Posted August 16, 2012 by Chris

“This article will show you how an accelerometer works, how it can be used to detect tilt and also how we can display that tilt ‘value’ visually on a large array of LEDs on my DE0-Nano breakout board. This way whenever we need to see if something is level, we can use this simple but fun tool to know, although don’t count on multiple decimal precision here!

Posted August 9, 2012 by Chris

“This article will go step-by-step through the process of designing a PCB that breaks out the 40 pin expansion header on the DE0-Nano demo board. The PCB will easily connect to a breadboard where you have access to each individual I/O pin.”

Posted August 2, 2012 by Chris

“Since we now know how to create PWM output with a CPLD or FPGA and we also know how to understand dynamic analog input using an A-to-D converter, we can actually combine these two functions together and create an FPGA DC motor controller!”

Posted July 26, 2012 by Chris

“This article will use the same theory from the microcontroller version of fading LEDs but we’ll use the CPLD Dev Board seen last in the connected ADCs to FPGAs article. There we connected up a 10 LED Bar which we will use in this article to show how to create that fading-in and fading-out effect via PWM.”

Posted April 26, 2012 by Chris

“In this article, we’ll use the CPLD Dev Board that I assembled together years ago and add an analog to digital converter IC, along with an LED bar and some current limiting resistors for output to verify the A/D converter is working. VHDL is listed as a pre-req as we’ll be using it to design our custom A/D interface.”

Posted March 15, 2012 by Chris

“This project shows the process of choosing parts, building a schematic, connecting the hardware and writing the hardware description (VHDL) to control a HD44780 LCD interface and output a few characters to the 16×2 LCD screen. To make things a little easier, we’ll use a familiar board, the CPLD Dev Board that I introduced a few years ago. It’s dated but still a good learning platform! ”

Posted March 1, 2012 by Chris

“In this article we explore the flexibilty and capability of FPGAs and specifically CPLDs for creating an RS232 serial interface. Our main goal will be to send ASCII codes from a PC to our CPLD Dev Board and display them on a 7 segment LED for verification. ”

Posted February 23, 2012 by Chris

“ This article will show you how to use standard electronics parts easily purchased at any electronics store to build your very own Altera FPGA and CPLD device programmer. The programmer will work flawlessly with Altera’s Quartus II software and take less than an hour to build. ”

Posted January 12, 2012 by Chris

     The Altera UP2 Dev Board may be a bit antiquated but it still provides an awesome learning platform for under- grad university students.     This week’s article will introduce 4 of the final projects from California State University Chico’s EECE 343 course: Computer Interface Circuits. Each final project has a video of the project in action as well as the FPGA source code available for download.

Posted December 15, 2011 by Chris

This article gives a quick intro to how you get started using the DE0 Nano development board with a simple example program. All you need is a DE0 Nano and a laptop, and you can get started building and programming your own FPGA logic.