Hamster - FPGA free courseware - material and structure - He/We need your feedback

mjones

We began a discussion in the kickstarter comments and updates about coming up with material that would allow FPGA users an easy and low cost means of learning the concepts of using FPGA and writing HDL.  We currently have taken the quick route of using the LOGI-EDU in conjunction with Pong Chu's comprehensive e books that cover VHDL and Verilog.  These books are great, but they are also expensive.  We want to do better and we have some great resources at our hands including the LOGI team, the one and only Hamster and all of you.   We would like to re-spark this conversation to get feedback and ideas from all of you on what you see as being an optimal solution.e  For the record here are some the comments and notes that we "kickstarted"  in the kickstarter comments.  

I will post some of the notes that were brought up in the comments and updates from the kickstarter.  Let's keep the conversation going here.

Hamster has already put together a tentative plan for an "updated" course that is based upon his previous popular course.  This sounds to be a very very very promising options and we can all thank hamster for his great efforts in his past course and any work that he is willing to do on his new course.  Of course we don't expect hamster to do this on his own.  I think that we all have something that we can offer here.  The LOGI-Team has Jonathan PIat, who is a university professor who is teaches HDL, Valentf(x) has specialty in designing and bring hardware to market, all of you have great talents and can help us on material and or ideas as well.  I think between all of us we can come up with something that will be a very needed and outstanding solution in helping users get starte in using FPGAs.  In particular it seems that there are a gazillion MCU users out there but limited FPGA users.  I think that one of the main reasons for this is the learning curve in using FPGAs.  Let's get to widling away at the learning curve - bring it down - FPGA for all I say!

valentfx

1. 

    

   Creator Valent F(x) on December 16, 2013

   @Mike, Indeed, I like it! I think that it is important for users to get the physical level and build some basic circuitry. Nothing can compare to the moments of power-up of a self-built circuit, for better or worse . Your proposal has the great strength of flexibility in any reasonably small circuit could be built and interfaced directly to the LOGi’s.

   We will certainly take this into consideration as option that support the LOGi-EDU-lite and especially the prospect of your support in free - open source FPGA material.

   Cheers! 
   Mike

2. 

    

   Mike Field on December 15, 2013 Backer infoReport spam

   How about an optional extra like an Arduino Protoshield, with a few jumpers, leds and resistors? See http://dx.com/p/arduino-prototype-shield-with-mini-breadboard-65273 for an (ultra cheap) example of what I am talking about.

   The benefits are that: 
   - Using it as a common platform makes it pretty easy to publish reference designs in howtos. 
   - in itself the product is useful with an Arduino shield, and for prototyping with the LOGi-Pi/LOGi-Bone 
   - it leverages the LOGi's Arduino compatibility with mass produced, generic shields. 
   - it is pretty inexpensive (board + jumpers + LEDs+ resistors could be < $10). 
   - quite a few backers may already have one. 
   - zero engineering risk involved

   This is far less expansive than I could make anything for - a bare 50 x 50mm PCB costs me US$2, and then it would need headers, switches and LEDs and assembly...

3. 

    

   Creator Valent F(x) on December 15, 2013

   Hi,

   concerning a new EDU, we have a discussion in the team to create a EDU that support the specificities of the LOGI-boards. These boards are not only FPGA development boards with the raspberry-pi or beaglebone used as a programmer, but a base to develop co-designed system (CPU + FPGA in that case). This mean that a future EDU will both have to address the teaching of FPGA based system but also co-designed system (hardware/software partitioning, communication models ...). We will post more on this later in an update.

   Regards,

   Jonathan Piat 
   LOGI-team

4. 

    

   Keith Thomas on December 15, 2013 Backer infoReport spam

   Hi Valent F(x),

   One more thought on the "LOGi-EDU-Mini board" - if it comes in an Arduino style then this will allow the Beagle Board fans to get a bit of "EDU". If not a stretch goal then perhaps this could be a "add $X to your pledge to get one" style of thing. Does this sound any good?

   Cheers, Keith

5. 

    

   Keith Thomas on December 15, 2013 Backer infoReport spam

   Hi Valent F(x),

   I guess one possible stretch goal might be a LOGi-EDU-Mini board based on an Arduino shield and designed for Mike F's course. Do you think this is possible/likely?

   Cheers, Keith.

6. 

    

   Mike Field on December 14, 2013 Backer infoReport spam

   ... I have a feeling that I will be spending Christmas updating my material to Spartan 6 (the chip-of-choice for the Logi series and other current entry entry level FPGA boards). The existing guide will still work just the same apart from the naming of the physical pins will need to be updated.

   The design for the Logi boards has focused on expansion, and as such has just basic on-board I/O - two LEDs, two push buttons and two DIP switches. Without additional LEDs and switches you won't get much feedback - a one bit adder isn't really all that impressive! So if you have never used Programmable Logic it will be really challenging to understand and interact with your project - you will need more I/O.

   There are a couple of options:

   - Add the extra I/O using a breadboard and jumpers. In which case a standard Arduino starter kit will help you out.

   - Use one of those Arduino shields that have the a little solderless breadboard in the middle. With all these boards stacked on your Pi/Bone will look start looking like a battleship, but you will have far less trouble with wires working lose.

   - .Somebody could develop a Virtual I/O GUI. This would be simple to do, giving your host a screen with virtual push buttons, switches, LED bar graphs and so on. This is really powerful, but would somewhat hide the fact you are working with real hardware - you might as well be looking at a simulation. Also, some things like PWM brightness control just won't be the same on the screen..

   One thing I would suggest is that you don't try to learn the physical electrical side (LEDs, switches, resistors...) at the same time as you are learning programmable logic. If you have never flashed a LED before then while you are waiting for your Logi board to turn up get a few LEDs and resistors and wire them up to your ARM board's GPIO, If you are a Pi user then maybe ask Santa to stop by Adafruit and get you an Assembled Cobbler and a Discover Electronics Kit.

   Flashing LEDs at Christmas? Nah - that will never catch on. ..

7. 

    

   Creator Valent F(x) on December 14, 2013

   Hi Venkat,

   I have talked with Mike Field about using his existing material and expanding on this to have comparable material to what is found in the Pong Chu book. Currently the Pong Chu book as some extended material that takes you a bit further and was designed before finding Mike’s material.

   I agree that there should be an open source free course material. I also believe that it would be very valuable to allow for the material to collaboratively designed and made available and based on discussions with Mike F, I believe that he does as well. Its really about making this happen. In my mind this is the long term goal and I have been absorbed in making the kickstarter available and have not been able to proceed in planning and implementing how this would happen.

   Now that we are up and rolling I do have some time to look re-address this and look at options. 
   If we do stick with the Pong Chu book for now, I would recommend getting the kindle edition, $62, or looking at the rental option, $22-$39.

   I will keep you posted.