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 – August 2024

Another month draws to a close, and it’s time to take stock of every article I’ve had published digitally over the past month.

The highlight of the month was, of course, the launch of the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 and its dual-architecture quad-core RP2350 microcontroller – one of a number of RISC-V design wins in August, as the free and open source instruction set architecture gains serious momentum. While some of the shine has been taken off the RP2350’s launch by the discovery of a hardware flaw, addressed in official erratum RP2350-E9, plenty of third parties have either pledged to adopt the part or have already launched hardware based around it.

Other topics of note this month include a great project from Guy Dupont to have a mouse play a game of Pong entirely in-firmware, relying on persistence of vision to have the cursor appear to be both bats and the ball simultaneously, Tim Alex Jacob’s work to give an existing LED badge design to the ability to be updated via flashing lights Timex DataLink-style, the impressive HaLiTerm Mini handheld, and an exerciser for your tired old floppy drives.

All this, and two newsletters to boot – what a month!

Digital Roundup – April 2024

The calendar has flipped over once more, meaning it’s time to take stock of everything I’ve covered over the past month – and what a month it’s been.

April has seen my interview with Matt Venn on the Tiny Tapeout project and related topics land on the Make: website, fresh newsletters for the MyriadRF project and the Free and Open Source Silicon Foundation (FOSSi Foundation), the launch of new Raspberry Pi Compute Module boards – though, sadly, not the ones for which everyone’s waiting – Espressif’s acquisition of M5Stack right before it launches a device powered by competitor STMicro’s silicon, a tiny ZX Spectrum-inspired games console, a major hardware upgrade for the MNT Reform laptop, and the promise from Syntiant that its latest “Neural Decision Processor” can deliver 30 giga-operations per second (GOPS) of compute in a microwatt power envelope.

The biggest news, however, was Zilog’s decision to discontinue the venerable eight-bit Z80 microprocessor family – just short of it reaching its 50th anniversary. The move does, at least, finally put to rest many a 1980s playground argument over whether the Zilog Z80 or the MOS 6502 is the superior chip – the 6502 having been selected to prove a foundry model for the production of fully-flexible semiconductors, a paper on which was published this month.

Special thanks to Professor Hamish Cunningham who, following my covering the project on Hackster.io, kindly sent me an unPhone to try – expect to see a hands-on review of that clever little gadget in the near future.

Now to see what May brings!

Custom PC, Issue 191

Custom PC Issue 191This month’s Hobby Tech column takes a look at Nvdia’s first-ever entry into the maker market with the Jetson Nano, guides the reader through assisting the Internet Archive with its Sisyphean task, and takes a look at the Xiaomi Wowstick cordless screwdriver.

First, Nvidia’s offering. While the original Jetson TK1 single-board computer was sold through the since-departed high-street electronics outlet Maplin in the UK, its near-£200 price tag meant it wasn’t of much interest to the pocket-money shopper. Its successors in the Jetson family have been successively more expensive, culminating in the £1,199 Nvidia Jetson AGX Xavier reviewed last month. The Jetson Nano, by contrast, is just £95 – £101.50 if you include shipping – and is specifically aimed at makers and tinkerers.

The board uses a system-on-module (SOM) on carrier design, dominated by a massive heatsink. Although it’s perfectly possible to view the device as a souped-up and considerably more expensive Raspberry Pi, general-purpose computing isn’t Nvidia’s primary market: instead, it’s aiming to bring a new generation of developers into the CUDA GPU-accelerated computing ecosystem by using the Jetson Nano as a jumping-off point for deep learning and machine intelligence projects, including its own Jetbot autonomous robot platform.

The guide, meanwhile, walks the reader through using almost any PC to assist the Internet Archive with its goal of storing all the world’s information for immediate retrieval. Written as I was firing up a Warrior – the name given by the Archive Team to its distributed data capture systems – to assist with the archiving of the last bits of Google+ before its closure, the step-by-step instructions will let anyone contribute to the not-for-profit effort.

Finally, the Wowstick comes from a company better known in the UK for its cut-price smartphones: Xiaomi. Designed, as with much of the company’s output, to give a premium feel, the USB-rechargeable electric screwdriver is aimed at fine electronics work rather than flat-pack assembly – and does a surprisingly good job of it. Only limited torque for locked-down or larger screws and a terrible case whose tiny magnets are improperly attached let the bundle down.

For the full run-down on all this and more you can pick up Custom PC Issue 191 from your nearest newsagent or supermarket, or snag a digital copy from Zinio or similar services. Alternatively, a new subscription offer will get you the next three issues for just £5 – renewing at £25 every six issues if you don’t cancel beforehand.

Linux Format, Issue 250

Linux Format Issue 250In my first piece for Linux Format I look at the Nvidia Jetson AGX Xavier system-on-module, an incredibly powerful device the company hopes will transform the field of autonomous machines and other machine learning initiatives – and the precursor to the recently-launched and significantly more affordable hobbyist device the Jetson Nano.

In contrast to the Jetson AGX Xavier review in Custom PC Issue 190, which takes an exclusively hands-on approach, my piece for Linux Format opens with a look at the history of Nvidia’s Jetson family and the company’s various efforts to make the name synonymous with autonomous machines.

The piece then moves on to the device itself, which is impressively powerful for its sub-30W power draw – but many features of which are inaccessible pending software updates which are still not available. This issue, which extends in part at least to the documentation supporting the platform, is something Nvidia really needs to address if it’s serious about having the device – and the hobbyist Jetson Nano – appeal to the educational market as well as experienced developers looking to build high-end machine learning implementations.

Linux Format Issue 250 is available now at all good supermarkets and newsagents, and can be downloaded in electronic form from Zinio and similar services.

Custom PC, Issue 190

Custom PC Issue 190My Hobby Tech column this month, wrapped in Custom PC’s newly-redesigned layout, takes a look at a powerful yet low-power machine likely out of the reach of most hobbyists along with the mind-bending 90s web simulator Hypnospace Outlaw and the book Robotics with Raspberry Pi by Matt Timmons-Brown.

First, the headline act: Nvidia’s Jetson AGX Xavier is its flagship entry in the Jetson range of Arm-based embedded computers, which launched with the Jetson TK1 I reviewed way back in Issue 133, and comes with a price tag to match: £1,199, dropping to £819 with educational discount. At that price, it’s a device aimed at professional developers more than hobbyists – but it provides a hint as to what to expect from the far more affordable and hobbyist-focused Jetson Nano, a full review of which will appear in next month’s column.

Hypnospace Outlaw, meanwhile, is Jay Tholen’s attempt at marrying what is effectively a 90s web simulator with a sci-fi plot involving headsets which let you browse while you sleep. Crowdfunded via Kickstarter, the game isn’t quite what was originally promised – but, frankly, that’s no bad thing: what has been delivered is impressively immersive and likely to thrill anyone who was around during the heyday of Geocities and Angelfire.

Finally, Robotics with Raspberry Pi is the first full book from self-styled “Raspberry Pi Guy” Matt Timmons-Brown. Designed with a very friendly hands-on approach in mind, the book walks the reader through the proces sof building a robot with each chapter adding new functionality: line following, Bluetooth remote control, user-addressable LEDs, a speaker, and even machine vision via the Raspberry Pi Camera Module. While a little muddled in places, it’s one of the better tomes on the subject – and one that avoids the usual pitfall of being little more than an elongated instruction manual for a single off-the-shelf robot kit.

Custom PC Issue 190 is available in all good newsagents and supermarkets now, and will shortly land on digital distribution platforms.