[TriEmbed] Quercus (ESP32/FPGA community project) update

[Pete soper]

This is an update on what's happening with the project.

Quercus is a standalone system for developing for and using the 
combination of a WIFI-capable ESP32 and one or more Renesas/Dialog mixed 
signal FPGA chips. The FPGA synthesis tool has a drag and drop GUI that 
involves zero Verilog or VHDL. It has a built in simulator and generates 
files that Quercus can program in place in the user's system for simple 
FPGA applications. These FPGAs are around one to two dollars in single 
quantity, even ones mounted on a DIP board that can plug into a wireless 
breadboard. Quercus is aimed at making FPGAs available to "the rest of 
us" while also creating a development ecosystem to augment the Espressif 
IDF and Arduino IDE.

Jaime Johnsen is facilitating meetings, Carl Nobile and Rob Mackie are 
starting to plan test systems, Dawn Trembath is taking over the Linux 
toolchain build process and when Rob and Paul MacDougal have a Windows 
(Powershell) install working Dawn will take that over too. Nick 
Edgington is getting mdns working to allow Dawn and I to eliminate all 
but one command from the install process (i.e. installit, then point 
browser to localhost:8080 to use the installed/running system). Nick is 
also adding a range of enhancements to Aardvark (the web-based UI) and 
Ant (the ESP32 firmware). I am refactoring the pieces and parts into a 
monorepo at https://github.com/TriEmbed/quercus while meditating about 
the UX for users to add ESP32 application code.

(Well) over the horizon and around a few bends the plan is to implement 
a network-centric implementation with no dependencies on the USB 
connection to the ESP32 (i.e. user apps can own that entirely), over the 
air updates of ESP32 native code, and a means of managing systems from 
anywhere on the Internet, not just with a user's local wireless LAN.

On the hardware front there has been zero dependency on my current 
custom board as it can be functionally replaced with off the shelf ESP32 
boards, a solderless breadboard and one of the Renesas/Dialog "DIP" eval 
boards for their mixed signal FPGA chips. (This is a hint for those of 
you who might be interested in trying the system out: FPGA DIP boards 
are available from us for free). However, decent ESP32 boards have 
become expensive and folks evaluating the system will find a custom 
board easier to use, especially with raw FPGA chips via an Espressif 
adapter that plugs into a socket on the custom board. So another short 
run of 12-15 boards is being planned. Some of these will be given to 
Renesas/Dialog and folks out on the 'Net to generate interest.

Finally, EVERYBODY is welcome to attend meetings. We're especially 
focused on keeping people safe at the face to face meetings. There are 
periodic virtual meetings too. WE NEED HELP.

-Pete

PS Beware ESP32 boards from Amazon. Read the one and two star reviews 
and steer around the boards that have under-powered regulators, bigger 
form factors than advertised, DOA rates, etc. To avoid heartache 
consider boards from Espressif, Digikey, Mouser, Adafruit, and SparkFun. 
Quercus will currently run with most boards supporting WIFI and if it 
can't the install process can almost certainly get a trivial tweak to 
extend support.