These are what I wanted to see, and I’d have been tempted to hide/flag if the content given had lacked any links to further technical detail.
But since that wasn’t the case, I think there’s value in highlighting the Kickstarter so people can support the project if they’re interested?
I’m often tempted to write comments like this on “does x belong here?” threads then abandon them to avoid spamming up the discussion further. So, an actual suggestion:
Perhaps in cases like this where there’s a good reason to link to the PR material, we could encourage people to also add a comment or blurb calling out any relevant links or technical information?
Agreed! I think this is squarely on-topic. It’s an interesting product that inspired me to read about https://pwnagotchi.ai/ and other associated devices. I learned a lot from reading the reading this page and searching the web for the topics mentioned. The USB stack fuzzing idea is interesting. I think I might try exactly that on a piece of embedded equipment I have lying around.
Probably a real swine to write drivers for, but as usual, ti supplies a bunch of libraries you could use.
Moore’s Law has ceased to be “Doubling of CPU speed every 18 months”. Actually, it never was.
Actually as stated by Moore, it was “Doubling the number of transistors every 12”. That has reach the peak of how much plain CPU speed that can be delivered.
What is still happening, is more and more powerful and weirder and more exotic chips like this.
Can you explain what makes this a weird, exotic, impressive beast? Almost all of my deep knowledge relates to server hardware, I haven’t worked with microcontroller-scale things for about a decade.
Read the data sheet I linked to for the full details, but basically…
It’s a radio receiver transmitter (transceiver) that frequency hops over 300-348 MHz, 387-464 MHz and 779-928 MHz bands and converts from an RF baseband signal to a stream of samples (i/q’s) and then encode/decode data from that via a bunch of different modem algorithms, plus a bunch of nifty stuff require to make it practical (sync detect, address and crc check, …) in a tiny (2.4mmx2.4mm) package.
In The Bad Old Days that used to require a lot of fancy rf circuitry, maybe an fpga, certainly a dsp, and a hell of a lot of very fancy maths and very smart code.
Ahh interesting. Yes, this is why I needed an explanation because I don’t do this stuff for a living. But certainly want to learn more. I can’t do much with a data sheet just yet
I’m on the software side of the picture so there is always more for me to learn on the RF/hardware side, but I at least know where the various tasks are done on the device I work on.
There are a lot of these super smart super tiny chips coming on the market… the down side smart equals complex to drive, and chip tends to mean you get what you get, if the chip doesn’t do what you want…. get another chip (means PCB redesign) and have a massive task of rewriting your drivers.
If you ever pull the bluetooth standard and print it out, (you will need to buy a new bookcase), you get an idea of the scale of “tiny,cheap,super smart aka insanely complex” I’m talking about.
That said, a lot of things that were very expensive, are becoming available at commodity prices. In some ways dumber, someways less customised, but with 90% of what you want.
i guess if it is paired with another ti µc it should be quite easy. i have still an ez430 chronos lying around, which wasn’t too hard to write code for, given the examples etc.
It’s just a joke about “x on lobste.rs should only ever be y” purity posts. You know what they say about death, taxes, and arguments about what lobsters “is”…
These things tend not to have releases till they’re shipped. I can’t remember the links but when I was designing hardware for my own products, I came across some products that had open sourced and by the time they’d shipped already had clones on taobao.
This is an advertisement for a Kickstarter and does not contain the type of technical content worthy of a Lobsters post.
It links to these technical places:
Those would’ve been better submissions!
These are what I wanted to see, and I’d have been tempted to hide/flag if the content given had lacked any links to further technical detail.
But since that wasn’t the case, I think there’s value in highlighting the Kickstarter so people can support the project if they’re interested?
I’m often tempted to write comments like this on “does x belong here?” threads then abandon them to avoid spamming up the discussion further. So, an actual suggestion:
Perhaps in cases like this where there’s a good reason to link to the PR material, we could encourage people to also add a comment or blurb calling out any relevant links or technical information?
