Anthocyanina

Thank you @JColvin. Hopefully this suggestion is accepted even if it was presented in the form of random thoughts put together. My comments on this may be the only comments you get on the forum about this, but look elsewhere, particularly when it comes to repairing or taking anything apart, there are few things that are more strongly disliked than screws hidden behind thick stickers that will never look the same once they are removed. I really love Digilent's products, and would love to see you go back to easily accessible screws :)

The AD3, as far as i know was the first Digilent device to come with hidden screws under a sticker, and dave from the eevblog has now showed the upcoming ADP2230 and took it apart, which was apparently much harder to do than on previous digilent instruments and now also involved removing a thick sticker which likely will never fit properly again. The instruments and other devices you make are bought and used by people who are knowledgable about or learning electronics. The kind of people most likely to want to either see inside what they buy, and/or the most likely to want to repair their own devices should they fail. Hiding screws behind stickers is just ridiculous in this kind of product for this demographic. The forum has seen lots of people opening their analog discovery 2s for repair, only resorting to claiming warranty if they can't fix it, but it seems always after they've tried lots of different things to fix it. Hiding screws behind stickers, hard to peel and hard to stick back, is just a move in the wrong direction. The screws in the AD2 being easily accessible don't make it ugly, and if they did, I think many people would care considerably less about the very minor impact this has on looks compared to the major benefit easily accessible screws provides to the serviceability of the device. Many of your devices are used daily to aid in repair efforts of other devices. Please don't make your own devices less repairable. Hiding screws tends to be the first step in making things less repairable and it would suck majorly to see Digilent going the apple route. I actually see visible screws as a plus. It's like an invitation, "go ahead, take a look inside, you're welcome to explore the innards of your device, you can more easily fix it, enjoy!" And when other providers of test and measurement instruments of the likes of Rohde & Schwarz, Keysight, Tektronix, and more manage to produce instruments that are aesthetically pleasing and still have the screws easily accessible, this tells me it is unlikely the goal of hiding screws behind stickers (which by the way will make the device look much worse after you peel it off and try to stick it back on) is an aesthetic one but likely that you are possibly starting to look into making your products not easily serviceable, and this sucks. Hopefully you reconsider your choice of hiding screws and future products make them easily accessible again. I love the Digilent products I own, and I keep recommending them to people based on my experience with them, but this moving in the wrong direction is making me wonder how much less serviceable your products will continue to become, again, hiding screws is always the first step in making things worse! Please consider going back to easily accessible screws in your future products.

are you using the bnc adapter and bnc probes? if so, you should compensate the probes by tweaking the capacitor on them until the signal looks square. your signal looks like a very uncompensated probe

hello @attila thank you! finally got a chance to test the new beta. the coupled parameters on the waveform generator appear a bit buggy, for example, if you change the device settings, sometimes, maybe due to a parameter or something that i haven't been able to identify, you need to select copy from none, then again copy from channel for the parameters to be coupled, also, the channel which is copying parameters can still be modified independently, and that will again sometimes "break" the coupling, requiring you to again select none, then select the channel to copy from again. also, the sweeping modulation option is missing. copying sweep works, but when in modulation, having the ability to sweep the modulating frequency, and the ability to also couple this sweep modulation parameter would be really helpful. Thanks again!

thank you @attila will the modulation parameters also be couple-able? thank you!

hi @JColvin great, that with the references works just as i needed it to. Thank you!

Hello. for the past couple of weeks i've been using the impedance analyzer and waveform generator in synchronised mode a lot, and while using them, i've encountered a few inconveniences, at least for the use case. Waveform generator suggestions: Having the ability to change the frequency and/or amplitude and/or symmetry of both channels simultaneously while having the channels synchronised is something that can be done with standalone generators which would be a welcome feature in waveforms Having the ability to also couple selected modulation parameters. In this case also being able to either couple or not the phase of the modulating waveform. Having the ability to sweep the modulating waveform, and having this also be a couple-able parameter. Impedance analyzer suggestions: Having the ability of displaying multiple traces on the same plot, and be able to label them and change their color(this would also be great to have in the bode plot instrument) Having the ability to change the start and stop frequencies while on the run without having the plotting restart, keeping the same frequency spacing, just dropping the data points taken at lower frequencies than the new "start" and stopping the measurement and drawing at the new "stop" without having to re-run the previous measurements(also great to have in the bode plot instrument) These new features would be great qol improvements to have, but i understand if they may not be reasonable enough to implement. either way, thank you!

