When all else fails, there’s radio. Hurricane Helene’s path of destruction through Appalachia stripped away every shred of modern infrastructure in some areas, leaving millions of residents with no ability to reach out to family members or call for assistance, and depriving them of any news from the outside world. But radio seems to be carrying the day, with amateur radio operators and commercial broadcasters alike stepping up to the challenge.
I’ve talked a fair bit about USB-C before, explaining how it all works, from many different angles. That said, USB-C is just the physical connector standard, plus the PD part that takes care of voltages and altmodes – things like data transfer are still delegated to the two interfaces you invariably end up using on USB-C ports, USB 2, and USB 3.
You might think USB 2 and USB 3 are tightly related, but in many crucial ways, they couldn’t be more different. I have experience working with both, and, as you might guess, I want to share it all with you. You might be surprised to hear there’s plenty to learn about USB 2 in particular – after all, we’ve had it hang around for 30 years now. Well, let’s make sure you’re fully caught up!
USB 2 is a point-to-point link – one side is “host” and another is “device”, with the host typically being a PC chipset or a single-board computer. USB 2 relies on a single pseudodifferential pair. It’s “pseudodifferential” because the wires don’t just do differential signaling – they also use digital logic levels and pullup/pulldown resistors to signal device presence, especially in the beginning when the USB link is still getting established. Indeed, you can imitate a USB device’s presence with just a resistor.
Continue reading “Ubiquitous Successful Bus: Version 2”
From space, the most striking feature of our Pale Blue Dot is exactly what makes it blue: all that water. About three-quarters of the globe is covered with liquid water, and our atmosphere is a thick gaseous soup laden with water vapor. Almost everywhere you look there’s water, and even where there’s no obvious surface water, chances are good that more water than you could use in a lifetime lies just below your feet, and accessing it could be as easy as an afternoon’s work with a shovel.
And therein lies the rub for those who delve into the Earth’s depths for the minerals and other resources we need to function as a society — if you dig deep enough, water is going to become a problem. The Earth’s crust holds something like 44 million cubic kilometers of largely hidden water, and it doesn’t take much to release it from the geological structures holding it back and restricting its flow. One simple mineshaft chasing a coal seam or a shaft dug in the wrong place, and suddenly all the hard-won workings are nothing but flooded holes in the ground. Add to that the enormous open-pit mines dotting the surface of the planet that resemble nothing so much as empty lakes waiting to fill back up with water if given a chance, and the scale of the problem water presents to mining operations becomes clear.
Dewatering mines is a complex engineering problem, one that intersects and overlaps multiple fields of expertise. Geotechnical engineers work alongside mining engineers, hydrogeologists, and environmental engineers to devise cost-effective ways to control the flow of water into mines, redirect it when they can, and remove it when there’s no alternative.
Want to give prospective employers a business card that doesn’t immediately get tossed? Of course you do. If you’re one of us, the answer is obvious: make it some kind of a PCB.
[Ricardo Daniel de Paula] initially chose the CH32V303 microcontroller because it has native USB 2.0 and 16 capacitive touch channels, which can support up to 48 keys via multiplexing.
But in order to reduce costs, [Ricardo] switched to the CH582M, which does all that plus Bluetooth communication. The goal is to have an affordable design for a unique, functioning business card, and I would say that this project has it in spades.
Continue reading “Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Folding Butterfly Keyboard”
One of the standard tropes in science fiction is some kind of device that can render someone unconscious — you know, like a phaser set to stun. We can imagine times when being aggressively knocked out would lead to some grave consequences, but — we admit — it is probably better than getting shot. However, we don’t really have any reliable technology to do that today. However, if you’ve passed a modern-day policeman, you’ve probably noticed the Taser on their belt. While this sounds like a phaser, it really isn’t anything like it. It is essentially a stun gun with a long reach thanks to a wire with a dart on the end that shoots out of the gun-like device and shocks the target at a distance. Civilian Tasers have a 15-foot long wire, while law enforcement can get longer wires. But did you know that modern Tasers also fire confetti?
It sounds crazy, and it isn’t celebratory. The company that makes the Taser — formerly, the Taser company but now Axon — added the feature because of a common complaint law enforcement had with the device. Interestingly, many things that might be used in comitting a crime are well-understood. Ballistics can often identify that a bullet did or did not come from a particular weapon, for example. Blood and DNA on a scene can provide important clues. Even typewriters and computer printers can be identified by variations in their printing. But if you fire a taser, there’s generally little evidence left behind.
Continue reading “Tech In Plain Sight: Tasers Shooting Confetti”
I recently got one of the new RP2040-based Bus Pirate 5 (BP5), a multi-purpose interface debugging and testing tool. Scanning the various such tools in my toolbox already: an Analog Discovery 2, a new Glasgow Interface Explorer, and a couple of pyboards, I realized they all had a Python or MicroPython user interface. A few people on the BP5 forums had tossed around the idea of MicroPython, and it just so happened that I was experimenting with building beta versions of MicroPython for a RP2350 board at the time. Naturally, I started wondering, “just how hard can it be to get MicroPython running on the BP5?”
Rather than duplicating the BP5 firmware functionality, I decided to ignore it completely and go with existing MicroPython capabilities. I planned to just make a simple set of board definition files — perhaps Board Support Package (BSP) is a better term? I’ve done this a dozen times before for development and custom boards. Then write a collection of MicroPython modules to conform to the unique aspects in the BP5 hardware. As user [torwag] over on the Bus Pirate forums said back in March:
Micropython comes already with some modules and enough functions to get some stuff out-of-the-box working. E.g. the infamous version of “hello world” for microcontrollers aka led-blinking.
Continue reading “Experimenting With MicroPython On The Bus Pirate 5”
More than a couple folks have written us saying that their entries into the Supercon Add-On Contest got caught up in the Chinese fall holidays. Add to that our tendency to wait until the last minute, and there still more projects out there that we’d like to see. So we’re extending the deadline one more week, until October 22nd.
If you’re just tuning in now, well, you’ve got some catching up to do. Supercon Add-Ons are another step forward in the tradition of renaming the original SAO. One of our favorite resources on the subject comes from prolific SAO designer [Twinkle Twinkie], and you can even download PCB footprints over there on Hackaday.io.
Don’t know why you want to make an SAO? Even if you’re not coming to Supercon this year? Well, our own [Tom Nardi] describes it as a low barrier to entry, full-stack hardware design and production tutorial. Plus, you’ll have something to trade with like-minded hardware nerds at the next con you attend.
We’ve already seen some killer artistic entries, but we want to see yours! We know the time’s tight, but you can still get in a last minute board run if you get started today. And those of you who are sitting at home waiting for boards to arrive, wipe that sweat from your brow. We’ll catch up with you next Tuesday!
