@ArchiteuthisFlux @crowdsupply feature creep is only a bad thing when marketing adds useless features with an unreasonable schedule. It is great for users when coming from an inspired creator.

Jumperless V5 by @ArchiteuthisFlux is the most glorious example of feature creep I have ever experienced.

I finally got a chance to see Jumperless in action at @crowdsupply and it is everything you didn’t know was possible in a breadboard, but somehow can’t live without.

Solderless breadboards are useful.
Electrically configurable breadboards are cool.
Programmable breadboards with an interactive probe are amazing.
Programmable breadboards that double as a display are awesome.
Being able to play Doom on said breadboard is mind blowing.

If you haven’t backed this unbelievable project yet, it is not too late. You can still place pre-orders:
crowdsupply.com/architeuthis-f

Unboxed my Jumperless from @ArchiteuthisFlux recently. It's absolutely beautiful and packaged so well. You can read about my unboxing experience on Patreon: patreon.com/posts/132126594. (The article is open-access)

#opensourcehardware #jumperless

Coming soon: Atum A3 Nano - a powerful, compact dev kit for the Altera Agilex 3 FPGA. Created by Terasic 🪄
Atum A3 Nano is part of Altera Innovation Lab
crowdsupply.com/terasic/atum-a

The simplicity of USB from a user perspective is built on complexity for developers.

Creating a universal, plug-and-pray interface is inherently complicated. The USB standard is very tedious and every implementation is a little different, so developers need to learn the nuance of the hardware they are using. The vendor libraries help, but they are often bloated, and never portable. This is why TinyUSB and TinyUF2 are two of my favorite open-source projects.

TinyUSB is an open-source, cross-platform USB stack. It is designed to be compact and memory-safe for embedded applications. It supports over 100 boards from more than a dozen MCU vendors. This is a huge advantage for code portability.
github.com/hathach/tinyusb

This code portability is likely why @adafruit uses it for TinyUF2 and CircuitPython. TinyUF2 builds a drag-n-drop UF2 bootloader with TinyUSB for a growing list of microcontroller platforms.
github.com/adafruit/tinyuf2

Creating cross-platform projects like TinyUSB and TinyUF2 requires a high-quality, well-planned build environment. The portability forces them to be command line based, so they cannot use the crutch of graphical IDEs.

I think these projects are great for intermediate-beginner developers to help them learn good practices early. The code portability also provides a wide array of low-cost supported hardware. The hardest part may be choosing which board to get.

docs.tinyusb.org/en/latest/ref

@piggo @arturo182 that's the definition I've always used, but I can understand that it may evolve. "Classic Rock" is probably even harder to define.

@arturo182 scary that 90/00 are now considered "oldies"

@misty it's almost hard to believe how useless Google search has become

Why is it so hard to find a good multimeter?
Phrased differently…
Why aren’t there more open source multimeter projects?

Fortunately, John Duffy is working to fix that. I have to applaud his motivation and initiative to create a project like this and make it open source. I agree that digital interfaces are not as common as they should be, and even when they are physically available, the software to make use of them is typically abysmal. The meter I’ve had since college, pictured below, is one such example.

Open source is a perfect match for test and measurement. Every application is a little different and being able to customize interfaces (software or electrical) can have a significant impact. This is why I often find a small development board more useful than a fixed function piece of test equipment.

I particularly like the fact that he is designing this to be modular, so it is easy to extend and upgrade. Modularity combined with open source are probably two of the best ways to accelerate the advancement of a new project.

I encourage everyone to check out the project. I will be following this closely.
Github: github.com/jduffy105/HydraMete
Hackaday: hackaday.io/project/176607-hyd
YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=JMexSal01g

Grok is a better syntax reference than Google.
When writing code, I used to google terms to figure out the proper syntax, but recently I started using Grok instead. I’m finding Grok is much more efficient.
With Google, I would follow a link to a reference and read through it to find the details I needed. Grok summarizes the details for me. I was a little skeptical at first and would check the links to make sure it interpreted them correctly. So far, I have been pleasantly surprised.
I am particularly impressed that it can even assist with more esoteric and complicated languages like Verilog for FPGAs. These do not have as many online resources as other languages and the vendor documentation leaves a lot to be desired. Even so, Grok was able to provide details on the synthesis directives I was looking for, including how to apply them in the source code or the constraint files.
I’m not sure I am ready to let Grok write my code yet, but it is certainly a powerful tool that will help me be more effective.

A few more images of the Two Broads sign - I also played with mapping a lime green to red color gradient that I thought was nice and appley, and modifying Pixelblaze patterns to change value instead of hue for animation. Mapping the color gradient was easy with the setPalette() function. @wizard

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Open source is often misunderstood.
Hear @olofk provide a great explanation. Including the subtle differences between open source software, hardware, and silicon.
open.spotify.com/episode/44ypT

@pmdj @funkylab @osmocom @LaF0rge There is no issue with IOUSBLib, except that it is different than LInux, Windows and Android. The problem is that you have to develop a custom application on every platform you want to support. You are lucky if you get a DFU app for Windows and Linux. It is rare to see support for macOS let alone Android or ChromeOS.

@funkylab @osmocom @LaF0rge UF2 does not rely on the OS sending everything in order. Every packet includes the destination address so they can be sent in any order, as long as every packet is sent. I know Adafruit's TinyUF2 tolerates that, but I'm not sure the RP2040 ROM implemented that based on my experience concatenating data to a firmware image.

@funkylab @osmocom @LaF0rge I agree CDC is another easy to use USB profile supported by most operating systems.

@funkylab @osmocom @LaF0rge I agree CDC is another easy to use USB profile supported by most operating systems.

@funkylab @osmocom @LaF0rge I would argue that macOS and Android are even worse than Microsoft (iOS is fundamentally broken). It is very difficult to build an accessible platform agnostic solution with DFU. USB MSC can even work with Android or ChromeOS. That opens up cheap hardware that you could put in a middle school classroom.

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