5 ms·

I'm in a very similar situation! I haven't "made the jump" and probably won't in the near future (or even at all). Some ideas for projects I have pursued: -

by meuk 8y ago

I'm in a very similar situation! I haven't "made the jump" and probably won't in the near future (or even at all). Some ideas for projects I have pursued: - A CPU (you can make this as simple or complicated as you want) - A rotozoomer (rotates and zooms a picture), which requires you to output some kind of graphical signal - Implementation of some communication protocols (I2C, SPI, UART)

godelmachine 8y ago
May I ask why you have decided to not "make the jump"?
- meuk 8y ago
  There seem to be many more jobs in software. The jobs I found in more hardware-related fields seem to be harder to get in (especially if you're not an electrical engineer), and seem to have lower salaries. Besides, there only seem to be hardware jobs around cities with technical universities - which means I have to either give up the place I just moved in to, or travel about 3 hours a day.
LastZactionHero 8y ago
Awesome- what hardware are you working with? Hit me up (email in profile) if you want to chat about what you're working on.
- meuk 8y ago
  Low-end development boards from sketchy companies ;) I own a Mimas v2 from Nimato Labs, and a miniSpartan 6+ from Scarab hardware (I think the first is around 50 dollars and the second around 100, but they both have less expansive versions as well). The miniSpartan is quite awesome since it's so tiny and has a slightly newer FPGA on it, but the support from Scarab is absolutely zero (from Nimato labs, I remember asking something once and getting a timely reply, so I guess the Nimato support is a lot better). However, the HDMI on the miniSpartan is nice to have if you want to have more colors (the Mimas supports only 8-bit colors on the VGA signal, which gives a posterized look). I don't know if I have much to offer since my experience is very limited, but I dropped you an email anyway. I do want to write something about installing and using Xilinx ISE (there are already quite a few articles explaining this), and also getting it to work on Windows 8 or 10 (which is explained in [1]). [1] https://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/guide-getting-xilinx-ise-to-work-with-windows-8-64-bit/ https://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/guide-getting...

by meuk 8y ago

godelmachine 8y ago

May I ask why you have decided to not "make the jump"?

meuk 8y ago
There seem to be many more jobs in software. The jobs I found in more hardware-related fields seem to be harder to get in (especially if you're not an electrical engineer), and seem to have lower salaries. Besides, there only seem to be hardware jobs around cities with technical universities - which means I have to either give up the place I just moved in to, or travel about 3 hours a day.

LastZactionHero 8y ago

Awesome- what hardware are you working with? Hit me up (email in profile) if you want to chat about what you're working on.

meuk 8y ago
Low-end development boards from sketchy companies ;) I own a Mimas v2 from Nimato Labs, and a miniSpartan 6+ from Scarab hardware (I think the first is around 50 dollars and the second around 100, but they both have less expansive versions as well). The miniSpartan is quite awesome since it's so tiny and has a slightly newer FPGA on it, but the support from Scarab is absolutely zero (from Nimato labs, I remember asking something once and getting a timely reply, so I guess the Nimato support is a lot better). However, the HDMI on the miniSpartan is nice to have if you want to have more colors (the Mimas supports only 8-bit colors on the VGA signal, which gives a posterized look). I don't know if I have much to offer since my experience is very limited, but I dropped you an email anyway. I do want to write something about installing and using Xilinx ISE (there are already quite a few articles explaining this), and also getting it to work on Windows 8 or 10 (which is explained in [1]). [1] https://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/guide-getting-xilinx-ise-to-work-with-windows-8-64-bit/ https://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/guide-getting...