Month: January 2020

Open Source Hardware in industry – meet DIN SPEC 3105

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Martin Häuer of Open Source Ecology Germany gave a talk at 36c3 about a recent effort to create a standard for Open Source Hardware with DIN (the German Institute for Standardization):
Screenshot from 2020-01-11 11-20-39

Open Source Hardware in industry – meet DIN SPEC 3105

Compared to software, the open source approach is relatively new to most actors in the field of (mechanical) hardware.

Plus Open Source Hardware faces some special issues. A yet missing definition of its “source code” is one of them (+ patent law, liability, engineers that do not know how to work with git, costly prototyping…)

DIN SPEC 3105 will be/is the first official standard for Open Source Hardware and also the first official standard ever published under a free license (CC-BY-SA 4.0; that was a lot of lobby work 😉 ). It defines the technology-specific “source” of Open Source Hardware and aims to build a bridge between research institutes, public authority, industry and the worldwide open source community.

Here is a PDF of the slides: OSH Standardisation-36c3

Screenshot from 2020-01-11 11-23-34To look into the standards themselves:

Additional information is hosted on GitLab:

Technology-specific Documentation Criteria (TsDC) specify the requirements for the technical documentation of Open Source Hardware (OSH). A TsDC is created (yet manually) by OSH projects/developers and is a subset of the TsDC database (TsDC-DB) provided in this repository. The concept of a TsDC was initially mentioned in DIN SPEC 3105-1 (since v0.3) and probably will be mainly used in this context.

Learn more about Open Source Ecology Germany on their website:

Screenshot from 2020-01-11 11-31-00

Enable a sustainable way of life and the emergence of an open source economy through self-created and freely available means of production .

Open Source Hardware in industry – meet DIN SPEC 3105

Hardware Happy Hour Chicago on January 23rd

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I will happen to be back in Chicago during the next Hardware Happy Hour on January 23rd, and I am looking forward to seeing all the projects people are working!

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Hardware Happy Hour Chicago

Some people will be in town for ORD camp so the January Meetup of Hardware Happy Hour Chicago will be on a Thursday this time to allow for people visiting to attend. As always bring projects, hack, and apparently giant LED signs.

https://www.meetup.com/Hardware-Happy-Hour-3H-Chicago/events/267275376/

Hardware Happy Hour Chicago on January 23rd

Penguino Feather SAMR34 LoRa Dev-Board

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Orkhan AmirAslan on Hackaday.io has created a RAK4260 based, Feather styled LoRa dev-board:

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Penguino Feather SAMR34 LoRa Dev-Board

This is a SAMR34 based LoRa dev-board with all the necessary components for fast prototyping. It’s a successor of my previous Penguino RF module and Feather breakout design ( https://www.tindie.com/products/16985/ )The new design uses the RAK4260 module from @RAKWireless and improves on some aspects, such as USB Type-C, RGB LED, user button, battery protection & voltage supervision, and optional flash & per-provisioned secure element IC pads.

Background:

About a year ago, after I first saw SAMR34 System in Package (SiP) in 2018 Electronica I couldn’t find a module for it and I took up the challenge for myself to build one myself. Then sharing first renders with the Twitterverse it gathered quite a bit of interest and I started selling couple over at my Tindie store. At the time I named the project TinyLoRa but for legal reasons I had to change it to Penguino.

Specs:

  • ATSAMR34J18 LoRA System-in-Package (SiP) based RAK4260
  • ARM Cortex M0+ MCU & SX1276 LoRa Radio
  • 256KB Flash, 40 KB RAM
  • Max Tx Power: +20 dBm; Max Sensitivity: -148dBm; Rx Current: 17mA (typical)
  • Frequency Range: 862 to 1020 MHz (DS values)
  • Deep Sleep Current: ~1 μA (module only)
  • Li-Po battery charging IC
  • RGB user LED, Battery Charge Status (red) and Power (blue) (w/ cut-off jumpers)
  • 3.3V low Iq LDO (~1 μA)
  • Low-voltage battery cut-off supervisor IC (3V Vbat cutoff)
  • USB Type-C connector with protection/filtering circuit
  • 0.75 A resettable fuse
  • Voltage divider for Vbat monitoring (w/ cut-off jumpers)
  • SMA and u.FL antenna connectors
  • 10-pin SWD programming header
  • Dimensions: 2 in. x 0.9 in. (50.8 mm x 22.8 mm)

Penguino Feather SAMR34 LoRa Dev-Board

Hackaday Belgrade: Call for Proposals

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Join Hackaday in Belgrade, Serbia on May 9th, 2020 for the Hackaday Belgrade conference!

