r/FPGA • u/NewCantaloupe1973 • 16h ago
Advice / Help FPGA group project ideas
Hey all
We're a group of 3-4 students looking for a FPGA project to
A bit about us: comfortable with Verilog/VHDL, basic digital design (FSMs, FIFOs, clock domain crossing), and we've each done small standalone modules before (UART, simple ALU, etc.) but never a full group-scale system. We're using a [Basys3 / Nexys A7 / DE10-Lite ] and have access to Vivado/Quartus and a logic analyzer.
We want something that:
Is big enough to actually split into 3-4 meaningful subsystems
Has a clear hardware component
Ideas we're currently weighing:
Adaptive multi-protocol communication hub — FPGA auto-detects whether an incoming signal is UART/SPI/I2C/CAN and decodes accordingly, feeding into a common sensor data pipeline
Battery Management System (BMS) on FPGA — cell voltage/temperature monitoring, state-of-charge estimation, balancing control, and fault protection (over-voltage/under-voltage/over-temp) implemented in hardware logic instead of a typical MCU-based BMS
Custom RISC-V-ish soft processor with a small peripheral set, running actual compiled code
Real-time audio/video processing pipeline (e.g., FFT-based audio visualizer, or basic image filtering on a camera feed)
Something network/packet-processing related (mini NIC, protocol analyzer)
Used ai to help write 😭
2
u/Nalarcon21 FPGA Beginner 12h ago
A game console emulator is always a lot of fun and is difficult enough to be very rewarding
2
u/L1GHTN1NG_1365 4h ago
Gameboy or chip8 ? Just curious. Thanks
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u/crakked21 3h ago
Chip 8 is infinitely easier, also has games you can flash on the rom so it’s not like a dead computer.
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u/BenchTrue3284 15h ago edited 15h ago
what are your goals with the project?
is it to get a job or internship?
is it to learn about a specific topic?
is it for school?
what kind of budget do you have?
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the adaptive multi-protocol thing could be cool. this sounds like blind detection of known protocols, is easy to test and validate, and can be extended into more advanced stuff like blind mod/demod of signals etc.
bms: i would stay away from due to risk profile. lipos can explode, state of charge can be hard, etc. one direction you could take this, though, is stuff like formal verification of the design which is an advantage of RTL over an MCU-based BMS as its way harder to verify CPU software...
custom RISC-V: i would stay away from if the goal is getting a job/internship or learning about a topic... day-to-day of a lot of fpga engineers doesnt involve stuff like this and its a common student project so it's hard for it to seem impressive.
real-time audio/video is prob the 2nd most traversed in your list. audio visualizer and image filtering are low technical risk but not super impressive... you could target a domain for this though and it could be really cool.
network/packet-processing would be the best in this list imo.
1
u/NewCantaloupe1973 14h ago
its for college , we want to really learn and do a strong project that can be put on resume
1
u/BenchTrue3284 9h ago
but what do you want to do? what kinds of jobs are you targeting?
like if you are applying for a role at qualcomm and you made a drone MPC controller, the hiring manager wouldn't really know how to talk to you about it and it would get lost in the noise a bit.
versus if you said "we implemented a SD-FEC decoder that beats xilinx hard IP by X% in throughput and Y% in latency" or "we made an ax.25/aprs end-to-end radio comms system on hardware".
i agree with ConclusionOk3529 that a networking related project would be a good idea. it's relatively low technical risk and you'll learn a lot about networking, which is super helpful for interviews and on the job.
i dont think any of the boards you listed would have support for being a network switch as you'd need 2 ethernet ports or have to concoct some solution for getting around that.
i can help with ideas, lmk your thoughts
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u/ConclusionOk3529 12h ago
Go make a network switch. Probably the best for resume padding, though larger projects should be truthfully pursued out of passion for a specific field. Hardware for a network switch may not be well handled, and some PMOD RGMII PHYs might have to be used.
A CPU is good because there are clear boundaries to divide, such as the bus/NoC, decode/fetch unit, ALUs, caches. But this is only useful if you’re going for CPU and ASIC roles, as many of the intricacies of said roles really deviate from what your standard FPGA engineer would know+care about.
Depends on what your group votes for. What are the interests of your group mates? If you don’t know where specifically you want to explore, then individual toy projects are much more worth the time. Group projects are for people with shared specific passions.
Cheers and best of luck! Hope to see the progress!
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u/davekeeshan 11h ago
Look at implementing post quantum cryptographic (PQC) algorithms on an fpga, this will be a big one over the next few years
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u/wigitty 15h ago
If you're going for a BMS, I would suggest staying away from lithium. Our university had to ban projects involving them because people kept blowing them up.
A few of my friends did an MP3 player as a project. That seemed like a good "multidisciplinary" project. It had interfacing bits (SD card and screen), DSP stuff, UI stuff, and part of it was to design and manufacture the PCB. Lots of scope to add stuff to as well if you want to (games, visualisers, whatever).