[HN Gopher] Interesting SPI Routing with iCE40 FPGAs
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       Interesting SPI Routing with iCE40 FPGAs
        
       Author : hasheddan
       Score  : 88 points
       Date   : 2025-11-10 13:40 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (danielmangum.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (danielmangum.com)
        
       | Graziano_M wrote:
       | I enjoyed playing with FPGAs and all the open-source tooling
       | makes it so much quicker and easier.
       | 
       | That said, I never understood the appeal of the FOMU. It's cool
       | that it fits in a USB port, but so little IO, there's not a lot I
       | can think to do with it.
       | 
       | Has anyone heard of some cool projects that others have done with
       | this hardware?
        
         | CamperBob2 wrote:
         | I suppose you could create your own crypto wallet or something,
         | but agreed, an FPGA without I/O is not a very interesting or
         | useful thing. You'd be better off with a conventional
         | microcontroller, I'd think.
        
           | duskwuff wrote:
           | > You'd be better off with a conventional microcontroller,
           | I'd think.
           | 
           | Or with a more conventional FPGA development board like
           | Icebreaker:
           | 
           | https://1bitsquared.com/products/icebreaker
        
         | Aurornis wrote:
         | The primary appeal of these minimalist devices is to get people
         | started as cheaply as possible.
         | 
         | They exist at a price point where it's an easy decision to pick
         | one up on a whim and spend an evening installing the toolchain
         | and building some little hello world tutorial.
        
         | sylefeb wrote:
         | Hi there, a while ago I had a ton of fun with the Fomu:
         | https://x.com/sylefeb/status/1571489610647371776
         | 
         | Fantastic little device! Relating to the post, I also happened
         | to brick one erasing the Foboot bootloader by writing the flash
         | beyond the limit (there was a bug regarding writing to
         | addresses beyond max at the time, but then I was pushing the
         | limit by abusing dfu-utils :)
         | https://x.com/sylefeb/status/1391898565061001225 ). I tried to
         | use the programming pads but at the time was lacking the skills
         | and it ended in disaster (ripped pads...).
         | 
         | The code repo for the overall project is here:
         | https://github.com/sylefeb/tinygpus
        
       | ChrisGammell wrote:
       | I aggressively enjoyed this post
        
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       (page generated 2025-11-10 23:00 UTC)