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HOME / PRODUCT CATEGORIES / FPGA / MOJO V3 FPGA DEVELOPMENT BOARD
Customer Reviews
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Mojo v3 FPGA Development Board
DEV-11953 ROHS
14
DESCRIPTION FEATURES DOCUMENTS
Spartan 6 XC6SLX9 FPGA
84 digital IO pins
8 analog inputs
8 general purpose LEDs
1 LED to show when the FPGA is correctly configured
On board voltage regulation that can handle 4.8-12V
ATmega32U4 used for configuring the FPGA, USB communications, and
reading the analog pins
On board flash memory to store the FPGA configuration file.
Mojo v3 FPGA Development Board Product Help and Resources
SKILLS NEEDED
Core Skill: Programming
If a board needs code or communicates somehow, you're going to need to know how to program or interface with it. The programming skill is all about
communication and code.
Skill Level: Expert - You should be extremely comfortable programming on various hardware in several languages.
See all skill levels
5
Core Skill: Electrical Prototyping
If it requires power, you need to know how much, what all the pins do, and how to hook it up. You may need to reference datasheets, schematics, and
know the ins and outs of electronics.
Skill Level: Noob - You don't need to reference a datasheet, but you will need to know basic power requirements.
See all skill levels
1
COMMENTS 47 REVIEWS 14
4.4 out of 5
Based on 14 ratings:
3 of 3 found this helpful:
Great FPGA Dev Board!
about 3 years ago by Otzen42 verified purchaser
It may not have the bells and whistles of other dev boards, but I think this is an excellent product. It handles the
configuration of the FPGA on power-up, and breaks out all of the remaining I/O. It is sized very well for
embedding inside a project and is easily powered. Also has an on-board oscillator to provide a clock to the
FPGA, as well as a button for a reset and a handful of LEDs for debug. They even break out the JTAG
interface if you wish to use it. Also, the analog inputs via the AVR are an excellent addition!
The only major downfall of note is that all I/O are configured for 3.3V LVTTL. This is a slight annoyance if you
wish to use LVDS or other signaling standards, but I can’t say that it has held me back yet. Also, the LEDs were
placed on global clock inputs which seems like an odd choice for such valuable input pins. However, they can
still be used for clocking if you aren’t worried about SI from the LED hanging off the pin. So far I haven’t found
a need to provide it with a global clock other than the on-board oscillator, so again, not an issue for me.
I have not used their programming GUI yet (I’m a Makefile person myself), but the Mojo works great for me. A
tool is provided to upload any .bit file onto the Mojo that you wish. Haven’t taken advantage of the Arduino boot
loader on the AVR yet either, but it is nice to know I have the option if I want it.
If you are new to FPGAs, check the Embedded Micro website for a variety of excellent tutorials. As mentioned
in the comments, there is a LOT more documentation out there for the Spartan 6 if you check the Xilinx website
(particularly for those familiar with FPGAs who wish to take advantage of the more complex primitives).
1 of 1 found this helpful:
Awesome FPGA Learning Board
about 3 years ago by Member #588542 verified purchaser
I have been away from doing FPGA work for about 10 years. I was a little bit timid at first, but having the Mojo
V3 board and the support from the Embedded Micro website was awesome. Justin Rajewski is a great teacher.
I’ve learned so much from the website. I would highly recommended the Mojo V3 board to anyone who wants to
learn FPGA. The Mojo V3 board is very easy to work with. It is very well documented. Justin, thank you for
making this board and share it with the world. Your grateful student.
1 of 1 found this helpful:
A great board, massive toolset
about 3 years ago by kallisti5 verified purchaser
This little board makes getting into FPGA extremely easy. The board is compact and feels well built. The pin-
headers work great when you throw in some M/M jumper wires (from SF). The biggest down side is that you
have to download the latest vintage ISE tools from Xilinx which are around 6.5GB. I prefixed ISE with vintage as
Xilinx’s latest development toolsuite (Vivado) doesn’t run with the older Spartan-6 :-(
Other than the issues above, a great way to get into FPGA’s! Working on driving HDMI with mine right now!
2 of 2 found this helpful:
awesome
about 3 years ago by Member #661764 verified purchaser
in the future, id like to see capes and sheilds from this manufacturer. in other words, i’d like to see capes for
beaglebone,raspberrypi, and a shield for arduino.
4 of 4 found this helpful:
Great Product to Explore FPGAs
about 3 years ago by KJ6MSG verified purchaser
I bought this product to explore the world of FPGAs and I’m glad I did. The tutorials on Embedded Micro are
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great and the added functionality of an onboard Arduino is a bonus. I use it with a 2012 MacBook Pro Retina,
running Linux Mint in Parallels Desktop 10. I’ve had no issues with the Xilinx ISE Design Suite software or the
Mojo Loader in the virtual machine. Of note, you do need a Micro USB cable and an optional 5-12 V DC power
supply. The documentation is a little lacking, but it is out there (dig through the Xilinx datasheets and the Mojo
v3 schematic).
1 of 5 found this helpful:
Could not use
about 3 years ago by Member #715049 verified purchaser
I thought I would be able to use this as a starting platform for some design work I was doing. The examples
looked close.My background is a senior electrical eng- primarily analog- but have designed computers from
the gate level and use lots of design software. I liked the idea of being able to work from a schematic- make
changes and retest. None of the spark-fun samples were schematic based. I tried to work backwards to create
schematics and that did not work. After wasting about 20 to 30 hours I set it aside and have bought another
system.
Best FPGA intro I have come across
about 4 months ago by Member #795843 verified purchaser
The learning curve for FPGAs is admittedly somewhat steep. I was pleasantly surprised that I got the first demo
working in just over an hour, and the slowest part was getting all the Xilinx software downloaded and getting the
license set up. I was very pleasantly surprised that everything seems to be working without issues on a very
current Linux release (Ubuntu 17.10). Aside from the basic demos I haven’t actually done anything with this,
but the point was to learn the technology, and it is accomplishing that.
FPGAs are awesome!
about 3 months ago by Member #868037 verified purchaser
Gonna have tons of fun with it
A lot better than the ICE Stick for number of I/Os
about 2 years ago by elligl verified purchaser
Has a lot of usable I/Os, has and IDE that takes care of “compiling” and transferring over to the board.My only
complaint on this is the the IDE needs a bit of work. They also have own HDL, which I haven’t touched, since I
am more comfortable with Verilog.
A good board
about a year ago by Member #733214 verified purchaser
Just a bunch of IO and no extras that you don’t need.
Good, But...
last year by theBecwar verified purchaser
WARNING TO WINDOWS 8/10 USERS: Xilinx has made it abundantly clear that they have no intention to
support the Spartan 6 going forward. The toolchain that you have to install in order to make the Mojo IDE build
your project is not supported. The 64 bit version of the toolchain doesn’t work on Windows 10. If you do use
Windows 10, I’ve written up how I got it working in the forum (https://forum.sparkfun.com/viewtopic.php?
f=43&t=45971) but your mileage may vary.
Other than that the tutorials are awesome. Mojo IDE is clean and works reasonably well. The board itself is
really well put together. I like the aesthetics of the black solder mask with the green silkscreen, which looks
better in person than in the pictures on the site. The price is also good for what it is.
Great minimal dev board
about 9 months ago by Funkenjaeger verified purchaser
I came to this board from a Lattice iCEblink40 with which I had been growing increasingly frustrated as the
manufacturer seems to have effectively abandoned it in place. When I switched to the Mojo, I had my existing
project ported over and working within a couple hours and I’ve never looked back. The thorough silkscreen
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pinout markings made it a breeze to hook up and create a new constraints file, and loading via Mojo Loader
workeed without any hassle. The board’s small footprint and minimalist design makes it a good candidate for
simply embedding into a project by putting a custom shield on top. I wouldn’t mind seeing a couple of user
pushbuttons added off in the one empty corner of the board, just for rudimentary debugging.
I did not try to use the vendor’s custom IDE; I used Xilinx ISE WebPACK; I got it running just fine in minutes on
Win10 x64 by using the instructions that Xilinx published on their support page (swapping out two DLL files).
Xilinx now claims to have a Win10 version of ISE due to popular demand, however I was informed by my rep
that it is not actually a native Win10 application, but rather a canned Linux VM running the Linux version of ISE.
You can currently only obtain that by getting it from a sales rep, so enterprising hobbyists may prefer to just set
up their own VM if they want to go that route.
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