A cost-effective way to expand the scope of FPGA based projects

FPGA is widely used in Computer Engineering and related curricula. However, most lab exercises are performed and constrained largely in a self-contained FPGA board. A serial interface is a simple, cost-effective way to connect FPGA board to outside systems. It can be used to control a robot platform, to communicate with desktop computers, to interact with Android devices, to establish a ZigBee wireless link, and to connect to internet. This greatly expands the scope of FPGA based experiments and projects and makes them more interesting and versatile.