I've been using bode plot and the impedance analyzer a lot this week, and was thinking about how nice this would be, for both instruments

wow, can't believe i completely forgot about having seen this, and having asked the same question 🤦‍♀️ maybe delete this repeated post? thanks again!

Hi, i followed a tutorial on a full adder, and everything works as expected, except for the 7 segment display. the project doesn't include it at all, but it dimly lights up after programming finishes. when loading the demo, the display works as expected, with segments fully off when they should be fully off. what may be happening? is this expected behaviour? Thank you! Edit to add: one of the DRC errors/warnings is about the configuration voltage and configuration bank voltage selection. I wonder if those two properties not being set might be what's causing this? i checked the schematic and see CFGBVS_0 is connected to VCC3V3 with a 4.7k resistor in series. this doesn't make it clear if configuration bank voltage selection should be set to GND or VCCO, but i'm guessing configuration voltage is 3.3V? Thanks!

hi @JColvin Thank you! yes, of course, as someone just getting started with FPGA and finding it quite challenging, i understand it would not be trivial. I appreciate the response, and just want to add that, as the response, i really appreciate how Digilent is the only company that listens so closely to the users of their products, and that's something amazing, and for which i'm really thankful. I completely understand not every suggestion can be implemented, and i think it's great that you at least respond, whether something will be implemented or not. That's something no other company in my experience does, and it's one of the reasons i will continue to use and acquire Digilent's products. Thank you again, really, just getting a response about this is cool, it is, if anything, a glimpse into what goes on behind the developmet of a feature, like what considerations go behind that and all that, and that's cool. I look forward to future waveforms updates, and your future products. if this eventually becomes part of it, great! if it doesn't, perfectly understandable, and again, thank you, and thank you for engaging so much with the community.

hi @attila yes, i understand, that's why i mentioned, since the AD3 has the larger FPGA, larger buffer, and is the better instrument, if it could be set to run in some form of "AD2 mode", by artificially limiting it in software so that it matched the AD2 when running both at the same time, but that it went back to its full capabilities when running it alone, or with another AD3. would this be practially realizable? Thanks!

Interesting, thank you, i didn't know about this being possibled through the SDK. About what you mention regarding the clock. given that the AD3 does support an external clock, or syncing it, it having a larger FPGA, i think would mean it is possible to have the AD3 syncing its clock with the AD2, maybe through the trigger system or a dedicated digital pin on the AD2 generating a clock and it being read to sync to on the AD3? Knowing different instruments can work together sort of as one using the SDK does change things a bit, but having this supported on the waveforms GUI would be really, really nice, and about device combinations supported natively, I would be biased, of course, saying AD2+AD3 minimum would be enough, but i think this would also be the most likely scenario for most people, and the one which most people interested in dual mode might care about the most, with how popular the AD2 has been over the years, and how useful it still is today. Thanks again! A small edit to mention that my question about generating a clock with the AD2 to sync the AD3 is more to learn if that is practically possible with the hardware than it is about how likely it is that that gets implemented that way, although i also want to know about the likelyhood of it happening, if practically achievable, of course. (not so small an edit after all!)

So, having an AD2, the AD3 doesn't look like a significant enough upgrade on its own, and having an AD2, buying an AD3 would mean still having basically the same functionality as a single AD2 with minor improvements. I'm wondering about the likelyhood of implementing dual mode for an AD2+AD3, making the AD3, the slightly more capable instrument, run in what would be an AD2 mode of sorts. limiting its capabilities to match those of the AD2 while running both together to form a 4 channel instrument, and then when using it alone, being able to run it as it normally would. I think having this option would make it easier to justify the purchase of an AD3, as now it would not only bring the minor improvements over the AD2, but also, in a way, expand the capabilities of both test instruments by being able to run them in dual mode. Because using the AD3 as a replacement for the AD2, when you already have an AD2, it doesn't make a lot of sense for the cost when that would mean one of the instruments would go live in a drawer or be sold, or be kept as backup or something, but wouldn't be of use at the same time. So, how likely is it for a combined dual mode to be implemented? Thanks!

Thank you, I'm going to see about older versions. I intend to only use the Basys 3 for the foreseeable future, as i'm just learning and it's the only FPGA board i have. Are projects made with the latest vivado versions compatible with the older versions? Like if i find a project written on the 2023 version, will i be able to import it and work on it in the older versions? Thanks again!