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hi guys

im doing a project about central heating controller using FPGA and i wonder if anyone can help me with it

my plan

1- desgin 7 segment display to display the time " 24:00" system
2- design a hardware which will help me to set time and other function in the system like setting a a schedule for the system to work for set time of day
3- hardware which will help me to over ride the schedule either by turning on or off

4- temperature sensor to give the temperature of the place .

any suggestion and which type of hardware should i use

thanx for help in advance

This project does not need anything a FPGA is good at. A microcontroller would be a cheaper and simpler solution.

I would have concentrated on finding a temperature sensor that gives the temperature in a format that does not need any conversion since math in general is a pain on FPGAs. The rest of the project is fairly straight forward.

Well Kristallo, If the project is like the original proposal, it's crazy to do it with a FPGA ,unless you want to do it just for fun,something nice and simple just to start with.

On the other hand,I have been dreaming about a heating controller in an FPGA for some time now,but something more sophisticated.
Why? because these things (heating controllers)need to be more user friendly.I thought of a graphic LCD with touchscreen and Ethernet.
It should have a tiny web server running for remote control,and communicate with (future) outside units that measure wind speed and outside temperature.It should constantly log the temperature and be self learning about the thermal behaviour of the house.
So what will you need for that ?An Altera EP2C8,32 Mb SDRAM,A RJ45 with integrated magnetics,a small PSOC processor (touch panel and A/D for temp sensor) and let's say a 128mbit serial flash.
Just plunge a NIOS II processor in,a standard SDRAM controller and LCD controller.
The rest is up to the software.The touch panel can be omitted,and rely entirely on the web interface for user interaction,but it might be handy for setting up IP adresses and so on.
the unit could also feature photoframe functionality,or act as a message box for the family-> it displays the content of an email message on the LCD (just like SMS on a cell phone)

OK you'll need a 32bit processor to do all these jobs,but what the hack? a NIOS takes only 16% of a EP2C8,plenty of room for the rest.