Anybody using Anadigm FPAA's?

FPAA is a "field programmable analog array". I've been thinking of buying their development board ($200) to play around with. Their subwoofer filter sounds like something I would like to try. I'm not real proficient with analog, but I gather that might be one of the advantages to FPAA's as it looks like their s/w can handle a lot of the analog pit-falls for you. Anybody got any experience? good/bad? easy/hard? comments?

Thanks - Dan K

Programmable logic devices, especially FPGAs, are stunning, and give a designer enormous freedom. Somehow it's hard for me to envision a similarly useful analog architecture.

What I'd like is just a simple precision resistor network, programmable via SPI or jtag or something, ideally nonvolatile, maybe a matrix or something.

John

Yeah, I saw them in a mag recently. They do look handy. I really don't mind "programming" them with traces and solder.

John

In message , John Larkin writes

I looked at them a while back, but struggled to think of an application which couldn't be done better/cheaper in other ways. They would probably be fun to play around with if you have the time and spare. One of the manufacturers ran a competition to come up with an application - I don't remember the winning entry, which kind of says it all.

Cheers

For well under $200 you can buy Don Lancaster's Active Filter Cookbook, and some excellent audio op-amps and passive components from Digikey and make your own "suboofer filter" that has much better specs (lower noise, lower distortion) than the FPAA. Anadigm's parts are apparently the same ones Motorola was trying to sell in the late '90's, and gave up on after only a year or two. IIRC, the specs of the internal op-amps are really bad, and will make one long for 741's. I know there's got to be some really good, neat applications for these things, but I just can't think of one.

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"Dan K" a écrit dans le message de news:

Anadigm's FPAA are really exciting components. Easy development tools, reasonnably good analog performances. For example I implemented with them a

However for "simple" fixed filters these components are not the best choice : why not just using standard switch cap filters or even a pair of operationnal amplifiers ? However as soon as you need any form of reconfiguration of the analog blocs, or a more complex function (like captor linearisation) then these components are really exciting. And I don't say that because I am a certified AnadigmPro consultant ;+)

Friendly yours,

Linear Technologies has a new series of congifurable opamps which almost get it right. You can configure the devices for various topologies and gains - selecting different on-chip precision resistor configurations by strapping various pins. I told their apps engineers when they were here that what would be really neat is if you could reconfigure the things on the fly via SPI, I2C or whatever. They didn't seem to think much of the idea...

Bob