On May 12th & 13th, 2018, the 14th edition of the international "Digilent Design Contest" took place at National Instruments and Digilent Office in Cluj-Napoca, Romania

This year we had 32 teams enrolled and 18 teams (made of one, two or three students) presenting in the finals. The 18 teams came from universities in Cluj-Napoca, Pitesti, Targu Mures, Iasi, Bucuresti(Romania), Poland, Turkey, Serbia and France. On Saturday, all teams presented their hard work in front of 3 judges. After that, the best eight projects were chosen. 

On Sunday, May 13th, the finalists went head-to-head in front of all the participants and judges in order to determine who would be the winner. The Vice-Dean of Faculty of Electronics, Telecomunications, and Information Technology from Cluj-Napoca, Professor Nicolae Crisan, was present at the awarding ceremony and handed out the certificates to the winning teams.
Author(s)
Stefan Sredojević
Marko Kozomora
​Milan Popović

Adviser: Vuk Vranjković​

University of Novi Sad, Serbia
Description
First Prize
Deep Neural Network Hardware Accelerator
If we look around us, we will realize that artificial intelligence surrounds us more and more. Let's be realistic, every one of us dreams about a super-car in which you will be able to sit and say where you want to go and the car will be driven by itself. We are witnesses that it is not an unrealistic dream. Because of that, we want to share with you our project that has some similarities with cars we mentioned. In the beginning, it will be just a primitive network of neurons but we will teach it to recognize numbers.To achieve this it was used the Zybo Z7 development board
Download
Karol Radwan

​Adviser: Tomasz Kryjak
​
 AGH University of Science and Technology in Cracow, Poland
Second Prize
"Structure From Motion" scene recognition system for navigation an unmanned aerial vehicles   In this project a design of an embedded vision system for structure from motion (SFM) computation is
presented. The solution allows for scene depth reconstruction based on two consecutive video frames.
The module is developed for a Xilinx Zynq SoC (System on Chip) device and is divided into a hardware
and software part. All steps required in the SFM algorithm are provided in design. The FPGA is mainly
used to detect and match features. The ARM processor is responsible for fundamental matrix estimation
and triangulation. The module is dedicated to navigation of an unmanned aerial vehicles. The 3D scene
information is extracted for autonomous flight and landing purposes. The system is adapted to process
a 1280 x 720 pixel video stream @ 60 frames per second. The HW used for this project are Zybo Z7, PmodWIFI and Analog Discovery2

Beniamin Bia
Cosmin Nechifor

​Adviser: Alin Grama
​
Technical University of Cluj Napoca, Romania
Second Prize
Hardware accelerated security system 
 The project presents a hardware accelerated security system which runs facial recognition in hardware, takes photos when motion is detected, allows you to unlock the door using facial recognition or a pin and even sends notification on your phone.
It uses the ZYBO-Z7 board, PmodKYPD

Robert Nawrath
Przemysław Mazur
Marcin Beberok

​Adviser: Robert Czerwiński
​
Silesian University of Technology, Gliwice, Poland
Third Prize
FPGA-based Programmable Logic Controller 
PLC with an HMI operator panel. System able to be used with real automation objects. Showcased on miniaturized, fully-functional models.
This project is a try to develop a CPU that would be specialized for PLC application from the very beginning. Apart from creating a CPU, we wanted to demonstrate its operation in industry-approvable fashion. That forced us to develop a system containing not only the CPU but also the Human-Machine Interface and the connection between them. Our choice of automation object to demonstrate our design on has been an elevator as it is a very common object and provides enough room for us to 
Digilent components used include: the Cmod A7 board and Digital Discovery
07gwpl.zip
File Size: 19214 kb
File Type: zip
Download File

Jakub Wiczyński

​Adviser: Marek Wójcikowski​
​
Gdansk University of Technology, Poland
Digilent Instrumentation Prize
Additive Synthesizer
​This report presents the design of additive synthesizer. Synthesis is done by DDS
method. Sine wave wavetable is stored in memory and custom IP maintains amplitude levels
and phase shifts of the sine waves. Finally, sine waves are mixed into one signal by other IP.
Values of amplitudes, phase shifts and frequencies of each sine wave is set by user in
application run on mobile phone with Android (communication via Bluetooth module).
Synthesizer is capable of generating 1,000 sine waves in real time (more sine waves can be
achieved, design utilizes 10% of DSP cores and 40% of slices)
The project uses a Nexys Video board, a PmodBT2 and an Analog Discovery
26gdpl.zip
File Size: 146335 kb
File Type: zip
Download File

Székely István-Zsolt

Adviser: Brassai Sándor-Tihamér​
​
Sapientia University, Targu-Mures, Romania
Honorable Mention
Localization based on RF Modules
The goal of this project is to locate a device, a robot in real time, of which position is unknown. The project will use the triangulation method for the localization, based on four fixed points. For distance measurement RF modules were used. The used method for distance measurement was the double-sided, two-way ranging method. In the documentation, you can find the method’s detailed description, with my own and other persons’ results. In this application three or four immobile and one mobile modules are used. The resulted position will be corrected with another filter. The computationally intensive task will be running on an FPGA, because it has the necessary resources to be able to finish the calculations in time. The FPGA will communicate with the microcontroller through a serial communication interface. It is based on a Zybo Z7 board and a PMOD RTCC
​
12msro.zip
File Size: 111969 kb
File Type: zip
Download File
Oualid Bachaou
Samuel Duport
Kamel El Moussati

​Adviser: Antoine D'Hermies​

ESIEE, Paris, France
Honorable Mention
SWEEP & PLAY
The SWEEP'n'PLAY console offers a new way of playing thanks to its smartphone. Once the console is connected to the television, the user mobile becomes a versatile controller; From the dedicated application, the set of movements made will be transcribed in the game. The console has a large library of games and supports up to 7 players.
An Arty Z7-20 board will be used along with PmodBT2 and Digital Discovery
10prfr.zip
File Size: 32286 kb
File Type: zip
Download File
​​Ozden Erdinc
Emine Zeynep Ozdoner

Adviser: Ahmet Cagri Arli

Cankaya University, Ankara, Turkey​
Honorable Mention
Wireless Transmission of Compressed Image by using ASK Modulation 
The aim of this project is accomplishing a data compression (source coding) algorithm in VHDL, wireless communication in between two FPGAs. Using ASK modulation in the wireless transmission. Additionally, reducing storage and saving time and using less bandwidth while image is transmitted. For this project were used the Arty A7 board, PmodVGA and Analog Discovery2
06aktk.zip
File Size: 140090 kb
File Type: zip
Download File
​View all the contest entries here
View more pictures of the event here