Pmod 8LD: Eight High-brightness LEDs

In building and testing FPGA patches, it is often necessary to display a number of digital control signals or numerical signals on Digilent FPGA development boards. The PMOD 8LD device is perfect for such display tasks, and given that an FPGA board may have up to four PMOD slots, it is possible to display a 32-bit value or 32 bits of status using four of these handy boards. Another subtle use for these boards is when you are designing a patch driving an output-only PMOD board such as the PMOD OLED display board. The OLED device requires a very specific startup protocol with strict timing requirements, and also a protocol for updating the contents of the display. A PMOD 8LD can be swapped with the OLED device to give a quick visual indicator of whether the patch is producing what appears to be correct groups of PMOD OLED signal changes. If you alow the clock speed you can also precisely confirm that your state machines meet the requirements of the OLED device. I had a long-standing credit of $50 on my Digilent account which I converted into five complimentary PMOD 8LDs. And yet between all my development kits, I still find I never have enough blinky LEDs to display what my patches are doing!!