Labs V2 suggestions

Thought it would help to make a topic to discuss V2 additions, for hardware and software.
So far I can not think of anything, so you are first.

After writing modules, we have to wire them together, and for this, I think there is nothing more intuitive than a GUI approach.

It’s visual and intuitive and I think a good schematic view is much more readable and less error-prone than the boilerplate wiring code that we need to write and copy-paste when the project start to get big.

I don’t know how hard it would be to implement, but I would definitely use it :grinning:

Great idea. Mixing this with the Vivado schematic view to also see inside of the module would be great. Actually, adding all Vivados views, Implementation, etc. would be neat.

Would be nice but probably too much work and most likely out of scope of Labs I guess.

But we can actually open Vivado if we really need, I do when I need to use the simulator and the debugger :slight_smile:

If we switch to the upcoming open-source toolchain, these views may become usefull since we won’t have Vivado anymore, and probably easier integrated because it’s most likely calling the right tool like we would do by CLI.
Sadly this toolchain it still in early beta for the gen7 afaik.

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Right now the open source tools are a bit of a novelty. I’ve been fairly disappointed with them when working with the Cu. They often fail to meet timing for basic designs that the proprietary tools have no issue with. They’ve come a long way and the fact that they work at all is impressive but they won’t be replacing Vivado any time soon.

Not such a great idea, now that I think about it.

For the wiring modules, maybe it could be a sort of simulation area too! Probe the signals on wires connecting the modules together. That would help a lot with the way I make verilog.

I realize this might be a bit late of a suggestion (as the V2 code development has started), but what about instead of writing a full IDE, Labs v2 leverages a pre-built IDE like VSCode?

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This comes up a lot with whatever IDE is currently in favor. I don’t think that this would actually save a ton of development work and would likely lead to more in the long term.

When I started the original IDE, Eclipse was the most popular IDE. It’s now all but dead. Having to maintain compatibility with another program seems like a ton of work over time. You’re also then limited to whatever the chosen IDE lets you do.

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VSCode seems pretty permissive, the PlatformIO and Sigasi extensions adds a whole lot of stuff (even custom GUI elements), but I can’t tell how much work they had to put to get that result.

I think a screen element would be fantastic. The rectangular form factor of the boards would work great with whatever screen you want there.

Do you mean like an LCD add-on board?

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Yes, kind of like the one used in the GPU demo, but add on, like the Io. It could be LCD, OLED, whatever you want.

Actually, nevermind. The split windows work, I just did not know how to use them :sweat_smile:.

Also, you could make mini add on sensor boards that have a single connector at the bottom to take up only one space on the boards, not taking up all (4 connectors on the old Aus and Cus). Maybe a microphone, speaker, temperature, etc.