Month: March 2022

First Oregon-made satellite now orbiting earth

fustini, , Leave a comment

We are thrilled by the recent successful deployment of OreSat0 into orbit and congratulate the Portland State Aerospace Society (PSAS) on their tremendous achievement!

After months of research, testing, and development, the first Oregon-made satellite, built by Portland State University students apart of the Portland Aerospace Society, was launched into space this month and is currently orbiting the earth sending back data packets.

The Portland State Aerospace society is a primarily undergraduate group at Portland State University that builds small rockets and satellites.

OreSat0, made of solar panels, batteries, radios, computer, GPS, and a star tracker, has been years in the making, according to David Lay, an Electrical Engineering undergrad involved in the Portland State Aerospace Society.

Read more on Fox12 Oregon….

First Oregon-made satellite now orbiting earth

Open Hardware Trailblazer Fellowship

fustiniLeave a comment

The Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA) has just announced our Open Hardware Trailblazers Fellowship. The one year fellowship provides $50,000 or $100,000 grants to individuals who are leading the way as open source hardware expands into academia. The fellows will document their experience of making open source hardware in academia to create a library of resources for others to follow. The RFP is here, and the application form for fellows is here. It is due April 7th.

To support the Open Hardware Trailblazers Fellowship, OSHWA is recruiting open source hardware professionals and practitioners from both inside and outside of academia with diverse backgrounds to serve on the mentor committee. The committee will review applications, make recommendations on fellowship awards, and advise fellows through their year-long Open Hardware Trailblazers Fellowship. For more details you can see this post. The mentor application is due March 30th.

Open Hardware Trailblazer Fellowship

An “unbusy” USB-C port doubles-up for JTAG Programming

fustiniLeave a comment

Joshua Vasquez writes:

Board space is a premium on small circuit board designs, and [Alvaro] knows it. So instead of adding a separate programming port, he’s found a niche USB-C feature that lets him use the port that he’s already added both for its primary application and for programming the target microcontroller over JTAG. The result is that he no longer needs to worry about spending precious board space for a tiny programming port; the USB-C port timeshares for both!

In a Twitter thread (Unrolled Link), [Alvaro] walks us through his discovery and progress towards an encapsulated solution. It turns out that the USB-C spec supports a “Debug-Accessory Mode” specification, where some pins are allowed to be repurposed if pins CC1 and CC2 are pulled up to Logic-1. Under these circumstances, the pin functions are released, and a JTAG programmer can step in to borrow them. To expose the port to a programmer, [Alvaro] cooked up a small breakout board with a USB-C plug and separate microcontroller populated on it.

This board also handles a small quirk. Since [Alvaro’s] choice of programming pins aren’t reversible, the USB-C plug will only work one of the two ways it can be plugged in. To keep the user informed, this breakout board sports a red LED for incorrect orientation and a green LED for correct orientation–nifty. While this design quirk sacrifices reversibility, it preserves the USB 2.0 D+ and D- pins while also handling some edge cases with regard to the negotiating for access to the port.

Read more…

An “unbusy” USB-C port doubles-up for JTAG Programming