FPGA Project Assistance: FPGA and Component Selection Assistance

FPGA Project Assistance: FPGA and Component Selection

Hello, I am a student taking a VHDL course and I am looking into FPGA's that could potentially be used with my desired project. The project I am looking into utilizes a touch screen (2-4" in size). I have searched this site and a few others on the web, but not much information is provided.

One project used a Altera Cyclone II FPGA (Project Link). The main problem is that it is twice the amount I am looking to spend. I am looking to spend about $100 on an FPGA. There are also Xilinx Spartan FPGA's, but I am not sure which one to choose.

The touch screens I have looked into are:

**broken link removed**
Graphic LCD 128x64 Touch Screen
**broken link removed** (This seems like the best choice)
**broken link removed**

My project goals are a follows:
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1. Have text display in one of the corners of the screen
2. Upon touching the screen, the screen changes color and the text updates

For example, I touch the screen the screen displays red, and the text updates to red.
So, it's a simple concept, but I'm not sure how easy that would be to implement.
I am trying to keep the project simple since I unfortunately only have about a month and a half to do it.

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So, the questions I have are as follows:

1. Which FPGA ($100) can be used for a touch screen based project (Cyclone/Spartan/other)
2. Out of the touch screen LCDs I am looking at, which would be a good choice (or can you recommend a better alternative)
3. What other components maybe required?
3. Do you think this project is feasible? (Should I go in another direction- Should I use a basic LCD screen to output text and use buttons for input instead?)

I would appreciate any help on the matter. Thank you.

Have you looked at Actel? particularly the Smartfusion products. These seem ideally suited to your needs and the biggest (A2F500) comes in at around 50 bucks in low volume. You would probably need some external memory to do the frame swapping and possible a crystal oscillator, depending on the clock stability requirements. There is a 100MHz RC osc built in but its only about 1% over industrial temperature. If you want pure FPGA then the Proasic3 might meet your needs. The A3P1000 is about $50 and can swallow a whole load of logic. This does not have a built-in RC, so you would need a crystal oscillator

Cant help you much with the screen though as I am an FPGA specialist

C

All of the development tools, both hardware (Libero) and software (Softconsole) are completely free as well for any device with 1,500,000 system gates or less which turns out to be almost everything

The project is certainly feasible. In terms of other components, you may need a few buffers/line drivers depending on the screen, maybe a block of RAM, some power supply components, connectors etc

---------- Post added at 10:30 ---------- Previous post was at 10:28 ----------

I forgot to mention - All Actel devices are flash based so do not require external support devices like boot proms etc