The biennial hardware conference is just seventeen weeks from now. Early Bird tickets will go on sale shortly, but beginning right now you can hack your way into the conference by submitting a talk proposal. Accepted speakers receive free admission, plus everyone who submits a quality talk proposal will be given priority when tickets go on sale.

Yes, I’m talking to you. Hackaday strives to include first-time speakers in the slate of presenters at our conferences. We’re looking for unique, cutting-edge, whimsical, crazy, formidable, or world-changing topics revolving around hardware creation. From learning new tools or techniques to fabrication adventures, from code-wrangling that firmware project to pulling off an art installation, and from forgotten hardware history to the impossible made possible on your own workbench, we need to hear your stories!

That project for which you went into the deep weeds and worked your way back out again? Everyone at a Hackaday conference wants to hear about it and in the greatest detail possible. After all, we’re your fellow hackers. In fact, you should probably bring the hardware along for the ride.

WE NEED YOU

None of this happens in a vacuum. This is the third Hackaday Belgrade conference, which have now settled into a tick-tock cadence of even-numbered years. The first two both sold out, this one will as well, and the result is always an action-packed, nearly 24-hour marathon sprint of talks, workshops, and hardware hacking. But the only reason this works is because amazing people just like you make it a priority in their life to be there.

via Hackaday Belgrade: Call for Proposals — Hackaday

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Learn to code KiCad at FOSDEM 2020

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FOSDEM 2020 is a free event on Februrary 1st and 2nd for software developers to meet, share ideas and collaborate.  Every year, thousands of developers of free and open source software from all over the world gather at the event in Brussels:

Screenshot from 2020-01-07 12-33-42.png

The Friday before FOSDEM, January 31st, will be an event for those that want to learn about KiCad development from project leaders like Wayne Stambaugh and Seth Hillbrand:

Learn to Code KiCad at FOSDEM 2020

 Are you looking to write code that improves KiCad?

On Friday, Jan 31 (the day before FOSDEM), we’ll be hosting a Learn to Code KiCad session in Brussels, BE. I will be there as will Wayne and possibly a few other of the lead development team. We’ll help you understand how the various KiCad components fit together and work with you to get your favorite feature from idea to committed code.

What you need:

1) An identified bug report (or multiple) that you’d like to address. This can be either a legitimate bug or a wishlist feature that is triaged in our system.
2) A laptop with your development environment
3) A launchpad account
4) A compiling version of KiCad
5) A working knowledge of C++ coding

What we’ll provide:

1) Space, power outlet, wifi
2) Coffee
3) A short introduction to the structure of KiCad and how the parts work together
4) Up to 8 hours of development time with others who share your interests
5) Clarifying insights to your KiCad coding questions

At the end of the day, you should be able to get at least 1 and possibly multiple bug report fixes under your belt and into the code base!

If you’re coming to FOSDEM 2020 and would like to participate, please e-mail me directly (off-list to preserve people’s inboxes). Send me your name/contact info and the list of 1 or more launchpad bugs you’d like to work on during the day. I’ll add you to our shared sheet (to deconflict bugs people are addressing) and get you all of the relevant information for the meeting

Here is a talk that Seth gave at KiCon 2019 which talks about their development community:

and also the KiCad developer panel:

Learn to code KiCad at FOSDEM 2020

PoE Powers Christmas Lights, But Opens Up So Much More

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Addressable LEDs are a staple of homemade Christmas decorations in our community, as is microprocessor control of those LEDs. So at first sight [Glen Akins]’ LED decorated Christmas tree looks pretty enough, but isn’t particularly unusual. But after reading his write-up you’ll discover there’s far more to the project than meets the eye, and learn a lot about the technologies behind it that has relevance far beyond a festive light show.

The decoration is powered exclusively from power-over-Ethernet, with a PIC microcontroller translating Art-Net DMX-over-Ethernet packets into commands for the LED string. The control board is designed from the ground up and includes all the PoE circuitry, and the write-up  gives a very thorough introduction to this power source that takes the reader way beyond regarding PoE as simply another off-the-shelf black box. Along the way we see all his code, as well as learn a few interesting tidbits such as the use of a pre-programmed EEPROM containing a unique MAC address.

