An oscilloscope is a “must have” tool for everyone who is involved in electronics. Digital Storage Oscilloscope (DSO) would be best choice for hobbyists as they are pretty cheap and has many handy features for wide range use like various digital filters, customizable triggering, huge memories for storing scope history and other features that can fit in to FPGA. Here is a DSO project developed by Cornell University students. Their goal was to construct FPGA based oscilloscope that could work at 20MSps and has small count of external components. As input they used a delta-sigma ADC chip AD7401, while other part was simulated in FPGA.

Signal output was generated as VGA signal with 640×480 resolution. So simple PC monitor could be used. Additionally they developed an interface to Nintendo DS so the trace could be seen on dual TFT 256×192 with capture capability. Perhaps this scope wouldn’t be much useful, unless using example for further developments, but still this is great resource to study FPGA capabilities. Another great DSO project that was used as a reference can be found here.

Laser trackers are one of the most important devices, especially in the heavy industrial sectors. Most of the companies use the laser trackers to track down the missing or broken parts of the goods. It’s to make sure that the quality of the products are always on the top!

If you thought that it’s very hard to develop a laser tracker, then you have to keeping read on the article, as we’re going to show you the easiest way to DIY a high tech laser tracker, even at your home’s laboratory.

Before you start with the project, you should know that the main objective of the laser tracker is to lock onto and track a laser pointer or small light source, by using the Altera DE2 board. In this case, you can use a Terasic (Note: Terasic has nothing to do with Triassic, which is one of the ancient geologic periods, right after the Jurassic) 1.3 Mega Pixel CMOS camera to capture continuous streaming picture.

After that, you can convert the captured images into black and white, and then stored them into SDRAM. The SDRAM is needed, as it will be used as the VGA buffer before the image is displaying on the VGA display!

First of all, did you know what VHDL is? For your information, VHDL is commonly known as a design-entry language for field-programmable gate arrays and application-specific integrated circuits in electronic design automation of digital circuits. VHDL is derived from VHSIC hardware description language, where VHSIC stands for “Very-high-speed-integrated circuit”.

Based on the information, VHDL was originally developed at the US Department of Defense. The main purpose of the mission is to document the behavior of the ASICs that supplier companies were including in equipment. This means, VHDL was developed as an alternative to huge, complex manuals, which were subject to implementation-specific details.

Well, this NES On-A-Chip’s main goal is to implement an older embedded system entirely in VHDL. In this case, you might want to choose the NES, as its complexity and variety of subsystems. The whole idea is to prove that chips can be modeled in VHDL and synthesized on an FPGA. Furthermore, it can be used to replace, either single ICs in old systems or the systems themselves.

You have to prepare the Altera UP3 development board to implement the design. In addition, you must use an Intronix LogicPort USB logic analyzer as well.

In the past, it’s very hard for us, especially the ordinary civilians to track light source, as we didn’t have the chance to buy or build our own facilities to perform this task. However, time passes by and everything is constantly changing.

Today, we’ll have the opportunity to develop our own simple yet powerful light source motion tracking system.

The main objective of the project is to accurately detect motion and report the speed of moving light sources in the view of camera. Basically, you can use this light source motion tracking system for many purposes. Let’s take an example. A night vision goggle that sees certain light spectrums is able to detect enemy motion, even in the darkest places!

Honestly, the project is built on an Altera DE2 development board with a Nios II CPU instantiated in hardware. In addition, it equipped with Terasic TRDB_DC2 1.3 Megapixel camera, speakers and a VGA monitor. The development can be done, by using the Quartus II IDE and the NIOS II IDE. In other hand, the image capturing and filtering are implementing in hardware, while the position and vector calculations are all done in the Nios II CPU.

Developing the light source motion tracking system would be a great experience for you. That’s why, you shouldn’t miss it!

Nowadays, there are many things have been converted into 3D system. Even though the 3D technology is quite common, but not every person has the chance to get in touch with it!

Honestly, you’re very lucky today, as we’re about to develop an ultimate 3D Wire Mesh Generator. For your information, the main purpose of the project is to build a hardware transformation unit and a 3D font rasterization system on the Cyclone II FPGA.

Isn’t the 3D font rasterization system sounds strange for you? Well, it’s actually the process of converting text from a vector description, such as from the TrueType fonts to a raster/bitmap description. Normally, it always involved the anti-aliasing on screen text, as it makes it smoother and easier to be read by the reader. Sometimes, it may involve hinting, which is the use of information precomputed for a particular font size!

Amongst the rasterization forms, the simple line drawing with no anti aliasing is regarded as the simplest and fastest method of all. In the meantime, the 3D Wire Mesh Generator is being used to proportionally control the camera position and orientation with a 3-degree freedom of movement.