Interesting FPGA board

[n4tlf]

I have several different FPGA boards and SDRs.  While I have been 
partial to Xilinx (and Verilog) in the past, I have started playing with 
Altera as well - thanks to some S100 FPGA boards.

My biggest issue with Xilinx is their tools availability.  Can one run 
Vivado as a hobbyest for not a lot of money?  That stopped me a few 
years ago, I could run the older tools associates with Spartan FPGAs, 
but newer FPGAs required Vivado, which was either hobbled so much it 
couldn't do much, or it was fairly costly.

The Avnet MiniZED came with a Vivado one-use limited license, but it 
expired after one year, and won't help with a re-installation on a new 
computer.

In addition to the old Spartan-series FPGAs, I have:
Avnet Spartan 6 LX9 FPGA board
Mimas V2 Spartan 6 FPGA board
two Red Pitaya boards with Zynq
Avnet MiniZed with Zynq
Digilent ZYBO development board with Zynq

I also have a Line SDR and Lime SDR Mini (uses Altera FPGAs)

I almost purchased the Analog Devices Adalm-Pluto a few times (another 
Zynq device), but it's frequency coverage STARTS at 325MHz, a range that 
I'm less interested  in.

There is a nice book on the Zynq FPGAs, maybe available from Xilinx, 
called "The ZYNQ Book" ISBN 978-0-9929787-0-9. www.zynqbook.com

So, is Vivado available to hobbyests like me?

Terry, N4TLF

On 1/10/2022 11:59 AM, Samudra Haque wrote:
> Thanks Martin, it would be nice to do that. I recently accidentally 
> discovered and broadcast a Reddit r/shortcircuit video stream of the 
> fpga testbed so, that system has great capability like live  comments 
> and stuff. But it does take a monitor and a dedicated setup. Have you 
> the time to explore Reddit RPAN streams ?
>
> Michael Chisena and I have talked a lot of about streaming 
> instructional electronics over thr new fangled systems... and I also 
> want to ask of anyone else is interested? Then it could be a nice 
> system to make if we used the OBS system ro switch video streams of 
> the presenters from time to time into a zoom channel to support a 
> group learning pathway .
>
> Zoom also works and I have a few cameras that can be switched 
> (selected) on demand.
>
> But if group teaching is not required. I can and want to start 
> collaboration in a technical education group towards homebrew digital 
> and analog systems.
>
> You may have noticed the booboo created at ORI, they just find out 
> that their matlab code can't be ported to HDL without the extensive 
> HDL converter license. Surprising they didn't know this earlier and 
> stay away from that pathway. They just put out an email on this.
>
> It is absolutely possible to write communication modulation and 
> demodulation code as RTL and C/C++ (however ineffcient) without 
> matlab! Even BASIC could be used to do a BPSK chain but of course the 
> issues are with the matlab handy filters... I think.
>
> So should we not  try to learn about this stuff all together?
>
>
>
> On Sun, Jan 9, 2022, 00:42 Martin <dcmk1mr2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>     Hi All & Happy New Year!
>
>     Have you considered the ADALM-PLUTO?  $229 from Digikey, 7010  (vs
>     7007), ships today, has more interesting stuff and can be reloaded
>     with original software if SDR is needed.  I know it's not a dev
>     board but people do tack leads to spare GPIO pins.
>
>     @Samudra, would you like to teach a little about FPGAs? There is
>     interest with the 50 MHz and Up club in Sunnyvale.  I'm too rusty
>     to lead and it's not a bad commute over Zoom.
>
>     73 Martin W6MRR
>
>     On Sat, Jan 8, 2022 at 9:10 PM Samudra Haque
>     <samudra.haque at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>         So it may be possible to post this project to Avnet Minized
>         which is also zynq 7010s  based
>
>         On Sun, Jan 9, 2022, 00:04 Terry Fox <tfox at knology.net> wrote:
>
>             Regarding today's discussion on tacos about FPGAs, this
>             (Blackboard) looks rather interesting.  It's not costly,
>             and has some neat peripherals.
>
>             Real Digital Signal Processing - Hackster.io
>             <https://www.hackster.io/adam-taylor/real-digital-signal-processing-0bea44?mc_cid=b16a7a12ba&mc_eid=65c2c46a0c>
>
>             Welcome to Real Digital <https://www.realdigital.org/>
>
>
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