DesignLab-IDE

The Papilio is much more then just a hardware project. In fact, the software is the secret sauce that sets the Papilio apart from other FPGA boards. It lets you draw up circuits without investing time and energy in learning VHDL/Verilog.

We start with the Arduino IDE (Integrated Development Environment) and supercharge it by adding circuits into the mix. We bring all of the pieces needed to draw and debug your very own circuits in one place. It's an easy and seamless user experience that we call Papilio DesignLab for use with both Windows and Linux.

Papilio DesignLab

We start with the Arduino IDE but every sketch now has a circuit associated with it - editing and debugging circuits is just a click away!

Simply draw and debug your circuits!

Click on the "Edit Circuit" button and simply draw your circuits using the Xilinx ISE schematic editor and our Papilio Circuit Library.

Logic Analyzer

Drop a professional quality Logic Analyzer into any circuit and know instantly what it's doing. Up to 32 channels and 200Mhz speed handles any circuit you can throw at it. Use up to 75KB of internal memory or the external SRAM memory.

System on Chip - Draw Soft Processor Circuits!

Want to get into more complex circuits? DesignLab includes the ZPUino Soft Processor with a Wishbone bus, providing greater speed and flexibility than the Arduino-Compatible chip. A Soft Processor runs inside the FPGA and uses the Wishbone bus to make it easy to connect peripheral circuits, such as UARTs, PWMs or SPI masters. Making your own Soft Processor with just the right mix of peripheral circuits is known as a SOC (System On Chip) design. With DesignLab you can draw your SOC designs in minutes!

Create SOCs with ten serial ports, or a PWM on every pin, or something exotic like classic Atari and Commodore audio chips connected at the same time. The sky is the limit, you can create things that don't exist anywhere else!

This is an example of making your own SOC design with ZPUino and a Commodore 64 SID audio chip. (This tutorial was written for an earlier version of our software. DesignLab integrates circuits and sketches together for a much easier and seamless user experience.) 

Papilio Circuit Library

Drawing circuits can only accomplish so much without a library of circuits (known as cores) to do the heavy lifting. Our goal is to provide the framework for anyone to write a core that can be wired into a circuit.

We want to seek out the best open source circuits on the interwebs and convert them to a dead simple schematic library. The internet is absolutely full of open source circuits; just take a look at sites like OpenCores.com. You will find everything from classic audio chips to stepper motor controllers. All of these amazing circuits are within our reach when converted to schematic form!

Take a look at what is already available in the beta version of DesignLab. (Cores colored in red are still in progress.)