Category: Lattice

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments on Radiona ULX3S Open Source Hardware ECP5 FPGA Development Board Launched for $99 and Up (Crowdfunding)

Radiona ULX3S Open Source Hardware ECP5 FPGA Development Board Launched for $99 and Up (Crowdfunding)

ULX3S Lattice ECP5 FPGA Educational Board

Last summer, we wrote about Radiona ULX3S education board combining a Lattice Semi ECP5 FPGA with an Espressif Systems ESP32 WiFi & Bluetooth WiSoC. Designed for a digital logic course at the University of Zagreb, the board is open-source hardware with KiCAD hardware design files released on GitHub, and programmable with the Arduino IDE (FPGArduino) and ProjectTrellis open-source toolchain. At the time, there was only a version based on Lattice ECP5 85F with 84K LUT, but they’ve now made versions with cheaper variants of ECP5 FPGA and launched the board on Crowd Supply. Radiona ULX3S specifications: FPGA (one of the other) Lattice ECP5 LFE5U-85F-6BG381C with 84K LUT Lattice ECP5 LFE5U-45F-6BG381C with 44K LUT Lattice ECP5 LFE5U-12F-6BG381C with 12K LUT System Memory – 32MB SDRAM @ 166 MHz Storage – 4–16MB Quad-SPI Flash for FPGA config and user data storage; MicroSD slot Audio – 3.5 mm jack with 4 contacts (analog […]

Posted on by Stephen Vicinanza - 4 Comments on Lattice Introduces CrossLink-NX FPGA for Edge AI & Embedded Vision

Lattice Introduces CrossLink-NX FPGA for Edge AI & Embedded Vision

Lattice CrossLink-NX FPGA Lattice Semiconductor has announced the first product associated with its Nexus Platform, the CrossLink-NX FPGA designed for embedded vision and Edge AI applications. There are two offerings at this time, the CrossLink-NX FPGA 17, and the CrossLink-NX FPGA 40. Recent Announcements The Nexus Platform was introduced at the beginning of December 2019, and now CrossLink-NX has been developed and is being manufactured. The first announcements of Lattice Nexus Platform and The CrossLink-NX  Product Family came as the company’s moved to capture the embedded vision systems market. The Standout Features The low-power consumption, low soft error immunity, and 10Gbps MIPI are highlights of the CrossLink-NX FPGA. Other features include Instant On, with IO configured in 3 ms, and a total of 8 ms for the device. The Cross-Platform FPGAs The trends in technology are leading to devices that can cross function in a number of different tech environments. […]

Posted on by Stephen Vicinanza - 4 Comments on PrinCube Said to Be Smallest Handheld Smartphone Color-Inkjet Printer That Prints on Anything (Crowdfunding)

PrinCube Said to Be Smallest Handheld Smartphone Color-Inkjet Printer That Prints on Anything (Crowdfunding)

PrinCube the smallest, color-inkjet printer on the market. PrinCube is a portable handheld color ink-jet printer that is palm-sized, wirelessly controlled by a smartphone, and easy to set up. The IndieGoGo campaign has exploded to more than $2,000,000.00 USD and featured on a number of tech sites.  Article Intent For clarity and function of the PrinCube abilities, there needs to be a careful examination of the facts that surround wireless, handheld, color inkjet, printer, that can print on any surface. Other Handheld, Smartphone, Color-Inkjet Printers There is another product, similar to PrinCube, PrintBrush, which is also a handheld wireless color inkjet printer, connected to a smartphone. It should be noted that while PrinCube is a very popular campaign, PrintBrush, which came out earlier than PrinCube, has very similar claims.  It is worth looking over the websites for both printers Here are the campaigns PrintBrush XDR- Colors Everywhere on Kickstarter PrinCube […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments on ULX3S Education Board is Powered by Lattice Semi ECP5 FPGA & ESP32 WiFi/BLE Module

ULX3S Education Board is Powered by Lattice Semi ECP5 FPGA & ESP32 WiFi/BLE Module

ULX3S Lattice ECP5 FPGA Educational Board

A few days ago, we covered the KiCAD designed OrangeCrab open-source hardware board powered by a Lattice Semi ECP5 FPGA, and compliant with Adafruit Feather form factor. It’s turned out there’s another Lattice Semi ECP5 FPGA board that’s also designed with KiCAD and open source hardware. Radiona ULX3S differs are it’s larger and exposes more I/Os since it was specifically designed to meet the meets of the digital logic course at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing (FER) of the University of Zagreb in Croatia. ULX3S specifications: FPGA – Lattice ECP5 LFE5U-85F-6BG381C with 84K LUT System Memory – 32MB SDRAM @ 166 MHz Storage – 4–16MB Quad-SPI Flash for FPGA config and user data storage; MicroSD slot Audio – 3.5 mm jack with 4 contacts (analog stereo + digital audio or composite video) Video – Digital video (GPDI General-Purpose Diferential Interface) with 3.3V-5V I2C bidirectional level shifter Display – […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments on OrangeCrab is an Open Source Hardware, Feather-Compatible Lattice ECP5 FPGA Board

