It’s been awhile since we last had some specific focus on Pmods, so I decided that we should get back to our favorite blog series (or at least my favorite). This week we’re going to check out some of the Pmods that occasionally get overlooked– the power Pmods. These Pmods include screw terminal modules, transistor modules, and power monitors.
This week’s throwback features one of the first tri-fold brochures we did, coming up on 11 years ago! Interesting to see the old product lineup. The D2 is probably the oldest board you see there, within the first four or five that Digilent ever built.
Our applications and systems engineering manager, Sam B., has had an exciting project sitting on his desk for a long time that we finally get to see. Originally, his project was the Zedbot, a Linux-based robot that uses the Zedboard.
Have you ever wanted to shoot lightning bolts out of your hands like the Sith do in Star Wars? Have you ever wanted to be immune to lightning strikes? These things sound impossible, but they actually aren’t. Specially designed suits are capable of making you immune to high voltages by redirecting the flow of current around you.
Last year, I wrote a blog post that featured everyone’s favorite women in STEM history. In celebration of yesterday’s International Women’s Day, I’d like to bring that back!
So, who’s excited about ECEDHA? We here at Digilent wanted something big and flashy to amaze everyone, so we put this together. We carry weatherproof strips of the WS2812 addressable LEDs in 1m lengths with 30 LEDs on each strip, so what better way to grab your attention than to build a display with 30 strips!
In science fiction, plasma-based technology is often included because it is perceived as futuristic and exotic. Referring to plasma as exotic is understandable, but the technology behind its creation is less so. Since the invention of electric circuits, it has been possible to easily create and control plasma using high voltages. It is pretty common knowledge that high voltages ionize the air producing plasma arcs. What is not-so-common knowledge is the fact that these arcs of plasma can be used to play music.
Today’s throwback brings us a few pictures from the first time we at Digilent presented ourselves as a company in a trade show setting, around 2007. This conference was very small — it was located in the main floor entry of the ETRL building on the WSU campus. Clint (Cole), our former president, was giving a presentation as well.
Inter-integrated-circuit, more commonly known as I²C (generally pronounced I-squared-C), is a communication style originally developed by Phillips Semiconductor (now NXP Semiconductor). Its design allows multiple components to be able to talk to each other on the same data line, making it widely used in a variety of systems, including Pmods. As a fan of Pmods, I’m in favor of learning how you can communicate with them and get them what you want to do. Let’s find out more.
As I mentioned a couple days ago, we will have a greater focus on women’s history within STEM this month. Last summer, I did a blog series focusing on just that! With it being the beginning of the month, I’d like to do a throwback to one of my first posts in the series that provided an overarching history of women’s involvement in the long history of science, technology, engineering, and math.
Some of the Pmods, such as the PmodOLED and the PmodCLP, need a higher operating voltage to run their screen than is normally supplied by system boards. This predicament could be solved by using an external power supply to power the screens, but that can get pretty inconvenient especially if you want your project to be portable. A slightly easier method that does not require a power supply is a boost converter circuit.
Digilent hasn’t always been located at 1300 NE Henley Court! Looking back at its old locations is so fun — getting to see where we were and how we’ve grown. Today, we’d like to show you one of our former locations, the one right before our current building. This was Digilent’s fourth location. Norm snapped these pictures on a Friday night in 2006, just after we had re-organized the main floor. This was the “combine” building — it sits above what is now one of Pullman’s fine dining establishments, Black Cypress.
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.
Robots that run around on motors are pretty sweet. These motors traditionally tend to be DC motors that are controlled through the use of an H-Bridge, which can change the flow of current so that the motor is able to run forwards or backwards. H-bridge modules, such as Digilent’s PmodHB3 or PmodHB5, also tend to have two pins labeled as Sensor A and Sensor B that measure which direction the motor is rotating. The two sensors, A and B, will be wired to the outputs of components known as Hall effect sensors. Unsurprisingly, these measure the Hall effect. But rather than having the “word in the definition” problem, let’s learn some of the practical details.
As February, Black History month, draws to a close, we want to highlight the achievements of an amazing and inspiring engineer. Astronaut Robert Lee Curbeam, Jr., was born in 1952 and is the astronaut who holds the record for most space walks on a single flight.
The binary search tree (BST) is a data structure that is much different from the other structures that we’ve gone over so far. Unlike stacks, queues, and lists, a BST’s struct is not a “straight-line”. Each node in a BST has a left and right child node.
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.
Recently, we found some great snapshots into what life was like at Digilent between 2003 and 2005. How things have changed in the ten years or so since most of these images were taken!
MPIDE comes with a nice serial monitor where you are able to print out values that your system board has measured onto your computer screen. But if you are able to print things onto your computer screen, wouldn’t it make sense if the chipKIT board also accepted and processed values that we typed into the serial monitor? It would make a lot of sense, which is probably why we can do just that. Let’s find out how.
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!
Recently, one of our hardworking interns started a new video series. You may have seen James’ blog series about Pmods. Now there’s a video component as well! James begins the series by introducing Pmods and talking about their history.
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.
At this point in reading the blog and going through the learn material, you might realize that there is a lot of FPGA code. It doesn’t look like C, it doesn’t look like Java…what is it?
A friend of mine came into town for Christmas and I wanted to do some sort of photography project with him. A few months ago, there were some pictures floating around the internet from Stephen Orlando, who took LEDs and attached them to a kayak paddle and kayaked around a lake, and through rapids. I wanted to do something similar. The first night wasn’t very organized. We went into the woods with just the LED strip, the chipKIT board (the uC32), and a battery.
The ZYBO Smart Car was developed by Digilent China. It is one of the items in the Zrobot line, the educational kit solely developed by Digilent China. The smart car is powered by the Digilent ZYBO that features Xilinx Zynq technology. Users can control the robot from an Android phone using the Bluetooth interface within 20m. The OS is Linux. Users can develop the software and Linux driver using Xilinx Vivado.
