Hi

[Darkbluestar]

Hi everyone, my name is Tony and i go to Cal Poly SLO. I am currently a Computer Engineer and I recently started looking into robotics. The is that my friends decided to enter a robotics competition here at my school. So I decided that I would give it a try too and design my own robot. I have a Nexys board that I used for one of my classes. http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Prod=NEXYS&Nav1=Products&Nav2=Programmable I wanted to know if I could use that board instead of having to buy a microcontroller. I'm trying to go as cheap as possible and use anything I already have. Thank you in advanced for all your help.
-Tony

[Kohanbash]

Welcome to the world of robotics.

Yes you can usually (probably always) use FPGA based instead of a micro.

With the nexus board does it automatically read/write the program to flash or do you do it manually (ie. is the board volatile or nonvolatile)?

[Darkbluestar]

I use a program called iMPACT in order to send the written code to the board. When I've used the board the memory would be wiped when i would turn it off and on, but I was also told that I could set it so that wouldn't happen.