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.
Digilent Expansion Modules / Digilent Product Accessories: What They Are, How to Use Them / Latest News & Announcements – Blog
New Pmod Cable Kits!
What do you use to connect your Pmods to their host boards? We now have two new options, the 6-pin Pmod Cable Kit and the 12-pin Pmod Cable Kit.
How-To Guides and Technical Workflows – Digilent Blog / Teaching and Training Product Applications – Digilent Blog
Instruction Pipelines
Implementation of an instruction pipeline is a common technique used when working with microprocessors. Pipelining improves operation and processing time. Microprocessors such as the Microchip® PIC32MX460F512L on the chipKIT Pro MX4 board use this technology to provide efficient processing and instruction execution. Though the process is sophisticated, it is actually quite simple in concept. In my explanation of instruction pipelines, I’ll specifically refer to the Microchip PIC32 microprocessor.
LabVIEW Tips and Tricks
Here are some of the tricks I have learned while using LabVIEW that will make your life much easier!
Making a Digital Thermometer, a Redux
Around this time last year, our very own James Colvin explained in a blog post about how to make a digital thermometer using parts from the chipKIT Starter Kit. How …
Solar Powered Robot — UV Index vs. Solar Energy
If you’ve been around the Digilent Blog, you’ve probably seen a lot of robots. Remember Susan the Line-Following Pig? Well, I recently found a small, portable solar panel in the MakerSpace at Digilent and I was inspired to build a solar-powered robot. Similar to Susan, I will be using the chipKIT Pro MX4 and the Digilent Motor Robot Kit (MRK) for my solar-powered design. However, when I first came up with this idea, it was the middle of winter. That being said, sunlight was quite a bit more scarce, especially up here in Pullman, WA. I first had to ask an important question: will I have enough sun?
Digilent Software Solutions: What They Are & How to Use Them / How-To Guides and Technical Workflows – Digilent Blog
Coding Logic Gates
Earlier today, Josh (a fellow intern and blog contributor) wrote a blog post about logic gates. After reading through Josh’s post and gaining an understanding of the concepts and basic functions of those gates, I figured now would be the perfect time to learn some code. I am going to go over each logic gate and it’s code in Verilog (a hardware language), VHDL (another hardware language) and C (software language).
FPGA Products: What They Are & How to Use Them - Digilent / How-To Guides and Technical Workflows – Digilent Blog
What Are Logic Gates? Basics and Functions
The very basis of computers is binary. In electronics everything can be boiled down to 1s and 0s. Logic gates are digital circuits that take one or more binary inputs and produce a binary output. You can check out the basis of logic with Boolean Algebra.
Throwback Thursday: Digilent’s Beginnings, Gene Apperson’s Story
Upon his retirement from Microsoft in 1998, Gene Apperson and his family relocated to Pullman, Washington. After a few years, Gene decided to go back to school as an undergraduate in mechanical engineering. A professor, Bob Richards, soon asked Gene to switch to the Master’s program, even though most of his background was in electrical engineering. He ended up taking a VLSI design class from none other than Clint Cole. While Gene ended up asking Clint whether he would be able to do well in the class, they got to talking and decided to start a company together.
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
Digilent Projects – Blog / Digilent USB Scopes, Analyzers, Generators: Info & Use Cases / Product Applications – Digilent Blog
Soda Can Theremin
As people come back from Maker Faire having seen — and made — some truly amazing things, we’d like to reflect back upon a fun project that one of our interns spent a lot of time on last year, the soda can theremin.
Wheels on Your ZedBoard
The goal of this Instructable by myronking is to build a simple two-wheeled motorized robot controlled by a ZedBoard. You’ll learn about communication and control logic with FPGAs.
Tweeting Webcam Photos with a ZYBO
A project that I’ve been working on (and off) for while has been the titular tweeting webcam photos with a ZYBO.
About 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).
All Turbo, All the Time
Do Fridays ever have a whimsical feel? They do for us, so we thought we’d do a short retrospective on our fantastic mascot, Turbo.
The Science of LEDs
LEDs are one of the coolest electronic components. They can brighten up any circuits project and turn it in to an eye-catching bonanza of blinking lights. Okay, corny imagery aside, they’re pretty cool. But have you ever thought of how they actually work? You likely already know that LED stands for light emitting diode. Where does the light emit from, though? There are no bulbs or filaments in an LED. So what’s going on in there that produces the glow that we love to have in all of our circuits?
Testing the NetFPGA-1G-CML
Guest contributor Kursat Gol provides a review of his project testing the NetFPGA-1G-CML with a laptop computer.
Bit Runner FPGA Game
We hope you had a great weekend, even though we’re sad it’s over! Want to end those Monday blues and work on a fun FPGA project? Take a leaf out of Instructable …
Demystifying the Linux Kernel: Diagram & Core
You’ll often hear about the “Linux kernel”, but what does that mean? Today we’re going to go about explaining what the Linux kernel is in terms that people can understand.
New Video Alert: Pmod Monthly Episode 2
What are some of the communication protocols commonly used in Digilent Pmods? Find out by watching our latest video, featuring James Colvin.
Throwback 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!
Digilent Forum Update
On May 1, our forum was offline for a major version update of our forum software. You probably noticed that the site looks very different than it did before! The upgrade went smoothly and we are excited to share the new features with you.
KCL & 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.
Making an FPGA Composer
What are some more things to do with an FPGA? One Instructables user, krosenfeld7, made a guide for an FPGA composer.
Throwback Thursday: Looking Back at Nexys
We’ve talked a lot lately about the Nexys 4 DDR lately, and we definitely hope you like it as much as we do here at Digilent. But what are the roots of this awesome board?