Guest Video: OpenTechLab - IcoBoard FPGA Experiments

In this guest video, Joel from OpenTechLab reviews and experiments with the IcoBoard, which features the Lattice iCE40 FPGA, and firmware synthesis with the Open Source "IceStorm" tool-chain.
icoBOARD is a FPGA based IO board for the RaspberryPi
Part 2 is on his channel: • [013-2] Open Source FP...
Show Notes: opentechlab.org.uk/videos:013...
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[@dl8cy]

This 1st vacation proxy video is definitely a winner! Thank you Joel and thank you Dave for choosing Joel

[@krishna34674]

His body moves but his head stays still... I like him !

[@OpenTechLab]

No - silly. My body stays still. I just move my head, the camera and the room with my mind.

[@damny0utoobe]

Pigeons do this too. Anyhow, I love this guy's content and happily subbed to his channel

[@griffcyt]

Should have gone the loo before starting ..

[@markuscwatson]

I was creepin the comments for someone talking about this

[@EvilJonas]

It's really nice of you to give other channels a chance by giving them a forum. Respect!

[@laaang]

I'm not particularly into FPGAs, but I love the fact that you took a pretty simple FPGA hat for the blinky and didn't use something overly complicated (for beginners) like the DE0-Nano - Altera Cyclone IV FPGA

[@laaang]

well I didn't mean the FPGA chip but rather the board ;)

[@foofighter1933]

Great video as always Joel! Finally this channel gets the exposure it deserves :)

[@KerryWongBlog]

Subscribed, great video!

[@OpenTechLab]

Hey Kerry - I love your videos!

[@KerryWongBlog]

Thanks!

[@anishsarkar120]

Great video , now peaple can atleast stop bugging about projrcts to dave , plus i never saw a fpga project , thanks for making video super easy to undestand (counter)

[@lucwybo]

Great video, 15years ago i was playing with a vertex fpga, from vhdl output blowing in the chip!

[@stergeon8272]

Happy that OpenTechLab got this spot! Such great content deserves a bigger audience.

[@programorprogrammed]

Glad to see you made it on buddy, love your stuff!

[@donreid358]

Congratulations Dave and Joel, a home run on the first guest video. FPGAs and Open Source, including RISK-V, is more that I would have thought to ask for.

[@jort93z]

great video. you got a new subscriber. Probably gonna bingewatch a dozen videos from your channel now.

[@alancordwell9759]

Great video Joel, I've wanted to get into FPGAs for a bit but so far been baulked by the the complication and expense... subbed to your channel :)

[@proffski]

Great presentation Joe, now about to subscribe. Great work, thanks!

[@LudovicGuegan]

Great overview. Would love to see a full course on FPGA using only FOSS tools. Super cool, thank you Joel !

[@czoknorris]

This is really cool, Dave. We viewers discover all new sources of interesting content thanks to the guest videos. And the channels for which you provide the stage of your channel get tons of new subscribers and hopefully this will get them to create even more awesome content.

[@MiaHeidenstedt]

@OpenTechLab thank you for your great and important work! Exactly the chanel i searching for!

[@MrAlFuture]

Absoluetly superb video! Thanks, Joel!

[@FindLiberty]

I LIKE IT - flashy bling (edge) too! Nice review.

[@vincei4252]

Great video as usual. Cool to see an FPGA device with open source tools.

[@sachingowda1785]

Never heard about Open Source FPGA development.. We are indeed living in a wonderful time!! Subscribed!!!!!

[@alimmi9]

The guest videos are a very nice idea. Thanks Dave and Joel! edit after watching the whole video: Thanks aswell for remotivating me to get into FPGA and especially VHDL coding again! :)

[@_PovertyLabs_]

I only found your channel about a month ago,,, your stuff on sigrok is awesome and now the ice40, well done. Welcome to the bigtime :-)

[@TilmanBaumann]

My favourite new channel as a guest at my favourite old channel

[@markusofficial9016]

Wow, that’s some real quality content right there, thank you! Always wanted a beginner FPGA intro and this is perfect. Now I’ll have to get one of those boards..and a newer raspberry pi.

[@obiwanjacobi]

First decent video in years. Subbed.

[@sysmatt]

You made FPGAs very accessible. Jumping over to pt2 very eagerly!

[@FurrySergal]

Dave made a good choice, and you've made a great video. It fits this channel very well.

