At long last, I’m happy to say that the Fabulous Silicon store is live.
In addition to Cyber Cortex AV, there are joysticks, displays, gift certificates, SpiderMega (shipping at the beginning of January), and tons of accessory boards.
If you have any questions about any of the boards (e.g. whether or not something will work for your particular application or platform), feel free to send an email to bryan@fabuloussilicon.com, as I’ll help out however I can.
Thanks,
Bryan
Last month, I was invited by the Rocky Mountain Inventors Association to talk about my experience launching Cyber Cortex AV on Kickstarter.com, everything that’s transpired since, and how others might go about launching their own projects.
In addition to myself, there will be other developers, innovators, and inventors who will also be talking about their projects as well (past and present).
I’m looking forward to being there on December 22nd, and I hope that anyone else in the Denver metro area who’s looking at Kickstarter.com as a way to fund a project can attend.
Details are below:
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MikroElektronika is one of Fabulous Silicon’s primary suppliers and the developer of the mikro-series compilers for Cyber Cortex. For only being 10 years young, they have quite a long list of accomplishments. Nebojsa Matic who founded the company wrote about his experience during the early years…. definitely an interesting read:
http://www.mikroe.com/eng/news/view/393/mikroelektronika-celebrates-10th-birthday
Happy birthday MikroElektronika.
Cyber Cortex AV has just launched on Kickstarter:
Cyber Cortex AV
multicore softprocessor development platform
Cyber Cortex AV – a multicore Arduino-compatible platform with graphics and sound capability.
Cyber Cortex AV provides a new, unique, and exceptionally powerful electronic canvas for the maker, the electronics enthusiast, the circuit bender, the future (or current) engineer, or anyone else who can dream of a new ways to steer a stream of electrons into their own digital creations.
Cyber Cortex AV has already been designed, and the final series of prototypes have been built and verified. This Kickstarter project is to fund the next stage… the first manufacturing run.
Should this project be successfully funded, those who back this project at the $147 reward level (or more) will receive a Cyber Cortex AV from the initial production run.
Also be sure to catch all the updates on twitter: @FabulousSilicon
What makes Cyber Cortex-AV quite different from other development boards is that it doesn’t use a traditional micro-controller. Instead, the 208-pin chip at the heart of Cyber Cortex is a Xilinx Spartan 3e 500K FPGA.
An FPGA’s strength lies in the fact that it can mimic just about any other kind of digital chip (or chips) that you can think of, limited only by the size of the FPGA. Because of this kind of flexibility, it can be a VGA graphics controller, a digital music synthesizer, a micro-controller (like the one used in the Arduino), and much more. Cyber Cortex’s Spartan FPGA can be reconfigured as often as you like with new and different “cores”… so it’s almost like a silicon etch-a-sketch in a way.
In the past, FPGAs have not been very easy for beginners to use. The Cyber Cortex AV platform is set upon changing that with a simple, unified, GUI-based environment and a growing library of cores to base your own creations around.
In essence, Cyber Cortex AV allows you to harness the power of what an FPGA is capable of with the same skills level and programming environment as an Arduino. It’s library of pre-built cores turns Cyber Cortex into almost whatever you need it to be… a programmable video game console, a digital music synthesizer, a powerful robotics platform controller, a logic analyzer, and more.
Even more exciting is that many of the Cyber Cortex cores are “multicore” capable, and the board also includes 512KB of synchronous SRAM allowing you to run as many as four independent Arduino sketches all at the same time.
Already built in are the most common ports to connect Cyber Cortex AV to the outside world, including VGA, audio, PS/2 mouse and keyboard, 2 joysticks, SPI, USB JTAG/Serial port, and a Xilinx JTAG port.
Cyber Cortex AV also has pin headers for 54 5-volt IO pins and 16 5-volt analog inputs arranged in an Arduino Mega128/256 form factor, making Cyber Cortex compatible with most Arduino shields.
The Cyber Cortex Core-Pack:
The cross-platform Cyber Cortex AV Core-Pack comprises of a simple GUI-based “loader” application along with a library of pre-synthesized cores, designed to get you up and running in minutes. The included cores are based on some of the best and most innovative open-source FPGA projects, and in most cases have been further enhanced to be programmable with simple Arduino sketches.
