I bought EP4CE6 Starter Board from Ebay for $45 few weeks ago. The board arrived by mail last week. Today I decided to write this quick review of the board.

Pack with EP4CE6 Starter Board contains: board with FPGA, mini USB cable, infrared remote control and DS18B20 temp sensor.

EP4CE6 Starter Board is made decently, unlike some similar Chinese products. The board board can be powered by an external adapter or USB cable (mini USB cable for programmer) from the PC. The board contains the following components/periphery:

- FPGA Altera Cyclone IV EP4CE6E22C8N with 6272 LE (LUT+FF) - USB blaster programmer (Altera EMP3064A + FTDI FT245RL) - Serial configuration device (EPCS4) - 8x LEDs - high to light - 3x user button - high in press - 1x buton for reconfig FPGA from EPCS4 - 4-digit seven segment display - Connectors: VGA, PS/2 and RS232 with MAX3232 - SDRAM 256Mb (Winbond W9825G6KH-6) - I2C EEPROM 2Kb (Atmel AT24C02) - SPI ADC 12-bit, 500kSPS, 8 channels (TI ADC128S052) - Infrared receiver - 1x 1-Wire interface - 2x PMOD (16x GPIO, 4xVcc, 4x GND) - PMOD pins extended to two headers

FPGA Altera Cyclone IV EP4CE6 is still supported in current software (Quartus Prime 16.0). On Altera web you can download free Quartus Prime Lite Edition that is fully sufficient for normal use.

FPGA Altera Cyclone IV EP4CE6 has 6272 LE (LUT+FF), 270Kb embedded memory, 15 embedded 18×18 multipliers and 2 PLLs. It is small FPGA but even with a small FPGA you can have lots of fun and you can learn a lot. For example, I revived my old school project Pipe Mania – Game for FPGA.

You can download documentation of EP4CE6 Starter Board here. The documentation includes schematic, example code in Verilog, FPGA datasheet and some guides.

This board works well so far, no problem. If you have any questions, please write a comment.