A few years ago, when our kids were young, we started a ridiculous family tradition of "Summer Christmas". One of the rules of this invented holiday is that we all get to self-gift something we'd like. This year I gave myself a cheap FPGA board that I'd seen over on hackaday. In part because it is cheap, but also because I'm always dabbling with FPGAs, and am now starting to think about a protocol analyzer.



The FPGA is a Lattice UltraPlus 5K, which has some interesting attributes:

128 Kbytes of internal RAM, in addition to 15 Kbytes of block RAM

2 IP cores for I2C and SPI

supported by project icestorm







So how much FPGA do you get for $9.99 shipped? Mine came folded in an anti-static bag, stuffed in a regular envelope. It arrived intact, though others have not been so lucky:



Inside was the UPDuino v1.0 What makes it a good fit for a protocol analyzer is the relatively large RAM. Being able to capture thousands of events makes it much more useful. With an FT813 driving a large touch screen the whole thing could be pretty sweet:So how much FPGA do you get for $9.99 shipped? Mine came folded in an anti-static bag, stuffed in a regular envelope. It arrived intact, though others have not been so lucky:Inside was the UPDuino v1.0 This thread (where people are criticizing the board layout) has a revealing comment from the maker gjennings himself:

On board quality - I paid a High School/College kid in Sri Lanka to do the board; I will give him your feedback. If you'd like, I can give you the UPDuino V2.0 schematic and layout to review. Just let me know I sell these boards at cost and have developed a decent time commitment in testing and shipping them. So, if they are not useful let me know.