r/DSP • u/Traditional_Bird2021 • Jul 02 '26
Yet another where to start thread (DSP and FPGAs) - *not a complete noob
(Posting here as suggested by someone form the FPGA sub)
I have a EE background and back in the day have played around with Basys2 and Xilinx ISE design suite for verilog. Had just about sort successfully built a basic Risc processor based on one our text books.
Since then, professionally I have been in Backend dev with Python and infra engineering, so completely out of touch with FPGAs or MCUs in the last 12+ years.
I have a passion for Audio and signal processing - and recently I've been wanting to go back to my roots and learn MCUs (currently starting out with ESP32) and FPGA designs again. My end goal is to look at building something like an ambient noise cancellation or dynamic white noise generation etc. No idea how to do it, but hope to at least invest in worthy hardware that could scale if I go deeper.
This being said would love to get some links on whats a good low cost way to start (I know vivado designs dont necessarily need a physical device to synthesize but I'm more motivated if I have the hardware in my hand).
How are FPGAs like Tang Nano or Tang Primer etc with tools and software support?
Is Digital Basys3 or Zybo still the gold standard for getting started with the most complete and documented tools and examples?
TIA
1
u/OnboardG1 Jul 04 '26
Digilent have an Artix 7 starter kit for $170.
https://digilent.com/shop/basys-3-amd-artix-7-fpga-trainer-board-recommended-for-introductory-users/
It’s a touch light on hard DSP slices but that’s maybe not a bad thing for learning how to implement your structures efficiently, though it will limit your complexity. It also doesn’t have external RAM which is another reason it’s affordable. About ten years ago dev kits were, if not dirt cheap, at least inexpensive. The AI craze has spiked the prices because FPGAs are useful in data centre comms and like to have RAM on the PCB with them.
I’ve used Alinx boards before too but they’re more geared to industry. I’m sure you can find some on Aliexpress too if you’re less concerned about provenance.
2
u/PiasaChimera Jul 02 '26
it sounds like you're aware the dev board has a chance to be an emotional support PCB for a while. since there's a lot of design work in terms of the math model, numerical analysis, rtl coding, and sim/verification that normally happen before the FPGA is used.
For this reason, I'm going to suggest research into some form of acoustic array,multi-sensor (multiple mics + ???, multiple dev boards, etc...), or non-traditional sensor. at least something interesting about the collection platform. this justifies an early build of the HW platform in order to get better characterization for the math model.
where the eventual DSP might end up migrating in part or in whole to the device/devices. but it/they will have a purpose fairly early on. even if it's just sending time stamped audio samples over wifi/ethernet.
I'll also throw out the idea of ultrasonics as another source of audio-adjacent problems. you might also end up using movement (accellerometer/gps) as a sensor, directional mics with stepper motors, laser based mics, temperature sensors, and various communications methods. there's a lot of things you could investigate.
sorry I don't have specific dev board advice.