Good Afternoon-
I posted this to comp.dsp the other day but had someone suggest I post it here.
I'm interested in learning more about DSP's and actually getting my feet wet with DSP hardware. I have three primary interests:
1) robotics 2) computer vision 3) software defined radios.My original intent was to keep working with Atmel AVR's in robotics and not learn more about FPGA's until the time for #2 and #3 arose, however, the more I read, the more I keep hearing about things like open cores and Xilinx's FireBlaze processor simulation on a FPGA. I'm wondering if it would be more practical to build robotics around the FPGA from square one and start learning now. It seems like you can do just about anything with FPGA's (with some tradeoffs of course)
My second question is, what is the best way to start learning? In doing reading I see the Spartan 3E evaluation board seems to be highly recommended. The board looks neat, I'm just curious what the best way to learn is.
I'm doing this as a hobby, I'm a mechanical engineer by trade. I've been programming C/C++ for 10 years and I've taken a few basic EE courses, (both analog circuits and basic digital logic) so as some would say, "I know enough to be dangerous". :)
Thanks for the thought,
Philip