[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Marketplaces for Embedded/FPGA Developers
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Ask HN: Marketplaces for Embedded/FPGA Developers
I have what I imagine to be a fairly simple project for a talented
FPGA coder. While I know of some marketplaces for finding generic
software developers, I don't know whether there are any good ones
in the embedded space. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.
Author : ckemere
Score : 35 points
Date : 2024-09-18 14:38 UTC (4 days ago)
| brudgers wrote:
| Do you have a budget that isn't based on your imagination?
| ckemere wrote:
| Maybe $5-10k?
| gaudat wrote:
| Do you need latency measured in nanoseconds or multiplexing
| hundreds of sensors? Otherwise it makes a lot more sense to
| use a Cortex-M or Cortex-A.
| user_7832 wrote:
| Aren't FPGAs also helpful for high bandwidth/throughput
| applications like continuous input from a camera? (I'm not
| an FPGA expert, just curious)
| schobi wrote:
| Right. Fpgas shine if you have high data rates (multi
| Gigabit on single/dual pins), low latency, lots of
| similar computation (multiply accumulate), a lot of
| complex pipelined logic and if you need to be really
| compact at the same time.
|
| The effort to get this running is also crazy huge. Large
| designs "compile" for hours, simulation and in situ
| testing can take months. If your fpga has 1000 pins, even
| PCB design, manufacturing and debugging is hard, if you
| even have a sufficient scope at hand. I would guess 10x
| compared to solving a problem with an embedded cpu, which
| is 10x compared to solving a problem on a standard PC.
| Expect another 10x if you go from Fpga to custom ASICs.
|
| I'm curious what could be expected / possible with 5-10k.
| Tweaking an existing design, on proven and available
| hardware? Testbench for a module only? Maybe "just"
| VHDL/verilog coding (instead of dealing with the Fpga)?
|
| (sorry, no marketplace)
| jononor wrote:
| Many of the common usecases, like camera input, will have
| dedicated peripheral a available in a System on Chip or
| microcontroller. Which would then generally be preferred
| over FPGA because it will require less custom
| development, quality assurance, etc.
| user_7832 wrote:
| That's true, I was thinking of the more "extreme" use
| cases like those cameras which sample at hundreds
| (thousands?) of images a second.
| gchadwick wrote:
| Does depend upon the project but I suspect this is far too
| low. Only thing you're likely to get in this price range is a
| small addition / tweak to an existing design.
|
| A very minimal design from scratch that uses existing off the
| shelf hardware with no interfacing to anything remotely
| complex and no follow on support (pretty much developer hands
| it over showing some smoke test works and you're on your own
| from there) could also fit into this budget.
| toast0 wrote:
| Here's your engineering plan for that budget.
|
| Make up some design documents and put up a splashy
| crowdsourcing campaign. Collect, but don't spend the
| deposits. Trickle out some progress content over about a
| year. Look for knock offs on aliexpress, return deposits.
| jononor wrote:
| Can you provide some details about the problem to be solved?
| jononor wrote:
| Arrow Electronics has been involved with freelancer.com for many
| years, so it might be ok for FPGA. I think an old colleague used
| it for some embedded stuff (not FPGA) and was pretty happy with
| it. Upwork also has FPGA category, but I know even less about it.
| svnt wrote:
| The marketplace for this, as compared with generic software
| developers, would be so small and infrequently used as to be
| basically nonfunctional.
|
| I would recommend searching for terms of art such as vhdl and
| verilog in normal freelancer sites.
|
| Most embedded folks don't do FPGAs, the subset that do is mostly
| employed in situations that don't permit freelancing.
| transpute wrote:
| _> Fairly simple project for a talented FPGA coder_
|
| The open hardware community (e.g. https://fossi-
| foundation.org/events/archive and http://www.enjoy-digital.fr)
| works with FPGAs. Contributors can be found on social media and
| video playlists from past conferences. If your project can be
| done by modification of existing open hardware, there would be
| less cost and risk.
| jaeckel wrote:
| If you give a short description of what you need and contact
| details, your search is maybe already over, as on this site are
| also some freelancers with FPGA&|Embedded experience.
| synthos wrote:
| You could probably post it on http://fpgajobs.com/
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