Author Topic: Arrow DECA MAX 10 board for $37  (Read 40923 times)

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Offline slburris

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Re: Arrow DECA MAX 10 board for $37
« Reply #50 on: February 26, 2021, 12:24:45 pm »
I finally heard back from Arrow.

“ Thank you for your interest in Arrow.com. In reference to the quote you requested on 2/21/2021.
The requested part is not currently listed and may require further research to quote.”

Say what?  Their site says: Total In Stock: 1,397 parts

They really don’t want to sell these boards.
 

Online RoGeorge

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Re: Arrow DECA MAX 10 board for $37
« Reply #51 on: February 26, 2021, 12:37:36 pm »
My guess is the listed stock is only ordered/reserved by Arrow, but not yet in their storage house, so they don't know for sure when they can ship, and at what price will be the new lot, maybe the hardware will be slightly different (e.g. more RAM) and so on.

Since the previous sell was a promotion to liquidate the existing stock, most probably the new price will not be the same.

Offline migry

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Re: Arrow DECA MAX 10 board for $37
« Reply #52 on: February 27, 2021, 03:20:48 pm »
Yep! I got the exact same reply "The requested part is not currently listed and may require further research to quote".
 

Offline slburris

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Re: Arrow DECA MAX 10 board for $37
« Reply #53 on: March 10, 2021, 05:03:59 pm »
And nearly two weeks later these are still in stock but unorderable from Arrow.  At that price point, I was thinking of a few projects that could use a nice FPGA board.  I could spin my own board, but when someone has already done the hard work for you on SDRAM and HDMI, it’s nice to take advantage of that.
 

Offline woofy

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Re: Arrow DECA MAX 10 board for $37
« Reply #54 on: March 10, 2021, 05:46:44 pm »
Though I couldn't find a price for the 10M50DAF484C6G, Mouser sells the 10M50DAF484C8G for $137 and the 10M50DAF484C7G for $152. That makes $37 for the DECA an amazing bargain. Someone somewhere had to be subsidising that price, accidentally or otherwise.

Offline BrianHG

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Re: Arrow DECA MAX 10 board for $37
« Reply #55 on: March 28, 2021, 12:44:31 am »
 

Offline slburris

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Re: Arrow DECA MAX 10 board for $37
« Reply #56 on: April 02, 2021, 03:00:31 am »
It’s been awhile, so I asked them to quote me 10 boards.  Will they offer them to me for $370?  My bet is they will do the “part is not currently listed” thing again, but we will see.
 

Offline Scrts

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Re: Arrow DECA MAX 10 board for $37
« Reply #57 on: April 14, 2021, 02:37:06 am »
Seems like it's back for $37.03. I was thinking to buy it, but decided that I already have too many FPGA kits laying around  :-/O
 
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Online RoGeorge

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Re: Arrow DECA MAX 10 board for $37
« Reply #58 on: April 15, 2021, 02:51:21 pm »
I want to make a Linux virtual machine, to preserve the toolchain and the settings, so to avoid future OS incompatibilities.

The only DECA specific tool (in the CD downloaded from Terasic) seems to be a Windows executable "DECA_SystemBuilder.exe".  It runs in Linux (with WINE), and generates some Quartus project files.  Not sure if there are some other windows specific things that I might have missed.  Also, In the DECA_SystemBuilder generated .qpf file is a line QUARTUS_VERSION = "14.1".  Current version of Quartus is 20.1.

- 1. Which version to install, Quartus 14.1 or the latest 20.1?
- 2. Can this board (and demo projects) be used from Linux?  There are some .bat files in the demos, .bat that apparently only load the demo bitstreams into FPGA, and they seem to have a .sh, too, for Linux, so I don't know if Windows is a must.  (can not test for myself, the board has not arrived yet)

Offline BrianHG

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Re: Arrow DECA MAX 10 board for $37
« Reply #59 on: April 15, 2021, 03:08:03 pm »
I want to make a Linux virtual machine, to preserve the toolchain and the settings, so to avoid future OS incompatibilities.

