Just managed to grab enough time between projects to have a go at my new NB3K board.
Having downloaded the latest version of Xilinx ISE 11 and installed it, I was a bit worried about the licensng situation and not a little frustrated with the whole licensing thing with FPGA development. But the Xilinx experience was good compared to some I could mention. Also I was wondering if I was going to suffer from the issues being experienced with different versions of ISE being use by others. But to no avail, it all went well and installed after one hefty download.
OK now to plug in the NB3000.... It funny just how nervous I get about doing the first power up... Plug in the power adapter ..OK Plug in the USB ..OK. Launch Altium Designer and switch on...... Led's flash and the screen starts to show a slide show of images, phew, I think we are good.
Before I start any examples I need to have a cup of hot tea at my side, so off I go to the kettle to brew one up, returning to my desk reveals that Altium has already checked the firmware version and is asking me to install a new version in a nice graphical wizard. Following the great easy to understand instructions, all goes well and I have new firmware. Updating this seems to have reprogrammed the FPGA as the slide show is no more just a blank white screen. Anyway ignoring this I start building Martys "Simple LED Driver" from the Altium website to see if all is OK in the NB3K world.
Clicking the Program FPGA button in the devices window starts to make things happen, some warning appear in the messages box and some green success reports for various synthesis and build completions, and up pops the instrument rack just as shown. If I move the sliders, it works ....
Great... Time to sit back and go through this again to understand what is going on.
A few initial comments on the NB3000 board...
It would be nice to have a brighter TFT screen, it is not bad but maybe an optional higher grade screen could be purchased if required. Initially had some audio interference, that was a bit alarming, at mid volume it was very audible, now this went away after I programmed the LED project into the board, hopefully this will not come back from now on. It would also be nice to have a IR transmitter as well as an IR receiver, but again not a show stopper by a long shot.
Now for the great stuff.. The firmware update was brilliant and worked without a glitch. And the LEDs are so bright you see them after you turn away from them, I would not stair at these at full brightness !
I'm off to play some more with this now, and I'll report back as I go.
Happy NB'ing 