Digilent Pmods: Analog-to-Digital Converters
James compares three Pmods, all which handle Analog to Digital conversion!
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.
555 Timer IC: History, Basics & Working Principle
The 555 timer is undoubtedly one of the most important and ubiquitous integrated chips in history. It has also been over 40 years since the introduction of the 555, and no major changes have been introduced, making it one of the longest running designs in history as well.
How to Use a Stepper Motor: A Practical Guide
There are motors everywhere in the world around us– in cars, printers, computers, washing machines, electric razors, you name it. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people (myself included up until very recently) that wouldn’t know what to do if they were handed a motor and told to run it. So I decided that I want to change that. Let’s learn to run a stepper motor!
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.
Introducing Our MakerSpace Robot
A few months ago, Norm designed a mascot/Robot for our new MakerSpace. It was a charming, jolly robot who lacked only one thing…a name! So we had an internal contest to …
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.
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!
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.
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.
Who is LabVIEW Hacker?
So what exactly is LabVIEW? LabVIEW is National Instruments’ program development environment. The name is short for “laboratory virtual instrument engineering workbench”. NI created LabVIEW to enable domain experts to focus on building systems by abstracting the hardware and software. For example, their hardware and software allows a chemist to focus on chemistry and not get bogged down with analog signal conditioning for thermal couples or advanced programming techniques.
Simon Says… with LEDs!
At one point or another, we have all played the “Simon Says” game. In this game, one person, Simon (or Susan, Chad, or whoever happens to be the leader), will say “Simon says” and tell all of the other players to do something, such as raise their left hand. The catch in this game is that if the leader tells the other players to do something without saying the words “Simon says” and the other players do it anyway, they’re out. I personally really enjoy playing Simon Says, but I thought it could even be more fun if you could play Simon Says with a bunch of LEDs…
Transistor Basics: Quick Guide
So what are transistors, what do they do, and how can I use them?
Pulse-Width Modulation
Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is a technique that takes advantage an electronic device’s capability to rapidly “pulse” one of its digital pins between logic high and logic low voltage states. The idea is that the switching between the two voltage states in a desired pattern will produce an “average” voltage somewhere between the high and low voltage inputs. If, within a given period, the pin is at a high voltage level more often than a low one, an overall higher voltage (but less than the full strength input voltage) will be observed.
Temperature-Sensing Coffee Coaster
Coffee is taken very seriously here at Digilent, as it is in most workplaces. Something that used to make me mad was not knowing when my coffee hit that perfect “Goldilocks” temperature zone where it didn’t burn my mouth but was warm enough to fully enjoy. I am currently working on developing a thermocouple Pmod using Analog Devices MAX31855 and thought of a great application project. If I could somehow sense how hot the temperature of the coffee was, I could have a microcontroller tell me when my coffee hit the perfect temperature range!
What Is a Debugger?
As an an engineer, regardless of your specific engineering sub-field, you are going to have to use a debugger at some point in your career. Interestingly enough, most people, whether it …
Pmod Communication: Serial Peripheral Interface
A while ago, we learned that one of the ways that Pmods are able to communicate with their host board is through SPI. We learned then that serial peripheral interface is a type of communication protocol where the “master” board and the “slave” device (in this case, a Pmod) are able to send bits of data to each other at the same time with the host board controlling the timing of the communication. Although this is a nice overview, it is my personal experience that theoretical overviews are not the most helpful in actually implementing what we are learning. This begs the question: how do you use SPI? Lets find out!
Arms and Motors and Sensors, Oh My!
I’m very proud to say that my For Cheap Robots project is still going strong! As some of you may recall, at the beginning of last month, I announced the beginning of my For Cheap Robots series here on the Digilent blog. Since then, I’ve added several more tutorials to the list and gotten a huge amount of positive feedback. I want to thank any and all of you who here who follow the Digilent Blog and decided to pop over to Instructables to check it out!
Digilent Zynq-Based Boards in The Zynq Book
I recently found another exciting example of Digilent boards in an academic textbook! The Zynq Book is a handy tool for a deeper understanding of “sophisticated” devices and as the first look at the Zynq System on Chip (SoC). In fact this is Digilent’s mission: to bring engineering to every interested person through affordable materials.
Digilent Pmods — Visual Pmods
As we continue on with our Pmod series featuring one of Digilent’s largest product lines, we find ourselves needing to see what’s going on inside of our microcontrollers and FPGAs as they race through their code at 80,000,000 times a second (or even faster!). Once again, Digilent has a variety of solutions to solve our dilemma. Our visual Pmods range from simple LEDs and a seven-segment display (SSD) to complex OLED and LCD screens.
Digital Fundamentals Textbook Overview (11th Edition)
In the world of technology, progress happens so fast that it is almost impossible to find a good and up-to-date source for digital design. That’s why I am so excited that I found Digital Fundamentals, (the 11th edition) by Floyd.
Announcing the Basys3–Our Newest FPGA Education Board!
This past month, we have been busily working on the launch of our newest educational board, the Basys3!
Proximity-Sensing LEDs Part 2: On a PCB
As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I designed the proximity-sensing LED circuit to eventually move it on to a printed circuit board, or PCB. This was my first experience with PCB layout, and thankfully it was successful! The board I designed is in the picture below. We ordered 6 “prints” and soldered them in our MakerSpace. I also included extra vias (electrical connections between the layers of the board) so that we could connect multiple boards together.
Proximity-Sensing LEDs Part 1: On a Breadboard
Who doesn’t love interactive LEDs? This project started because I wanted to make a simple circuit that I could later move on to a printed circuit board (PCB) that I designed myself. (The original goal was to learn PCB design and layout.) This idea was given to me by my manager, Larissa, and was inspired by Evil Mad Science’s Octolively. Being an analog enthusiast, I came up with my own design that doesn’t use any ICs.
Back to School and Looking Forward: A Letter from Clint Cole
After 15 years, we’re still hard at work building better tools for engineering education. We’re working more closely than ever with leading companies like Xilinx, Analog Devices, Texas Instruments, and Linear Technology, and our shared mission is the same — to create tools and technologies that give students access to the most relevant technologies. And I can honestly say that we’re all still loving our jobs! Since joining with National Instruments almost two years ago, we’ve gained access to a larger group of world-class engineers and improved our manufacturing processes, but we’ve maintained our laser-focus on producing the best, lowest-cost teaching and learning kits for engineers.