[@Sloothz]

Im not an electronics guy, but i just wanted to say that introduction was great, clear, concise and short.

[@TheRadioShop]

Very nice presentation Joel, Thanks Dave for giving others a chance.

[@OpenTechLab]

Yeah - thanks Dave! And thanks for watching!

[@AntiProtonBoy]

Great production quality. Subbed.

[@kylemaillet9885]

This is a wonderful idea for a side series. EEVblog is definitely the goto for EE & Electronics!

[@droknron]

Great job Joel! - Really interesting video, these FPGA's are so cool!

[@flymypg]

Timely topic, especially relevant for me, as I've been getting VERY tired of using the Xilinx tools with my Spartan6 boards. Excellent organization, structure and narrative. Ideal content, in both scope and functionality. My only content wish would be for a quick trip through a simulation pass for this very simple design, since it is not revisited in the second video. The only tiny production nit I can pick would be to make the audio leveling more uniform. Great job!

[@Darfk]

Fantastic video, subbed!

[@mrsnes486]

This is almoast like the EEV blog channel has been open sourced. Really nice to promote other channels like this!

[@coolwinder]

Subscribed, excelet work man!

[@Aemilindore]

We from the FOSS world love EEVBlog even more for sharing your popular platform to shred some FOSS light on others.

[@MichelPASTOR]

I was loking for a good FPGA intro. Thanks. Subbed !

[@nutsnproud6932]

Interesting video, thanks for making it.

[@AnimalFacts]

Awesome that we are getting to see new faces.

[@7head7metal7]

great video! What was fun to me to notice is, that the base board is seemingly done by a company only about half an hour drive from my home. What are the odds!

[@crazyboy2006cashier]

Hey Joel. Great Video. Thankyou :) - Subscribed

[@timmgiles]

Joel - great video, subbed.

[@369gems]

Outstanding! Thanks.

[@Aemilindore]

Thanks Dave for choosing Joel

[@youtubkeeper]

I have NFI what most of that was, but I was still so intrigued!

[@Pampali]

Dave - great idea, great choice. Subscribed.

[@giacomo1191]

Very cool, subscribed!

[@MedSou]

"Guest Video" i like the concept thanks you 👍👍

[@pedroset7972]

Great video. Thanks

[@sarowie]

How small the world is - when I heard "Clifford Wolf" I recognized the name. And sure: Clifford Wolf the FPGA Guru, is also the OpenSCAD developer Clifford Wolf.

[@mustaregis]

Joel is awesome, subscribed!

[@JackZimmermann]

Cool! Keep it up!

[@georgebockari289]

this is easily your best content in the past few weeks. If at any point my sub list grows to high..he will take your spot lol jk. (but you did get him a sub) Thanks

[@Zeigren]

Woohoo! I already watched this on the OTL channel

[@jetraid]

Ass allways Daves share with us excellent content. Sucribed, excelent video, I see the second part and waiting for more.

[@danielcolon18]

I like it, subscribed already.

[@womble321]

Great idea of Daves ive subed

[@Jochen754]

Nice FPGA Videos :D

[@avrkris]

Hey Joel, greetings from the Richmond Maker Labs :)

[@OpenTechLab]

Hey!! Thanks for watching. I miss you guys

[@avrkris]

Didn't know you had a channel, just subscribed ! :) I'm based in USA those days, so only visit London occasionally - but RML is doing well from what I see :)

[@bsvenss2]

Seems as an interesting channel. Subscribed.

[@theIpatix]

I've never worked with Opensource toolchains on FPGAs before. If I we're to pick this FPGA showed in the video for my next project, is there a public collection of IP cores out there? I've worked with Xilinx Vivado and ISE before and really liked the IP catalog they have (although they are obviously not freely licensed). If I want a dual clock FIFO on the Lattice, am I going to need to program that myself or are these kind of things already out there (with free license)?

[@OpenTechLab]

Historically there's a lot of stuff on OpenCores - but there are issues with the way it is managed. So LibreCores is getting started to fill the gap. Also you might want to check out fusesoc - which is a package manager for FPGAs, and includes many cores in the standard index.

[@AtomkeySinclair]

Impressive - I've been looking at these things for a few months and figured they were too involved to mess with. But this makes it look a little more manageable. My first thought is how it visually looks like it could handle a neural net. To what end I don't really know, but I think it's worth investigating further. Any suggestions on a good verilog book? Thanks for the excellent introduction.

