Electronic component distributor element14 now stocks. OrangeCrabs’ open-source FPGA development board.

The ultra-compact high-end FPGA OrangeCrab development board enables flexible design due to its tiny Adafruit Feather form factor and two memory configuration options.

The OrangeCrab combines the Adafruit Feather form factor that electronic designers love with the high power normally associated with much larger Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) development boards. It’s based on the Lattice EPC5 FPGA and features two memory configurations including the ECP5 25F/128Mbit and ECP5 85F/521Mbit.

The FPGA is compatible with an open-source toolchain and perfect for experimenting with RISC-V and other softcore SoCs. The variety of peripherals built into the OrangeCrab makes it suitable for many real-world applications.

Users can port over CircuitPython to the OrangeCrab which is more than capable of hosting the interpreter. While not currently implemented, developers are free to target the FPGA itself with gateway synthesized HDL. For those more familiar with an SoC-level development platform, the ECP5 can run a RISC-V softcore. The LiteX project also provides developers with increased flexibility and capability.

“The ultra-compact, feature-packed and versatile OrangeCrab open-source FPGA development board is a great addition to our extensive portfolio of SBC development boards and evaluation kits,” element14 head of SBC Romain Soreau says.

“The OrangeCrab is a skillfully designed and versatile board that can be used for a range of professional applications – or by hobbyists with a keen interest in FPGA hardware.”

The OrangeCrab r0.2 open-source FPGA development board is available from Farnell in EMEA, Newark in North America and element14 in APAC.