The only DECA specific tool (in the CD downloaded from Terasic) seems to be a Windows executable "DECA_SystemBuilder.exe".  It runs in Linux (with WINE), and generates some Quartus project files.  Not sure if there are some other windows specific things that I might have missed.  Also, In the DECA_SystemBuilder generated .qpf file is a line QUARTUS_VERSION = "14.1".  Current version of Quartus is 20.1.

- 1. Which version to install, Quartus 14.1 or the latest 20.1?
- 2. Can this board (and demo projects) be used from Linux?  There are some .bat files in the demos, .bat that apparently only load the demo bitstreams into FPGA, and they seem to have a .sh, too, for Linux, so I don't know if Windows is a must.  (can not test for myself, the board has not arrived yet)
Install both Quartus.  The projects will load on the new one, but, once you have done so, it sometimes will not load again backwards in earlier versions.  So, keep a copy of the source files.
The .bat files are there to automatically JTAG program the pre-compiled projects onto the DECA board.  You do not need them.  All you need to do is open the Quartus programmer, select JTAG, load the .sof programming file and program away as the projects on the CD have already been compiled.  Or, you may also open the full project in Quartus and compile, then program.

Windows is not a must.  The projects should run in the Linux build of Quartus.
 
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Online RoGeorge

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Re: Arrow DECA MAX 10 board for $37
« Reply #60 on: April 16, 2021, 02:29:05 am »
Great, thanks!   :)

In this case maybe I should make the VM with Linux and Quartus 14.1 as a fallback, and to keep the VM size reasonable small, and install the latest Quartus on the physical machine.  Not sure yet, will see after working for a while with each version, to spot their ups and downs.

Meanwhile I've found that back then (Quartus 14) it was ~ Ubuntu 12, and apart from the DECA demos CD, there is also a DECA LinuxTutorial pdf for how to put Linux on DECA, and 8 DECA Labs (for bare metal, not Linux):
https://community.intel.com/t5/FPGA-Wiki/DECA/ta-p/735458

Online RoGeorge

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Re: Arrow DECA MAX 10 board for $37
« Reply #61 on: April 17, 2021, 10:48:23 am »
-1. On the search page Arrow shows about 1400 pcs of DECA boards on stock, shipping today.
https://www.arrow.com/en/products/search?cat=&q=deca&r=true

-2. On the DECA product page is shown "Ships from US"
https://www.arrow.com/en/products/deca/arrow-development-tools

-3. On my order it is written "Ships from non-US location"

-4. I made the payment 3 days ago, with debit card, the payment was confirmed by my bank a few seconds after finalizing the Arrow order, yet the order is still pending.  All I have is an order number and an email saying they will email a tracking number after processing.  I am ordering from EU/Romania.

-5. Also, the VAT seems wrong (7%), but they say Arrow will pay the shipping and DDP (the email says free shipping with DHL - DDP)

Anyway, no shipment after 3 working days.  I wonder if they really replenished the stock.   :-//

Anybody from EU ordered this month?
How long does it took between payed and delivered (they say one day usually)?

Online up8051

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Re: Arrow DECA MAX 10 board for $37
« Reply #62 on: April 17, 2021, 01:05:18 pm »
I ordered yesterday, but at this moment has status "Pending".
 

Online RoGeorge

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Re: Arrow DECA MAX 10 board for $37
« Reply #63 on: April 22, 2021, 09:58:25 am »
Today (7 days later) the order status went from pending to "Fully Shipped" (ships from US, NV) and got a DHL tracking number.   :D




with a SiLabs gesture sensor, placed on the bottom side of the board

Could be on the other side because the pulsing light coming from the rest of the LEDs might blind or confuse the sensor, just a wild guess.

Offline dolbeau

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Re: Arrow DECA MAX 10 board for $37
« Reply #64 on: April 22, 2021, 05:50:52 pm »
-2. On the DECA product page is shown "Ships from US"
-3. On my order it is written "Ships from non-US location"

Mine did a trip from the U.S. to a city in Germany, then went to the Netherlands, then right back to the same city in Germany (and likely the same warehouse...) before shipping to France.

I suspect the reason is that the US-Germany-Netherlands[-Germany] part of the trip was "internal" to Digikey, and it cleared customs "in bulk" as part of an internal shipment between Digikey locations. Then the rest of the trip was to deliver to me, internally in Europe in the common market - so no customs to deal with for me, the customer. And perhaps export control is also a motivation to ship from the "non-US location".
 

