Hi All,

As we approach the last days of the Tiliqua campaign, I wanted to thank you all again for allowing me to turn this FPGA music obsession of mine into reality! Thanks for all the questions, ideas, and generous orders. At almost 300% of our goal, I can’t thank you enough.

This week, I’ll cover some new features added to the xbeam visualizer, a new version of the webflashing / updating tool, my plan for the next month, and a note about post-campaign pricing.

New xbeam features

This week I merged some new visualization features (link to PR) I’ve been working on for a while. The highlights are:

• The vectorscope mode now supports color and intensity modulation at full bandwidth (so you now have 4 channels for stroke-raster conversion: x deflection, y deflection, intensity and color)
• Both vectorscope and oscilloscope modes have tweakable delay lines, which makes it much easier to get interesting patterns out of mono signals.

To demonstrate, here’s a short video:

New WebUSB flashing tool

I’ve also been working on Tiliqua’s web-based flashing tool, which lets you flash to the bitstream slots from a web browser. On connecting to Tiliqua, it reads the flash to determine which slots are occupied, and you can then select bitstreams from your computer to flash in each slot. Here’s a quick video demo:

There’s still quite a bit to add here, for example:

• Connect this to Tiliqua's GitHub CI, so that it automatically picks up the latest version of every bitstream (no need to download / reupload bitstreams for flashing).
• Add a general 'Update' button, that simply updates every slot (and the bootloader) to the latest version, or bootstraps a Tiliqua if it was bricked (for example, if a user wipes the bootloader).

Of course, if you prefer, you can still use the command line directly to flash Tiliqua!

What’s next

Over the next months I expect to be pulled in many different directions:

• Hardware validation: play with Tiliqua R4 every day, make sure no last-minute bugs remain
• Production and sourcing: procuring components, getting PCBAs and custom screens made
• Final assembly: soldering and putting all the bits together by hand
• Hardware test: design an automatic calibration + test procedure, execute on every unit
• Packaging: figure out what packaging (maybe custom) we will use for Tiliquas/Screens
• Compliance: make sure we have every piece of documentation needed to sell this everywhere in the world
• Quickstart manual: finish documentation for using Tiliqua as a non-developer
• Developer manual: finish documentation for using Tiliqua as a developer
• Tutorial series: write some simple tutorials, working up from audio DSP chains or beamracing to complete SoCs
• More DSP blocks: some commonly-wanted things like FFT blocks or Biquads are not implemented yet.
• More bitstreams/examples: there are so many more things that Tiliqua could do and that I have ideas for but not enough time!

Having all of these things in a perfect state by November will be difficult - so for now, my top priorities are:

• Getting the hardware in people's hands (Oct/Nov timeframe)
• Ensure the developer manual (and tutorials) are in a good state
• Ensure the bootloader / update procedure is robust and simple to use

After Tiliqua is shipping and available, I would then continue adding more features, more DSP blocks, more example bitstreams and more documentation, with the hope that having a community of people with the hardware accelerates this.

As soon as the campaign funds come through (which may take another month or so), I plan to kick off PCBA production. To reduce the timeline risk, I have been careful to source most of the crucial / difficult-to-replace parts already: FPGAs, RAM, CODECs, LCD panels, deserializer chips, audio jacks, encoders and knobs. Additionally, I am (perhaps too enthusiastically) refreshing my LCSC BOM every couple days, keeping an eye on the availability of these components to reduce the risk we run into any unexpected surprises.

Post-campaign pricing

I wanted to let everyone know that Tiliqua prices are going to go up after the campaign - from $299 to $340 for Tiliqua and from $199 to $239 for the screen, so now is the best time to grab your Tiliquas if you haven’t already!

Thanks again!

I also wanted to thank the team at Crowd Supply, the amazing people behind NLnet that helped fund Tiliqua’s development, and anyone involved in developing the infrastructure Tiliqua is built on (Special mention to the Amaranth community and the team at Great Scott Gadgets! We are building on the shoulders of giants.)

I’m looking forward to getting this hardware in your hands as fast as I can, and to seeing what you make of it: whether it’s some crazy music, a wierd visualization or an entirely new bitstream. The Tiliqua adventure has just begun!