Author: dlucey

This week I spent some time looking into the different FPGAs that we could use for our designs. Then, after discussing with my group, we pivoted to a design without the FPGA. We all agreed that using RPi0s would enable us to do wireless communication between the main RPi and the individual screens. We also agreed that it would be easier to drive the video screens if they each had their own individual RPi driving them, as opposed to one FPGA driving all 4 screens. After changing our design, I began looking into appropriate video screens that would be able to connect to the RPi0s.

This upcoming week, I want to finalize which screens we will be using and place the order of the RPi0 wireless and the screens, so that I can start working on the wireless communication.

This week I began looking at the possible options for the FPGA and the LCD screens. By next week I want to create a doc with some of the tradeoffs of our options so that we can decide which hardware we want to use for our project. Looking at the purchasing sheets there are a few FPGA options and we will likely have to choose one of those options given our budget constraints. Another big question is what LCD screens we will choose to use. I need to learn how other similar projects have interfaced between an FPGA and a touch screen, as well as what hardware they used. I think that my other major task for this week will be starting and working as a team to make our design presentation, filling in the slides for what work I’m going to be doing. All in all, I think that we are on schedule but these next few weeks will be critical to the success of our project, in particular ironing out all of the technical details, and starting to take the first steps.