Digital Roundup, October 2024

Another month has come to a close and it’s time to take stock of everything I’ve had published in digital outlets throughout October.

It’s been a busy month, with a number of high-profile launches – not least of which are new products from Raspberry Pi, which is branching out into microSD Card and SSD storage devices in order to deliver guaranteed performance and compatibility with its single-board computer range. STMicroelectronics has also been looking at storage, announcing “Page EEPROM” chips which, it says, combine the benefits of EEPROM and flash memory for non-volatile storage.

It’s been a good month for makers, too, with some very interesting projects – like Stephen Hawes’ work to have a LumenPnP pick-and-place machine place working components on an active circuit for in-production testing, David Buchanan’s “electromagnetic pulse” attack to gain a shell on a laptop, a staggering array of badge Simple Add-On boards, and my favourite of the month: Luke Mortimer’s Quandoom, which runs a cut-down version of id Software’s 1993 classic Doom on a (simulated and very much future-gazing) quantum computer.

A full list of my articles from October, with links to read each in full, is available below.

Digital Roundup, September 2024

It’s been a busy September, there’s no doubt about that: the month has seen the publication of 116 news articles, my two regular newsletters – one for the Free and Open Source Silicon Foundation (FOSSi Foundation) and one for the open-source software-defined radio project MyriadRF – and the first stage of a roadmap document to be presented to the European Commission later this year.

On that last topic first, I was approached by the FOSSi Foundation to act as editor for a whitepaper document offering an overview of the state of the open-source electronic design automation (EDA) sector in Europe and a roadmap for how investment could help deliver improved resiliency and technological sovereignty in the region. A collaborative document pulling in contributions from industry, academia, and the community, my first editing pass was completed in September; a second pass is scheduled for October ahead of the document’s presentation to the European Commission via the GoIT project.

The biggest news story, meanwhile, came at the end of the month: the release of the Raspberry Pi AI Camera Module, a MIPI Camera Serial Interface (CSI) accessory for the Raspberry Pi family of single-board computers which uses Sony’s IMX500 “Intelligent Image Sensor” to deliver on-sensor computer vision acceleration. My review was published day-and-date on Hackster.io, just squeaking under the wire for inclusion in the September round-up – and, as usual, includes a wealth of in-house photography.

Other big stories include a project to distribute Commodore VIC-20 software via YouTube video streams, several Espressif ESP32-based development board launches, a virtual joystick library for LVGL, the formal unveiling of the MNT Reform Next open-hardware laptop, a lower-cost MiSTer-compatible FPGA emulation board, the discovery that Play-Doh can be used to deliver ultra-low-cost sensors for human-machine interface systems, and my most popular story of the month: an open-source kit to build a plasma-ring-generating desk toy, inspired by tokamak nuclear reactor technology.

Custom PC, Issue 195

Custom PC Issue 195This month’s Hobby Tech column opens on an interview with Ryan Brown on the impressive Quarter Arcades miniature fully-licensed reproduction arcade cabinets, moves on to a review of the RISC-V-based Seeed Studio Grove AI HAT for the Raspberry Pi, and closes with a look at Pimoroni’s clever Inky wHAT electrophoretic display.

First, the interview. Answering the important question first, Brown admitted that “the pun certainly helps” when it came to deciding to what scale the Quarter Arcades cabinets should be produced: each carefully-designed reproduction, modelled on real period-appropriate cabinets, is built to a quarter scale both as a means of having it sit nicely on a desk and of providing a name which echoes the most commonly-required coin of US arcade cabinets.

While the Quarter Arcade range is currently limited to licensed properties including Pac-Man and Galaga, Brown has indicated there’s potential there to expand: “Starting with the most beloved classics really helps us open doors to other, more niche arcade games, and even potentially games that never reached the arcade.”

The Seeed Studio Grove AI HAT, by contrast, was an undeniable disappointment. Based on the Kendryte K210 system-on-chip, which uses the RISC-V instruction set architecture and includes a co-processor designed to accelerate artificial intelligence workloads, the AI HAT can be used as a stand-alone development board or attached on top of a Raspberry Pi – but in the latter mode is almost entirely divorced from the Pi itself, to the point where it’s not even possible to program the AI HAT without detaching it again and connecting it to a more traditional PC.

Finally, the Inky wHAT. Another Raspberry Pi HAT (Hardware Attached on Top) board, the Inky wHAT offers a 4.2″ electrophoretic display in three colours: red, black, and white in the model reviewed, with a yellow variant available alongside a slightly cheaper black-and-white two-colour version. Forming the heart of a project which will appear in next month’s magazine, the Inky wHAT impressed – though it would be nice to see the price drop a little, given how cheap full-colour though considerably more power-hungry LCD panels are these days.

Custom PC Issue 195 is available now at all good supermarkets, newsagents, and digitally through the usual outlets.