Gadget Factory

  • Great news! Papilio DUO, Computing Shield, and LogicStart Shield going into production at Seeed Studio!

      Great news, I just made payment to Seeed Studio to start manufacturing the first batch of boards! They expect to easily meet the December delivery time frame and may even have them completed in November. 🙂 We had a bit of a scare and a last minute scramble due to a global shortage of…

    Jack Gassett

  • Guide for Generating ROMs and BRAM Memory

    Hamster tipped us off to this nice guide about generating memories with the Xilinx wizards. The objective of this lab is to illustrate the use of ROM and block RAM memories located inside the FPGA – a Spartan-6 in the case of our Atlys board. We’ll learn how to use the ISE’s Core Generator tool…

    Jack Gassett

  • SDRAM Controller

    Here is a very interesting Xilinx App note that includes full VHDL code for interfacing to a SDRAM chip. I’ve been meaning to see if this could be adapted as an example for the Papilio Pro, but never seem to find the time…   This document describes the VHDL design for interfacing CoolRunner™-II CPLDs with low power…

    Jack Gassett

  • Yet Another Synth project updated with drum from SD Card.

    Papilio User Thomas just posted an updated video of his “Yet Another Synth” project with a new update, drums from the SD Card. via gadgetfactory forum via www.youtube.com I finally manage to add drum. Actually it read sample from the SD card. The current design is limited to one drum sound at the time. But…

    Jack Gassett

  • Xilinx App Note: Writing Efficient Testbenches

      I’ve been looking through Xilinx App Notes recently and came across some great information to share on the blog. This app note gives lots of great background information that will help you in writing test benches to provide stimulus for your HDL code so you can perform simulation before you ever load a design to…

    Jack Gassett

  • UPDATE: DesignLab Libraries – FPGA circuits and sketches together!

    I’ve been hard at work on the DesignLab software and just wanted to share a video of how libraries will work in DesignLab. One of the major things we are doing with DesignLab is expanding on the Arduino IDE by coupling FPGA circuits to sketches. Every DesignLab project will be the combination of an FPGA…

    Jack Gassett

  • Meet the WIDGEDUINO

    This is an interesting looking toolkit for the Arduino, and the Papilio, that lets you control widgets on your computer screen from your Arduino. With that said, the WIDGEDUINO aims at making this process even faster and easier. Bristling with an array of meters, graphs and data entry widgets, the WIDGEDUINO is sure to be…

    Jack Gassett

  • New Chip Alert: The ESP8266 WiFi Module (It’s $5)

    Here’s an exciting new Wifi module from China, at just $5 its hard not to put it in your project! The only downside is the existing datasheets and information is in Chinese, but a quick search on google is showing some promising documentation in English. Hopefully we will see these modules used more and more…

    Jack Gassett