The goal of this project is to create a relatively cheap board that can push 720p video through HDMI at a reasonable framerate for experimenting. To accomplish this, an FPGA (Xilinx Spartan-6 LX9) is used along with some DDR SDRAM for a framebuffer and a micro-SD slot to store any pictures or potentially video to display (unsure if video will work out speed-wise). To keep costs down it is using a 4-layer layout that should be able to be produced with a cheap service like OSH-Park. The PCB is also only 4in^2 so should be relatively inexpensive in terms of size.
The project is currently in the PCB-routing stage.
Components
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Spartan-6 LX9 CSG225
FPGA, the heart of the project
I have now uploaded my git repository for my schematic and PCB sources to github and put a link through this project page. I don't use git for hardware very often so my workflow with it isn't fully ironed out yet, though I'll try to keep it as up-to-date as I can while working on it. It's all still in progress on the PCB layout side, though hopefully I'll be able to get that fixed up soon. Then it's off to oshpark for the pcb's!
The schematics for the project are finished now and will be posted for all to see soon! Work is currently being done on the PCB layout, with the power supply fully routed. The DDR interface to the RAM is the next step and is quite difficult (particularly due to quirks in the KiCAD software currently being used). Depending on the difficulty of the routing another software may need to be used down the line, though for now I'm trying to keep to KiCAD so that anyone can view the entire project without needing special software. Though if another software is used for the PCB routing the schematics will always be kept up to date in KiCAD.
Hi, I was wondering did OSH-park managed to build this board? I been planning on designing board for Spartan BGAs but cheap manufacturers have hole diameter and annual ring restrictions that makes that hard. OSH-park:
13 mil minimum drill size 7 mil minimum annular ring
Unfortunately school caught up with me and I haven't managed to finish the board yet, so I haven't sent it off to OSH-Park yet. I'm currently working on moving the design over to Altium as KiCAD started annoying me too much (RAM layout is difficult enough as it is without the CAD tool getting in the way). I'll try and update things here once I've got the PCB layout done in Altium.
This looks very similar to the miniSpartan6+ - Have you seen that? https://github.com/scarabhardware/miniSpartan6-plus