Hi All … I’m meeting with Andrea @emuboy on Tuesday evening 2017-02-07 as a rerun of my earlier Gate Array Workshop, and others are welcome to join. Kind regards to all, Jonathan.
I’ve seen applications of FPGAs through closed and open video hardware (ie. my adventures with http://sparklive.net/dfuser). But the motion control of http://tobyz.net/projects/tekton basically failed, and one of the thoughts I’ve had is a baby FPGA tied to the RPi to drive the step pulses (ie. probably riffing off http://fpga4fun.com/CNC.html). There are probably simpler routes, but I still haven’t found the obvious one.
Thanks for interest! Gate arrays are really quite a niche interest. Of maker-type people doing electronics, perhaps 75% are interested in doing things with Arduinos (controlling motors and LEDs and sensors), 10% various kind of audio … and so on. Probably 1% or less are interested in gate arrays, partially because they are a bit of a black art.
I can’t tell from your posts whether you’ve done much electronics (practical or theory or reading), because if haven’t I might easily put you to sleep in the first minutes! My talk won’t make any sense if you don’t know what logic gates are or why we might use a lot of them. And if you haven’t bumped into limitations of Arduinos, then gate arrays are probably not a going to solve anything for you that wouldn’t be much easier done another way.
Hope that doesn’t sound negative. Take a peek at my notes (linked above) and if slide 2 makes sense to you do please feel free to come along to session and leave if you find out it’s not for you – absolutely I won’t be offended.
Slide 2: