MoCo Makers Returns to Crowdfunding for the Bigger, Better Fipsy FPGA V2 Dev Board
A shift to a larger Lattice MachXO2 CPLD means five times the capacity for more complex beginner FPGA projects.
MoCo Makers is back on the crowdfunding circuit with a second-generation development board designed for those who are looking to take their first steps in field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and complex programmable logic devices (CPLDs): the Fipsy FPGA V2.
"The Fipsy FPGA is a breakout board we wished we had while learning about FPGAs," says MoCo Makers' Matthew Zamora. "Many FPGA enthusiasts reach a point in their learning journey where they need to buy an FPGA board for hands-on practice. Quality, price and availability has been an issue for most people, and our team at MoCo Makers realize that this can greatly affect the educational journey. We developed the Fipsy FPGA as a product to make learning about FPGAs accessible and DIY-friendly."
The Fipsy FPGA itself isn't new: MoCo Makers launched a crowdfunding campaign for the original back in March 2018, having been inspired by the earlier DIPSY FPGA project. The Fipsy borrowed heavily from its predecessor, but came with a larger Lattice Semiconductor MachXO2 complex programmable logic device and two years' of documentation and projects to support its use.
The Fipsy FPGA V2 is, as the name suggests, an upgraded Fipsy. The board design is effectively unchanged, still using a compact breadboard-friendly layout with its general-purpose input/output (GPIO) pins exposed in 0.1" headers at either side — but at the heart of the board is a new FPGA with 1,280 look-up tables (LUTS), five times that of the original Fipsy.
"While the first version could handle a pinball machine's worth of design," Zamora explains, "this upgraded version can manage complex designs including graphic drivers for VGA or HDMI displays. This is an excellent opportunity for makers to delve deeper into educational topics such as HDL (Hardware Description Language), understanding how CPUs are made, and exploring how 4K TVs process vast amounts of data quickly."
The Fipsy FPGA V2 is, like its predecessor, currently funding on Kickstarter, with hardware starting at $26 for a single Fipsy FPGA V2 board; all hardware is expected to ship in July this year, the company has confirmed.
