Greg Steiert @steieio@qoto.org

Ever wonder how to program an FPGA through an MCU?

That is what I showed people how to do in my workshop at @crowdsupply Teardown 2024. The participants didn't even need to install any software as the method emulates a USB thumb drive for drag-n-drop programming.

If you are interested in how this works or where I got the idea, I will be speaking with @helenleigh in a Teardown Session on YouTube at noon Pacific Time on December 5th.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns5RiT4F2Mw

I'll talk about where I got the idea, and how a failed first attempt lead to an even better solution. Along the way, I'll cover some of the various methods for loading an FPGA and their tradeoffs and other background details. This will also touch on my favorite UF2 file format.

Let me know in the comments if there is something specific you wold like me to cover.

The instructions and code from the workshop are available on GitHub if you want to try it yourself:
https://github.com/gsteiert/pico-dirty-blaster-workshop

A few lucky viewers of the live-stream will get a workshop kit including the MAX10 FPGA based 10M08 Evaluation Kit courtesy of Altera.

#FPGA #microcontroller

Did you ever wonder how much current you can draw from the energy harvested output of an NFC EEPROM? I did, and I built a board to measure it.

The ST25DV and NXP NTAG I2C PLUS are designed for the same antenna loading so I was able to design a board that would support both devices. The results were a little surprising. The NXP NTAG I2C PLUS does a much better job regulating the output voltage. The ST25DV starts at about 4V with no load, and drops off rather quickly. I could draw almost 5mA before dropping below the 2.7V minimum voltage of the WCH32V003 with the NT3H2211, but less than 4mA from the ST25DV. Based on this data, I switched my beeping, blinking business-card designs to the NT3H2211.

Learn more about the project on Hackaday:
https://hackaday.io/project/177897-beeping-blinking-business-card-badge-b4/log/221646-power-estimates

We really need to give more credit to NXP for creating tools like SPSDK in Python, available through #PyPI, with source on #GitHub, and documentation on #readthedocs. Their MCUXpresso SDK is also available on GitHub.

If for no other reason, to shame other vendors into following their lead. Am I wrong?

https://spsdk.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Just submitted another #tinytapeout
This could be addictive
Thank you @matthewvenn
It is yet another take on programmable logic, implementing a state machine using SPI flash: https://github.com/steieio/tt02-sfsm-wokwi

Happy Halloween