Offline migry

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Re: Arrow DECA MAX 10 board for $37
« Reply #65 on: April 22, 2021, 10:35:14 pm »
Thank you @RoGeorge,  :-+

   I re-visited the Arrow website using your links and they were in stock. I bought 2 off for 75$ including shipping and tax, £55 in local currency, a hell of a bargain for such a well featured FPGA board. I like the fact that it has HDMI, as I have really enjoyed experimenting, thanks to the excellent code and instructions of Mike Field (HamsterNZ). It should be more than powerful enough to host several 80's retro computer designs (with some tweaking).

 

Offline migry

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Re: Arrow DECA MAX 10 board for $37
« Reply #66 on: April 26, 2021, 04:50:39 pm »
Well I'll be <whatever>!

My two DECA boards arrived at 8.30AM this morning (today is the 26th). I ordered them the same time as my last post on the 22nd at 11PM . £28 each. Wow! The cheapest FPGA boards I have ever purchased.

That MAX10 is quite a meaty FPGA and should be great for some of my retro projects. Currently I'm trying to get audio data islands inserted into a HDMI data stream and something isn't quite right. I might be one bit out, or quite a lot  :-DD , there's no way to know. I have done many searches but there is a lack of clear information. I get audio but it is distorted.

The DECA uses an Analog Devices parallel to HDMI transmitter and has separate audio codec. I haven't yet checked the data sheet to see if this chip can pass through data islands. If not I guess I will need to wire up my own HDMI connector to the spare LVDS GPIOs and "bit bang".
 

Online RoGeorge

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Re: Arrow DECA MAX 10 board for $37
« Reply #67 on: April 26, 2021, 05:33:17 pm »
Mine just arrived today, too, and WOW!!!   :-+
It certainly looks like an expensive and high quality board.

The blue LEDs are indeed eye piercing bright, so this time I had to use not one, but two layers of yellow post-it paper cut and stick on above any LEDs.  ;D

The included power adapter can work for either 110 or 220V, but the socket is US type.  There is no 220/110 plug adapter included, just saying, not complaining.

I'm quite impressed so far, will give it a ride in the next days and see how it performs.   8)
Thank you all who pointed out to this devboard.
 :popcorn:

Offline BrianHG

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Re: Arrow DECA MAX 10 board for $37
« Reply #68 on: April 27, 2021, 03:49:33 am »
The blue LEDs are indeed eye piercing bright, so this time I had to use not one, but two layers of yellow post-it paper cut and stick on above any LEDs.  ;D
:-DD I did warn about this a number of posts back...
 

Online RoGeorge

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Re: Arrow DECA MAX 10 board for $37
« Reply #69 on: April 27, 2021, 02:20:58 pm »
Just for the docs, former alterawiki com website addresses have become broken links.  For example if one goes to the arrow product page https://www.arrow.com/en/products/deca/arrow-development-tools and clicks on the link "DECA Wiki page" will get a "404 Not Found" error.

The broken link "DECA Wiki page" points to the address https://www.alterawiki.com/wiki/DECA .  To "translate" the old URLs into the current Intel com URL format, replace "www.alterawiki" with "fpgawiki.intel":
Code: [Select]
- [url]https://www.alterawiki.com/wiki/DECA[/url]  <---    404 page not found
- [url]https://fpgawiki.intel.com/wiki/DECA[/url]  <---    will redirect automatically to

- [url]https://community.intel.com/t5/FPGA-Wiki/DECA/ta-p/735458[/url]

Online RoGeorge

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Re: Arrow DECA MAX 10 board for $37
« Reply #70 on: April 29, 2021, 10:17:53 am »
To user "extensie":
I can not reply to your PM because your inbox is full.  Please empty your PM inbox.

For me, I had a 10% discount coupon, free shipping and all taxes payed by Arrow as a new Arrow client.  In total payed $40.32  from the lei card. (172.32 lei - the bank automatically makes the currency exchange from lei to USD)

There were no extra payments for taxes or for package delivery, just what I payed to Arrow.  Package had a DHL tracing number.  Bought the board as a private person, not as a company.




