when [Ezra Thomas] To provide inspiration for his advanced design projects, he only needs to look at his own robot. In 1979, Frank DaCosta’s classic book “How to Build Your Own Work Robot Pet” (How to Build Your Own Work Robot Pet) was built during his high school. [Ezra] Have struggled to understand the many limitations and complexities of the 74xx series of logic chips around its 8085 processor.
[Ezra] Began to seek to reproduce this monster in miniature, calling it Pets on a chipThe use of modern FPGA chips can shrink electronic devices by an order of magnitude and provide flexibility for future expansion. Implementing an 8-bit CPU on a large-size FPGA leaves enough room for VGA GPU, motor controller, serial UART, etc. CPU programming is handled by a custom assembler written in Python.
result? The weight is reduced by 12 times, the power consumption is reduced by 13 times, the performance is better, and there is a lot of room for growth. [Ezra] It implies that I2C bus expansion and higher-level programming languages make software development no longer an obstacle.
The pet on the chip is a well-designed project, and we hope we can see more projects like this [Ezra] As time goes by. Watch his Pet On A Chip in the video below the break.
if [Ezra]FPGA escapades If you want to know how to get started, you can check this FPGA introduction from the 2019 Hackaday Superconference. If you have your own FPGA creation to share, please let us know through the prompt line!