Exploring Open FPGA Hardware

Last month, Kate Temkin began her blog series aimed at comparing FPGA families that have open source toolchains available. In the first post she reviews the pros, cons, and features of the Lattice iCE40 LP/HX, Lattice iCE40 UltraPlus, and Lattice ECP5 families.

Excerpt:

“The world of FPGAs has traditionally been full of closed-source mysteries: designs have long been crafted using expensive, multi-gigabyte vendor tools, and the inner working of vendors’ hardware and software have remained closely guarded secrets.

This changed when Claire Wolf created her IceStorm project, which reverse engineered Lattice’s low-cost iCE40 FPGAs, and led to an expansive ecosystem for creating FPGA...

May Update: PineTab pre-orders, PinePhone Qi charging & more!

With the PinePhone and Pinebook Pro production well under way and shipping in just a few days time, we’ll now be turning our attention to the other projects we have in the pipeline. There is a fair bit of material to cover this month - the main piece of news, however, is that we’ll be taking pre-orders for the PineTab at the end of this month!  

Project: Small self-powered speaker

Low power amp-in-a-box, showing off some more messy copper-tape construction.

Project: Tool demagnetiser

A simple little box that defeats the ferrous furries.

April Update: CE & FCC, Software Update and DIY Router?

I hope and trust this update finds everyone well. Production in China is picking up pace and we expect to start shipping the Pinebook Pro with Manjaro and PinePhone UBports Community edition next month. I am happy to report that, for the time being, everything is proceeding  smoothly and we’re on track to ship devices in accordance with our original plans. Still, I encourage you to sign up to this blog to stay up-to-date on shipping information since anything can happen in the next 30 days. 

PinePhone UBports Community Edition Pre-Orders Now Open

PinePhone UBports Community Edition mock-up; final product may differ in appearance.

I am proud to announce that the PinePhone UBports Community Edition is now available for pre-order with an estimated shipping date of late-May, 2020. Community editions are meant to bring exposure to partner-projects operating systems and communities, as well as help finance ongoing development. 

Самодельный лазер на парах марганца

В этой, юбилейной 10ой статье я опишу, что же является логическим следствием, продолжением моего самостоятельного лазеростроения. После построения источника питания, который подходит для накачки импульсных лазеров на парах металлов и приобретения опыта работы с готовыми активными элементами лазеров на парах меди и её соединений оставалось только изготовить активный элемент лазера (далее — АЭ) полностью самостоятельно, при этом с новой рабочей средой.
Читать дальше →

I2C Scanner

Since always when I am working with I2C devices I need the scanner I will post here for me and for others:
#include <Wire.h>
void setup()
{
  Wire.begin();
  Serial.begin(115200);
  Serial.println(F("\nI2C Scanner"));
  byte error, address;
  int nDevices;
  Serial.println(F("Scanning..."));
  nDevices = 0;
  for(address = 1; address < 127; address++ )
  {
    Wire.beginTransmission(address);
    error = Wire.endTransmission();
    if (error == 0)
    {
      Serial.print(F("I2C device found at address 0x"));
      if (address<16)
        Serial.print("0");
      Serial.print(address,HEX);
      Serial.println(F("  !"));
      nDevices++;
    }
    else if (error==4)
    {
      Serial.print(F("Unknow error at address 0x"));
 ...

March Update: Manjaro on Pinebook Pro & PinePhone Software

COVID-19 recovery in China is underway and factory work is slowly returning back to normal. This is good news, and we hope to have a constant stream of updates for you in the coming weeks. That said, we’re taking it one step at a time, since factories are still at 20% of the normal manufacturing capacity and it’s hard to predict the recovery pace. So rather than offering you my guesstimates for particular device availability, we will make announcements once all stages of production are secured for each device. Frankly speaking, this also means that announcements will likely drop suddenly;...

Самодельный лидар: OpenTOFLidar

В этой статье я хочу рассказать про свой проект импульсного (TOF) Open Source лидара — о том как я его делал, и каких результатов удалось добиться.