FPGA + AVR for pen control?
Posted: Fri Sep 04, 2015 4:13 pm
Plan C (or whatever it's going to be called) will need to control far more pens.
Recently ran across this Spartan FPGA + AVR combo on Sparkfun.com:
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11953
Spartan 6 XC6SLX9 FPGA with 84 digital ios (3.3v or 1.2v), and an Atmega32U4 with 8 analog ins.
The Atmega32U4 is used for programming the FPGA via USB - no JTAG device needed.
With a bit of software work, the Atmega32U4 could be a 'front end' for the Spartan 6, and you could send compressed print bands to the Spartan 6 (USB/SPI/Serial to the ATmega, which decompresses them and transfers them to the Spartan 6's internal 512K of RAM as needed).
Then the Atmega32U4 could start a DC Motor + Encoder, and the Spartan 6 could drive the pen jets as the ink axis moves along. As the Spartan empties it's 512K pen FIFO, the Atmega32U4 can feed additional pen control into the pen fifo, so that the 512K is not a limiting factor for total line resolution.
Recently ran across this Spartan FPGA + AVR combo on Sparkfun.com:
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11953
Spartan 6 XC6SLX9 FPGA with 84 digital ios (3.3v or 1.2v), and an Atmega32U4 with 8 analog ins.
The Atmega32U4 is used for programming the FPGA via USB - no JTAG device needed.
With a bit of software work, the Atmega32U4 could be a 'front end' for the Spartan 6, and you could send compressed print bands to the Spartan 6 (USB/SPI/Serial to the ATmega, which decompresses them and transfers them to the Spartan 6's internal 512K of RAM as needed).
Then the Atmega32U4 could start a DC Motor + Encoder, and the Spartan 6 could drive the pen jets as the ink axis moves along. As the Spartan empties it's 512K pen FIFO, the Atmega32U4 can feed additional pen control into the pen fifo, so that the 512K is not a limiting factor for total line resolution.