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Category Archives: Gadget Factory

Papilio Projects: Chord Keypad to control CAD software

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Chord Keypad

Here is a project that we missed from a couple years ago. A chord keypad that is used to speed up PCB development by making common key strokes easily available. This is particularly useful for EAGLE PCB development where you are continuously typing in commands on the keyboard…

 

Our friend Ken Boak put together this cool project and lists this as the capabilities:

The five main keys are located under the fingertips and thumb of the right hand, plus an additional shift key that can be held down with the thumb.  This combination allows up to 64 key combinations  – which is enough for simple ascii, alphas and numerals.

This is what he says about its use case:

However, this time the application is not for text entry, but to allow very rapid access to menu items, tools and colour options for a CAD program – without having to break concentration and use the keyboard.

We also had the same desire to simplify CAD input and made a custom tablet based solution, not as cool as Ken’s but its worth putting it up here too. :)


via Sustainable Suburbia Blog

Tetris-like game for the Papilio and Arcade Megawing

Posted on by Posted in Papilio, Papilio Arcade, User Submitted Leave a comment

Sometris is a Tetris-like game that Papilio user Peter Ivanov has written for the Papilio One and Arcade MegaWing, the game works with DesignLab 1.0.8.

This is a tetris-like game for Papilio One 500K + Aracade Megawing.

You need a VGA monitor and optionally a Atari/Commodore compatible joystick.

I’ve used Papilio DesignLab 1.0.8.

The source code is available on Github.

Please feel free to comment or reply to the game forum thread.

New Papilio FPGA tutorial – Create custom clocks of any speed inside an FPGA with the Xilinx clocking wizard.

Posted on by Posted in FPGA, Gadget Factory, Papilio, VHDL Leave a comment
Step 4 - Clocking Wizard

This tutorial shows you how to generate custom clocks inside your FPGA using the simple Clocking Wizard. Easily create clocks at any speeds such as 100Mhz, 75Mhz, or 50Mhz from the 32Mhz oscillator connected to your Papilio FPGA. The Xilinx clocking wizard easily generates custom clock speeds with all of the Global Clock buffers and supporting circuitry automatically created for you. It is definitely the easiest way to generate custom clocks for your FPGA project.

Step 4 - Clocking Wizard

 

Find this tutorial and more at GadgetFactory learn website.

 

 

DesignLab 1.0.8 and RetroCade 1.3 Released!

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RetroCade Synth

We just completed a new release of DesignLab and RetroCade Synth.

DesignLab 1.0.8 has the following changes:

DesignLab 1.0.8 – 2017.01.04
[DesignLab Libraries]
-Added a new Video Audio Player example.
-Fixes for RetroCade Synth libraries.

RetroCade Synth 1.3 has the following changes:

1/4/2017      Version 1.3.1
-Fix for some LCDs that have contrast issues.

4/21/2015      Version 1.3
-Updated MIDI library to better handle NoteOffs.
-Moved to ZPUino 2.0 with a DesignLab schematic.

1/29/2014      Version 1.2
-Moved to Papilio Schematic Library and drew up a schematic of the RetroCade system.
-Added Analog mode to the LCD.
-Made joystick interaction for smallFS more intuitive. Cannot do the same for SD Card access without a lot of rework…

 

Robots Game Implemented On The Papilio!

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Inspired by the snake game our forum member Jaxartes has successfully managed  to implement the Robots game on the Papilio Pro with the Arcade MegaWing using Verilog, his source code should be able to run on other FPGA platforms with comparable capacity.

It displays in 1024×768 on a VGA monitor, and is controlled by keyboard.  Or, it can be controlled from the serial port for those without a PS/2 keyboard hooked up.

You could find the source code is Github and here is a link to the original forum thread to drop a comment.

MULTICOMP Z80 CP/M migrated to the Papilio Duo Platform!

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img_1786-thumb-jpg-ff1defa67a2dda6d93077070d9f00fd7

 

Hello Papilio fans today we got an awesome project to share with you! Our forum member jlcollado has managed to migrate the Grant Searle’s brillant work called MULTICOMP to the Papilio DUO, the final result is a very usable and complete Z80 soft-core based machine, running the venerable Digital Research CP/M 2.2 OS.

I’ve built the Z80 CP/M variant, complete with VGA & Keyboard terminal, Serial port, SD-Card and external SRAM. The steps I followed to accomplish this:
1. Adapted the pinouts, ports and some signals of all the modules (Main Interconect, Z80, VGA, Serial, Keyboard, SD-Card) from the original design to fully use the Computing Shield peripherals and the DUO’s SRAM (using and updated Computing Shield UCF file).
2. Converted the original 6 bit color VGA to 12 bit color interface.
3. Converted the internal BIOS ROM and Character Font ROMs, to use Xilinx’s Core Generator’s Block Memory instead of the original Altera Altsyncram IP.
4. Converted the internal double port Display & Attribute RAMs also to use the Core Generator’s Block Memory instead of the original Altera Altsyncram IP.
5. In my first attempt I adapter the CPU and Baudrate clock generators, to use the Papilio’s 32 MHz OSC instead of the original 50 MHz, but I ran into timing problems converting the many clock -dependant constants in the design. So I decided to generate a new 50 MHz clock using the DCM & PLL Wizard.

For an in depth look at this great work please visit the project showcase page here, the full project files are also available on the same page.

Feel free to express your thoughts about the project in the comment section or in the original showcase page.

Snake Game Created With The Minimum FPGA Resources!

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Hello FPGA and Arcade games fans! A couple of weeks ago we posted about how to play the Snake game on your FPGA in fore easy steps, our community member mkarlsson was not totally satisfied with the amount of FPGA resources the Verilog code uses and decided to rewrite the game to make it use less resources and now it even fits an LX9  based board like Papilio Pro or Duo with a VGA wing:

The GadgetFactory blog page has this story about the snake game written in Verilog so I decided to take a look at it.  Sadly to say it’s pretty much a textbook example of how not to write HDL code.  However, this idea seemed pretty cool so I decided to do an almost complete rewrite of the code (basically the only thing left from the original code is the VGA controller) while still keeping all the functionality of the original code.  The new version uses about a 1/4 of the FPGA resources compared to the original code when compiled for Spartan6 and it now fits an LX9.

Please visit the original forum thread here to share your thoughts about this project.

Source code is available on github.

By mkarlsson.