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 Forum index » DIY Hardware and Software » Microcontrollers and Programmable Logic
Interesting $50 Altera Cyclone V FPGA Development Board
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skrasms



Joined: Feb 21, 2008
Posts: 121
Location: Portland, OR

PostPosted: Sat Nov 02, 2013 6:25 pm    Post subject: Interesting $50 Altera Cyclone V FPGA Development Board Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I stumbled across this yesterday:
http://components.arrow.com/part/detail/NEG65669932S517051N1911

They don’t seem to be actively marketing it in the US yet, even though it’s shown as being in stock. Here’s the hardware reference from the Asian branch of the same distributor:
http://components-asiapac.arrow.com/file_system/intranet/MAR/ADRE/File/Hardware_Reference_Guide_for_BeMicro_CV_A2_v1.04.pdf

The cool features, in my opinion:
1) Built-in USB Programmer/Debugger
2) MicroSD slot
3) 1 Gbit of 16-bit DDR3, and the FPGA hardware includes a dedicated DDR3 controller!
4) 16 Mbit Configuration flash
5) Cyclone V Fabric (wider LUTs than Cyclone IV, better DSP support, more PLL flexibility)
6) 1.76 Mbit of FPGA memory blocks (for a comparison, the $80 DE0-Nano board only has 0.594 Mbit)
7) Two 40-pin I/O connectors with a jumper to choose 3.3V or 2.5V logic levels

I’m going to buy a couple and see how that goes. They’re cheap enough to dedicate to projects. I figured it was worth mentioning here since low-cost FPGA dev boards are coming up a lot lately.

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emeb



Joined: Dec 16, 2008
Posts: 35
Location: Arizona

PostPosted: Wed Nov 13, 2013 10:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Anyone buy one of these?

I ordered one and got it last week. Tried out a couple of the demo designs and they seem to have worked. The SD card test ran fine.

Overall its not a particularly well supported board, but it has a lot of potential for someone who's a self-starter and can figure out a lot of the details for themselves. The 0.1" 2-row headers should be fairly easy to interface to, but the standardized card-edge connector no longer appears to have a lot of hardware available for interfacing (there used to be a bunch of stuff, but most of it is no longer available, or still out there and extremely expensive). The mating connector is fairly expensive in non-production quantity so it's probably not practical to use for home projects.

Anyway - a lot of potential but it will take some effort to use.
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skrasms



Joined: Feb 21, 2008
Posts: 121
Location: Portland, OR

PostPosted: Sat Nov 16, 2013 2:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

emeb wrote:
Anyone buy one of these?

I ordered one and got it last week. Tried out a couple of the demo designs and they seem to have worked. The SD card test ran fine.

Overall its not a particularly well supported board, but it has a lot of potential for someone who's a self-starter and can figure out a lot of the details for themselves. The 0.1" 2-row headers should be fairly easy to interface to, but the standardized card-edge connector no longer appears to have a lot of hardware available for interfacing (there used to be a bunch of stuff, but most of it is no longer available, or still out there and extremely expensive). The mating connector is fairly expensive in non-production quantity so it's probably not practical to use for home projects.

Anyway - a lot of potential but it will take some effort to use.


Did you find a demo design for this board specifically, or did you modify a demo design from another board? I ask because I haven't been able to find any example projects specific to this board (pin assignments, etc). Mine arrived this week, and I was about to make a new project from scratch.

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emeb



Joined: Dec 16, 2008
Posts: 35
Location: Arizona

PostPosted: Sat Nov 16, 2013 3:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

There's a web page for the board here:

http://components-asiapac.arrow.com/en/campaign/altera-bemicro-cv-fpga-development-kit/

with design files and a few FPGA projects. You may be able to borrow from those.
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engineer



Joined: Mar 31, 2014
Posts: 11
Location: Frankfurt / Germay

PostPosted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 10:13 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Should be a bit too small for more than just some basic functions. I recommonde to consider the Cylcone iV D115 from terasic. It hast 115k LEs and is large enough for big apps.
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