Hey Everyone!
We are getting very close to the end of the iCEBreaker crowd funding campaign. We have crossed a major milestone of 300% funding! Thank you to everyone for your support!
Returning back to the US
Its likely while you are reading this update Piotr is on an airplane flying back to the US from his Europe trip. Piotr already has a lengthy to-do list of things he will be working on as soon as he arrives back at 1BitSquared HQ. We will be kicking into high gear assembling early bird iCEBreakers and ordering parts for the main production run.
New iCEBreaker tier
Some of you asked us to add an "iCEBreaker LED panel Kit" tier without a LED Panel included, as you already have panels of your own or you want to use a different one than what we include in the kit. We have added it now. We are looking forward to seeing your LED panel creations!
TheCurrentSource FPGA video
Our friend TheCurrentSource has created a really well edited, funny and easy to understand video featuring the iCEBreaker and explaining in very simple terms what an FPGA is and how it differs from a Microcontroller. You should definitely check it out!
The Amp Hour - Open FPGA toolchains at 35C3
Chris Gammel from The Amp Hour decided to send his field recording gear to Piotr in order to make a remote podcast. Piotr stepped into the role of The Amp Hour remote correspondent and invited Clifford Wolf and Dave Shah to talk about the current state and future of open source FPGA tools. We hope you enjoy the conversation:
https://theamphour.com/423-open-fpga-toolchains-at-35c3
3D printed iCEBreaker case
At 35C3 Piotr met Pim De Groot. Pim generously offered to create a 3D printable case for the iCEBreaker. It looks amazing! It has special features to guide the LED through the case, so that they are well distinguishable, and exposes all the connectors except the CRESET, due to mechanical constrains.
You can find the design files as well as 3D printable files in Pim’s github repository.
That’s it for now
That is all for today. It was a very full week of amazing campaign progress and community contributions. We have a few days left in the campaign, as always we are very greatful to those who can spread the word about the campaign far and wide. We really want to bring FPGA development to as many people as possible.
Cheers,
Danika and Piotr