Cynthion is at Mouser

Note: This is a crosspost of a Cynthion update on Crowd Supply: https://www.crowdsupply.com/great-scott-gadgets/cynthion/updates/cynthion-is-at-mouser

An 885 lb / 401.43 kg shipment of thousands of Cynthions has been received by Mouser (who will fulfill Cynthion orders for Crowd Supply)! We expect the Cynthions to start shipping to backers around the 5th of July. You will receive a notice when your Cynthion has shipped.

While you wait for your shipping notice and for your device to arrive, take a moment to read the Cynthion documentation. Cynthion does not ship with USB cables, so take a look at the connection diagrams in this documentation for different...

BML FPGA Design Tutorial Part-10ofN

Placement and Floorplanning

2024.06.30 : I’m Kevin Hubbard, BSEE. I started my career 30+ years ago designing digital circuits on PCBs. I eventually moved into FPGAs in the mid-1990s and then onto designing digital ASICs for signal processing. I’m mostly back to FPGAs as they’ve become incredibly capable for signal processing and high speed interfacing. I’m writing this series ( which starts here ) to try and remove the shroud of secrecy surrounding FPGA development and hopefully encourage others to pursue a career in digital logic design. It’s been an incredibly challenging and rewarding career for me.

In Part-9 I introduced “Timing...

BML FPGA Design Tutorial Part-9ofN

Timing Closure

2024.06.29 : I’m Kevin Hubbard, Electrical Engineer for some 30+ years now.
At football tailgaters people will often ask me, “So what do you do for a living?”
My prepared answer is “I design digital computer chips.”
This generally shuts them up immediately.

Every so often though a smartass will reply “So you write RTL? You’re like a software engineer then?”
For which I reply, “No. I write RTL which infers digital CMOS logic gates that make timing across PVT – I’m an Electrical Engineer.” and then promptly throw my drink in their face. Now that REALLY shuts them up.

“Make Timing” aka “Timing Closure”...

Talking Tines

[Concept] Tuning forks that talk

Fritzing 1.0.3 released

Fritzing 1.0.3 is a maintenance release. It has been tested on Windows 10, Windows 11, macOS Ventura, macOS Monterey, Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04, and Ubuntu 24.04. It is designed to work on all Linux variants with glibc >= 2.31 (64-bit Intel/AMD). Changes since 1.0.2. Subparts A number of issues with schematic multiparts have been fixed. Basic operations like Undo/Redo on multiparts and their subparts were lacking and are now complete. Subparts can be used to clean up the schematic view. This example shows a 4001 Logic IC. The gates can be freely arranged to gain a much cleaner and more...

Inside the tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

To use the Montreal subway (the Métro), you tap a paper ticket against the turnstile and it opens. The ticket works through a system called NFC, but what's happening internally? How does the ticket work without a battery? How does it communicate with the turnstile? And how can it be so cheap that you can throw the ticket away after one use? To answer these questions, I opened up a ticket and examined the tiny chip inside.

The image below shows the chip inside the ticket, highly magnified. The four golden squares in the corner are the connections to the antenna. The tan-colored lines are the metal...

BML FPGA Design Tutorial Part-8ofN

Finite State Machines (FSMs)

2024.06.22 : I’m Kevin Hubbard, Electrical Engineer. For 30+ years now companies have asked me to design digital logic circuits for them. Which I have, and get this – they even pay me for it. Don’t tell my boss, but I would absolutely do it for free. I started doing digital design in the early 1980’s as a kid. I got hooked designing small interface logic circuits for my 6502 and Z80 8bit computers of the era.
40+ years later, I’m still loving the challenge of digital logic design. It’s a lot like LEGO building, but getting...

«Неоновые» лампы своими руками

Учебно-тренировочная работа для применения и закрепления навыков: освоенные стеклодувные операции, изготовление электродов из различных металлов гнутьём, резкой и контактной сваркой, печная термообработка стекла. Все работы выполнены в домашней лаборатории-мастерской с применением простого оборудования, инструментов и приборов. По большей части самодельных. Материалы тоже подножные. Читать дальше →

lowRISC and Microsoft Collaborate to Help Bring the Revolutionary CHERioT-Ibex Core to Production Grade

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Распиновка GPIO для Orange Pi 4 LTS

Для удобства схема GPIO и разъемов Orange Pi 4 LTS вынесена в отдельный пост. Все схемы и datasheet доступны в репозитории GitHub OrangePi4-LTS. Что такое GPIO и для каких задач используется, пост Работа с GPIO на примере Banana Pi BPI-M64. Часть 1. Интерфейс sysfs LED и DS18B20. Datasheet на процессор Rockchip RK3399 репозиторий GitHub Rockchip-SoC/Rockchip RK3399 Интерфейсы На плате доступны интерфейсы: 26-контактный GPIO разъем с шагом 2.54 мм; 24-контактный разъем FPC включающий в себя линию PCIe (необходим переходник на стандартный разъем mini PCIe). Позволяет подключать mini PCIe карты расширения функциональности. Например, можно установить диск NVMe M.2 SSD через дополнительный адаптер;...