Electronic enthusiasts and developers may be interested in a new powerful, open hardware ECP5 FPGA development board which will soon be available via Crowd Supply and takes the form of the ULX3S. The small development board is fully open source and offers an affordable FPGA dev board equipped with a balanced selection of “additional components and expansions” say it’s creators.
The ULX3S board incorporates a wide array of features and interfaces and has been in development since 2016 and as a result of a partnership between Radiona.org / Zagreb Makerspace and FER – the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing – at the University of Zagreb in Croatia.
“Built around a powerful Lattice Semiconductor ECP5-series FPGA chip and supported by the latest open-source toolchains, ULX3S is one of the most powerful and desirable platforms available for FPGA enthusiasts. It comes equipped with onboard Wi-Fi, display, buttons, LEDs, and storage. Flash it with an over-the-air (OTA) update using the Wi-Fi connection or take advantage of the onboard OLED display and buttons to browse the contents of an SD card and select a bitstream. Due to its battery-backed RTC, ULX3S can power down completely and wake up only in response to certain events. This feature makes it perfect for use in low-power applications such as battery-powered remote sensor nodes.
And if you’re not the low-power type, onboard peripherals like SDRAM, USB, digital video out, onboard FM/ASK antenna, ADC, and DAC make it an audio/video powerhouse for signal processing and synthesis, motor control, and SDR use cases. It can emulate arcade machines and retro computers like the Minimig (Amiga) or modern systems like the F32C (MIPS/RISCV). It has 56 GPIO pins, all routed as differential pairs, and a PMOD compatible pinout, which opens it up to a wide range of expansion options. And if you are just starting out FPGAs, you can use the Arduino IDE to program ULX3S in seconds.”
For more information and to register your interest in purchasing a ULX3S jump over to the official crowd Supply website by following the link below.
Specifications of the ULX3S include :
- FPGA: Lattice ECP5
- LFE5U-85F-6BG381C (84 K LUT)
- LFE5U-45F-6BG381C (44 K LUT)
- LFE5U-25F-6BG381C (24 K LUT)
- LFE5U-12F-6BG381C (12 K LUT)
- USB: FTDI FT231XS (500 kbit JTAG and 3 Mbit USB-serial)
- GPIO: 56 pins (28 differential pairs), PMOD-friendly with power out 3.3 V at 1 A or 2.5 V at 1.5 A
- RAM: 32 MB SDRAM 166 MHz
- Flash: 4-16 MB Quad-SPI Flash for FPGA config and user data storage
- Mass Storage: Micro-SD slot
- LEDs: 11 (8 user LEDs, 2 USB LEDs, 1 Wi-Fi LED)
- Buttons: 7 (4 direction, 2 fire, 1 power button)
- Audio: 3.5 mm jack with 4 contacts (analog stereo + digital audio or composite video)
- Video: Digital video (GPDI General-Purpose Differential Interface) with 3.3 V to 5 V I²C bidirectional level shifter
- Display: Placeholder for 0.96″ SPI COLOR OLED SSD1331
- Wi-Fi & Bluetooth: Placeholder for ESP32 (standalone JTAG web interface over Wi-Fi)
- Antenna: 27, 88-108, 144, 433 MHz FM/ASK onboard
- ADC: 8 channels, 12 bit, 1 MS a/s MAX11125
- Power: 3 Switching voltage regulators: 1.1 V, 2.5 V, and 3.3 V
- Clock: 25 MHz onboard, external differential clock input
- Low-Power Sleep: 5 µA at 5 V standby, RTC MCP7940N clock wake-up, power button, 32768 Hz quartz with CR1225 battery backup
- Dimensions: 94 mm × 51 mm
Source : Crowd Supply
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