Gadget Factory

FPGA

  • Tutorial: Running Nut/OS On DE0-Nano For Internet Radio

    Courtesy of Emb4fun, Michael Fischer posted a wonderfully detailed tutorial for getting the Nios II soft processor up and running on his Altera DE0-Nano FPGA, complete with Nut/OS.  The tutorial is as about as in-depth as they come. The tutorial comes in three easy-to-follow sections, and is complete with screenshots and step-by-step instructions. The first…

  • Vector Graphics Arcade Games On An FPGA

    This is a pretty cool reincarnation of the old-school vector graphics arcade games – now reborn on FPGA. You just might recognize vector graphics from such classic arcade games as Asteroids, Gravitar, and Tempest. Vector was an interesting display technology at the time, differentiating itself from pixel-based video game graphics by using a method of…

  • Augmented Reality Edge-Detection Game On DE-2 FPGA

    The cool FPGA projects just won’t let up over at Cornell University. In this one, we’ve got students Chris Fairfax, Matheus Ogleari, and Aadeetya Shreedha with their realtime edge-detection physics-based ball game implimented on an Altera DE-2 dev board. This is some seriously cool design. The project uses the Sobel operator to detect the edges…

  • Accelerometer Tilt Sensing On Altera DE0 Nano FPGA

    We found a great tutorial for using an accelerometer’s tilt data on an FPGA over at Pyro Electro. In this particular project, they’re using an Altera DE0-Nano board (and using the built-in accelerometer), a breadboard, the DE0-Nano Development Suite software, (32x) 100 mega resistors, (32x) green LEDs, and jumper wires. Check out the video above,…

  • Bitcoin Mining Rig With R-Pi & DE0-Nano FPGA

    Here’s an interesting Bitcoin mining rig consisting of both a Raspberry Pi and an Altera DE0-Nano FPGA board. The guys over at Design Spark decided to give this Bitcoin mining thing a try, and their project page details their efforts. You’ll find the links below for those who would be interested to give it a…

  • FPGA Platformer Game Written Entirely In VHDL

    FPGA enthusiast and nostalgic gamer Ben created a 1980s-style side-scrolling platformer game (think Super Mario Bros.) entirely in VHDL. Hence there is no microprocessor present. Ben’s game was originally written to run on an Altera dev board, and some other hardware. The hardware consists of: •A single FPGA •Power and clock circuitry •A controller, which…

  • ZX Spectrum ULA Chip Implementation On OBLS

    Above: OpenBench Logic Sniffer running the ZX Spectrum ULA chip clone. As a follow-up to Friday’s article on the ZX Spectrum clone running on the Pipistrello, I thought it would be good to share a little more with you on the implementation of the Sinclair ULA chip. The chip was originally included in the ZX…

  • ZX Spectrum With HDMI Out On The Pipistrello

    Jozsef Laszlo, AKA “joco” has come up with a very good implementation of the 1982 ZX Spectrum computer using his Papilio-based Pipistrello board. Joco says he wanted to do the ZX Spectrum project to “prove that a Spectrum clone can have a modern HDMI video output. Pipistrello was a good choice for this, because it…