What is it?

A board in the DIP-20 form factor containing an FPGA with 1280 logic elements. The FPGA contains its own programming flash and internal oscillator, so it is the perfect part for small, self-contained devices.

Why did you make it?

There is already a board with a fairly small size available with this specific FPGA (the TinyFPGA A2), but I wanted to take this a whole step further. The FPGA offers 18 GPIO, so a DIP-20 would be a perfect match, if I could only get it to work. And it actually did somehow fit on a double-sided PCB.

What makes it special?

The obvious thing here is the extremely small form factor. It is specifically designed to fit on a breadboard with ample space around for wires. It can of course also be soldered into a PCB or fit into a suitable IC socket. Note, that it will not fit a machined precision socket, as the pins are to thin for that.

Programming header options

You can solder in the provided pins to allow programming with any Lattice-compatible programmer, or you can leave the holes unpopulated to use pogo-pins instead.

Initial test program

The FPGA comes with a test program pre-installed that plays a simple animation when you connect LEDs (with a 1k series resistor) from all 18 IO ports to GND. Do not drive these pins externally before uploading your own program into the FPGA.

Power supply

The device can operate with a supply voltage from 2.5V to 3.3V. Power pins are denoted with "G" (ground) and "V" (VCC = positive). All IO pins run on the same voltages as is supplied as power. It is safe for all IO pins to source or sink up to 2mA, which is enough to drive LEDs (using 1k as current limiting resistors works nicely).