[@WillArtie]

Awesomeness! Always thought FPGAs were a little over my head really.... but maybe not? Will sub & look - Thanks Joel :)

[@Yukicanis]

Very nice video! Finally some serious FPGA stuff on the channel. ^^ Does this open source toolchain also support VHDL?

[@OpenTechLab]

I heard some rumors about VHDL support in the works for Yosys. Also, people have used vhdl2verilog as a front-end - I heard it works ok.

[@iluan_]

Open source FPGA, OMG! This is the best thing ever.

[@trickyrat483]

Strewth, Dave's been taking elocution Lessons! Finally, I can understand him. :)

[@Jefferson-ly5qe]

If you can't understand Dave, you must live in the wrong country, ya nong

[@jotaemebee]

Yayyyyy, FPGA voodoo magic!!

[@pepsijazz462]

Subscribed. Also, couldn't you just update whatever version of Raspbian the icoBoard crew provides on their website?

[@jon_raymond]

Really glad Joel's channel got some exposer. Check out his great videos on logic analysers.

[@mcuembedded]

Been on embedded design for over a decade now. Feels like this video would make me try out FPGAs. The support for open development was piss poor a decade back. Gotta start off now, nothing better than being able to make your own glue logic for embedded systems!

[@johnfrancisdoe1563]

Pratik Panda I wonder if the open tools support the glue logic-sized simpler devices (CPLDs with normal logic levels in QFP packages rather than high density FPGAs with sub-2V levels in BGA packages). Those seem to be almost abandoned by the factories these days. I've been looking at chips like Intel (Altera) Max5 and Lattice Mach 4000 for a recent project, and even those require an external 1.8V precision LDO and external TTL level converters.

[@ozricm]

What do you use for video editing? You said its all open source and ive been looking for something like that for a long time,

[@OpenTechLab]

kdenlive on Ubuntu. You may find problems with it, but it has progressed immeasurably in the past year - I don't have many complaints about it these days. There's also PiTiVi and OpenShot, but they're not quite so far along IMHO, but they're also growing. I also use ffmpeg on the command line and some scripts to pre-process my clips.

[@ozricm]

Awesome, thanks!

[@GRBtutorials]

8:19 It's funny, I didn't notice them until you told me. And is there an open source toolchain for the Altera and Xilinx FPGAs as well? Right now I have a cheap Cyclone II board + USB Blaster clone. I've also seen some cheap Cyclone IV and Spartan-3E boards. I say this because for big projects with lots of logic elements, like video encoders and probably cryptocurrency miners, this chip is a bit small. It's, however, very good to get started and there are lots of projects you can do with this FPGA. And I subbed to your channel!

[@giannisloukovitis1256]

Very nice. But it feels like it's all been done in 1 breath. Subscribed :)

[@enjoying28]

First thing I thought of seeing this board was the 1Hz to 10hz sound detection FPAG design from an Evolution Algorithm in 2006.

[@TheGFS]

I like the new Dave, seems fun :) Let's have him on once a week =)

[@OpenTechLab]

Gunnar Freyr I can't make videos that quick. Family/work commitments- you know how it is ;-)

[@Dominoe11112]

Doesn't appear to be a way to get this board in Australia, without paying more than its cost in shipping. Any ideas where we can get it?

[@jope7137]

If you want to start in FPGAs I would not recommend this board. Joel is restricting himself to open-source tools; but you don't have to do the same. You can get far more powerful boards for less money. And Xilinx, Intel and Lattice have free tools.

[@OpenTechLab]

If you want to try the IceStorm tool-chain you could get a ICE40HX1K-STICK-EVN board @ USD25.25, or an iCE40HX8K-B-EVN for the 8K @ $49.49. You can pick either one up from DigiKey. And when SymbiFlow open source tool-chain comes to fruition we'll be able to start using Xilinx 7-series boards - of which there are many to choose from.

[@Frankfurtdabezzzt]

What video editing software are you using on Linux? Still looking for a decent one.

[@OpenTechLab]

kdenlive, and a bit of ffmpeg on the command line with scripts

[@Frankfurtdabezzzt]

Thanks, I'll check it out. Appreciate your answer.

