Arrow Chameleon96 Arm + Cyclone V FPGA Board Sold for $32 (Promo)

First introduced in 2017, Arrow Chameleon96 96Boards SBC comes with an Intel / Altera Cyclone V SE SoC featuring a dual-core Arm Cortex A9 processor clocked at up to 800 MHz and FPGA fabric with 110K Logic Elements.

It used to sell for $129, but Arrow & appears to have a promotion now where the Novtech board sells for just $31.34 with free shipping[Update: all available boards are gone, and the product is now out of stock]. It looks like a good opportunity for people interested in playing around with an Arm Linux FPGA platform.

Here’s a reminder of Chameleon96 board specifications which the company shamelessly copied from CNX Software:

SoC – Intel PSG / Altera Cyclone V SE 5CSEBA6U19I7N with a dual-core ARM Cortex A9 processor @ up to 800 MHz and FPGA fabric with 110K Logic Elements
Chips, Ports, and Features connected to FPGA:
- Integrated USB-Blaster II JTAG cable
- Configuration sources: SD Card, JTAG
- HDMI display output
- WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n + Bluetooth 4.1 module interface
Chips, Ports & Features connected to ARM system (HPS)
- 512MB DDR3 SDRAM (16-bit data bus)
- 2x USB 2.0 host ports, 1x micro USB OTG port
- Micro SD card interface
- Serial UART
- User LEDs
- Warm reset button
Expansion Connectors
- 2x 20-pin Low-speed expansion connector with UART, SPI, I2C, I2S, GPIO connectivity
- 2x 30 High-speed expansion connector with USB 2.0 Host, SPI, I2C, GPIO, and MIPI CSI-2 connectivity
Debugging – 3-pin UART connector
Misc – User LEDs, power button, reset button
Power Supply – 12V DC (8~18V supports as per 96Boards CE specifications)
Dimensions – 85 x 54 mm

You’ll find information to get started and resources like the Linux image on 96boards website. All documentation that I could find is dated 2017, so don’t expect to have a recent U-boot and/or Linux kernel with the board. But if all you plan to do is to learn a bit more about FPGA development it should not matter that much.

There are still 173 pieces for sale at the time of writing. It could well be Arrow getting rid of old stock, and the board may not be available after that.

Thanks to Fran for the tip.

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.