Hello there! My name is Valentin Angelovski. I am an electronics enthusiast and also the creator of my 'Ohm' series of FPGA experimenter boards presented to you in this Indiegogo campaign.

What is FleaFPGA 'Ohm'? 

It is my successful attempt at designing a modern, powerful yet easy-to-use FPGA development platform that is also compatible with the Raspberry Pi. In standalone mode, it also provides enhanced capabilities from it's main GPIO header, including  (4) ADC inputs and (12) high-speed LVDS lanes (see specifications for more info).

Of course, no FPGA development platform is complete without some equally cool working HDL examples to go with it. Among the HDL projects ported to my Ohm board are:

• Minimig (ECS Amiga core) 
• Next186 (i186 core with VGA and OPL3 FM sound) 
• Sweet32 SoC (Homebrew computer architecture, developed by me :-)
• Simple Digital Oscilloscope
• More to follow!

So whether you're an electronics maker/hacker/hobbyist, EE/CS Student (or Lecturer) or even a retro gamer I believe you will find my Ohm board interesting and/or useful!

FleaFPGA 'Ohm' Specifications: 

• Lattice ECP5 FPGA 24K LUT elements and 112KB Block RAM. 
• 256Mbit SDRAM, 16-bits wide and 167MHz clock.
• 8Mbit SPI Flash ROM for FPGA configuration storage.
• 25MHz Crystal oscillator 
• Digital video out (up to 1080p30 or 720p60 screenmodes possible).
• uSD card slot.
• Two micro USB host ports with alternate PS/2 (or even custom!) host port functionality. 
• 29 User GPIO, including 4 x medium-speed ADC inputs and 12 x LVDS signal pairs available from the (Raspberry Pi compatible) 40-pin expansion and 2-pin reset headers respectively.
• One micro USB slave port. Provides +5V supply feed to the Ohm, serial console/UART communications as well as access to the on-board JTAG programming interface (for configuring the ECP5 FPGA).
• Provision for an external JTAG programming pod to allow real-time debugging.
• Low current consumption. Typical example: FleaFPGA Ohm configured with Minimig example = 96mA typical with keyboard, mouse, uSD and video connected.
• Mechanical dimensions: 65x30mm. Mounting holes: 4x3mm dia.

FleaFPGA 'Ohm' Technical Documentation :  Currently being worked on - to be uploaded as soon as it becomes available.

Project History: Development of this project began 18 months ago. Inspired by the release of the Raspberry Pi zero, I decided to attempt to design what was intended to be by far my coolest FPGA-based hardware platform yet (Ohm board).  

Development of this new platform did not all go as smoothly as I had hoped.. I suffered everything from 'feature creep' and prototype assembly problems through to availability issues with the selected FPGA of the day.

After taking a short hiatus, I went back and carefully redesigned the 'Ohm' board to focus on elegance as well as utilizing a more readily available ECP5 device variant. It is the re-designed 'Ohm' variant that I present to you in this campaign.

My vision for FleaFPGA 'Ohm'

I am passionate about FPGAs and also around the exciting possibilities offered by them. Therefore, I am very pleased to offer my own viable contribution to the world in the FleaFPGA 'Ohm'!

My goal for this campaign is a very simple one: Make my 'Ohm' boards available at a very reasonable price through a production run of a suitable minimum quantity.

I also want to improve on my previous Ninety or so FleaFPGA 'Classic' boards that were successfully shipped to around twenty countries in 2014-2015 (last time using entirely my own money and not crowd-funded). Considerable experience was gained through that hobby venture, as well as learning the limitations of going it alone on limited funding.

It is the above-mentioned experience, along with a prior 15-year career in the electronics industry overall that I bring to the table in this campaign.

Campaign Breakdown

Our approximate campaign breakdown is as follows (Note - proportions subject to variation, exchange rates etc.):

• 50-55% allocated to component procurement and PCB assembly costs (estimated)
• 4% allocated to PCB production test costs (estimated)
• 5% allocated to indegogo fees
• 3% allocated to payment processing fees where applicable
• 5-6% allocated to an order fulfillment processor
• 8% allocated to shipping costs
• Balance to be allocated to me for project management, writing of related test and end-user documentation etc.

Risks & Challenges

Several major challenges await this project. These are:
1.) Component availability used to assemble the Ohm board - Lead times on key components can be anywhere up to several months, depending on stock and demand. We will work closely with all the major silicon vendors to help ensure timely supply of critical parts for the Ohm production run.
2.) Production test plan and associated equipment - Assembly of Ohm boards, will likely take place in Shenzhen China. Therefore, some means to reliably perform functional testing of Ohm boards at the factory will be required. I have previously done this successfully for my earlier FleaFPGA board and so this should not be a deal-breaker here either.
3.) Supply and distribution of assembled Ohm boards - Will very likely need to use an order fulfillment partner to get the job done in a smooth and orderly manner.

Thanks for reading this far :-)

Valentin Angelovski