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Show HN: Icepi Zero – The FPGA Raspberry Pi Zero Equivalent

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Re: Show HN: Icepi Zero – The FPGA Raspberry Pi Zero Equivalent

#31

Post by robinsonb5 »

duskwuff wrote: post #7
Graziano_M wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The icebreaker is great and easy to get up and running, plus it has pmod headers which makes it easy to add add-ons.

Yep, and I love it. That's a much smaller (and lower pin count) FPGA than this ECP5, though.

IceSugarPro (with its breakout board) is quite a nice board if you want something pre-assembled. Same FPGA as this new board (so also supported by the Open Source toolchain), same size SDRAM, HDMI out but PMODs for everything else.

I really like the look of this new board, though - I definitely want to get my hands on one. (I also have a Tang Nano 20K but don't like it all that much.)

Re: Show HN: Icepi Zero – The FPGA Raspberry Pi Zero Equivalent

#32

Post by robinsonb5 »

Cyao wrote: post #28
kriro wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't offer them too cheaply. Typically you want to roughly sell for 4x your buy price. 200 seems good and there should be plenty demand at that price. Great work. I'll look into this after my vacation as it seems quite interesting for our university courses.

Can I ask your reasoning about not selling them too cheaply? I would like to sell them cheaper then the existing boards since the price prevented me from buying one when I was 13

Selling them nice and cheap is great if you're going to do one batch as a project and then move on to other things.

If you're still going to be selling them next year and the year after that, you don't want it to become a burden or a chore - it has to feel like it's worth your while to be psychologically sustainable.

Re: Show HN: Icepi Zero – The FPGA Raspberry Pi Zero Equivalent

#33

Post by robinsonb5 »

tverbeure wrote: post #14
lukevp wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea about this product category but am interested in learning more about FPGAs. What is the ballpark price point that something like this would be? Are we talking $100 or $1000?

Not OP, but these kind of boards are ballpark between $100-$200. Here’s a similar board with the same FPGA: https://www.crowdsupply.com/radiona/ulx3s .

Another similar board (perhaps even more similar than the ULX3S) is the IceSugarPro - it's sub-$100 for the module and breakout board.

[I enjoy reading your blog by the way - just last week I picked up a Pano Logic G1 on EBay!]

Re: Show HN: Icepi Zero – The FPGA Raspberry Pi Zero Equivalent

#35

Post by mschuster91 »

peterburkimsher wrote: post #29

Looks great! Is there an FPGA board with HDMI in and out? I’d like to build an HDMI freeze button to transmit a single frame at the push of a button. (e.g. during a meeting or church when noticing mistakes on the PPT slides).

If you want something that's made for professional use, look at the BlackMagic ATEM series. I think that should have you covered.

Re: Show HN: Icepi Zero – The FPGA Raspberry Pi Zero Equivalent

#36

Post by peterburkimsher »

mschuster91 wrote: post #35
peterburkimsher wrote: post #29

Looks great! Is there an FPGA board with HDMI in and out? I’d like to build an HDMI freeze button to transmit a single frame at the push of a button. (e.g. during a meeting or church when noticing mistakes on the PPT slides).

If you want something that's made for professional use, look at the BlackMagic ATEM series. I think that should have you covered.

Thanks, but I’d prefer open-source rather than professional.

Re: Show HN: Icepi Zero – The FPGA Raspberry Pi Zero Equivalent

#37

Post by nsteel »

kriro wrote: post #30
Cyao wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I ask your reasoning about not selling them too cheaply? I would like to sell them cheaper then the existing boards since the price prevented me from buying one when I was 13

That's a great motivation. I just want to caution against underestimating some costs (shipping, returns) and leaving yourself a good margin of error. If your goal is to supply as cheaply as possible, you can always lower the price later. Extra profits can always go into improvement :)

And once you start taking money from people you'll have to deliver, it can alter how it feels when working on the project. It can feel a lot less fun, it needs to be worth your time.

Re: Show HN: Icepi Zero – The FPGA Raspberry Pi Zero Equivalent

#38

Post by nsteel »

peterburkimsher wrote: post #36
mschuster91 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want something that's made for professional use, look at the BlackMagic ATEM series. I think that should have you covered.

Thanks, but I’d prefer open-source rather than professional.

Have you conaidered a £10 HDMI capture card? Not open source, or much of a project, but it would Just Work.

Re: Show HN: Icepi Zero – The FPGA Raspberry Pi Zero Equivalent

#39

Post by peterburkimsher »

nsteel wrote: post #38
peterburkimsher wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, but I’d prefer open-source rather than professional.

Have you conaidered a £10 HDMI capture card? Not open source, or much of a project, but it would Just Work.

I've got an Elgato Camlink, but need the freeze button (e.g. CamLink input to a Raspberry Pi full-screen, feeding through to HDMI output, with a GPIO button to pause the live stream).

Re: Show HN: Icepi Zero – The FPGA Raspberry Pi Zero Equivalent

#40

Post by whitehexagon »

nebula8804 wrote: post #11

What is this FPGA capable of? Can any of the cores of the MISter cores be ported over to this?

I found this one so far:

https://github.com/emard/ulx3s_c64

Exciting to have an alternative to de10-nano, especially seeing the price doubled? since I got mine.

Amazing project anyway, and brings back dreams of building some arcade cabinates. Icepi Zero looks perfect for the job! I hope they arrive in the EU one day.

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