Plug and Play Pmods with LabVIEW
Looking for a quick electronic fix? Check out one of our awesome NI Week demos!
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FPGA vs Microcontroller: When to Use Each?
FPGA or microcontroller? Do I have to choose? We’re here with some of the differences between the two and appropriate times to use each.
Read MoreSmart Irrigation System
During the summer, gardens abound — so many people are keeping an eye out for their sun-ripened, home-grown tomatoes or for that lovely hydrangea that’s just the right shade of blue. But summers are also a very hectic time. So how do you maintain that garden and make sure it receives the care it needs? One of the projects created for the Digilent Design Contest 2015 is a smart irrigation system intended to work with an Android device to see to it your garden gets the moisture it craves.
Read MoreFPGA Products: What They Are & How to Use Them - Digilent / How-To Guides and Technical Workflows – Digilent Blog
Getting Started with Xilinx Vivado and the Nexys 4
We’ve posted plenty of projects before that make use of Vivado. But how do you begin using it? This Instructable provides a guide to getting started with using Xilinx’s Vivado CAD with the Digilent Nexys 4. Alex uses Verilog to create the logic design. The Digilent Intro to Verilog Project provides an introduction to logic design.
Read MoreDigilent Software Solutions: What They Are & How to Use Them / How-To Guides and Technical Workflows – Digilent Blog
LabVIEW for the Layperson
What is LabVIEW? How do I get started using it? What are some challenges a beginner might face? Miranda explains it all.
Read MoreA Message from Digilent President Steve Johnson
A summer message from our president, Steve Johnson.
Read MoreFPIDroidHouse with a Nexys 3
As smart homes are becoming more and more de rigueur, Instructables user skorpyon1992 created a timely project, the FPiDroid House. This project is still in beta testing, but has shown a lot of potential so far. By using the Nexys 3 (or any of our FPGA boards), you too could connect a lot of your devices to monitor and control your very own smart home.
Read MoreThe Nexys Video Has Launched!
As you may have surmised from Jesse’s post earlier, we have a new product, the fantastic Nexys Video! To learn more, I talked to Sam Bobrowicz, one of the people at Digilent who worked very hard to get this product released.
Read MoreWorking with the Digilent Forum
As most of you know, we have our own Forum where anybody can go post questions and projects involving Digilent products: FPGAs, microcontrollers, any of our scopes, National Instruments products like the LabVIEW Home Bundle, Pmods, programming solutions, you name it. With this wide variety of products and an even wider variety of potential questions, the Forum can be a little daunting to navigate. This post will help first-time Digilent Forum users get the best experience out of the Digilent Forum.
Read MoreSoda Can Theremin Video
We recently published a video about a simple Theremin built using the Analog Discovery and the Analog Parts Kit. A Theremin is an electronic musical instrument which essentially turns the user into a variable capacitor. The user can then adjust the frequency of the sound produced by the instrument by moving their hand in relation to an antenna. As the distance to the antenna changes, the capacitance also changes, thus changing the signal frequency. In the Theremin showcased in this video, a recycled soda can is used as the antenna.
Read MoreDigilent Education Processes – Blog / Digilent Projects – Blog / Digilent Software Solutions: What They Are & How to Use Them
Fan Speed Control Using a Thermistor, LabVIEW, and myRIO
Dharsan, a new Digilent intern, used the LabVIEW Home Bundle and the NI myRIO to create a circuit that controls the speed of a fan based on a temperature reading.
Read MoreOpen-Source MRK+Line robot
In keeping with our open-source initiative, the Digilent Marketing Team used open-source parts to build a robot. This is an altered version of the MRK Line Robot, which uses only open-source components.
