Introducing Qomu 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
renode Precursor + Renode Precursor is an FPGA-based dev platform for secured applications. The reference design runs a VexRiscv CPU core plus a wide range of peripherals. Developing software for an embedded target can
simmel Trace Together Token: Teardown and Design Overview On 19 June, GovTech Singapore invited four members of the community to come and inspect their new TraceTogether Token. This token removes the need to carry a phone at all times, and is designed to help both those who do not have a smart
Xous: Support Tooling 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
xous Announcing Xous: the Betrusted Operating System Today we're pleased to announce the Betrusted project. The goals of this project are to create a secure platform that is auditable by the end user, and is capable of performing secure communications.
Cobbled-together Profiler 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
Clocks and Timing are Hard 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
Fomu EVT: Prototype or Business Card? 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.
Fomu: An FPGA in your USB Port 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
Tomu Plastic Case Part 2: PCB Modifications 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
Making Tomu: Plastic Case Overview 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
palawan Palawan project #1: button box June saw lots of progress on Palawan. Many bugs were fixed in the Grainuum stack, the bootloader was fleshed out, and stability was improved. The system is usable now, and just about feature-complete. Enough to think about shipping. An image is worth many words,
Grainuum 1.3: Now with fewer bugs 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
Love-to-Code Debug Shoe 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.
novena Clustering Novena Server clustering is a topic I've been cirous about for a rather long time, from back in the Slashdot days where one would constantly "imagine a beowulf cluster of" any given low-powered device. With modern clustering software, such thoughts become practical reality.
palawan Palawan DVT1 Build I've just finished taping out Palawan DVT1. This is the first build in a long time, and is a rather heavy redesign. The three biggest changes are: New CPU/Radio pair 433 MHz operation Redesigned in KiCad KL02 and RFM69HW Previously, Palawan was based
usb Palawan's USB Stack is Now Known as Grainuum The USB stack from project Palawan has grown beyond its original scope. The bootloader contains a completely separate copy, and it has been ported to at least one other platform. It is confusing to refer to both the hardware platform and the USB stack
Seafile: Filesharing that's pretty great 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
xobs.io Promising URLs for the future A statement floating around on Twitter is that "A URL is a promise". A fine sentiment, and I hope that link continues to work in the future. The Internet is not a static thing, but being able to send someone a link
novena Novena-as-a-Keyboard There's just something magical about watching text flow along a screen. It's the basis for Defcon boards made popular by the movie Wargames, and is popular in the background of most movies. It's rare that such a display happens in the real world, but
Palawan: Part Selection and Schematics 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
palawan Introducing: Project Palawan I want to learn more about hardware design, and the best way to learn something is to do it. I've started work on a new project to create an easy-to-use hardware input platform. The project, codenamed Palawan, allows you to make contraptions that show
Novena Beta Repo 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,
novena Desktop Factory Test We've just shipped the desktop factory test off to the assembly line, and they'll soon begin the process of turning bare boards into desktop models. We ran the initial factory test -- the one I mentioned earlier -- on every board we produced. This
senoko Senoko Battery Board as a Device The Senoko battery board contains an STM32 chip, and runs its own separate operating system. The computer itself has 10 kilobytes of RAM and 64 kilobytes of storage space, where the operating system lives. This operating system is responsible for keeping the battery charged,