Oak Development Technologies Revamps the IcyBlue Feather FPGA Board, Launches a V2 Variant

Oak Development Technologies has announced a new revision of its IcyBlue Feather, a compact FPGA development board built around the Lattice Semi iCE5LP4K, which brings with it improvements and bug fixes — and USB Type-C, too.

"IcyBlue brings the best of an iCE40 FPGA and the Adafruit Feather form factor to provide a vast environment of sensors and add-ons." Oak's Seth Kerr writes of the board. "This makes it easier than ever to learn FPGA design. Immediately get started with IcyBlue and all your favorite feather wings from Adafruit and others!"

The original IcyBlue Feather launched in February last year, promising a "unique FPGA feather" designed as a quick-start platform for the Lattice Semi iCE5LP4K. While the revamped release keeps the same FPGA at its heart, it brings with it what Kerr describes as "major improvements" — not least of which is a move to the modern USB Type-C connector for data and power connectivity, plus a selection of unspecified "hardware bug fixes."

The redesign hasn't dropped any of the features of the original, either: there's still two hardware I2C and SPI blocks available without consuming FPGA resources, two user-addressable single-color LEDs and an RGB LED, and 22 general-purpose input/output (GPIO) pins brought out to Feather-format breadboard-friendly headers.

The new board is available to order on the Oak Development Technologies Tindie store at $74.95; design files and documentation are available on GitHub under a combined hardware/software MIT license.