IcyBlue FPGA Feather is a breadboard-friendly, battery-backed, intuitive platform for FPGA development using a Lattice iCE40 FPGA. As the name suggests, IcyBlue FPGA Feather comes in the Adafruit Feather form factor, which means it can draw on a large ecosystem of compatible FeatherWing boards to extend its capabilities using a variety of sensors, actuators, and other interfaces.

The board provides a standard FTDI FT232H USB FIFO bridge as the programming interface to load your projects quickly onto the 2 MB SPI FLASH. In addition to the 22 GPIO broken out along the Feather’s headers, two additional GPIO are dedicated to user LEDs for that initial "blink" experience.

The onboard ICE5LP4K FPGA has dedicated RGB pins capable of driving a bright and compact Cree UHD1110 RGB LED. The onboard Microchip MCP73831 lithium polymer battery charger with a 100 mA programmed charge rate opens up plenty of mobile and embedded possibilities.

Use Cases

IcyBlue FPGA Feather incorporates the Lattice ICE5LP4K FPGA, a blank canvas in a tidy package for both novice and professional FPGA developers. IcyBlue FPGA Feather is well suited for many kinds of projects, including:

• small open source CPUs (e.g., RISC-V)
• off-chip integer digital signal processing (DSP)
• data processing bus
• simple digital logic gates
• traffic light controllers for four-way intersections

Features & Specifications

• FPGA with 3520 Logic Cells (LUT + FF) (Lattice iCE5LP4K-SG48ITR)
• USB programming interface (FTDI FT232HQ-REEL)
• 1 x RGB LED (Cree UHD1110-FKA)
• 2 x user LED
• 22 x GPIO in a Feather-compatible pinout
• Lithium polymer battery charger with 100 mA charge current (Microchip MCP73831T-2ATI/OT)
• JST-PH two-pin LiPo battery connector
• Micro USB Type-B connector
• 1.2 V, 2.5 V, and 3.3 V power domains
• 2 MB SPI FLASH (Winbond W25Q16JVUX)

Open Source

Check out the IcyBlue FPGA Feather GitHub repository for EagleCAD schematic and layout files, a datasheet, sample code, and other documentation.

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