In this post we want to show you what is about to come for the Q1 2013. We have a list of products for the entire 2013 but these two are in the final testing phase and will be available very soon.
AK-MACHX02-7000 – PLD Development Board
Let’s start with our PLD (Programmable Logic Device) development board.
This board is a high-end, full featured FPGA development platform designed in partnership with Lattice Semiconductors and Arrow Electronics Europe.
It is based on the powerful Lattice Semiconductors MachX02-7000. It has an Ethernet connector, VGA output, microSD slot, 8MB of SDRAM, 8MB of serial flash, on-board and external JTAG, a RS232 serial port.
It can be powered with an external power supply or with a USB cable. There is a slot for an optional AK-SDFS-UART module and an expansion header for a LCD display that can be purchased separately.
There are also 5 leds (1 for power, 4 for the application), and 4 push-buttons (1 for reset, 3 for the application) and plenty GPIO.
The board will be for sale at the beginning of March 2013. Click here to go to the product page.
Some features of the MachX02-7000:
| Density LUTs |
6864 |
| EBR RAM (Kbits) |
240 |
| EBR RAM Blocks (9 Kbits/block) |
26 |
| Dist. SRAM (Kbits) |
54 |
| User Flash Memory (Kbits) |
256 |
| PLL |
2 |
Some pictures of the prototype:
AK-ACCEL-RS232 – Serial Accelerometer Dongle
This is our  new Serial Accelerometer Dongle.
It’s a 3-axis accelerometer that you can control and read using a RS232 serial port. It has a reset button and 3 leds: 1 for power, 2 for activity such as serial communication and accelerometer sampling.
There is the possibility to connect it over TTL if you don’t want to use the serial interface (for example, you can connect it directly to your microcontroller).
The power supply arrives directly from the serial cable, so there is no need to power the board with an external power supply. It’s enough with the RTS/DTR signals.
All the software is done inside a powerful STmicroelectronics Cortex M0, with the possibility of upgrading the firmware.
The serial port provides a plain-text output of the accelerometer readings, separated by tabs. By sending any character through the serial port, the boards enters a menu mode where it is configured. For example, you can choose the accelerometer output rate or scale (2g, 8g) from this menu.
The accelerometer we use is a STmicroelectronics LIS331DL from the “nano” family (very low power consumption). The G scale is ±2g or ±8g dynamically selectable. The output data rate is 100 Hz or 400 Hz.
One of its best features is the price: it will be one of the lowest on the market.
Here are some pictures of the prototype:
