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PHANTOM® Omni™ Force Feedback Joystick Acquisition Engine for Hand-held X-Ray Ambient Dashboard BigDog Quadruped Robot Control Board Sports Medicine Testing and Rehabilitation Systems Prototype Bicycle Power Meter Display Reader for the Blind Faxview: A Pocket-Sized Fax Machine RF Power Amplifier Predistortion Engine RedXDefense iModule Miniature USB Camera Brushless DC Motor Driver Retrofit 128 Line High Reliability Hot Swap Phone Switch Lottery Ticket Vending Machines Molecular Characterization Detector Tera Ohm Meter Low-Cost Audio Micro Ohm Meter Bi-Pedal Research Robot Laser Diode Driver DVI Video Development Board LittleDog Robot Military Standard 1275D Power Supply PCI Motion Control Interface PCI 4DI Imaging System Medical Cosmetic Laser Image Processor Fingerprint ID System Production Test System for Zeo Personal Sleep Coach Black-I Landshark Ground Vehicle Robot Blackfin Stamplet Board and TCP/IP Engine Board Tester Canoe Controller for the Handicapped Combination CO-Smoke Detector Force-Feedback Joystick Controller Daedalus Human-Powered Aircraft Wastewater Sludge Detector Touch Panel and Display Interface Thermal Imaging Camera Synthesized Sine Wave Generator Steganographic Audio Processor Quadrature Encoder Phased Array Microphone Pharmaceutical Vending Machine Personal Relaxation Device Lung Impedance Analyzer Laser Hair Removal Speed Sensor
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PDF Blackfin Stamplet Board and TCP/IP Engine

System Overview

The Blackfin Stamplet is constructed around the Analog Devices BF531/2 Blackfin processor and a flexible Intel/Altera Cyclone II-series FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array). It stores UBOOT, Linux, and simple application programs in its on-board Flash memory, and connects to an external FTP server to access larger application programs and datasets. It executes its programs from on-board SDRAM running at the maximum Blackfin bus speed of 125MHz. It's on-board 6000 Logic Equivalent (LE) sized Intel/Altera FPGA may be configured to implement a variety of custom peripherals or interfaces. With careful planning, Bolton Engineering was able to fit the Blackfin Stamplet and Ethernet interface onto a 2.25" x 2.90" board of only 6-layers. An enhanced version of this board with more Flash memory is in development.

TCP/IP Engine

One of the first applications for the Stamplet was a configurable TCP/IP Engine to dump large amounts of data from an experimental Software Radio System. The Stamplet took in 16-bit data at high speed and dumped it out to an FTP server. The FPGA implemented a straightforward 16-bit interface into the Blackfin memory via the Blackfin's Programmable Parallel Interface (PPI). A simple handshake protocol controlled data flow. All software was written as an application-level program under Linux. The system was able to sustain an over 30MBPS data rate through a dedicated Ethernet link to an FTP server.

Project Scope

Bolton Engineering wrote the specification, designed the schematics, wrote and simulated the FPGA, designed the 6-layer circuit board, bought up UBOOT and Linux, wrote driver application in 'C', debugged the system, and delivered over fifty boards to several clients.

Blackfin Stamplet Board and TCP/IP Engine

Bolton Engineering was working on several Blackfin projects and needed a miniature development board that could be used to jump-start software development. Two of the projects needed to run Linux, and also required significant programmable logic content. Using the Analog Devices Blackfin Stamp board as a starting point, Bolton Engineering designed the Blackfin Stamplet.