Free Stuff - November 2024

The belated November 2024 recipients for the Great Scott Gadgets Free Stuff Program are the folks at iMagineLab makerspace in Antwerp, Belgium! iMagineLab is home to a community of students and tech enthusiasts alike that gather weekly to collaborate on and share knowledge for open source projects.

Thomas Janssen from iMagineLab has informed us of the makerspace’s upcoming project to build a digital radio receiver for receiving and decoding NOAA weather signals using open source software. Their goal is to then visualize NOAA weather images and collect and display data to create a weather monitoring station based on RF signals!

Thomas has...

Free Stuff - October 2024

The belated October 2024 recipient for the Great Scott Gadgets Free Stuff Program is Dustin Chambliss, who teaches at Pearl River Community College in Mississippi! Dustin currently teaches a 2 year electronics program and aims to revive an older and outdated communication course to focus on more modern technology. By obtaining a HackRF One, Dustin will be able to teach students about wireless communication including Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and cellular, and provide hardware for the updated curriculum. We are excited to be providing Dustin and his students with a HackRF One to continue their educational journeys and stay up to date...

April Update: Risc It For A Biscuit

Hello and happy April! The past few months have been relatively quiet on the surface, but there is a lot going on behind the scenes. During the past three months we have seen some improvements for the PineTab2, PineTime and PineNote, along with the announcement that the PineTab-V is back in store and the new micro soldering tip set for the Pinecil. Charlie the Pinecorn also makes his yearly appearance in the update banner, artwork made by Caffeine.

We have been very happy with the feedback after the launch of the PineNote Community Edition. Users coming from the developer edition with...

Fritzing 1.0.5 released

Fritzing 1.0.5 is a maintenance release. It has been tested on Windows 11 24H2 (ARM and Intel), macOS Sequoia, macOS Ventura, Ubuntu 22.04, and Ubuntu 24.04. What is new Windows ARM Support for Windows on ARM CPUs. Fritzing uses Prism on Windows 24H2 to run on ARM. New Fonts We are fading out Droid Sans and Open Sans in favor of Noto Sans. This affects mostly the Breadboard and the Schematic View. A bunch of Fritzing parts was using unknown fonts, which resulted in using whatever fallback font the operating system provided. We have replaced these with either Noto Sans,...

Interview with Bileam Tschepe: TouchDesigner Expert

An illuminating interview with Bileam Tschepe, a Berlin-based TouchDesigner expert and visual programming specialist.

An Interview with Lancelot Blanchard and Perry Naseck

A in-depth discussion with Lancelot Blanchard and Perry Naseck about their work with Jordan Rudess on AI music technology, bridging the gap between musicians and technology, and the future of generative AI in music.

Comments to USTR Opposing Tariffs and Tariff Increases

The United States Trade Representative invited comments from the public this past month to assist them in making recommendations about how to address so-called “unfair trade practices by other countries” and “non-reciprocal trade relationships”. This is the public comment I left today on the USTR docket. I have also submitted similar comments to my senators and representative in Congress.

“I am deeply alarmed by the Trump administration’s decision last week to impose tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods, as well as further increase tariffs on imports from China. As the CEO of Great Scott Gadgets, a small Colorado-based business that designs,...

Robotron S6130 — Восставший из мертвых

История ремонта этой пишущей машинки тянется уже 8 лет! Шутка что ли, это Самый Первый Артефакт моего YouTube-канала!

Robotron S6130 — многофункциональная пишущая машинка формата A2 на базе процессора Z80, с функцией запоминания набранных текстов во встроенной оперативной памяти, с записью и воспроизведением на магнитофон, а также возможностью приема и передачи текстов с ЭВМ по последовательному порту!

Но, перед тем как появиться у меня, агрегат порядка четырех лет пролежал в сыром, заброшенном помещении на горе заплесневевших книг. За это время питающая ОЗУ резервная батарейка протекла и пожрала дорожки на материнской плате. Коррозией покрылись и ноги ближайших микросхем, ОЗУ. Разумеется, на первом...

Emulating a PS5 Controller with Cynthion

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/MMZAyQuZHvs

We’ve recently published the second video in our Cynthion training series, so if you want to go deeper into exploring and experimenting with USB, this is for you. In this video, Martin explains the basics and evolution of Facedancer and demonstrates how to use Cynthion and Facedancer to emulate a PS5 controller. If you haven’t already, check out the first video- Sniffing PS5 Controller Packets with Cynthion.

Repurposing Cisco power supplies

Sometimes you can find a good deal on used power supply from various vendors. In my case it was Cisco C3K-PWR-750WAC and RPS 2300. The problem is, that they don’t output any voltage until they are plugged into device. The question is, how to fool them into thinking they are plugged in. Update: including N2200-PAC-400W

The spec for the supply looks good:

And the interface is following:

You can see, there are some huge terminals which will obviously be power output and then 16 2.54mm pins where the detection will most likely happen. I was thinking how to find out which pins are...