New versions of the Core-Pack will be made available as new cores are released or when existing cores are updated.
All of the cores included in the Core-Pack are also optimized to make the most of the Cyber Cortex AV hardware, and loading cores to AlienCortex is seamless and occurs transparently as a new program or Arduino sketch is loaded to the Cyber Cortex AV hardware.
The cores that will be included as part of Core Pack 1.0 are:
Cyber Xtreme-G:
A dual processor Arduino sketch-compatible core with Gameduino-compatible graphics and sound
(Xtreme-G startup screen)
Cyber Xtreme-G turns Cyber Cortex AV into a powerful gaming platform with two 32MHz Arduino-sketch compatible cores (based on Ruslan Lepetenok’sAVR8 project) and a graphics and sound engine based on James Bowman’s awesome Gameduino (previously featured on Kickstarter).
128KB of program memory (+ 4KB DRAM) is available for for each of the two cores so you’ll have plenty of room for larger and more sophisticated designs, and with the dual core architecture you’ll be able to spread processor intensive tasks between both of the independently running cores.
Interprocessor communication between each of the cores is simple to program and based on standard serial protocols, so sending messages and data between the individual cores is as simple as programming a serial port.
Cyber Xtreme-R:
A quad processor Arduino-sketch compatible core
(Please note that the parts shown are not included with Cyber Cortex AV. Some details with regard to sourcing robotics related parts will soon be available in the forums and blog postings at http://www.fabuloussilicon.com . )
Cyber Xtreme-R is designed to be the ideal core for robotics enthusiasts. With four AVR8 Arduino-sketch compatible cores, you can now develop independently running code to interact with sensors, motors, and other I/O devices without contention.
Xtreme-R is also perfect for graphical LCDs based applications. A larger LCD can simply be driven with it’s own soft processor, no longer slowing the rest of your design.
Note: Presently, this core has been stress-tested at 16MHz per core and verified to be stable. Another version of this core is running “in the lab” at 24MHz per core, but has not yet been stress tested. Backers should assume that this core will run at 16MHz until I’ve fully verified stability of the 24MHz version.
Cyber Song:
An 8 note polyphonic digital synthesizer and drum sample playback engine under the control of an Arduino-sketch/AVR compatible core.
The Cyber Song core is based around the amazing SK-Synth open-source synth engine by Stefan Kristiansson. SK-Synth is a high quality, 8 note (2 oscillators per note), digital synthesizer with resonant filters and LFOs, as well as drum sample playback.
Cyber Song takes the SK-Synth core to the next level by combining it with an AVR8 Arduino sketch-compatible core, making it easy to design your own stand-alone MIDI synth. Example code and libraries for Cyber Song are included to help you get started, with support for patch full editing, MIDI, example GLCD user interface pages, and more.
(Video and sound clips will be added soon.)
Note: A KS0108 GLCD such as the one sold by Adafruit (pictured above) and a MIDI interface like one sold by SparkFun are not included, but recommended to take full advantage of the the example code and libraries written for the Cyber Song core.
Cyber 4:30 :
A single core soft-processor emulation of the MSP430 micro-controller
The Texas Instruments MSP430 has become one of the most popular 16-bit micro-controllers in recent years used in countless embedded products. The Cyber 430 soft-processor core is based on the open-source openMSP430 project by Oliver Girard, and provides a near cycle-accurate emulation of the MSP430.
The Cyber 430 core is especially ideal for students and hobbyists who’d like to broaden their horizons by learning to develop code with the Texas Instruments Code Composer Essentials IDE while gaining a better understanding of MSP430-series micro-controllers.
Cyborg Autopsy:
A 32 channel 100MHz Logic Analyzer
Cyber Arcade:
A collection of cores emulating vintage upright arcade games and retro gaming consoles
Cyber Arcade provides you with a set of cores that emulate the hardware of many of 8-bit arcade games and consoles from the past. Cores that are included and that have been verified include:
Pacman
Ms. Pacman
Space Invaders
Frogger
Scramble
Galaxian
The ColecoVision Console
Please note: The ROM files for these games are *not* distributed with Core-Pack. To use these cores, you must provide a ROM image to make the core work. It is assumed that you:
A) are legally entitled and licensed to use any ROM images used in conjunction with these cores… or
B) you are developing your own code/ROM image for use with these cores (in most cases with 6502 or Z80 assembly language)…. or
C) you are only interested in reverse-engineering the VHDL source code for these cores as a reference model for how hardware can be modeled in in an FPGA.