Two questions for everybody else, please:

I'm new to the Altera toolchains.  So far I've installed:
- Quartus
- Quartus Help
- Quartus Programmer
- MAX10 support files
- Modelsim

Q1.  Did I missed any?  Are there other useful components I should install for the DECA board?


So far I've downloaded:

The DECA CD-ROM from Terasic (has demo bitstreams, docs and datasheets) https://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?Language=English&No=944&PartNo=4
- DECA_v.1.0.1_SystemCD.zip

Workshop lessons for DECA, from the Altera wiki https://community.intel.com/t5/FPGA-Wiki/DECA/ta-p/735458
- deca_lab_files.zip

Tutorial for how tu run Linux on the DECA board, from the Altera wiki https://community.intel.com/t5/FPGA-Wiki/DECA/ta-p/735458
- DECA-Linux-Tutorial_15_1.pdf
- Deca_linux_package.zip

Q2.  Did I missed any?  Are there other learning resources worth to know about?
 
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Offline Daixiwen

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Re: Arrow DECA MAX 10 board for $37
« Reply #71 on: April 30, 2021, 06:43:02 am »
If you plan to have a softcore CPU in the FPGA then you will also need a C compiler for it, and they provide a full Eclipse environment for it. It used to be called the Nios II Software Build Tools, but right now I can't find it on Intel's website and who knows what it is called now. Just be sure to download the one for the Nios II CPU and not the ARM version that is designed for the SoC FPGAs.
Intel's FPGA website is a complete mess and it isn't getting any better.
 
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Online RoGeorge

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Re: Arrow DECA MAX 10 board for $37
« Reply #72 on: April 30, 2021, 08:43:17 am »
Didn't got there yet, will keep in mind, thanks!




Regarding the name changes of the components and tools, it seems Quartus 15.1 was the last version with Altera naming, then starting from Quartus 16 the naming was switched to Intel.

Since the DECA training workshop was made with Quartus 15.1, I've installed 15.1 in a Kubuntu 20.04 virtual machine.  Some names of the software components, and some Quartus menu entries are named different in more recent versions, so for somebody that didn't work before with Quartus, I recommend using 15.1 in order to be able to follow the workshop labs.  Not to say 15.1 is smaller in disk size, so it will save you a lot of GB.

The only thing to take care for the Quartus 15.1 to run on recent Linux, is to manually download and install libpng12.
Code: [Select]
=====================
- if missing libpng12.so.0, with Quartus launch error:

    $ ./quartus
        quartus: error while loading shared libraries: libpng12.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

- Download libpng12 for the correct Ubuntu version from
    - http://ppa.launchpad.net/linuxuprising/libpng12/ubuntu/pool/main/libp/libpng/
    (or e.g. for xenial - https://packages.ubuntu.com/xenial/amd64/libpng12-0/download)
   
    - sudo dpkg -i ./libpng12-0_1.2.54-1ubuntu1.1+1~ppa0~focal_amd64.deb
    (for ubuntu 20.04 focal fossa)




To find out what other Altera components might be there to evaluate, all the extra tools seems to be listed when opening the "Design Software" menu from the official download page:
https://fpgasoftware.intel.com/20.1.1/?edition=standard&platform=linux

Don't count on the drop down boxes called "Select edition:" and "Select release:", they doesn't seem to be working properly (for example when selected the 15.1, only Quartus Standard is displayed to download, for Quartus Litte 15.1, one should navigate to Quartus Lite through the left hamburger menu "Design Software").

For the Q1 answer, I guess following the entries from the download page will reveal all the other tools or components Altera used to have.

For Q2, still looking for more tutorials and/or project links.
« Last Edit: April 30, 2021, 08:50:55 am by RoGeorge »
 

