Open softerhardware opened 4 years ago
Changing this to microcontroller-based IO. I would like to see a microcontroller used for IO provided it can also do the following:
The idea is to have the HL2 send the microcontroller data, the 5 control bytes from the host PC plus maybe another 3 (temperature) etc from the FPGA. That way the microcontroller has all state and can do all slow control. It would make programming IO even easier if the microcontroller supported micropython or circuitpython:
http://www.micropython.org/ https://circuitpython.org/
Currently I am looking at the ESP32, STM32 red/black pills, and the Risc-V Longan Nano. Places like https://jlcpcb.com/ also have microconrollers as standard parts in their SMT libraries for easy fabrication.
One option would be to leverage the work of ucx/qcx or CentSDR: https://github.com/ttrftech/CentSDR
Or some other standalone SDR. Then the HL2 just needs to generate IQ at an acceptable rate.
Gateware has HR50 support. Extend this to simple bidirectional UART support with pipe to software.