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This sounds very cool - it's interesting to hear what projects lie further down this trail.

I was initially looking at the Arty board, as it was referenced by a text book - all the exercises were based on it. It's a bit more pricey than the ice40 (enough to force a comparison against other boards), but it certainly looks more capable.

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The icebreaker looks cool too, and small. I see they sell an HDMI output PMOD for it too. I wonder how that works (not that it's necessarily related to this VGA output example, anyway)

The HDMI PMOD is based around the TI TFP410 HDMI transmitter [1], or a compatible part from Silicon Labs. You feed it a VGA-style signal (parallel R/G/B signals, horizontal/vertical sync) with a pixel clock, and it generates an equivalent HDMI output. It's basically a drop-in replacement for most VGA designs.

[1]: https://www.ti.com/product/TFP410

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