From Radiona to ULX3S FPGA board

About me

Goran

Repair technician of informatics equipment

Repair technician of banking equipment

SW/HW design engineer (LoRa, NB-IoT, FPGA...)

Member of Radiona.org – Zagreb Makerspace

Meetups, lectures, workshops, exibitions...

CEO and co-founder of Intergalaktik d.o.o.

Saved a lot of equipment to end in trash and always wanted to create some that will not end there

About RadionaOrg

Radiona.org is a non-profit organisation and citizen lab consisting of makerspace/hackerspace, media art lab, Repair Café and residence program founded in 2011. The organisation is dealing with DIY (do-it-yourself), DIWO (do-it-with-others) and DITO (do-it-together) cultures, STEAM concepts, interdisciplinary and intergenerational non-formal education and hybrid activities.

It is a diverse and intergenerational community of different professions working together.

Workshops

https://inklulab.eu/

InkluLab is a program line intended for creating STEAM solutions, education programs and practices for people with different physical and mental challenges and disabilities.

Repair cafe

Once a month Radiona is organizing repair cafe where we are fixing our stuff of helping others in repair.

Sometimes members design weird prototypes

Mizantrop

by Igor Brkić (2014.)

Hacked Furby

by Goran Mahovlić (2014.)

Partitura

by Ana Horvat

Jazavac

by Ivica Zdelarec

POV sferični display

by Mario Pavlić and Davor Jadrijević

SPACEkretarica

by Damir Prizmić, Boris Vidošević

Haube

by Ana Labudović, Deborah Hustić, Goran Mahovlić, Igor Brkić

Synthomir

by Igor Brkić, Damir Prizmić

Developed with flexibility in mind, Synthomir is a completely open source 8-bit synthesizer based on the ATmega microcontroler and is compatible with the Arduino interface.

ULX3S

by Davor Jadrijević

The ULX3S is a fully open source, compact, robust and affordable FPGA board equipped with a balanced spectrum of extra components and expansions.

ULX3S

Davor Jadrijević joined Marko Zec in 2014. on the F32C (soft-core CPU) and FPGArduino projects, which by their size have expanded ULX2S capacities, after which they move to development and creation of new ULX3S board.

In 2016. EMARD started to work on the board.

2017. we had first working prototypes.

Radiona members helped in organizing crowd source campaign.

CrowdSupply campaign started in 2020.

Company Intergalaktik was formed that will continue developement, provide support and organise production/distribution

In 2021. ULX3S was delivered to users from more then 50 countries all around the world.

PCB design is authored by Electronic Mechanic Aerodynamic Research & Development (EMARD).

ULX3S CrowdSupply campaign

https://www.crowdsupply.com/radiona/ulx3s

ULX3S CrowdSupply campaign video

Open Source Toolchain

Big thanks to YosysHQ team!

https://www.yosyshq.com

Intergalaktik d.o.o.

Founded in 2020.
Organize crowdfunding campaign for ULX3S
Taking care of ULX3S production
ULX3S distribution
ULX3S support gitter/discord/mail

Focused on opensource HW/SW solutions

Currently working on multiple open projects

(SynthoGame, FireFly, ULX4M, ULX3S extension boards, STM32-ULX3S, Megaphone, ULX3S-BB3)

https://intergalaktik.eu/

https://twitter.com/intergalaktikEU

FireFly

https://github.com/intergalaktik/firefly

MegaPhone

https://github.com/MEGA65/megaphone-r4-pcb

Testing ULX3S batches

Production companies are preferring GUI testing so Envox helped us to with designing batch testing with EEZ flow

https://intergalaktik.eu/news/production-testing-automation-for-ulx3s

ULX3S extension boards

https://github.com/goran-mahovlic/ulx3s-extensions

USB

GPDI IN/OUT

OV7670

All fully open, check for more here:

In collaboration with Envox d.o.o.

The main objective of the project was to introduce FPGA technology in the existing open source EEZ DIB concept for modular T&M (Test & Measurement) solutions, and EEZ BB3, its first practical implementation whose master (control) module uses a 32-bit general purpose microcontroller (MCU).

https://www.envox.eu/eez-bb3/

BB3 ULX3S integration

We have successfully confirmed that combining BB3 and ULX3S is possible, but it was not easy to mix two HW projects

ULX3S was designed in KiCad and BB3 was designed in Eagle

Luckily KiCad provides import of Eagle board, but once imported Eagle design cannot progress.

BB3 ULX3S conclusions

BB3 ULX3S

While working on integrations and in talk with EMARD, Envox, Paul (MegaPhone project) and few other people from industry, we got to conclusion that modular FPGA board SoM ( System on module) would be solution for better and faster integration of FPGA into existing or any new project.

We applied for NLnet grant as we wanted to create multiple opensource SoM boards with same pinout that will eventually cover multiple FPGA vendors.

As grant was approved we have started to work on ULX4M

First board on our list was lattice ECP5 board with SDRAM ULX4M-LS (LS suffix stands for Lattice SDRAM)

As a part of NLnet grant we also had opportunity to experiment with blender.