Antarctic Widget-based Data Display Gadget powered by Complex Logic Device
This is to document the completion of a prototype for the icepack series of widget displays
powered by FPGA and CPLD devices manufactured by Altera (now Intel) and Xilinx (now AMD).
The concept started as a motherboard chipset design which contains a programmable unit
for web hosting. The icepack fits onto the front of the chipset to display its information.
The FPGA device used is an Altera Cyclone II which has 16 i/o pins arranged appropriately.
Some jumpers have also been added to widen the physical bus to fit various IC's and displays.
A piece of 7T77 arctic frost cyan blue perspex was filed with a triangle file with scratches
in the appearance of an ice pack. Ideally, an inset file should be used for this purpose.
An inset file is shaped like the letter "T" with inset curved serrations on the underside
to make either side of the substrate have rounded edges which appears more user friendly.
To program the device, the initial version of Altera Quartus II Web Edition is used.
The command line tools can then later be ported to arduino to automate VHDL-based coding.
The Pin Planner shows the chip pinout based on prior device selection in the project wizard.
This allows for graphical selection of inputs and outputs which will use labels from the VHDL.
A USB Programming Cable is required to connect the board's JTAG port to the PC running Quartus.
Different boards will have varying tools, but for this one the drivers are included in the installation.
The Device Programming window automatically detects official programming cables and chips.
However, much manual selection is also required here and in the creation of the project.
Once the project is compiled and assembled, the unprogrammed board may look like this.
It will require the bitstream to be uploaded to the board before anything will function.
It is important to note that once the device is programmed, the memory is volatile
which means the firmware will be lost and will need reprogramming by an external device.
Modern USB Gadget Devices will have better programmability for custom functions and
data streams going to the icepack widget display, where the app is aware of the grid size.
While it is intended for monitoring internal engineering edge-cases, it might also be
of use to install this on the inside of gaming rigs to monitor thermals and chipset functions.
The FPGA used is a representative of a range of products that may use this design workflow.
You might not have to use this specific toolset and may instead opt for something different.