[@lorenzo42p]

I think those huge install sizes come from the windows culture. on linux, file sizes are usually much more reasonable, only a few megs being all that's really needed to contain the entire executable and a few text config files, even the "installer" itself if it's an installable package. actually, more common are executables of only a few kilobytes. the smaller file sizes will also run a bit faster too. maybe it's just a historic remnant from the time when everything came on cd's, and they would fill it with all kinds of crap just because they could. hard drives also became bigger as time went on, meaning they could worry about space usage less and less. meanwhile you get linux and all its programs from the internet, where size matters much more. a smaller download size means much less bandwidth used to host those files, and the hosting is often sponsored, so even more important to keep sizes small. as well as people from around the world freely working at optimizations if they so choose. a corporation on the other hand, costs them much money to do such optimizations. short term it saves them money, but there are penalties at the user end.

[@OpenTechLab]

I agree 100%. I've heard the mantra "bytes are cheap, engineers are expensive" many times, which makes buisiness sense, but for engineering it's crippling, because there's no way Vivado could ever run on a raspberry-pi. Do you want to be able to do that? Who knows, but it doesn't matter, because you can't. So on Linux it's easier to innovate, because you don't run into people telling you that you can't do something, because they don't think you need to be able to.

[@izimsi]

On the compile section it looks like you've got 2 or so cores on the Pi and you're not using all of them, because CPU usage is stuck at 50%. Maybe make -j2 or -j4 should be used?

[@OpenTechLab]

I had problems with running out of ram, overheating and browning out my phone charger. Making a time-lapse like that takes ages, and you can waste hours doing failed recordings if it craps out, so I played it safe.

[@izimsi]

Well, I have just the original pi1b+, and even that one makes all sorts of problems with many power supplies, so fair enough...

[@Eletronicafg]

I've bought my one with a 2.5A power supply to avoid power issues, but the RAM limitation is a little frustrating. While setting up a cross-compiling environment is complex there are docker images already configured with the cross-compiler that will save you a lot of time.

[@23RaySan]

but keep in mind, make isnt magic...it cant magical parallelize things just by adding a -j argument. It may work, maybe it doesn't, maybe you run into trouble. Just want to say that...keep it in mind

[@23RaySan]

just think a minute, what make and gcc (or whatever your c compiler is) does, when you are compiling c source....In most cases you don't have just one file of c source, you have many....and these are not compiled into a binary at one pass....Your compiler creates intermediate object files for every c file. And this stage can easily parallised, just by fire as many compiler instances you want. Your SMP capeabil operating system takes care of the rest. And then you end up with your object files which are linked into a binary in a single process (which is no issue, because linking is cheap). When you got only one single big fat file of c code you will have a hard time trying to distribute the compilation over several cores.

[@MatthewSuffidy]

Wow, I wonder how the compiler branches from a sort of a cpu module inside an FPGA instead of some sort of digital logic. Also can you short out an FPGA by accident and destroy it?

[@bBrain]

Fun video...

[@BrianLough]

Awesome video! If you need any proof of that, As of my comment about 1 in 6 people who saw this video went and subscribed to your channel, that's an insane conversion rate! (going by socialblade you got 1k subs today, and video has 6k views) Subbed!

[@OpenTechLab]

Yeah I'm pretty blown away by it. The sub-count was 4,727 the minute before the video released. Dave's done me a massive favor giving me a platform. I'm looking forward to seeing the other submissions.

[@BrianLough]

That's awesome! I don't even know you and I'm delighted for you! It took me just under a year to get 1k and I was so happy when I got it! I can only imaging how you feel after getting 1.5k in 4 hours!

[@ehafh]

open source hardware, wooooooooo!

[@fuzzy1dk]

I'm a bit surprised that verilog compiled, selecting bits in a vector should normally be done in the same order as the vector was defined, and afair regardless of how you define it the left most bit is always msb

[@rustyrebar9647]

Dave should go on vacation more often!!!

[@2j4ez]

This video was edited in open shot? if so nice one, I love linux ubuntu is your friend. You should do a video on how you edit your videos

[@OpenTechLab]

kdenlive! with a bit of help from ffmpeg via some scripts

[@DAVIDGREGORYKERR]

If you are interested with FPGA's have a look at the Jerri Ellsworth channel and her FPGA SDR Radio series, you will need a VDHL++ compiler, If you are going with a Raspberry Pi why not go with the Pi-Drive which should be able to store the Jessie OS for ARM and your applications.

[@BogdanSorlea]

what do you do the video in?