OrangeCrab is an Open Source Hardware, Feather-Compatible Lattice ECP5 FPGA Board

Lattice ECP5 Feather board

Lattice ECP5 FPGA powered OrangeCrab is the work of Greg Davill who designed the Adafruit Feather-compatible board in KiCAD, crowdsourced schematics/PCB checking and published his progress on Twitter, and published the files  of the open source hardware board on Github. OrangeCrab board hardware specifications: FPGA – Lattice ECP5 25/45/85 variants System Memory – Up  to 8Gbit DDR3 Memory (x16) Storage – 128Mbit QSPI FLASH Memory (Bitstream + User storage), 4-bit MicroSD socket USB – Micro USB connector, full-speed direct USB connection to FPGA Programming – 10-pin FPGA programming header Expansion – I/O’s broken out via 30 through holes: GPIO, SPI, I2C, Analog, … 7x diff pairs, 1x single ended only Misc – Reset Button, charge LED (Green:  external power, Yellow: when charging, No color: when running off battery), 48MHz Oscillator Power Supply – 5V via USB port, battery header for LiPo battery + battery charger chip Dimensions – Adafruit Feather […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments on Amungo NUT2NT+ is an Open Source High Precision GNSS Board (Crowdfunding)

Amungo NUT2NT+ is an Open Source High Precision GNSS Board (Crowdfunding)

NUT2NT+ GNSS Board

Amungo Navigation NUT2NT+ is an open-source hardware four-channel, all-frequency, GNSS RF-to-bits receiver for precision, satellite-based positioning. Connected to the right antennas, the board can achieve centimeter positioning resolution by connecting to multiple navigation satellite systems including GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, BeiDou, and IRNSS. Amungo claims that while several startups and large companies already offer proprietary GNSS positioning solutions NUT2NT+ is the only open source option in this class of GNSS devices. NUT2NT+ key features and specifications: Receiver chip  – NTLab NT1065 4-Channel RF Front-End IC FPGA – Lattice ECP5 with 12K LUTs + 28 DSP blocks (LFE5U-12) opened for custom design USB – 1x USB 3.1 Type-C port via CYUSB3014 USB 3.0 controller: Clock – 10 MHz TCXO, soldered RF inputs – 2x bands dedicated;  – 5 dB referred noise floor ADC – 2-bit resolution up to 99 MHz Samples transfer – Continuous full stream, from 10 to 50 Mbytes/sec GNSS […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment on TechNexion AXON and FLEX SoM Families Feature i.MX 8M Mini SoC, FPGA Fabric

TechNexion AXON and FLEX SoM Families Feature i.MX 8M Mini SoC, FPGA Fabric

AXON-IMX8M-MINI

Taiwan based Technexion has introduced several new products at Embedded World 2019 including two new SoM families: AXON and FLEX. AXON is a product family of small form factor (58 x 37 mm) modules designed for specialized embedded applications requiring extra I/O flexibility, while FLEX series is a low-cost family making use of the standard LPDDR4 SO-DIMM connector. Specifically, the company launched new AXON and FLEX modules powered by NXP i.MX 8M Mini processor with AXON-IMX8M-MINI featuring AXON Fabric programmable logic, a specialized IC that provides additional functions including nearly infinite pinmuxing, and FLEX-IMX8M-MINI that offers HD multimedia streaming and integrated 3D graphics for cost sensitive applications. AXON-IMX8M-MINI SoM AXON-IMX8M-MINI SoM specifications: SoC – NXP i.MX 8M Mini Solo, Dual or Quad Arm Cortex-A53+M4 processor FPGA – “Axon Fabric” making use of a Lattice MachXO3LF FPGA with 2100 LUTs (LookUp Tables) System Memory – Up to 4GB LPDDR4 RAM Storage […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments on Fomu FPGA board fits inside a USB port, Supports Python, RISC-V Softcore

Fomu FPGA board fits inside a USB port, Supports Python, RISC-V Softcore

Fomu FPGA Board

Sutajio Ko-usagi launched Tomu, a tiny open source hardware USB board that fits inside a USB port at the very beginning of this year. The company is back with a similarly shaped board, but instead of featuring a Silicon Labs EFM32 Arm Cortex-M0+ microcontroller, Fomu is equipped with a Lattice ICE40 UltraPlus FPGA. Fomu specifications: FPGA – Lattice ICE40UP5K FPGA with 5280 logic cells System Memory – 128 kB RAM for a soft CPU Storage – 1 or 2 MB SPI flash Clock – 48 MHz crystal oscillator USB – 1x USB 2.0 FS (12 Mbps) port Misc – 4x buttons, 1x RGB LED The default Fomu firmware exposes a USB bootloader running a RISC-V softcore, and the platform is powerful enough to run a port of Python. It’s also possible to experiment with LM32 and OpenRISC softcores on the platform. Using the board is pretty straightforward as just you […]

UP 7000 x86 SBC