Digilent Expansion Modules

Digilent Pmods: Connector Pmods

It’s time for another Pmod feature! Today, we’re going to check out the Connector Pmods. Rather than just being strictly limited to a pure input Pmod or pure output Pmod, all of these Pmods are able to easily communicate with the system board in both directions. Although many of these Pmods might be chalked up to simple “pass-through” modules, I certainly wouldn’t label them that way. These Pmods offer some invaluable features that are otherwise not so easily obtained.

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Digilent Expansion Modules / How-To Guides and Technical Workflows – Digilent Blog

Shields vs Pmods: Good vs Better?

Today we’re going to compare two different ways of increasing the functionality of a system board: Pmods and shields. Those of you have that have been following the Digilent Blog know that Pmods are Digilent’s series of peripheral modules with 6-12 pins that can easily be connected to appropriate pins on a system board to provide extra functionality and include audio amplifiers, GPS receivers, USB to UART interface, seven-segment displays, accelerometers, H-bridges with input feedback, analog-to-digital converters, and much more. For the rest of you who have been in this sector of the electronics industry, you know that shields are a type of board that you can plug directly on top of your microcontroller in a nice pin-to-pin fashion for expanded functionality. Although you might suspect which of these two items I prefer, we’ll check out the advantages of both of them.

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How-To Guides and Technical Workflows – Digilent Blog

What is a Pointer?

This blog post will cover the basics of pointers, a programming tool that is used in languages like C and C++. In this post, we will be using C as our primary language. Pointers are variables that contain a memory address (a concept used to access the computer’s primary storage memory). Variables normally contain a value such as 1 or ‘a’, but pointers contain an address of the value. When we reference a variable through pointers, this is called indirection. Each link goes to a text file of C code. This code can be run as is and will help show us the power of pointers!

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Digilent Expansion Modules / Digilent Projects – Blog

Running 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!

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FPGA 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?

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Digilent Expansion Modules / How-To Guides and Technical Workflows – Digilent Blog

What is a Datasheet & How to Read One?

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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FPGA Products: What They Are & How to Use Them - Digilent / How-To Guides and Technical Workflows – Digilent Blog

Types of Computer Memory: RAM vs DRAM vs SRAM

Computers have several difference ways of keeping track of the information that it is given. Most people in the world, which included myself until recently, might think there are only two kinds of memory: the “random access memory” (RAM) that computers have, and the flash memory that you can put on a thumb drive and carry around in your backpack without an issue. However, despite knowing that these two types of memory are not the whole picture, it was my personal experience that trying to learn more usually resulted in my eyes instantly glazing over; this is rather unhelpful in terms of actually learning something. Keeping this in mind, we’re going to do a broad overview of the different types of RAM, hopefully without the glazing over effect.

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Digilent Expansion Modules

Digilent Pmods: Input Pmods – Tactile User Input

Today, we’re going to check out the last chunk of the input Pmods™ that Digilent offers. This set of inputs are slightly different than the inherent sensors that we saw last time. Although these Pmods are designed to give the system board information about the outside world, but this time you are their whole world. These tactile Pmods are designed so that they respond when you physically interact with them. It’s kinda like playing outside…in the comfort of your own home.

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Digilent Expansion Modules

Digilent Pmods: Input Pmods – Sensors

It is time to check out another set of the Digilent Pmods! Last time, we looked at a subset of the input focused Pmods, the analog-to-digital converters. Today, we’re going to take a look at more of the input Pmods, most of which incorporate ADCs into their design structure. These ten peripheral modules are all inherent sensors, reporting the temperature, location, light level, or movement without the user needing to physically interact with them.

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Digilent Software Solutions: What They Are & How to Use Them

Digilent WaveForms Software — What Is It and Who Should Use It?

On our website, WaveForms is described as a powerful suite of virtual instruments that brings analog and digital circuit design to your PC desktop. The instruments within WaveForms include an oscilloscope, logic analyzer, arbitrary waveform generator, digital pattern generator, power supplies, a voltmeter, virtual I/O devices, and a spectrum analyzer. Okay, so there’s a long list of fancy technical terms. But what makes WaveForms so special?

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Digilent Products: What They Are and How to Use Them / How-To Guides and Technical Workflows – Digilent Blog

With So Many Starter Kit Options, Which One Should I Choose?

We here at Digilent Inc. are proud to be a leading hardware provider for educators, students, professionals, hobbyists, and hackers alike. We have developed numerous devices to help with every stage of developing projects, from learning the basics to prototyping to finished projects. If you can think of it, we have the hardware to help you build it. So it should come as no surprise that we have a few options to choose from should you decide you want a parts kit to go along with your new Electronics Explorer Board or chipKIT Max32. So, which kit is right for you? Well I’m here to help make that decision a little easier. I will be discussing three kits that we offer: the chipKIT Starter Kit, the Analog Parts Kit, and the TI myParts kit.

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Digilent Projects – Blog

Microcontroller Dice Roller — Made in the MakerSpace

If you’ve been keeping up with our blog, you’ve probably seen something about us setting up our very own MakerSpace here at Digilent. We’ve come a long way from a few cluttered cubicles to getting our MakerSpace up and running. We have just about everything you can think of to make any project imaginable: a 3D printer, a soldering station, breadboards, buttons, copious amounts of LEDs, and more! I thought up a just-for-fun project and wanted to test drive the MakerSpace to see what I could build.

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Product Applications – Digilent Blog

Halloween Box Monster

With Halloween coming up soon, I decided to make a cool Halloween prop using Digilent products. After grabbing a chipKIT uC32, a couple of shift registers, a bunch of LEDs, breadboard jumper wires, and a PmodMAXSONAR, I was able to make a distance detecting Halloween Box Monster.

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How-To Guides and Technical Workflows – Digilent Blog

MPIDE vs. MPLAB

Previously, I posted about what a debugger is. Other than all the great features I described in my debugger post, you may be wondering–why does Digilent care? As you probably know, we use many of Microchip’s wonderful products in our chipKIT and chipKIT Pro boards. We still want to address the overarching differences between the user experiences using chipKIT and chipKIT Pro boards, so we’re going to talk about the differences between MPLAB and MPIDE!

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FPGA Products: What They Are & How to Use Them - Digilent / Workshops – Digilent Blog

FPGA Design Flow Using Vivado Workshop!

Digilent is proud to announce that together with our Brazilian distribution partner, Anacom, and our academic partner Xilinx University Program, we will be hosting a workshop, “FPGA Design Flow using Vivado,” from Oct 29-30. This course will provide professors with an introduction to digital design tool flow in Xilinx All Programmable devices using Xilinx Vivado Design Suite. It will be held at Escola Politécnica da UFBA, Brazil. Attendees will use the Digilent Nexys 4 and the Xilinx Vivado Design Suite to gain the hands-on experience with digital design, basic HDL knowledge, Xilinx 7-series architecture overview, and Xilinx Vivado design suite.

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Digilent Expansion Modules

Digilent Pmods — Motor Output

As we continue on with our exploration of the Pmods, after checking out some of the Output Pmods like the DAC, Audio, and Visual Pmods, we find ourselves at the final set (at least for now) of output Pmods. These five Pmods all drive different types of motors including servo, DC, and stepper motors. Through these Pmods, you can get your project on the move, whether its a robot arm, a box monster, or a line-following robot.

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