[@OpenTechLab]

kdenlive on ubuntu! with a bit of help from ffmpeg via some scripts

[@tubical71]

Awesome, i always wanted to do something with an FPGA but all the time, i was concerned about the toolchain and also the philosopy of the companies, giving the hardware FPGA boards away for a "few" bucks, but wanted to get some sort of "return on investment" when you want to do soemething, you either do it on your own, or buy some software modules which will to it on the FPGA for you but they don´t come cheap anymore...

[@sokolum]

awesome

[@Jefferson-ly5qe]

Better than most of Dave's videos tbh. Boy, does Dave ramble...

[@allesklarklaus147]

Jefferson Allan Well, daves channel is a "blog" (maybe) and not education. I watch it for fun and not for learning specific things. The things you learn are usually just random stuff related to maybe a teardown.

[@TheGFS]

yeah and Dave is a bit "outdated" when it comes to things like microcontrollers and programming

[@martintince]

What open source video editing software are you using ?

[@OpenTechLab]

kdenlive on ubuntu! with a bit of help from ffmpeg via some scripts

[@martintince]

Man that was fast :D thanks !

[@simontay4851]

90mins waiting for it to compile then writing code just to flash some LEDs. Is there a precompiled version? You assume everyone already knows linux commands and what code to write and how. I wouldn't know where to start.

[@OpenTechLab]

The code here is relatively new, so up until recently the IceStorm tools havn't been available via the package repositories on various Linux distributions - which is the normal "app-store" method of installing things on Linux. Though this is changing. The commands to build from source are pretty much in keeping with other software on Linux - if you want to do it yourself, check out the instructions on the IceStorm website. Also there is a pre-built RPi image on the IcoBoard website with the tools pre-built and installed if you want to do synthesis on there - which is much quicker to set up, but not so good for understanding what has been installed and how.

[@LukeValenty]

Install APIO, it’s a cross-platform Python tool that sets up the tool chain for most of the iCE40 FPGA boards. It will download pre-compiled binaries for your platform: github.com/FPGAwars/apio/blob/develop/README.md

[@zebedie2]

There's also www.myhdl.org/ which can be used to render to vhdl / verilog from python

[@paulcollins664]

I've subscribed mainly because I don't understand FPGAs so hoping to learn something, well anything is possible

[@KX36]

at least us pommies can get on an aussie youtube channel, even if we can't win a cricket match. Small victories!

[@allesklarklaus147]

even a blind chicken finds a seed once in a while

[@richfiles]

I have Xilinx's software installed on my PC. I use their graphical "schematic" tool to draw logic circuits. Has anyone created a similar tool for these open source tools, or is it programing only?

[@OpenTechLab]

richfiles Try IceStudio... I think that might cover this use case, though I haven't used it myself yet

[@richfiles]

Part of me is really interested in this whole open source tool thing on the Lattice products. The other part of me knows I have drawers of Xilinx parts on hand. I just can't belive the space the Xilinx software takes, and the hoops you have to jump through to actually use it! It took _three days_ to get my free license to be recognized. The legalese, if I saw correctly, had close to a thousand pages of text!?! I applaud open source tools, if anything, to escape that nonsense! I just wish an open source tool for Xilinx would get figured out. I'm grateful we got oc tools for some Lattice parts!

[@JLSoftware]

Lost me at 19:32. How can a bitstream make gates?

[@OpenTechLab]

Each logic-element contains a 4-bit input 1-bit output lookup-table (LUT). By programming the LUT with the desired truth-table, you can make any logic gate you want. If you want more than 4-inputs, you can do it by making a cascade of two or more LUTs.

[@JLSoftware]

OK, thanks - so your code is in some high-level language, and that at some point gets compiled to machine code. Is there then a translation of each machine code instruction into the logic gates required to do that instruction? So for example, an ADD instruction gets compiled into a bit string that represents the logic gates needed to make an adder?

[@OpenTechLab]

JL Software Basically that -yes. It's hard to explain everything in a YT comment, but if you want to know more, check out fpga4fun, for some nice introductory tutorials.

[@JLSoftware]

Thanks a lot!

[@666Tomato666]

> vim user Ah, I see you're a man of culture as well.

[@metalpachuramon]

Hmmmm for the last 3 blocks I think it implemented it like flip-flops connected as slaves to the register as master in order to get the multiplied clock signal from the output