Recursive Sorting Algorithms
Now that we know about recursion, we can talk about an important topic in programming — recursive sorting algorithms!
Interrupts 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.
A 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.
Can I Make My Own Metronome?
Last June, one of our interns wrote about a project he did making his own metronome. Using the chipKIT Basic I/O Shield with a servo motor and a speaker buzzer, you can make something fantastic! James used parts from the chipKIT Starter Kit.
When to Use Multisim Circuit Simulation Software
If you’ve been keeping up with Digilent over that last couple of years, you may have heard about our merger with National Instruments. We’ve collaborated to create new products, and we’ve expanded our capabilities to work with more of NI’s products. One of those products is Multisim, a full-function testing and simulation environment for analog, digital, and power electronics designs.
Blinky Ugly Sweater
For our holiday ugly sweater party, our web developer, Sam Logan, added some blinking LEDs to his using a chipKIT microcontroller. His Instructable was featured on the chipKIT blog.
Will 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!
How Recursion Works: Advantages & Disadvantages
Welcome back to the Digilent Blog! Today we’re going to go over recursion! Recursion is when a function calls itself directly, or through another function. Sometimes we can’t solve a problem using loops (iteration), so we have to use recursion. Recursion is slower than iteration, difficult to debug, and it uses up more of the stack. But recursion can also have simpler code, so in some cases, the benefits outweigh the problems.
Making Membrane Keypads
Have you ever seen those membrane keypads that are often on kids’ toys? Have you ever wanted to make your own?
Generating 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.
How to Choose a Resistor for Your Design
Take a look at a circuit board and chances are you’re going to find a resistor or two. Most boards today use surface-mount device (SMD) technology, so the components are almost too small to see sometimes, but they are on there, I promise. How do engineers decide which resistors to use in the design? Sometimes it depends on how you want that portion of the circuit to perform, as in the case of an op-amp. Other times it’s to prevent too much current from passing through a given point in a circuit, which is why they are often called current-limiting resistors. Maybe you want a simple way to divide the voltage or current. The reality is that there are numerous ways to use resistors, and oftentimes, the defining the resistor value is up to you.
Why Do Electronic Components Have Such Odd Values?
If you’ve been around electronics for a while, you’ve probably noticed that components like resistors, capacitors, zener diodes and inductors come in some odd values. Looking at the chart above, there seems to be no clear rationale behind the values, but there is a pattern. 47kΩ resistors and 22μF capacitors are everywhere, but not 40kΩ or 50kΩ resistors, or 20μF or 30μF capacitors. So what’s the deal? It all has to do with preferred numbers.
Digilent 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!
A Brief Intro to C++
In previous blog posts, we’ve programmed mainly in C. But with a blog post about classes coming up, I figured a short post about how C++ works would be helpful for everybody.
FPGA Products: What They Are & How to Use Them - Digilent / How-To Guides and Technical Workflows – Digilent Blog
History of the FPGA
As you probably know, one of Digilent’s major focuses is producing FPGA (field programmable gate array) boards and educating the public on FPGA design. One of the classes I was in last semester focused on FGPA design. This class is EE324 at WSU, which is taught by Digilent’s own Clint Cole. He gave a background lecture on the History of FPGA chips. Not only was it an extremely interesting lecture, but it also helped me understand the huge leaps in logic design that have been made since the 1960s. This is the history that led to the development of FPGA chips. The chips are the parts that Xilinx makes that we use on our FPGA boards.
Number Systems
Today, we are going to learn about number systems. A “number system” is defined here as “any notation for the representation of numerals or numbers.” We naturally use the decimal (base 10) system, meaning we use the numbers 0-9 to represent all the other numbers. The three types of number systems that we are going to talk about today are decimal, binary, and hexadecimal, but there are many more!
Behind 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?
iLAB Analog – Practical Introduction to Analog Circuits
During the Christmas break, I ended up reading iLAB Analog, a new textbook written by Dr. Chen Yun Chao from National Taipei University of Technology Department of Electronic Engineering. I was excited to read a book that deals with both conceptual knowledge and has practical labs. For anyone who wants to learn about analog circuits but has very basic knowledge of physics, it is a good starting point. This book is currently being used in the Intro to Analog Circuits class held at National Taipei University of Technology.
New Product — Introducing the NetFPGA-SUME
With great excitement, we would like to show off the NetFPGA-Sume, our most complicated board to date, featuring the Xilinx, Inc. Virtex-7 FPGA!
New Product– the Nexys 4 DDR
Our new product, the Nexys4 DDR, is now available for sale! We have been anxiously awaiting this board’s release ever since we received an end-of-life notice from Micron (our memory provider) about cellular RAM that we had been using on all of our Nexys-class products. Rather than strip features off the current Nexys4, we decided to evolve the product line to accept DDR Memory. Check it out now!
How 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.
What Is Hysteresis? Explanation & Examples
Hysteresis is something that is all around us. Its effects can be found in many disciplines, like economics and biology, but especially in engineering and physics. But what is it? How do we use it? Let’s do some digging to find out.
What Is a Struct in Programming?
Structures are a group of related variables that are placed under one name. Unlike arrays, structures are not limited to one data type. The struct keyword will allow us to create a structure.
A 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?
Is Boolean a Data Type?
True! Boolean is a data type. However, it’s also a term that gets thrown around in the electronics world by programmers presuming that everybody else knows what they are talking about; I can personally attest that this is not always the case. In light of this, let’s go over some of the data types that are commonly used in programming.