STM32 are worth looking into, with "blackpill" boards at around $2 on aliexpress. Investigate stm32-base.org if you're curious.
>Can you say whether this tutorial would still work on something that is not an IceStick?
Yes, absolutely. Compatibility across the board is excellent for the whole iCE40 family, at least while using the open flow (icestorm, yosys and nextpnr). I've never tested the proprietary vendor tools. For the suggested iCESugar, You'll have to map the pins (edit the pcf constraint files to match those in the iCESugar board), but this is a basic operation you'll have to do for any design outside of a tutorial. You'll also have to tell nextpnr-ice40 to route for LP5K instead of HX1K.
As the external clock source in ICESugar is 12MHz like iCEStick, you won't even have to do any adjusting of parameters involving clocks.
I'd suggest using PMOD 2/3 as they don't share any pins with the onboard functionality. PMOD 1 can be freed by removing the jumpers connecting the serial port, and by not using the FPGA-dedicated USB port.
Overall, the iCESugar has a lot of I/O, whereas it is easy to run out of usable pins on the iCEStick.
There's some differences between the FPGA chips, but the tooling is the same. Relative to the HX1K, among other niceties, the LP5K is way newer (newest subfamily), has two internal oscillators, has way more (5K vs 1K) logic blocks, so they can fit a lot more logic, some hard blocks for basic peripherals (which are out of the way unless wired by your design) and more sysMEM blocks. This has proven to be extremely useful in my projects.
The only aspect in which the LP5K is disadvantaged is in slower propagation speed (HX is the "high performance, power doesn't matter" subfamily), so the max clocks for a given design will be lower. Say, 120MHz vs 90MHz on the same design (not as dramatic as this). This will typically not matter in most tutorials out there, which seldom use the PLLs at all, thus the clock is always the non-scaled 12MHz source.
STM32 are worth looking into, with "blackpill" boards at around $2 on aliexpress. Investigate stm32-base.org if you're curious.
>Can you say whether this tutorial would still work on something that is not an IceStick?
Yes, absolutely. Compatibility across the board is excellent for the whole iCE40 family, at least while using the open flow (icestorm, yosys and nextpnr). I've never tested the proprietary vendor tools. For the suggested iCESugar, You'll have to map the pins (edit the pcf constraint files to match those in the iCESugar board), but this is a basic operation you'll have to do for any design outside of a tutorial. You'll also have to tell nextpnr-ice40 to route for LP5K instead of HX1K.
As the external clock source in ICESugar is 12MHz like iCEStick, you won't even have to do any adjusting of parameters involving clocks.
I'd suggest using PMOD 2/3 as they don't share any pins with the onboard functionality. PMOD 1 can be freed by removing the jumpers connecting the serial port, and by not using the FPGA-dedicated USB port.
Overall, the iCESugar has a lot of I/O, whereas it is easy to run out of usable pins on the iCEStick.
There's some differences between the FPGA chips, but the tooling is the same. Relative to the HX1K, among other niceties, the LP5K is way newer (newest subfamily), has two internal oscillators, has way more (5K vs 1K) logic blocks, so they can fit a lot more logic, some hard blocks for basic peripherals (which are out of the way unless wired by your design) and more sysMEM blocks. This has proven to be extremely useful in my projects.
The only aspect in which the LP5K is disadvantaged is in slower propagation speed (HX is the "high performance, power doesn't matter" subfamily), so the max clocks for a given design will be lower. Say, 120MHz vs 90MHz on the same design (not as dramatic as this). This will typically not matter in most tutorials out there, which seldom use the PLLs at all, thus the clock is always the non-scaled 12MHz source.