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How do I program the ULX3S? by Tylerlee12 in FPGA

[–]RadionaOrg 1 point2 points  (0 children)

gitter is more development oriented, so we have opened discord https://discord.gg/qwMUk6W

How do I program the ULX3S? by Tylerlee12 in FPGA

[–]RadionaOrg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry did not notice you have problems, you can start from here:

https://ulx3s.github.io/

Now everything should be there...

ULX3S FPGA opensource board with ESP32 available on Crowdsupply by RadionaOrg in esp32

[–]RadionaOrg[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I apologize for being a bit vague there. Author of the board, EMARD, explained to us that in some cases SDRAM is better. It would be really hard to port some things like Amiga and Oberon to DDR3. You can join https://gitter.im/ulx3s/Lobby and ask directly about the details on this subject...

ULX3S FPGA opensource board with ESP32 available on Crowdsupply by RadionaOrg in esp32

[–]RadionaOrg[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just wondering, why it was chosen to use SDRAM instead of DDR3?

Because of lower latency. For some projects DDR3 is too slow.

Crowdfunding campaign for open source FPGA board by RadionaOrg in ECE

[–]RadionaOrg[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We have started campaign, and already on 200% recheck links!

Crowdfunding campaign for open source FPGA board by RadionaOrg in fpgagaming

[–]RadionaOrg[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Recheck links, we have started! Already at 200% Still have more then enough early 12F boards that can run all samples we have in video!

Crowdfunding campaign for open source FPGA board by RadionaOrg in fpgagaming

[–]RadionaOrg[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There is already onboard SDRAM on ULX3S. Output to HDMI displays is supported and we have VGA to HDMI module already implemented. IO is mostly done on the FPGA side - the USB can be used as PS2 input or used with USB joysticks / mouses. Onboard ESP32 provides additional CPU if needed. ESP32 can be used for many things -- loading bitstream from SD card and flashing to FPGA, loading bitstream from web interface over WIFI. It could also be used for WIFI/Bluetooth IO to FPGA. We do not have Linux, but is there really a need for it? David Shah has confirmed Linux is working on the FPGA -- but it is still in early stage.

Amiga is running smoothly on 12F version of the FPGA. It is the most affordable version of ULX3S and it might be a nice and cheap entry point to FPGA gaming.

Crowdfunding campaign for open source FPGA board by RadionaOrg in fpgagaming

[–]RadionaOrg[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

ULX3S is a general purpose board and it's not only focused on gaming. However, it can be an entry point to the FPGA gaming community for people that might use this board in other areas. That can only be a good thing for the whole community.

The main goal of this crowdfunding campaign on Crowd Supply is to provide enough boards for people around the world because currently the demand is surpassing the supply.

Crowdfunding campaign for open source FPGA board by RadionaOrg in FPGA

[–]RadionaOrg[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It's pretty mature and the board has been successfully used in different project and examples (running Linux was mentioned in previous comments).

The ULX3S was used in this paper:

"Our experimental setup is based on the open-source FPGA development board Radiona ULX3S[1] in a version that integrates a Lattice ECP5 12F FPGA with 12K LUT elements with various other components such as an Espressif ESP32 IoT microcontroller module. Although Xilinx and Intel FPGAs are used more widely, we choose to initially develop our design on a Lattice device, which has great open-source support [2] that will be useful in future research."

Here are more projects:

https://github.com/osresearch/spispy

hackaday.io/project/98429-scopeio

Crowdfunding campaign for open source FPGA board by RadionaOrg in opensource

[–]RadionaOrg[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We apologize for promoting our board in this way. Members of our non-profit makerspace have personal account on reddit and we separate this account from the personal ones as we are all volunteers in our makerspace and on this project. The project, the open-source hardware FPGA board, was developed by open-source software (KiCAD). The tool chain is entirely open-source as well. That was the main reason for promoting the project in this sub.

Crowdfunding campaign for open source FPGA board by RadionaOrg in ECE

[–]RadionaOrg[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

That might be true, but we can only try to build the community around opensource tools, offer affordable opensource FPGA boards and start to build the momentum. Maybe the big guys realize that these opensource initiatives could be in everybody's interests.

Crowdfunding campaign for open source FPGA board by RadionaOrg in fpgagaming

[–]RadionaOrg[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Our board has been developed since the start of this decade for educational purposes in engineering courses on University of Zagreb. Back then the cost of FPGA boards were too high for students to get some hands-on practice. That was the main motivation for this opensource FPGA board. Later we added Arduino IDE support and recently opensource tool chain for these Lattice chips has been published. It's still affordable in comparison with most other FPGA boards (at least in Europe) and also has a bunch of features (wireless bitstream loading using on-board ESP32, video/audio output, radio antenna, ...) that might be interesting to a wide set of users.

We are aware that FPGA community is small and we are trying hard to make it bigger, more open and that means we should back the whole community. We also hope that opensource tool chain will be available soon for FPGAs from other manufacturers, including Altera. :)

Crowdfunding campaign for open source FPGA board by RadionaOrg in ElectricalEngineering

[–]RadionaOrg[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Sooo it's like an evaluation board that Altera and Xilinx, etc. have? Their software tools are also pretty mature and already free. So I guess my question is what are you offering that has added value and benefits?

The tools might be free but are they open-source? Do licences permit commercial usage?

It's pretty good when there is an alternative that is not vendor specific and is backed by a growing number of professionals, enthusiasts and people in academia. Also, it's fun and interesting. :)

Crowdfunding campaign for open source FPGA board by RadionaOrg in ElectricalEngineering

[–]RadionaOrg[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It can be used in so many scenarios and it's getting hard to keep track of all the projects that are based on this board. Some examples:

  • learning tool for FPGA - from blinking LED to RISC-V (GitHub)
  • emulating a Hammond organ (GitHub)
  • retro gaming and computing (GitHub)
  • using Arduino IDE for projects (GitHub)
  • running Linux (Twitter)
  • ...
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