New Zealand’s First Microcomputer May Be This 1802

May 24, 2023 by Al Williams 13 Comments

Hardware hackers of a certain age likely got started with microcontrollers via the RCA 1802 — a relatively easy-to-use processor that was the subject of several excellent articles in Popular Electronics magazine back in the late 1970s. [Al’s Geek Lab] has an interview with [Hugh Anderson], who saw the articles and eventually designed the HUG1802, which may be the first microcontroller kit designed and sold in New Zealand.

The 1802 was very attractive at the time since it was inexpensive, static, didn’t require exotic voltages, and had a DMA system that allowed you to load software without complex ROMs. He initially marketed a kit unsuccessfully until an Australian company convinced him to create a proper PC board — the resulting kit was sold to about 100 customers.

The HUG1802 reminded us somewhat of the Quest Super Elf since it had a keypad, a cassette interface, and even a TV output. The 1802 had a DMA-enabled chip that made crude memory-mapped video output. The computer eventually morphed into the ETI 660, which they talk about at the end of the interview.

A lot of people built 1802 computers back in those days. If you don’t have an 1802, but you have an Arduino… ell, there’s always emulation.

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Simulated ET To Phone Home From Mars This Afternoon

May 24, 2023 by Al Williams 31 Comments

In science fiction movies, communicating with aliens is easy. In real life, though, we think it will be tough. Today, you’ll get your chance to see how tough when a SETI project uses the European Space Agency’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter to send a simulated alien message to the Earth. The transmission is scheduled to happen at 1900 UTC and, of course, the signal will take about 16 minutes to arrive here on planet Earth. You can see a video about the project, A Sign in Space, below.

You don’t need to receive the message yourself. That will be the job of observatories at the SETI Institute, the Green Bank Observatory, and the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics. They’ll make the signal available to everyone, and you can join others on Discord or work solo and submit your interpretation of the message.

There are a host of issues involved in alien communication. What communication medium will they use? How will they encode their message? Will the message even make sense? Imagine an engineer from 1910 trying to find, decode, and understand an ad on FM radio station 107.9. First, they’d have to find the signal. Then figure out FM modulation. Then they’d probably wonder what the phrase “smartphone” could possibly mean.

When [Frank Drake] created a test message to send to aliens via the Arecibo dish, almost no one could decode it unless they already knew how it worked. But even looking at the message in the accompanying image, you probably can only puzzle out some of it. Don’t forget; this message was created by another human.

If you want a foreshadowing of how hard this is, you can try decoding the bitstream yourself. Of course, that page assumes you already figured out that the stream of bits is, in fact, a stream of bits and that it should be set in an image pattern. You also have the advantage of knowing what the right answer looks like. It could easily become an extraterrestrial Rorschach test where you find patterns and meaning in every permutation of bits.

Speaking of the Drake message, it saddens us to think that Arecibo is gone. The closest we think we’ve come to intercepting alien messages is the Wow signal.

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Building Circuits Flexibly

May 23, 2023 by Al Williams 20 Comments

You think of breadboards as being a flexible way to build things — one can easily add components and wires and also rip them up. But MIT researchers want to introduce an actual flexible breadboard called FlexBoard. The system is like a traditional breadboard, but it is literally flexible. If you want to affix your prototype to a glove or a ball, good luck with a traditional breadboard. FlexBoard makes it easy. You can see a short video below and a second video presentation about the system, also.

The breadboard uses a plastic living hinge arrangement and otherwise looks more or less like a conventional breadboard. We can think of about a dozen projects this would make easier.

What’s more, it doesn’t seem like it would be that hard to fabricate using a 3D printer and some sacrificial breadboards. The paper reveals that the structures were printed on an Ender 3 using ePLA and a flexible vinyl or nylon filament. Want to try it yourself? You can!

We know what we will be printing this weekend. If you make any cool prototypes with this, be sure to let us know. Sometimes we breadboard virtually. Our favorite breadboards, though, have more than just the breadboard on them.

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Network Programming

May 22, 2023 by Al Williams 13 Comments

If you want a book on network programming, there are a few classic choices. [Comer’s] TCP/IP books are a great reference but sometimes is too low level. “Unix Networking Programming” by [Stevens] is the usual choice, but it is getting a little long in the tooth, as well. Now we have “Beej’s Guide to Network Programming Using Internet Sockets.” While the title doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, the content is right on and fresh. Best part? You can read it now in your browser or in PDF format.

All the topics you’d expect are there in ten chapters. Of course, there’s the obligatory description of what a socket is and the types of sockets you commonly encounter. Then there’s coverage of addressing and portability. There’s even a section on IPV6.

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Handheld PC Looks Great

May 22, 2023 by Al Williams 13 Comments

[Bytewelder] fondly remembers the Palm III and Sharp HC-4500, so taking on the design of Decktility, a custom handheld cyberdeck , was a natural next step. The blog post goes into much detail about the design decisions and challenges throughout the project. The end result, though, looks great.

The device uses a Raspberry Pi CM4 and an IPS touchscreen. The bulk of the design work was to get the power system working. There is a custom FET board and an Arduino that manages charging and battery state.

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ChatGPT Rules The World… Or, At Least, The Home

May 22, 2023 by Al Williams 17 Comments

With all the hype about ChatGPT, it has to have crossed your mind: how can I make it control devices? On the utopia side, you could say, “Hey, ChatGPT, figure out what hours I’m usually home and set the thermostat higher when I am away.” On the dysfunctional side, the AI could lock you in your home and torment you like some horror movie. We aren’t to either extreme yet, but [Chris] couldn’t resist writing a ChatGPT plugin to control a Raspberry Pi. You can see a video of how it turned out below.

According to [Chris], writing a ChatGPT plugin is actually much simpler than you think. You can see in the video the AI can intuit what lights to turn on and off based on your activity, and, of course, many more things are possible. It can even detect snoring.

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The Wizard Of Semiconductors

May 22, 2023 by Al Williams 19 Comments

If you have three hours and you want to learn the fundamentals of semiconductors, [Tiny Tapeout] has something for you: An introduction to SiliWiz. You’ll also need the SiliWiz software (or use it online), which resembles the kind of tools that chip designers use but is meant for students to use as a learning tool

Using SiliWiz, you create layers on a virtual device, and you can use Spice to view the results. The tutorial is meant to be high-level and is suggested for students aged 14 or over (but we liked it and we are quite a bit older than that). Some more advanced material is also available at the same site.

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