Agreed! I think this is squarely on-topic. It’s an interesting product that inspired me to read about https://pwnagotchi.ai/ and other associated devices. I learned a lot from reading the reading this page and searching the web for the topics mentioned. The USB stack fuzzing idea is interesting. I think I might try exactly that on a piece of embedded equipment I have lying around.
It might be. Or it might just be performance art, as the kickstarter in question does not even exist.
If it ships, I’d sure like to see a link to the promised firmware and hardware source. It’ll be an interesting gadget if it ever becomes real.
The heart of it seems to be this very impressive beast https://www.ti.com/lit/gpn/cc1101
Probably a real swine to write drivers for, but as usual, ti supplies a bunch of libraries you could use.
Moore’s Law has ceased to be “Doubling of CPU speed every 18 months”. Actually, it never was.
Actually as stated by Moore, it was “Doubling the number of transistors every 12”. That has reach the peak of how much plain CPU speed that can be delivered.
What is still happening, is more and more powerful and weirder and more exotic chips like this.
Can you explain what makes this a weird, exotic, impressive beast? Almost all of my deep knowledge relates to server hardware, I haven’t worked with microcontroller-scale things for about a decade.
Read the data sheet I linked to for the full details, but basically…
It’s a radio receiver transmitter (transceiver) that frequency hops over 300-348 MHz, 387-464 MHz and 779-928 MHz bands and converts from an RF baseband signal to a stream of samples (i/q’s) and then encode/decode data from that via a bunch of different modem algorithms, plus a bunch of nifty stuff require to make it practical (sync detect, address and crc check, …) in a tiny (2.4mmx2.4mm) package.
In The Bad Old Days that used to require a lot of fancy rf circuitry, maybe an fpga, certainly a dsp, and a hell of a lot of very fancy maths and very smart code.
(Source. I do this stuff for a living)
Ahh interesting. Yes, this is why I needed an explanation because I don’t do this stuff for a living. But certainly want to learn more. I can’t do much with a data sheet just yet
edit: And thank you!
I’m on the software side of the picture so there is always more for me to learn on the RF/hardware side, but I at least know where the various tasks are done on the device I work on.
There are a lot of these super smart super tiny chips coming on the market… the down side smart equals complex to drive, and chip tends to mean you get what you get, if the chip doesn’t do what you want…. get another chip (means PCB redesign) and have a massive task of rewriting your drivers.
If you ever pull the bluetooth standard and print it out, (you will need to buy a new bookcase), you get an idea of the scale of “tiny,cheap,super smart aka insanely complex” I’m talking about.
That said, a lot of things that were very expensive, are becoming available at commodity prices. In some ways dumber, someways less customised, but with 90% of what you want.
And that will probably improve in time.
yes i’d love to know as well!
i guess if it is paired with another ti µc it should be quite easy. i have still an ez430 chronos lying around, which wasn’t too hard to write code for, given the examples etc.
It would be nice if they marked PDF links more visibly.
I don’t think so and so you are wrong because what determines posts to be worthy of lobste.rs is the users, and I am a user of lobste.rs :)
I don’t think a flat “you are wrong” is correct when the post has already been spam-flagged over ten times.
It’s just a joke about “x on lobste.rs should only ever be y” purity posts. You know what they say about death, taxes, and arguments about what lobsters “is”…
The website says
but I couldn’t find any of these…
These things tend not to have releases till they’re shipped. I can’t remember the links but when I was designing hardware for my own products, I came across some products that had open sourced and by the time they’d shipped already had clones on taobao.
Which probably costed 70% less and were 70% less reliable…
Add sufficient safety margin that 30% reliability still is enough and let the folks on taobao cost-optimize it for you?
It reminds me of https://pwnagotchi.ai/ (which is also open source)
On the page itself: “Flipper was inspired by pwnagotchi project”
The cyber dolphin ala Johnny Mnemonic is a nice touch.