGA, one Xilinx Virtex-5 Processing FPGA, 2GB DDR2 SDRAM, 1G, 10G, […]

Gameduino: a game adapter for microcontrollers

Gameduino is a game adapter for Arduino – or anything else with an SPI interface – built as a single shield that stacks up on top of the Arduino and has plugs for a VGA monitor and stereo speakers. Anyone who can write an Arduino sketch can create video games. It’s capable of the full […]