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Much improved USB connectivity
Posted by David Fergenson on 19th Feb 2020
I had previously reviewed this product and pointed out that it was not a good module for a beginner but that it was good for an experienced FPGA developer who did not want to have to design an FPGA directly onto a PCB. However, there was a nagging issue with the modules that is no longer true: they now connect flawlessly over USB. They had been picky about cables and took some work to stabilize for programming but they now connect on the first try and are stable.
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Documentation sucks
Posted by William D. Richard, Ph.D. on 22nd Jan 2020
The schematic available for the part doesn't have all of the parts documented in the manual shown. Pretty sloppy. I expect better from DIgilent. I am really disappointed.
--Response from Digilent--
Hello,
The programming circuit in the schematic is considered proprietary. For additional information, you can contact us at support.digilent@ni.com
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Exactly what I wanted
Posted by Tony Peguero on 15th Aug 2019
This my first FPGA, and it is exactly what I wanted. I considered the larger boards with more built-in bells and whistles, but I decided that the breadboard friendly form factor was a better fit for me; on-board peripherals are great, until you want to use those IO pins for something else.
Very quick service, even with international delivery. Very happy.
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Great for the Experienced; Bad Place to Start
Posted by dfergenson on 5th Apr 2019
FPGA-wise, the board is highly capable. For many users, the A7-15 or -35 chips will have plenty of fabric. There are 44 digital I/O pins and 2 analog inputs. There's a Pmod on top, too. With the I/O and onboard flash memory, you will be able to store a fairly complex program and drive a significant number of peripherals from it. But the idiosyncrasies and limitations of the board make it a bad place to start if this is your first design. If you are just starting out in FPGA design, I'd recommend the Basys3. It's worth the extra money.
One idiosyncrasy is that the USB connection is far more noise-sensitive than other FPGA PCBs by Digilent. There are forum discussions about this with workarounds so check them out before you buy. Another idiosyncrasy has to do with USB bus powering vs. pin powering. If you are ordering this to embed in a PCB, make sure that you can switch between the two different types of power--harder than it sounds given the noise-sensitivity of the USB port--or else do not connect the PCB pins if you intend to always have it bus-connected. This issue is a feature, not a bug, but make sure to read about it in the manual.
As far as PCB-mounting the board goes, there is a forum discussion about the socket mount that can be used to socket the board onto a PCB. And because it's an FPGA, the pins drive 3.3V (and read 3.3V) so make sure that you engineer protection and level shifting if you intend to use them with 5V components elsewhere on the PCB. Normal Pmod protection is not on the board itself--you'll need to follow the schematics and read the Pmod specification to do so correctly.
Finally, because of the small size of the board there just aren't the switches, indicator lights and buttons that other Digilent PCBs have. There are a few but not enough to really indicate internal operations with any level of complexity. There's no display port (though you can connect one to the Pmod port). So you will need to either prototype your design on another board or become very conversant with on-chip debugging tools such as Xilinx's Integrated Logic Analyzer IP or the simulation tool in Vivado.
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FPGA Power in a 40 pin DIP!
Posted by Richard V on 11th Mar 2019
I've used this before. It's a really low cost FPGA with an easy to use DIP pinout. The are more powerful FPGAs, but this one was low cost, has a high pin count for most small projects and is very low cost. The Vivado tool to program it is free (use the web version).
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ARTY A7 vs CMOD A7 BreadBoardable
Posted by DigitalConfig on 19th Mar 2018
I purchased the ARTY not the CMOD version to get started knowing you had a CMOD version I thought I might buy several of the CMOD version later. Now I'm waiting upon the A7-100 I plan on buying it, thou ID Prefer a CMOD version of it. ONLY 10 less thou does not make it economically feasible, perhaps you should consider eliminating PMOD, LEDs, Buttons, and External SRAM for the next A7-100 CMOD version to increase the demand. I know if it were dollar sense between ARTY and CMOD Id buy many of them.
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Ideal project platform with easy start-up
Posted by William Orosz on 26th Feb 2018
I really like the breadboard friendly form factor. By offering the essentials in a compact size, it is extremely easy to prototype with, uncrowded by demonstration peripherals found on larger dev kits. Also, coming from a background developing on a different toolchain, I was amazed by the volume and quality of support resources. The documentation took me from never having used Vivado to implementing 5 designs, including a microblaze with pmod support, in under 2 hours.
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Excellent device for my hobby toolbox.
Posted by Marty on 13th Feb 2018
I checked out this device using some of my homegrown Verilog code. It meets all my expectations and then some. I love the form factor. I stuffed it into one of my breadboards, and it'll probably stay there for my various projects. I'm already ready to buy another one as soon as I've got some loose change.
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Handy and quick to get going
Posted by oem user on 29th Jan 2018
I was pleased to find that getting this device talking to Vivado was fairly straight forward..as thats usually the main challenge with complex devices. We use it as a handy OEM product and its convenient form factor allows us to use it straight out of the box. Why muck around with making your own module if your project can afford to just drop one of these in there.
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Great Product, but reference manual needs source/sink currents
Posted by Gary Block on 14th Jun 2017
I would like all reference manuals to document source/sink currents for I/O pins using the default UCF constraints. Can you simply say "using the default, UCF a pin can source 500A and sink 5000A, with the constraint that the part can dissipate 20nW of power". It would clue in the clueless and prevent my eyes from rolling back when reading mind numbing specs.
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Great little board
Posted by Unknown on 5th Jun 2017
This is a great little board packed with a highly functional device at an unbeatable price. A nice way to get your compact system prototypes without having to worry about getting the chip on a board and interfaces correctly.
My one concern is that libraries and functionality from its larger brother Arty don't port very well, and support is somewhat limited. We understand this is a new product, but Digilent, please help us out here. With a little more consistent attention this could be a really great and popular product.
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