Introducing
FrontPanel 6
Same SDK. New platform. Built around the way modern engineers want to work.
Today we're launching FrontPanel 6, a significant update that brings the FPGA development experience in line with modern software engineering. For those of you who have been building on FrontPanel for years, the most important point to make first: the SDK you know and rely on is unchanged.
Every C++ call, every Python, Java, and C# binding, every Wire, Trigger, Pipe, Register, and AXI endpoint — the methods you've built on behave exactly the way they always have. Migrating an existing C++, Python, Java, or C# application to FrontPanel 6 takes only minor, structural updates, and we've published a full FP6 Migration Guide (along with an AI guidance document) to walk you through it. Your gateware does not need to change. The SDK is still the SDK.
What does change is how you build and deploy apps. At the core of FrontPanel 6 is FrontPanel Platform, a modern application platform built on top of the SDK to bring web-native tooling, real debugging, and AI-assisted development to FPGA application work.
A new home for your apps and devices
The Classic FrontPanel application has been replaced by the FrontPanel Platform App Launcher. The launcher brings your apps and your hardware together in a single workspace, where connected devices and installed apps appear side by side. Deploying an app is now as simple as dragging it onto a connected device, after which the launcher automatically configures the FPGA, loads the bitfile, and establishes the connection.
From the same window, you can update firmware, inspect connected SYZYGY peripherals, monitor real-time sensor data, and view device information at a glance. The goal was to put everything you need to work with your hardware in one place, and to make sharing a working application with a teammate as easy as handing them a single file.
FPGA development with the ease of modern software development
Modern web and software development has advanced significantly in the past decade. Toolchains, package management, build tooling, IDE integration, and AI-assisted coding have all matured rapidly. With FrontPanel 6, we wanted to bring that same level of developer experience to FPGA application work.
Starting a new project now takes a single NPM command. That command scaffolds a complete project, with TypeScript, React, and the FrontPanel Platform API already wired up. From there, you build your application the way you would build any modern browser-based project. When you are ready to deploy, a second NPM command packages your code, your assets, and your bitfile into a single deployable file ready to drop onto a device.
The full NPM ecosystem is available throughout. Whether you need a charting library, a statistics package, a 3D viewer, a data grid, or a math utility, any package is a single install away. Your FPGA application is now a Node project, with all the tooling that comes with it.
Real debugging, in tools you already know
Because FrontPanel applications run in a modern web runtime, debugging works the way it does for any modern web application. Open Chrome DevTools from inside FrontPanel Platform, and you have breakpoints, live state inspection, streaming console output, and performance profiling, all in one place. Pause execution on a Wire read to see exactly what came back from the device. Step through a Trigger handler line by line. Watch a sensor reading tick up in real time.
For anyone who has spent time scattering print statements across a host application to track down a problem, this is a meaningful improvement.
AI-assisted development out of the box
Because every FrontPanel project is now a standard TypeScript and React application, modern AI coding tools such as Cursor and Claude Code work with your project natively. There is no Opal Kelly-specific AI to learn. You bring whatever AI-enabled IDE you already use, and the project is structured so that those tools can read, edit, and refactor it effectively.
In practice, this means you can describe a change in plain language — whether replacing a chart library, adding a calculated value to a sensor dashboard, or restructuring a UI layout — and have a working version of that change running on your hardware in minutes rather than hours.
What this means for you
For existing FrontPanel customers, the practical answer is straightforward.
The methods you've built on are unchanged, and the gateware on your devices does not need to be modified. Bringing an existing C++, Python, Java, or C# application over to FrontPanel 6 is a small, structural migration — we've put together a Migration Guide and an AI guidance document so the work is straightforward.
When you are ready to explore the new platform, the FrontPanel Platform Developer's Guide and several example projects — including Counters, PipeTest, and a SYZYGY sensor monitor — are available at docs.opalkelly.com. Each example can be packaged and run on your own hardware in a few minutes.
The Classic application will continue to be supported through a reasonable transition period. Future investment, however, is going into FrontPanel Platform, and we encourage you to begin exploring when you have the bandwidth.
— The Opal Kelly team
