Preview of the Falcon16v2

[David Pitts]

So far a few good things to report.

1) I received the boards for Falcon16v1.
2) I received all boards for Falcon16v2 beta version.
3) My SMD oven works really good.
4) The FPGA/Microcontroller board boot fine. Both FPGA and Microprocessor.

I am waiting on a small 1.27mm pitch header before I can test the PHY board. Man that thing is small.


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[David Pitts]

PHY Board

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[Steve Gase]

Very nice!  is the store open for pre-orders?

[Frankr]

Wow looks great David. That jack board is tiny.

[JerryPlak]

Humm I need to add this to my wish list!!

[rdebolt]

Looks AWESOME!!!

[smeighan]

Wow, so your version 2 board is 16 strings , each string can have 680 pixels?

Amazing!

This board will set the standard for all controllers. That FPGA chip is huge.

sean

[Livermore-Dad]

Was meaning to give the falcon boards a spin last year. Maybe this year it will happen!

Tory

[JonB256]

Dave, you are missing some solder on a few pins just below the word SPARTAN on the FPGA. (ps, if you don't someone to look, take lower resolution pics!!!)

[David Pitts]

That is where i messed up the pads when i tried to fix solder bridge after reflow. Luckily the pins were not used. First error in about 200+ chips.

[David Pitts]

I have tested the Pixelnet input section and all is working great.

I am receiving 4 universes of Pixelnet with no problem. Now need to send it over to the FPGA's memory. I may try to see if I can raise the baud rate in FPD, F16v1 and F16v2 to support larger channel counts. We will see.

I spent some time this week and learned a little about FreeRTOS and I am using that now. I am loving it. Very nice real time operating code that allows you to organize the processes much cleaner and efficient. The processor seems to be purring right along. So far so good.



 

[David Pitts]

Here is a glimpse of the F16 Expansion Board (F16EB or we can name it something else). This board would connect to the F16v2 and give 16 more string ports. 

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[JonB256]

Wow. 32 channels of 3 wire or 4 wire pixels, with a Falcon Pi attached on the bottom. That is one powerful pixel pumping package.

[David Pitts]

I am very happy about the last test. I finally got my male/female 1.27mm headers that are used to connect small (size of RJ-45 connector) PHY board to FPGA/uC board. I am happy to rport the PHY board is a complete success. Yeah.

Looks like this version hardware is sound. I just need to test RS-485 outputs but that should be good too.

 

[Steve Gase]

Wow. 32 channels of 3 wire or 4 wire pixels, with a Falcon Pi attached on the bottom. That is one powerful pixel pumping package.

By problem in the past was finding affordable power supplies to drive a 16-string hub or controller...  does the v2 allow multiple power supplies so that all 32 strings can be fully exploited?