Open-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.
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Digilent 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 MoreKirchhoff’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.
Read MoreA Quick History of the Digilent Logo
You may have noticed, but recently we rolled out our new logo, and it’s just the first part of a whole new look for Digilent! This is the 3rd logo design I’ve done for Digilent, and I thought some folks might find it interesting to see where it all started.
Read MoreWill Winter Wane?
Happy Groundhog Day! At Digilent, we have Punxsutawney Sam the groundhog to tell us whether we’ll have more winter to look forward to. Our 3D-printed friend is here to tell us whether winter will wane!
Read MoreGenerating High-Frequency Radio Signals Out of a VGA Port
Over at our forums, we have a lot of great projects that both Digilent employees and users have contributed! One of the members of our user community and a regular contributor to the forum, hamster, used the Basys 3 to generate high-frequency radio signals from its VGA (video graphics array) port.
Read MoreDigilent Product Accessories: What They Are, How to Use Them / Digilent USB Scopes, Analyzers, Generators: Info & Use Cases
Fun With the Project Box
We all know how much of a hassle it can be to safely transport your electronics, and let’s face it, the protective cases that many of our boards previously came in were flimsy, unaccommodating, and caused a great deal of stress for our customers. Well, we’ve responded to all of your feedback and I’m here to talk about our new Project Boxes!
Read MoreBehind the Scenes with SUME
You may have heard of the NetFPGA-SUME, Digilent’s amazingly advanced board that features one of the largest and most complex FPGAs ever produced. But what is the story behind it?
Read MoreHow Do I Use Digilent Products at School? (Digital Edition)
As you learned from my previous post (the Analog Edition version of this post), we used the Analog Parts Kit and Analog Discovery in EE352 at Washington State University (WSU) to make an AM radio transmitter and receiver. Not only do we use Digilent products in EE352, but we also used Digilent parts in EE324 (Fundamentals of Digital Systems) — the digital lab class I was taking.
Read MoreA Listening Calculator
When working with microcontrollers, it’s pretty straightforward to have your system board “listen” for an input that you would give it and have it do some sort of action to show that it noticed your input, such as pressing a button to light up an LED. Listening to a set of inputs and then comparing them to a predetermined set, like in the Simon Says game, is a little more involved but definitely doable. But what if we did not compare to any internal values and the system board has no idea how many inputs we might provide?
Read MoreHow Do I Use Digilent Products at School? (Analog Edition)
One of the reasons I like working at Digilent is that we are primarily an educational company. Because of that, I thought some of you might want to know how we use Digilent products in our classwork at Washington State University (WSU).
Read MoreRunning 5+ Servos on a uC32…Can I Do It?
In the not too distant past, we made a couple of posts on Pmods that can help drive motors as well as a post on stepper motors. Today, we’re going to check out running multiple servo motors on a chipKIT board. Why would we want to do this? Well, aside from the nice feeling that comes from successfully doing some extreme multitasking, we’d also be able to run some super cool mechatronics projects, such as a robot arm!
Read MoreFPGA Products: What They Are & How to Use Them - Digilent / How-To Guides and Technical Workflows – Digilent Blog
What Are Muxes and Demuxes?
A huge part of FPGA design is using logic blocks in design. With logic blocks, you can compartmentalize your design, rather than trying implement everything in one shot. Designing without smaller blocks would be like trying to design a car without subsystems like the braking system or engine. About half of the way through the course there is a project that covers a variety of basic logic blocks, including multiplexers (muxes) and demultiplexers (demuxes). So what are muxes and demuxes?
Read MoreHow to Read a Datasheet
Here at Digilent we have a ton of products with a large amount of documentation and examples (like our Learn site and our Instructables page) letting you know how you can use our products. Within all of these, there are statements about what each product is (and is not) capable of in addition to the recommended operating condition. Some of you may be wondering, “How do we know these things?” Much of the information presented is determined from a datasheet. But where do we find this sort of information in the datasheet, or how do we even read a datasheet? Let’s find out.
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