It’s been a couple of weeks since our last email. We have continued to stay active with our development on XLR8 and planning our next steps for production.
I wanted to share a quick update on the recent happenings at Alorium Technology.
The Rev 2.0 XLR8 Board is Here!
We received our first prototypes of the Rev 2.0 XLR8 board, and everything is working great!
Some of the key changes on this board include:
- Mechanical changes to better match standard Arduino Uno, Sparkfun RedBoard, etc…
- Full 5V support for Digital I/O
- Access to JTAG pins for use as extra I/O pins
- SOIC-8 pads for optional EEPROM or SRAM
And of course there are a handful of fixes to some nits and nuisance behaviors we found with Rev 1.
We are very excited to have the protos in-house! You will see more of the new board as pictures propagate across our website and it shows up in video demos of new XBs and other features we are developing.
User-Defined XBs
One consistent piece of feedback we received during our Kickstarter campaign was that the ability for users to design and load their own custom Xcelerator Blocks on to the FPGA is a key feature.
So, we have listened and are taking action!
We are close to finishing development on the design flow that will allow for the creation of user-defined XBs. And while you will need the free web version of Altera’s Quartus II to compile your source code, no JTAG programming is required! You will be able to update XLR8 with your custom blocks across the USB connection.
As soon as it is ready, we will be sure to create a video showing how this process will work. Stay tuned!
Production Update
We are very close to selecting our production partner for the first volume run of boards. The target date to kick-off production on the new design is January 2016. We will be sure to keep you posted regarding the production timeline and when/how you can place your orders.
As always, please contact us with any questions or other feedback. We love to hear from you!