AkshayaPatra is an easy to use, digital circuits experimentation platform, targeted for use in introductory as well as intermediate level digital electronics laboratories. The CPLD on board is programmed using an inexpensive microcontroller based JTAG interface implementation, which as a bonus can be used to learn microcontroller programming and interfacing, making AkshayaPatra a really attractive learning platform.

The AkshayaPatra features a Xilinx XC9572XL high performance CPLD operating at a system voltage of 3.3V. The input/output pins are 5V tolerant and can accept 5V, 3.3V, and 2.5V logic levels. The device can operate up to a frequency of 178MHz with maximum pin-to-pin logic delay of 5ns. The XC9572XL has four 54-input function blocks, each with 18 macro cells, providing total of 72 macro cells with 1600 usable gates on chip and 34 to 72 I/O pins depending on the device package. There is an on-board Atmega328p microcontroller operating at 3.3V, which acts as a JTAG bridge. It can also be used as clock source for the CPLD and provides a default clock with frequency of 65535Hz.

AkshayaPatra has the following on-board peripherals which can be easily interfaced with the CPLD and the Atmega328p.

1. 12 Input Slide Switches
2. 12 Output LEDs
3. 4 Push Buttons (2 with Pull Up resistors, 2 with Pull Down resis-tors)
4. 16x2 Alphanumeric LCD
5. 2 Single Digit SSDs.
6. 1 4-Digit SSD.
7. 12 Charlieplexed LEDs
8. 1 Buzzer
9. 1 Potentiometer
10. 1 RGB LED
11. 1 LDR
12. 1 LM35 temperature sensor