Low cost, Suitable USB key style FPGA development kit for students

[Altera_Forum]

Hi 

 Can you orientate me in the best direction so I can recommend my students a low cost FPGA development kit which they can program with Quartus II on a PC? I believe there are USBkey style FPGAs which may be programmable from a PC usin Quartus II. If you can make a recommendation, that would be great.  Thnks Ian

[Altera_Forum]

These are the two common solutions: 

BeMicro: http://www.altera.com/b/nios-bemicro-evaluation-kit.html  De0-Nano: http://www.altera.com/education/univ/materials/boards/de0-nano/unv-de0-nano-board.html BeMicro is the most compact solution, since it fits in the PC like a USB stick. This is perfect if you only need to work with the fpga itself. However, in you'd like to have I/O features and/or connecting to any external device, I'd rather have De0.  If you search with your local distributors, you'll certanly find other third party kits.

[Altera_Forum]

Hi Ian, 

 Arrow/Altera have three kits in their BeMicro series; BeMicro (linked to by Cris72), BeMicro-SDK, and BeMicro-CV  http://parts.arrow.com/item/detail/arrow-development-tools/bemicrocv#cpgg http://www.arrownac.com/solutions/bemicro-sdk/  Terasic/Arrow have the DE0-nano. http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?no=593  What projects were you hoping to have the students work on? The 100-mil headers on the DE0-nano are easier to interface to than the 80-pin edge connector on the BeMicro or BeMicro-SDK, but the BeMicro-CV has both 100-mil headers.  This thread has a BeMicro-CV example ...  http://www.alteraforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=43992  I have all of these boards, so can provide further comments if you have specific questions.  Cheers, Dave