Online RoGeorge

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Re: Arrow DECA MAX 10 board for $37
« Reply #73 on: May 10, 2021, 10:32:46 am »
Anybody else get this error with the 3rd workshop "Lab 3 - Embedded Systems Lab" from these lessons https://community.intel.com/t5/FPGA-Wiki/DECA/ta-p/735458 :
Code: [Select]
13:17:22 **** Build of configuration Nios II for project LM71_temp ****
make all
Info: Building ../LM71_temp_bsp/
make --no-print-directory -C ../LM71_temp_bsp/
[BSP build complete]
Info: Compiling lm71.c to obj/default/lm71.o
nios2-elf-gcc -xc -MP -MMD -c -I../LM71_temp_bsp//HAL/inc -I../LM71_temp_bsp/ -I../LM71_temp_bsp//drivers/inc  -pipe -D__hal__ -DALT_NO_C_PLUS_PLUS -DALT_NO_INSTRUCTION_EMULATION -DALT_USE_SMALL_DRIVERS -DALT_SINGLE_THREADED    -O0 -g -Wall   -mno-hw-div -mno-hw-mul -mno-hw-mulx  -o obj/default/lm71.o lm71.c
In file included from ../LM71_temp_bsp//drivers/inc/altera_avalon_pio_regs.h:34:0,
                 from lm71.c:40:
lm71.c: In function 'main':
lm71.c:54:7: error: 'TEMP_LM71CIMF_BASE' undeclared (first use in this function)
  IOWR(TEMP_LM71CIMF_BASE, WRITE_MODE, 0xffff);  //set shutdown
       ^
../LM71_temp_bsp//HAL/inc/io.h:70:23: note: in definition of macro '__IO_CALC_ADDRESS_NATIVE'
   ((void *)(((alt_u8*)BASE) + ((REGNUM) * (SYSTEM_BUS_WIDTH/8))))
                       ^
lm71.c:54:2: note: in expansion of macro 'IOWR'
  IOWR(TEMP_LM71CIMF_BASE, WRITE_MODE, 0xffff);  //set shutdown
  ^
lm71.c:54:7: note: each undeclared identifier is reported only once for each function it appears in
  IOWR(TEMP_LM71CIMF_BASE, WRITE_MODE, 0xffff);  //set shutdown
       ^
../LM71_temp_bsp//HAL/inc/io.h:70:23: note: in definition of macro '__IO_CALC_ADDRESS_NATIVE'
   ((void *)(((alt_u8*)BASE) + ((REGNUM) * (SYSTEM_BUS_WIDTH/8))))
                       ^
lm71.c:54:2: note: in expansion of macro 'IOWR'
  IOWR(TEMP_LM71CIMF_BASE, WRITE_MODE, 0xffff);  //set shutdown
  ^
make: *** [Makefile:775: obj/default/lm71.o] Error 1

13:17:22 Build Finished (took 488ms)


There are 4 program examples written in C for the "Lab 3 - Embedded Systems Lab", the ones included with the lab files:
- hello_led.c
- cap_sense_example.c
- rh_temp.c
- lm71.c

Each C file is for a different Eclipse software project running on the same NIOS II hardware.  I could compile and run the first 3 projects with no errors, except for the LM71 one.

Any ideas why the error, and why only with the LM71 file?
« Last Edit: May 10, 2021, 10:34:36 am by RoGeorge »
 

Online RoGeorge

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Re: Arrow DECA MAX 10 board for $37
« Reply #74 on: May 10, 2021, 11:59:53 am »
Found it!   :)

When adding in Qsys the IP called "TEMP_LM71CIMF", the default instantiated IP's name was "TEMP_LM71CIMF_0", with an "_0" suffix added automatically (which suffix is usually incremented at each new instantiation of the same IP).  However, the instantiated name must be renamed to "TEMP_LM71CIMF" (suffix removed).

In the lab's PDF guide https://www.intel.com/content/dam/altera-www/global/en_US/uploads/d/da/3_Embedded_Systems_Lab.pdf (Chapter 3.4.20 - Add the temperature sensor component) the renaming step is missing, yet the following Qsys printscreen and the zipped files with their completed project shows the suffix was removed.

Seems like the C macros used in the BSP files doesn't work as expected when the instantiated IP name has that suffix "_0", suffix that is added automatically by Qsys.
 :-//




Later edit:
--------------
AS Daixiwen pointed out in the next reply, the macros and the BSP files are just fine.

In my case, the "TEMP_LM71CIMF_0" had to be renamed only to match the names provided in the C code example provided by the "lm71.c" file.  The naming must correspond, so one could either adjust the IP name, or the C code.
« Last Edit: May 11, 2021, 10:25:05 am by RoGeorge »
 


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