Project Suggestions for 2011
FPGA Work
I'm principally interested in hardware oriented projects. The kit used in the ECAD+Arch Labs can be used to prototype a huge range of devices. Using an more advanced HDL like Bluespec (see my examples pages) can also speed up development but with some learning cost at the beginning.
Recreate Legacy Processors
Using modern hardware description languages it is now quite tractable to implement lecacy processors quickly. How about a SystemVerilog or Bluespec version of a PDP8? Or perhaps a stack machine to execute Forth programs?
The level of difficulty is obvously dependet upon the processor chosen and the existance of tools (instruction set simulator, etc.) that would help development.
GPU
Build a GPU capable of the fixed functions in OpenGL 1.1. Probably a complex project.