Supported Boards

Author: Johannes Hofmann 2026

The PicoNut aims to support a variaty of FPGA boards from diffrent vendors.

Currently the following boards are supported:

• ULX3S: https://radiona.org/ulx3s/

• OrangeCrab: https://orangecrab-fpga.github.io/orangecrab-hardware/

Note

The udev rules for the supported boards are in the Udev Rules chapter.

By default the ULX3S FPGA board is used when building a system. To specify the target board set the PICONUT_BOARD variable accordingly.

The following chapters show how to run the refdesign system with the hello_piconut app.

ULX3S

$ make hello-ulx3s

or

$ cd systems/refdesign
$ make TECHS=syn program

OrangeCrab

The OrangeCrab board has no built in serial-to-USB converter so an external module has to be used.

Note

When plugging in the board, press the btn0 button so the FPGA can be programmed later.

$ cd systems/refdesign
$ PICONUT_BOARD=orangecrab make TECHS=syn program

The programming tool throws an error after a successful upload (see below). Despite this message, the design actually uploads perfectly.

Download        [=========================] 100%
Download done.
DFU state(7) = dfuMANIFEST, status(0) = No error condition is present
dfu-util: unable to read DFU status after completion (LIBUSB_ERROR_PIPE)