More cores are currently under development, and will be announced as they are ready to be released in future versions of the Cyber Cortex AV Core-Pack.
Through a special arrangement with MikroElektronika, Cyber Cortex AV will now also include three language compilers - mikroBasic, mikroC, and mikroPascal.
This is especially exciting, as MikroElektronika’s compilers were used quite extensively during the development of Cyber Cortex AV (especially with regard to the multicore SPI bootloader and Cyber Song), and they’ve become my preferred development environment for writing microcontroller-targetted code in my own projects.
To help support the Cyber Cortex AV platform, MikroElektronika is contributing all three of these language compilers to this project at no cost. All of the compilers are functionally identical to their professional line of compilers, except that they will only compile code for the Cyber Cortex AV platform.
Aside from that, these are fully functional, and with no code-size limitations. In addition, they are also compatible with the wide range of libraries already available for the mikro-series compilers.
Here are a few additional details regarding these compilers:
The Cyber Cortex AV versions of these compilers should be available soon. In the meantime, you can try out the demo versions of all three of compilers:
(The demo versions below have a 4K maximum code size limitation.)
For PC users:
Cross-compatible solutions for Mac and Linux users:
It’s my intention to be able to provide support on all platforms for Cyber Cortex AV and it’s associated tools. With that in mind, I’ve taken the time to test a couple of viable solutions to ensure that the Mikro-series tools will be accessible to those using the Mac and Linux operating systems as well. Please note that MikroElektronika does not provide support for any platform other than Windows, but has given permission to allow me to create a “WINE wrapped” version of each of the compilers to support Mac users (using PlayOnMac), and provide instructions for Linux users who wish to do the same using PlayOnLinux.
I’ve been testing all three compilers in this manner using Snow Leopard 10.6.5 on the Mac and Ubuntu 10.04 on Linux side, and I’m happy to say that they work very well!
For the best user experience, anyone installing any the Mikro compilers with the PlayOnMac or PlayOnLinux solutions as I’ve described above should immediately change the screen layout option at the top of the screen from “1024×768″ to “Legacy” after opening them up the first time, and then click the “Set Layout” button. (The “Legacy” layout resolves some graphics and font anomalies to do variances between WINE and Windows that you might encounter with the “1024×768″ layout.)
Links to WINE-wrapped versions of the 4K demos for Mac users are below:
A link to instructions for Linux users to show how to install them through PlayForLinux will be provided soon!
Developing your own cores for Cyber Cortex AV:
For those who are interested in learning how to create their own cores for Cyber Cortex AV, you will want to download the Xilinx’s ISE Webpack. This is free to download and use, and is the same tool used to develop all the cores in Core-Pack 1.0.
A few good resources to help you get started include:
Additionally, the cores included as part of Core Pack 1.0 that have been derived from open-source code will likewise be made available in source-code form for you to be able to learn from and reverse engineer.
Important notes for Kickstarter project backers:
Lead time:
Please note that the lead time after completion of the Kickstarter funding cycle is about five weeks before the boards will be shipped from the manufacturer, and I will make sure to keep everyone updated during that time as to the status.
Cyber Cortex AV power supply requirements:
Cyber Cortex AV requires a 2.1mm tip-positive 1 amp 6 volt DC adapter when using the Xtreme-G or Xtreme-R cores, as these two cores consume more than the 500ma provided via USB. (Most other cores will work fine when the the board is powered over USB.) Do to the variety of international power standards, and to keep shipping costs to a minimum, the power supply is not included with the board, but should be commonly available at most consumer electronics stores.
Thanks again for checking out the Cyber Cortex AV Kickstarter project, and feel free to contact me directly or leave a message in the comments section with any questions you may have.
Thanks,
Bryan Pape
Fabulous Silicon
bryan@fabuloussilicon.com
