Free Stuff - February 2023

The February recipient for the Great Scott Gadgets Free Stuff Program is Mihajlo. Mihajlo is a student in Serbia who will be studying Electrical Engineering in college. He plans to use the HackRF One we are sending him to teach people in his community about SDR, RF, LRPT images from NOAA, and other fun signals. Mihajlo is also an open source contributer to projects focused on providing simple scripts and instructions to set up low-cost base stations. We are proud to support Mihajlo in his projects as he gives back to his community in so many ways!

Free Stuff - January 2023

The January recipient for the Great Scott Gadgets Free Stuff Program is Guillermo. Guillermo is from Spain. He had a career in computer security about ten years ago before switching to another career. He’s back now and excited to use the HackRF One we are sending him to explore interesting topics like RF, Lora, Zigbee, and BLE. We are happy to support Guillermo on his journey back into computer security.

February update: things are taking shape

Let me start by apologizing to everyone for skipping yet another monthly community update. This has largely been my fault as I was rather busy in January and following FOSDEM at the start of February I found myself occupied with things related to the EU store.

Wuthering Bytes Returns for its 10-Year Anniversary, and We’d Love You to be Involved

AB Open is proud to announce the return of Wuthering Bytes, the three-day festival celebrating interesting and inspiring technology now celebrating its 10-year anniversary – and we’re looking for participants to run events or give presentations.

After global and local conditions caused a three-year hiatus, AB Open is now preparing for Wuthering Bytes’ 10-year anniversary with three days of events – including the always-popular Festival Day on Friday the 25th of August, followed by the two-day Open Source Hardware Camp on Saturday the 26th and Sunday the 27th of August. As with previous years, there is room in the schedule for...

Тестовые пины

Проектируя плату я всегда оставляю множество контрольных точек. Это удобно для отладки, а денег и места они почти не требуют. Всегда, вот всегда, я делал петлю для земли. Просто оставлял рядом два отверстия и вставлял туда проволочную петлю, чтобы удобно было цеплять крокодил осциллографа. Но в нее неудобно тыкать щупом, если надо просто измерить мультиметром напряжение от земли.

Для сигналов можно оставить просто луженую переходку, вскрытую от маски. Или даже отдельный пустой пад. В него удобно тыкать иголкой мультиметра или осциллографа, отверстие в площадке не даст щупу соскользнуть. Но в нее не зацепишь крокодил.

Более того, промышленность выпускает множество...

Консольный интерфейс в микроконтроллере

Проектируя сложное устройство часто требуется како-нибудь отладочный терминал, чтобы можно было легко заглянуть в недра контроллера, выполнять команды, посмотреть логику. Вмешаться в ход событий, что-то запустить. Да банально логи посмотреть и ошибки считать.

Обычно для этого применяют UART и терминальный доступ в текстовом режиме. А для простоты и универсальности весь интерфейс реализуют прям в самом контроллере. Благо ресурсов это много не требует. Задача столь частая, что существуют хорошие готовые библиотеки терминальных систем для контроллеров. Одну из них я давно применяю и хочу познакомить читателей с ней.

Написана на Си и с большим количеством макросов. Состоит из трех файлов. Умеет...

Renaming LUNA Hardware to Cynthion

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

Until now, the name LUNA has referred both to our USB multitool hardware platform and to the USB gateware framework that supports it. From now on, we want these projects to have separate names. We’ve decided to name the hardware platform Cynthion. The gateware framework will continue to be called LUNA.

This renaming is happening because we have often had conversations, both internally and with external folks, in which we’ve had to say, “Wait. Are you referring to LUNA hardware or LUNA gateware?” Additionally,...

Omega2 Guaranteed Available until 2028

The Omega2 family of modules is now guaranteed to be available until January 2028.
This is a 3 year extension of our previous guarantee.

After the guaranteed date, we will continue to produce and sell the hardware modules as long as there is demand.

The subject of the Omega2 family EoL date was starting to come up in our conversations with customers. Realizing this is important to our customers, we got to work on this front.

In 2021 and 2022 we focused on strengthening our supply chain and establishing deeper relationships with our suppliers. As a result, we are able to confidently extend...

Free Stuff - December 2022

The December recipient for the Great Scott Gadgets Free Stuff Program is Shiva. Shiva is new to hardware and IoT. We have sent Shiva a GreatFET One so they can do some research on devices they have in their own home. We are looking forward to hearing about their results!

RetroNetCall: "Datex-L, the German CSPDN"

I've presented about Datex-L, the German CSPDN (Circuit Switched Public Data Network) as part of the RetroNetCall talk series on retro-networking technology.

You can find the video recording at https://media.ccc.de/v/retronetcall-20230201-laforge-datex-l-cspdn

I've always been fascinated by "ancient" data communications - both the kind that I personally consciously witnessed from the late 1980s as well as the kind that I never experienced myself (like Datex-L).

I am not an expert in the subject by all means, as I was never involved in its design, implementation or even used it. However, given that there's very few public information online about Datex-L and/or other CSPDNs, I thought I could improve the situation by presenting about it.