So if your house has CAT5 wiring and you want an extra dimension to your festive splendour, you’ve officially got a whole year to build your own version. He’s featured here before, with his buzzer to break the Caps Lock habit.

via PoE Powers Christmas Lights, But Opens Up So Much More — Hackaday

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Hackaday Superconference: An Analog Engineer Dives Into RF

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Those of us who work with electronics will usually come to the art through a particular avenue that we master while imbibing what we need from those around it. For example, an interest in audio circuitry may branch into DSP and microcontrollers as projects become more complex. Some realms though retain an aura of impossibility, a reputation as a Dark Art, and chief among them for many people is radio frequency (RF). Radio circuitry is often surprisingly simple, yet that simplicity conceals a wealth of complexity because the medium does not behave in the orderly manner of a relatively static analogue voltage or a set of low-frequency logic levels.

Chris Gammell is a familiar face to many Hackaday readers for his mastery of much electronic trickery, so it comes as something of a surprise to find that RF has been one of the gaps in his knowledge. In his talk at the Hackaday Superconference he took us through his journey into RF work, and the result is a must-watch for anyone with a curiosity about radio circuitry who didn’t know where to start.

via Hackaday Superconference: An Analog Engineer Dives Into RF — Hackaday

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Ben Heck’s Atari 2600 Junior Single Chip Portable

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Here’s a portable retro gaming project by Ben Heck:

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Project started in 2000 finally finished – Atari 2600 Junior Single Chip Portable!

When I first starting buying Atari 2600 consoles for modding purposes back in 2000 (right after my website became famous) I was lucky enough that my first Atari 2600 Junior had the ultra-rare “single chip” variant inside.

Of course this was “portablization catnip” for me so I desoldered it and tried to make a custom PCB.  My skills at the time weren’t up to task and I feared the chip dead. Had I know then how rare it was (I’ve never found another since) I probably wouldn’t have tried but can’t change that now.

Flash forward to fall of 2018 and I come across the project in a junk box while moving out of the Ben Heck Show shop. Decided to give it another go and I have help this time – my friend Parker Dillmann has an intact single-chip 2600 Junior so we can cross reference to it.

I documented this near-year-long process in the video below. You can also click here for the full photo gallery with notes.

Ben Heck’s Atari 2600 Junior Single Chip Portable

Hackaday: DIY Scalar Network Analyzer

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[Steven Merrifield] built his own Scalar Network Analyzer and it’s a beauty! [Steve]’s SNA has a digital pinout matching a Raspberry Pi, but any GPIO could be used to operate the device and retrieve the data from the ADC. The design is based around a few tried and true chips from Analog Devices. He’s taken some care to design it to be nice and accurate which is why he’s limited it to 1kHz to 30Mhz. We think it’s quite a fetching board once the shielding is in place.

via DIY Scalar Network Analyzer — Hackaday

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The first Adafruit Show ‘n Tell of 2020

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https://youtu.be/ENVEeFbJBQ8?t=839
https://youtu.be/ENVEeFbJBQ8?t=839
https://youtu.be/ENVEeFbJBQ8?t=839

Joining Adafruit Show ‘n Tell with Helen Leigh was a fun way to start 2020!

Helen embroidered the CircuitPython-powered Serpente board from Arturo at Chaos Communication Congress (36c3):

I showed Linux running on a RISC-V core in the ECP5 FPGA on the Hackaday Supercon badge:

I gave a shout-out to Greg Davill who got Linux booting the OrangeCrab while at 36c3:

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Greg’s open hardware OrangeCrab board features the ECP5 FPGA in an Adafruit Feather form factor and is capable of running a RISC-V “soft” core using LiteX.

Find out more about Linux on RISC-V using open source FPGA toolchains in the slides from my 36c3 talk

https://github.com/pdp7/talks/raw/master/oshw-linux-36c3.pdf
https://github.com/pdp7/talks/raw/master/oshw-linux-36c3.pdf
https://github.com/pdp7/talks/raw/master/oshw-linux-36c3.pdf
The first Adafruit Show ‘n Tell of 2020