New toys of the new vendor plus future ideas
After finishing BSEE at the Kaunas University of Technology, I’ve got a job at TERRA Electronics, so the time, I’ve spended before for blogging and doing some interesting microcontroller and FPGA stuff, has narrowed almost to nothing. However, that “alsmost” isn’t nothing at all, so I’ve got some new toys to play around. Read the rest of this entry »
Hacking Hantek scope
Posted by admin in Uncategorized on January 27, 2011
Since I am a last course student, I had to think about my own measurement equipment, so after many reviews of Rigol, UNI-T, Hantek, etc I have chosen Hantek DSO5102B, which is easily hackable to DSO5202B. Its actually funny, that Tekway, Hantek and Protek scopes are ideally the same inside. I don’t know about Protek, but when I have opened my Hantek, all of the PCBs were marked Protek logo 
. Lets check some specs. Read the rest of this entry »
Everyone likes freebies!
Merry X-Mas everyone! A short post about some gifts/freebies and contests!
Some time ago I’ve applied for Renesas DesignCon contest, which guaranteed me a RX62N devboard. A contest is still running, but the limit of free boards is reached. However, You can still enter the contest! Ok, thats a bit advertise, but not the point of the blog. So, Renesas sent me a board using FEDEX. Thats great, except the board stuck on customs and FEDEX asked me about 100USD to make the package clear. A one hundred dollars from a STUDENT… FFS! So I’ve rejected to pay and asked to send it back. Thanks Renesas guys to care about the situation, but I believe everything will be ok next time. Read the rest of this entry »
Update: USBee AX Pro – the making of
Posted by admin in Uncategorized on October 17, 2010
Hello! Since I got many requests to show the files of USBee, which are available at Russian forums, I will upload all the files HERE. Feel free to update the schematic, redo the board, improve it or do anything else – just publish it here! I am waiting for successful comments Read the rest of this entry »
USBEE AX Pro clone
Posted by admin in Uncategorized on September 15, 2010
Time for doing bad things! This time, I am writing about USBEE AX Pro logic analyzer/oscilloscope (worth 1045$ !) clone, which I found somewhere in Russian forum. Even how expensive and shitty this thing looks like, this cloned version has some improvements! Let’s see what it can… Read the rest of this entry »
Quick update on OpenCores + some news
Hello again! Just wanted to write a new post and say thanks to Armandas, who has written a testbench for the SPI DAC core. The whole core now available at OpenCores project SPI DAC – check it out!
Was a little bit hard to upload the source using that old SVN software, however I am moving to GIT and hopefully I will be able to publish my buggy source code on github! So studies started, I am time limited per day, but I am still doing some work creating a MAC core for my LAN83C185 PHY. Hopefully, I will be running some echo server soon.
Opencore: Quad 12bit DAC (LTC2624) in VHDL
Hello my readers, if I have any Summer is going on, my studies in FPGAs should also have an increase, but I had only a couple of days for vacation. Work work work! 
However I will keep my post short. This time I have implemented LTC2624 Quad 12bit DAC, which is placed on my Spartan-3E devkit, in VHDL. The module could be a bit tidier, but I think it is very easy to understand, plus I added some comments in the source. Read the rest of this entry »
Every fail is a lesson
Hello dear readers! Another one post with fail after success So I’ve managed to make SPI working on FPGA, but my first try using shift_left() did not work, so the solution is to use an array with counting array number, like array(i) and count incoming bytes after FF (not 0xFF, its FLIP-FLOP).
Ok back to my post. I’ve got 800×480 LED backlight LCD panel, which has 40 pins (yes, exact the same number as on my FX2 breakout board). However, I can’t remember LCD manufacturer. So they gave me some connectors and I had to solder it on breakout board. This is how I made it:
The wires I used was from very old HDD IDE 40 wires cable. Read the rest of this entry »
Altera BeMicro – expect nothing for small money
Hello again! Since I had to start forever loop on my ToDo task “Update blog”, here I am again! Ok, this entry will be about my new devboard, which I got from Arrow and its called Altera BeMicro. Here is how it looks like:
Looks really small heh? It has FTDI USB to 2xSerial chip, Cyclone III EP3C16F256 FPGA, ISSI SRAM, 8 LEDs, edge connector with 80 pins and an empty space for EPCS4 memory. Read the rest of this entry »
A little update
Hello my readers, long time – no talk . Work, studies and my lazyness lead to making this blog almost dead. Additionally, I have bought a new domain (www.scrts.net) and was thinking to revive this blog on the other server, but many blog fallowers asked me to update my blog as is. So thats it, I have made a major comeback!
Firstly, my bad, but my FPGA designs were slowed, but I am still trying to learn design in small steps, so here You can see my additional boards. 
I have bought a breakout board for FX2 connector, which was a waste of money since the FX2 connector has 100 pins, remove JTAG pins, additional clock, many pins are connected together with LEDS on the board or other devices, also its better not to connect Your LVTTL pins to differential IO pins, finally we have about 20 useful pins… Anyway, as seen in the photo I have made two additional boards by myself. The one on the left is a board with Atmel ATmega8L, which runs from 3.3V, connected to the FPGA for I2C and SPI tests. Read the rest of this entry »