Xobs' Blog

Three years ago I announced crowdfunding for Tomu – a microcontroller in your USB port. This project brought to mass-market a tiny Arm Cortex-M0 CPU in a package that fits directly into a USB port. Now you could take a standalone USB project anywhere. One year later in 2019, we launched

As part of the Betrusted Project, I am working on an operating system to power the hardware.  I've talked about the need for a new operating system for the project, which boils down to the need for software to be secure and small.  I've been working on it for about

I recently got Circuitpython working on Fomu! But there's an issue with the speed of Fomu's SPI flash: It's currently incredibly slow, and that makes for a poor experience. Worse still, the program runs so slowly that the tinyusb stack can't keep up with the USB protocol, and the host

Computers are binary things, right?  A bit is either "1" or "0". Except when it isn't. Computers are built from logic gates, which are built up from silicon, which is based in physics.  In physics, things very rarely are clear cut, and silicon gates are no exception.  Signals take time

When starting a project from scratch, it's important to create prototypes. For programming, you usually create small snippets that demonstrate what you want. Fortunately, software is quick to compile, so you're free to create hyper-specialized programs that exist only to test out particular theories. With hardware, the build cycle is

We've just started crowdfunding Fomu, and FPGA that fits in your USB port! The original project -- Tomu -- was a really interesting little device. It was a simple ARM Cortex M0 MCU that fit entirely inside a Type A USB port. It was easy to build, yet was actually

When designing a plastic case, it is important to work within the limitations of the medium. The design process begins with the PCB, which must fit within the final design space and still be manufacturable. You must take into account manufacturing tolerances and design specifications, while still providing plenty of

This series of blogposts details the steps I took to create a plastic case for Tomu. Tomu is a project I helped to crowdfund. Initially created by Tim "mithro" Ansell, Tomu is a tiny computer that fits entirely inside a Type-A USB port -- the sort usually found

In the process of bringing up Palawan DVT1, I've run across a number of bugs in Grainuum. Most notably, several subtle timing errors where the loop was one cycle too short or too long. Or in the case of the end-of-packet signal, four cycles too short. There was also an

Looking to debug your Chibitronics Love-to-Code board, but don't want to solder on headers? If you have access to a 3D printer, grab the LtC Debug Shoe, print it out, and crimp on some tinned wires. Read on to learn more about the project. I've been working lately on the

Seafile is a piece of software that I use every day that I find exceedingly handy. The elevator pitch is something along the lines of "Like Dropbox, but self-hosted, with versioning." I use it on all of my stuff, and it is fantastic. I run it on Linux,

When starting a project, the first step is obviously to decide what it should do. Do you want to do a light blinker or a laptop? Maybe you have something prototyped already on something like an Arduino, and you'd like to move to Mass Production (MP). Either way, entire industries

I have a private Novena repo of my own that contains packages that have not yet been released, but are good enough for testing. They may be unreliable in certain ways and have new bugs, but they also fix old bugs, add new features, and pull newer versions of the