Holiday Gift Guide 2025: Five Perfect Gifts for the FPGA, Embedded, and Electronics Enthusiasts

2025 has flown by, and I cannot believe we are nearly in 2026 already. As the year winds down, I thought it would be a good time to think about gifts that will keep creativity flowing into the new year and beyond.

So, I decided to put together a short list of boards, tools, and accessories that provide engineering value while keeping the fun and exploration at the heart of hacking.

FPGA development boards

Few things beat the excitement of unboxing a new FPGA development board, and this year there is a great candidate in the AMD Spartan UltraScale+ SCU35 development board. This board provides not only high-performance logic but also a wide range of interfacing capabilities, enabling us to create exciting projects such as robotics systems, signal-processing pipelines, and image-processing applications.

To support this, the SCU35 provides developers with four Pmod interfaces, dual mikroBUS Click interfaces, dual Raspberry Pi 40-way headers, an Arduino shield connector, and a high-speed I/O connector. When it comes to communication, the SCU35 offers Ethernet connectivity, USB UART, and JTAG, all powered from a USB-C interface. Of course, the Spartan UltraScale+ FPGA on the SCU35 provides developers with ultrafast logic capable of running designs at high clock rates, and you can also implement the RISC-V-based MicroBlaze V soft processor to leverage embedded software capabilities.

Digilent Analog Discovery 3

The ability to visualise what our design is doing is critical, especially when working with external sensors and interfaces. This is where the Analog Discovery 3 comes into play. It provides developers with pattern generators, logic analysers, an oscilloscope, and analogue waveform generation. This allows us to drive sensors directly where necessary and monitor transactions on our FPGA interfaces. The AD3 is a truly versatile tool that lets us get the best from our hardware.

The WaveForms software also provides a range of additional capabilities, such as spectrum analysis, a network analyser, an impedance analyser, and a curve tracer. With the AD3 in your backpack, you are ready to start testing and verifying your designs.

Tria ZU Board

If you want to get hands-on with a modern system-on-chip that combines Arm processors with programmable logic, the Tria ZU Board is the one for you. The processing system contains dual Arm Cortex-A53 processors, dual R5 processors, and a host of interfacing and communication peripherals, as you would expect in a complex processor system — e.g. USB, Gigabit Ethernet, SATA, and more. The programmable logic provides advanced UltraScale+ fabric for implementing custom hardware accelerators and high-performance logic.

Interface-wise, the ZU Board provides developers with three high-speed I/O ports, a mikroBUS Click interface, Ethernet, USB-A, and USB UART/JTAG, again all powered over USB-C. We can, of course, develop applications in the programmable logic or create embedded software solutions using bare-metal code or embedded Linux. One of the great things about the ZU Board is the availability of a PYNQ image, which enables us to use Python and Jupyter notebooks to interact with and control designs within the programmable logic.

A selection of Pmods

Pmods are the perfect way to add sensors, interfaces, and capabilities to FPGA projects with minimal effort. A curated bundle of five popular Pmods makes an especially thoughtful gift, providing endless opportunities for experimentation.

• Pmod HYGRO: Measure temperature and humidity to learn about environmental sensing.
• Pmod ADC (e.g. AD2): Capture analogue signals and practice writing digital filters, DSP chains, or measurement firmware.
• Pmod DA2: Generate analog outputs from FPGA logic — ideal for audio, waveform synthesis, or control systems.
• Pmod OLED RGB: Create colorful graphical displays and experiment with hardware-driven 2D and 3D renderings.
• Other Pmod sensors or comms modules: Such as accelerometers, I²C expanders, or UART bridges — perfect for building complete embedded systems.

Combined with the SCU35 discussed above, these Pmods will enable you to develop a range of exciting applications.

Power managers

One of the key strengths of FPGA-based design is the ability to achieve extremely high performance at relatively low power. Understanding and optimizing energy usage is both enlightening and essential. That’s why a power monitoring tool makes a great gift.

At the entry level, simple inline USB power monitors are perfect and provide immediate visibility into system power consumption. For more serious analysis, the Nordic Power Profiler Kit II offers high-resolution current measurements, detailed graphs, and logging capabilities for embedded systems.

For those who want the very best, the JouleScope stands in a league of its own. With exceptional accuracy and dynamic range, it is a professional-grade instrument that turns power measurement into both a science and a joy.

Whether your recipient is an experienced FPGA designer or dipping their toes into FPGA development for the first time, these gifts offer the perfect mix of learning, capability, and practical value. From powerful development boards to essential debugging tools, from plug-and-play Pmods to precision power meters, each item encourages exploration and helps bring ideas to life.