Robotics design, gadgets, hacks, and DIY technology.

A few weeks ago, I received a very pleasant message: Altium, an FPGA development board manufacturer and IDE developer, contacted me asking If I wanted to try the (excessively cool) brand new development board (the NanoBoard 3000) for free. Of course, I immediately (and quite emphatically) said YES.

The Altium NanoBoard 3000

Now that I got it, I’m dying to have some spear time in order to try out their awesome board with their quite intriguing IDE.

About the Hardware

The NanoBoard 3000 is a beautiful piece of equipment. It boasts lots of cool peripherals and is built and packed as a luxury electronics product. It is a very good looking piece of equipment while remaining perfectly functional, it beats by far all the other development boards I am familiar with (i.e. the Altera DE2 board and the Lattice Mico32 development board) while remaining much cheaper (around 50% of their price).

NanoBoard 3000 Unboxing

Features

Here is a selection of the NanoBoard’s features from Altium’s Wiki I find most prominent:

• A Xilinx Spartan-3AN device (XC3S1400AN-4FGG676C)
  

  Nanoboard 3000 Front

• 4 Serial SPI Flash memory devices
• Programmable clock 6 to 200 MHz, accessible by Altium Designer or by an FPGA design
• SPI Real-Time Clock with 3V battery backup
• Adjustable voltage regulators set to generate 1.2V, 1.8V, 2.5V and 3.3V power
• 256K x 32-bit common-bus SRAM (1MB)
• 16M x 32-bit common-bus SDRAM (64MB)
• 8M x 16-bit common-bus 3.0V Page Mode Flash memory (16MB)
• Dual 256K x 16-bit independent SRAM (512KB each)
• 256K x 16-bit independent SRAM (512KB)
• 8 RGB LEDS
• 5 generic push-button switches
• 4-channel 8-bit ADC, SPI-compatible
• 4-channel 8-bit DAC, SPI-compatible
• 4x isolated IM Relay channels
• 4x PWM power drivers
• Screw terminal headers for ADC/DAC/Relay/PWM interfaces
• SD (Secure Digital) card readers:
  • One for use by the Host Controller FPGA
  • One for use by the User FPGA
• SVGA interface (24-bit, 80MHz)
  

  NanoBoard 3000 Back

• 10/100 Fast Ethernet interface
• USB 2.0 High-Speed interface
• RS-232 Serial Port – DB9M
• RS-485 Serial Port – ‘RJ45′
• 240 x 320 TFT LCD with touch screen
• 8-way DIP-switch
• Stereo 2W audio power amplifier with 3.5mm test input jack and DC volume control
• 24-bit Stereo Audio CODEC with I2S-compatible interface
• Stereo audio jacks (3.5mm):
  • Line In / Line Out
  • Headphones
• Speakers on a separate (attached) board
• MIDI interface
• Diagnostics interface – PCI Express (PCIe) edge connector for connection of automated test equipment (ATE)
• 1.8″ ATA/IDE connector providing access to user LED and generic switch I/O
• Remote Control and IR interface.

I should post some further details and perhaps even a simple test project soon (as soon as I get Altium Designer and Xilinx ISE installed and running)