Learning VHDL - Basics

Today I start a new series of tutorials  focused of FPGA and VHDL programming.
Since FPGA are becoming more accessible to the hobbyist, learning how to use them can be really useful for certain applications; moreover, engineers that are able to code in VHDL/Verilog are always requested on the job market.

In this tutorial I'll cover the basics of Xilinx ISE and VHDL.
I'll base my code on the Basys2 board from Digilent: it is really cheap (especially for students) and has a lot of features on board.
However, in this tutorial we'll only simulate our code with ISim, for the real applications check back soon!

Digilent's Basys2 board

Syntax Highlighter 3 VHDL Brush

I've created a simple VHDL for Alex Gorbatchev's Syntax Highlighter 3.

You can download it here.

Enjoy!

MSP430 LaunchPad Tutorial - Bonus- UART Transmission

Here's a little bonus, as someone requested: I'll just give the code with some basic explanations, so you don't have to deeply understand it but just insert the snippet into your project.

MSP430 LaunchPad Tutorial - Part 3 - ADC

Finally, here's the last part of this little tutorial series about LaunchPad.

I'll explain the basics of Analog to Digital Conversion on the MSP430G2231.

EDIT 01-10-12: Multi-channel conversions added!

EDIT 01-23-12:Added "Watch variable" instructions.

Launchpad Serial Morse TX

Inspired by this, I decided to build a morse transmitter and add some cool features to it.

This project shows how to build a little morse transmitter using an MSP430G2231 MCU.
The device can transmit in two modes:

•    serial,  receiving the characters from a COM port  and translating them into morse code; 
•    manual, using the key switch.

Launchpad Morse TX