Read MoreDigilent Expansion Modules / Digilent Projects – Blog / FPGA Products: What They Are & How to Use Them - Digilent
Virtual Touchscreen Game Using ZYBO
One of the really cool projects to come out of the Digilent Design Contest is a virtual touchscreen game hands-on tutorial for the ZYBO. This Instructable provides step-by-step instructions for customizing hardware to emulate a touchscreen on a simple TFT (thin-film transistor) monitor using camera and finger detection
Read MoreAbout Us - Digilent Blog / Around Digilent – Digilent Blog / FPGA Products: What They Are & How to Use Them - Digilent
Xilinx Partner Pages
One of the companies we work closely with is Xilinx, and we’re honored that they feature some of our products on their partner pages. The Digilent partner page not only has information about our company, but links to our products that use a Xilinx FPGA (and a few accessories).
Read MoreThrowback Thursday: Digilent’s First Video
While Digilent’s YouTube channel now has x videos, but it wasn’t always that way. Back in 2010, we did our first YouTube video. It’s part of the Real Analog Course by Tim Hanshaw, and it’s incredibly fun to see how much has changed in five years!
Read MoreKCL & KVL: Understanding Kirchhoff’s Circuit Laws
In one of my first circuits courses, the professor’s favorite words of advice were to “keep calm and remember KCL, KVL, and Ohm’s law.” With these three concepts, just about any electrical circuit can be analyzed and understood. Granted, things get a little more complicated when you add concepts like inductance and capacitance, but KCL, KVL, and Ohm’s law form the foundation of all circuit analysis. Brandon mentioned Ohm’s law in his blog post on how to choose a resistor for your design, so I will only be discussing KCL and KVL.
Read MoreLearning the AI behind Amazon
How does Amazon improve its customer service? It uses an AI to learn user preferences (by tracking purchases) and generate recommendations. This is an AI that learns over time. And now Amazon is making one of its algorithms available for programmers and other businesses to use.
Read MoreThe Analog Parts Kit
The Analog Parts Kit contains a large selection of components perfect for creating a wide variety of useful circuits & devices. Featuring Analog Devices components, the kit includes transistors, resistors, capacitors, diodes, sensors, and variety of useful ICs, including op amps, converters, and regulators. Finally, the kit also comes with an assortment of lead wires, a solderless breadboard, and a screwdriver.
Read MoreBeing Green with DIY Solar Panel Improvements
Happy St. Patrick’s Day! If you’re wondering how to celebrate and add some green to your life, consider this — improving your solar panels with a microcontroller! This project from Hackaday uses an Arduino to harvest more energy from the panel than would otherwise be available.
Read MoreInduction Heating
Did you know you can melt metal using magnetic fields? It seems pretty crazy, but it’s possible.
Read MoreBack to Basics with Transistors
With any upcoming projects you may be doing, will you be using transistors? A few months ago, Brandon wrote a post detailing the basics of transistors — what they are, how they work, how they can be used, etc.
Read MoreTesting the PmodACL and LabVIEW on the Race Track
Recently I released a collection of projects going over how to use LAbVIEW, the chipKIT Max32, and the PmodACL to do some neat stuff with accelerometer data. These include filtering, multidimensional vector plots, and tilt measurement.
Read MoreRemotely Control FM Radio with a chipKIT uC32 and Basic I/O Shield
Recently, a user of our products posted a tutorial about using a chipKIT uC32 to remotely control an FM Radio. We always love to see our users creating cool projects and try to give space here not only to projects created by us at Digilent but also by you the user. This project does require the use of multiple components and could be a bit overwhelming to a beginner, but we encourage you to try it out if you so choose!
Read MoreGetting to Know the Electronics Explorer Board
One of our lesser known products that definitely deserves some more attention is the Electronics ExplorerTM Board. This is an incredible piece of hardware that everyone interested in electronics should have. When I first started in electronics, I used the popular Analog Discovery. After using the EE Board, another analog design product offered by Digilent, it has become my new favorite.
Read MoreInterrupts vs. Polling: What’s the Dif-(Interrupt)-ference?
For those of you that have been coding for awhile, you likely have heard about both interrupts and polling. These are both techniques that can be used to alert your system board, such as a chipKIT microcontroller, when an input has occurred. But what is the difference between these two methods? Is one better than the other? Let’s find out.
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