10 years back I was building small robotic items using PIC microcontrollers. More recently I've played with Arduino and PICAxe (which is amazing yet massively underrated). I'm well aware that Raspberry Pi is currently en vogue, and being staunchly pro-education (Mum was a teacher!) I applaud Eben Upton's motives and success.
But last week I decided that I simply wanted to do something that was, for me at least, a bit different. And FPGAs were a niggling "hole" in my repertoire of experiences. Hence this little project.
A bit more about my background after the break.
But last week I decided that I simply wanted to do something that was, for me at least, a bit different. And FPGAs were a niggling "hole" in my repertoire of experiences. Hence this little project.
A bit more about my background after the break.
I've always been interested in electronics, especially digital electronics, (because analogue is so, well, difficult!), and I wielded a soldering iron and Vero cutter before I was 10. Then computers came along, starting with a ZX80, progressing through the ZX81 and the mighty BBC Micro and eventually (against my will!) an Amstraad PC 1512.
I wasn't a computer gamer - Acorn's "Defender" & "Elite" being the most complex I could handle. My forte was programming, and in my time I've covered most types of software from binary-level machine code, through BASIC and assembler to the usual higher languages of PASCAL, C & ADA, with a little FORTH & OCCAM thrown in for good measure.
I've also coded for most types of target at most levels, from firmware and operating systems through device drivers to compilers, utilities and applications, whether running embedded, on PCs, on UNIX and Windows servers and, possibly most fun of all, massively parallel systems, courtesy of Intel's iPSC supercomputer.
I did some Programmable Logic Array work whilst at UMIST, but the idea of being able to use FPGAs as a hobbyist was a pipedream.
Obviously only time will tell whether any of the above experience is still relevant or useful to my current endeavour.
I wasn't a computer gamer - Acorn's "Defender" & "Elite" being the most complex I could handle. My forte was programming, and in my time I've covered most types of software from binary-level machine code, through BASIC and assembler to the usual higher languages of PASCAL, C & ADA, with a little FORTH & OCCAM thrown in for good measure.
I've also coded for most types of target at most levels, from firmware and operating systems through device drivers to compilers, utilities and applications, whether running embedded, on PCs, on UNIX and Windows servers and, possibly most fun of all, massively parallel systems, courtesy of Intel's iPSC supercomputer.
I did some Programmable Logic Array work whilst at UMIST, but the idea of being able to use FPGAs as a hobbyist was a pipedream.
Obviously only time will tell whether any of the above experience is still relevant or useful to my current endeavour.