Gadget Factory

FPGA projects

  • 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…

  • Firing Up The RetroCade Synth: First Impressions

    We found another great article by Phillip Howard from Raspberry Pi @ Gadgetoid, this time on Getting Started With The Papilio RetroCade Synth. In the image above, you can see the RedroCade MegaWing plugged into its host Papilio Pro. This is the setup that Phillip used for the purposes of his article. After some initial…

  • FPGA Nixie Tube Speedometer = Steampunk Goodness

    A Nixie tube speedometer for a vintage pickup truck – seems like the coolest combination ever, right? Check out the video above and you’ll see what I mean. For those who have never heard of a Nixie tube, it’s basically a numeric-display (there are also character-display variants) vacuum tube that works very similarly to a…

  • Motion-Tracking Project Lets You Be A Robot Puppeteer

    Embedded Systems Design student Annie Dai recently finished up her final project for the Spring 2013 semester at Cornell University. Based on an Altera DE-2 FPGA board, her project was designed to track realtime movement in a subject’s upper body (head, torso, right & left arms) using the DE-2, a VGA monitor, and a video…

  • Controlling An LCD Module With Your FPGA

    By way of FPGA 4 Fun, we have a great and easy project on driving a one line/ 16- character (HD44780 chip-based) LCD display using your FPGA. This project works with HD44780-compatible modules also. The project page covers controlling the LCD module by utilizing a 7-bit design, an 8-bit design, as well as some code…

  • Chess-Playing FPGAs @ Design West 2014

    Warren Miller of All Programmable Planet has a plan to turn his research and writings about teaching an FPGA to play chess into a real thing – at next year’s Design West event. His plan is to have “an extravaganza at Design West 2014 in which electronic “Robot” chess players can compete on the big…

  • VGA Out Hacked Into Virtual Boy Console Using FPGA

    Here’s a new one. Retro game console enthusiast and hardware hacker Furrtek created a great hack with his Nintendo Virtual Boy 3D console. He knew the Virtual Boy didn’t have a stock video output so he decided to use his Altera DE-1 FPGA board to make his own. One problem though – he wanted to…