iolinker FPGA boards: Rewire and extend microcontroller IOs

iolinker FPGA boards Rewire and extend microcontroller IOs-kickstarter

Watch the official Video here

iolinker boards are flexible IO interfaces, controlled via UART, SPI or I2C, that offer

IO extension,
IO linking,
and PWM generation.
Up to 127 iolinker boards can be chained, to allow for enormous IO extension where needed.

IO Extension

The FPGA board presented here features 49 GPIOs, all usable for IO extension with an easy to use library, on Arduino, Raspberry and on your PC.

FPGA reprogramming

The features described above do not require you to reprogram the FPGA. If you are an FPGA developer or intend to become one, you can reprogram the board however and reuse it for another application.

The FPGA boards feature a JTAG interface that you can use for flashing. Use a Lattice HW-USBN-2A compatible USB cable (21€ on eBay) and the free Lattice Diamond software to get the job done! A short introduction on how that part works is online already.

iolinker software: New features ahead

The FPGA software is complex, and uses up the hardware of the FPGA entirely. We can offer different features and there will be more product versions in the future. But you can also reprogram the FPGA with the other software versions. Among our ideas for those are:

A specialized PWM version, with 49 PWM outputs.
More PWM features.
Versions that allow for extra UART or SPI interfaces, and communication with those from the UART / SPI / I2C interface used for configuring the iolinker chip.
Versions that translate Low / High to Tristate / High or Low / High to Low / Tristate output, for parallel bus designs.
A board with microcontroller (cheap ATtiny / ATmega?) on it as well, that stores default pin configuration in its EEPROM, and integrates the self-test part (i.e. verify digital levels and test for short-circuits), to save the user application the extra work.