Hi everyone,
I wanted to take the opportunity to let you all know about a new project we have just launched on Kickstarter that allows you to develop project for a Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA and configure them through the Arduino IDE.
The idea for Alan originally arose while looking for a suitable Xilinx FPGA development board for a project I am working on. While the Xilinx development IDE is available for free the challenge comes when you want to program a device as programmers can range in cost from a few tens to hundreds of dollars.
Having consulted on FPGA designs for a number of years I am very familiar with configuring them from a microprocessor so I begin to think about could this be done easily and cheaply? My first thought was to use an Arduino compatible board as I had built a number of project with both the Arduino Uno and the Leonardo and I am a great fan of Arduino and simplicity of their IDE.
The challenge was how to open a bit file and transfer it from the PC to an Arduino compatible microcontroller using the serial interface in as simple a manner as possible? While opening the Arduino IDE one afternoon I noticed the reference to Processing in the splash screen and my problem was solved.
We now use the Processing environment, which is very similar to the Arduino IDE, to create the interface to an Arduino compatible microcontroller and FPGA all with free software.
It became obvious to me that the Processing IDE would also allow me to create some really interesting projects that could integrate an PC with the Arduino compatible microcontroller and the FPGA so Alan was suddenly looking like a really nice project.
As there didn’t appear to be anything like Alan on the market I thought that this blend of well-established elements (Processing, Arduino and Webpack FPGA tools) might be something that other people would be interested in – hence the Kickstarter Project.
If your interested then please take a look at our project on Kickstarter and we would certain appreciate your comments and feedback. (search for "Alan - an Arduino compatible mircoprocessor and Xilinx FPGA")
I was also very impressed with the process that Kickstarter followed to ensure that the project was legitimate and to ensure as much as possible that they protect the sponsors from bogus offering. Having been thorough this with them I am now much more willing to make a pledge to some of these projects myself - it has been a great experience.