A super powerful device built with the Xilinx Spartan-6

Posted by: Cnc Machining China 2022-08-23 Comments Off on A super powerful device built with the Xilinx Spartan-6

I found someone on the Internet made a device, made of spartan-6, called Milkymist one, this is really powerful, it shows that the application field of FPGA can be very wide! The following is the introduction of the original author:

Milkymist one includes everything in a computer. I always fantasize that the Milkymist one will be a very powerful device in the future. MilkyMist one has one feature. There is no CPU. Some are just an FPGA. You can write whatever you want into this FPGA. Make it the device you want. Now Milkymist one is more like a VJ station. It runs LM32 and the operating system is RTEMS. The program is called FlickerNoise.

The Milkymist One is an open hardware product that concentrates all the processing power and the interfaces of an heavily interactive VJ setup into one small box. With a unique combination of built-in interfaces such as MIDI, DMX512, analogue video input, Ethernet, OpenSoundControl and generic digital I/O, it gives you all the tools to create truly interactive performances.

With the Milkymist SoC, the project pushes the frontiers of open source further. While many open hardware projects are based on a proprietary and closed processor, at the core of the Milkymist One lies a custom embedded processor whose Verilog HDL design files are entirely free and open source.

All of this would never be usable by everybody without user-friendly VJ software optimized for running on the system. Inspired by the popular MilkDrop visualization plug-in for Winamp, Flickernoise provides a graphical tool that allows you to create, set-up and run the visual performances.

The Milkymist One will be a turnkey interactive VJ station. Before the software is ready for this more general public usage, we sell developer kits to pioneers who can stand a few software problems and embedded devices enthusiasts who would enjoy developing on this open source platform. Thanks to the extreme flexibility of the FPGA, many uses can be imagined.

Milkymist One
Manufacturing is carried out by Sharism at Work Ltd..

Features:
– Multi-standard video input (PAL/SECAM/NTSC)
– Two DMX512 (RS485) ports
– MIDI IN and MIDI OUT ports
– VGA output, 24bpp, up to 140MHz pixel clock (> 1024×768)
– AC’97 audio
– XC6SLX45 Spartan-6 FPGA supporting the open source Milkymist SoC
– 128MB 32-bit DDR400 SDRAM
– 32MB parallel flash
– 10/100 Ethernet
– Memory card
– Two USB host connectors
– RC5-compatible infrared receiver
– RS232 debug port

A super powerful device built with the Xilinx Spartan-6

RC2 board
– RC2 design files (Altium Designer)
– RC2 Gerber plots
– RC2 schematics (PDF)
– Changes from RC1

RC1 board (outdated)
– RC1 design files (Altium Designer)
– RC1 Gerber plots
– RC1 schematics (PDF)

All the board design files are © Copyright 2009-2010 Sébastien Bourdeauucq and Adam Wang, and are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Commercial use within the terms of the license is encouraged.

Steampunk DIY case
Thanks Joachim Steiger from Raumfahrtagentur for this DIY case design, that you can reproduce yourself with a laser cutter.
(more photos: 1 2 3)
You can download the DXF design files here. They are licensed under Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 Unported. There is some room for improvement in this design; it’s currently missing a hole for the internal microphone and labels on top of the different connectors.

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