RSS Parrot

Announcing Experimental Rust Filesystem and Path Support for Xous PDDB!

https://xobs.io/experimental-rust-filesystem-and-path-support-for-xous/

Published: July 6, 2022 05:29

The “filesystem” on xous is called PDDB – short for the Plausibly Deniable Data Base. This is a dict-key-value store with built-in overlay support. We’ve just released experimental support for File and Path support for Xous! This requires a recent libstd…

Xous Process Creation

https://xobs.io/xous-process-creation/

Published: May 30, 2022 08:48

A fundamental feature of modern computing is the ability to run programs. In many embedded systems, the list of processes is fixed at startup. In other systems, including mobile phones and desktop computers, new processes can be spawned on a running…

EC: Phone Home

https://xobs.io/ec-phone-home/

Published: March 28, 2022 05:44

The main Betrusted SoC CPU gets a lot of interest, but it’s the EC CPU that’s responsible for networking. This discusses the software and stack of the Betrusted EC, how it’s wired up, and why it was designed that way.

Adding Rust Stable libstd Support for Xous

https://xobs.io/porting-rust-standard-library-to-a-new-operating-system/

Published: August 8, 2021 12:04

It is possible to add support for a new OS to the Rust compiler’s stable channel without rebuilding everything, enablinglibstd support for entirely new operating systems.

Introducing Qomu

https://xobs.io/introducing-qomu/

Published: March 11, 2021 12:46

Three years ago I announced crowdfunding for Tomu – a microcontroller in your USB port. This project brought to mass-market a tiny Arm Cortex-M0 CPU in a package that fits directly into a USB port. Now you could take a standalone USB project anywhere. One…

Precursor + Renode

https://xobs.io/precursor-and-renode/

Published: November 19, 2020 04:00

Precursor is an FPGA-based dev platform for secured applications. The reference design runs a VexRiscv CPU core plus a wide range of peripherals. Developing software for an embedded target can be a challenge in the best of circumstances, and when you’re…

Trace Together Token: Teardown and Design Overview

https://xobs.io/trace-together-token-teardown/

Published: June 21, 2020 05:30

On 19 June, GovTech Singapore invited four members of the community to come and inspect their new TraceTogether Token. This token removes the need to carry a phone at all times, and is designed to help both those who do not have a smart device capable of…

Xous: Support Tooling

https://xobs.io/xous-support-tooling/

Published: February 28, 2020 09:34

As part of the Betrusted Project, I am working on an operating system to power the hardware. I’ve talked about the need for a new operating system for the project, which boils down to the need for software to be secure and small. I’ve been working on it…

Announcing Xous: the Betrusted Operating System

https://xobs.io/announcing-xous-the-betrusted-operating-system/

Published: December 27, 2019 11:03

Today we’re pleased to announce the Betrusted project. The goals of this project are to create a secure platform that is auditable by the end user, and is capable of performing secure communications.

Cobbled-together Profiler

https://xobs.io/cobbled-together-profiler/

Published: December 1, 2019 07:43

I recently got Circuitpython working on Fomu! But there’s an issue with the speed of Fomu’s SPI flash: It’s currently incredibly slow, and that makes for a poor experience. Worse still, the program runs so slowly that the tinyusb stack can’t keep up with…

Clocks and Timing are Hard

https://xobs.io/metastability-is-hard/

Published: August 3, 2019 05:54

Computers are binary things, right? A bit is either “1” or “0”. Except when it isn’t. Computers are built from logic gates, which are built up from silicon, which is based in physics. In physics, things very rarely are clear cut, and silicon gates are no…

Fomu EVT: Prototype or Business Card?

https://xobs.io/fomu-evt-prototype-or-business-card/

Published: January 6, 2019 09:14

When starting a project from scratch, it’s important to create prototypes. For programming, you usually create small snippets that demonstrate what you want. Fortunately, software is quick to compile, so you’re free to create hyper-specialized programs…

Fomu: An FPGA in your USB Port

https://xobs.io/fomu-an-fpga-in-your-usb-port/

Published: December 20, 2018 09:02

We’ve just started crowdfunding Fomu, and FPGA that fits in your USB port! The original project – Tomu – was a really interesting little device. It was a simple ARM Cortex M0 MCU that fit entirely inside a Type A USB port. It was easy to build, yet was…

Tomu Plastic Case Part 2: PCB Modifications

https://xobs.io/tomu-plastic-case-part-2-pcb-modifications/

Published: May 31, 2018 08:03

When designing a plastic case, it is important to work within the limitations of the medium. The design process begins with the PCB, which must fit within the final design space and still be manufacturable. You must take into account manufacturing…

Making Tomu: Plastic Case Overview

https://xobs.io/making-tomu-plastic-case-overview/

Published: May 21, 2018 14:32

This series of blogposts details the steps I took to create a plastic case for Tomu. Tomu is a project I helped to crowdfund. Initially created by Tim “mithro” Ansell, Tomu is a tiny computer that fits entirely inside a Type-A USB port – the sort usually…

Palawan project #1: button box

https://xobs.io/palawan-project-1-button-bar/

Published: June 30, 2017 10:00

June saw lots of progress on Palawan. Many bugs were fixed in the Grainuum stack, the bootloader was fleshed out, and stability was improved. The system is usable now, and just about feature-complete. Enough to think about shipping. An image is worth many…

Grainuum 1.3: Now with fewer bugs

https://xobs.io/grainuum-1-3-now-with-fewer-bugs/

Published: June 4, 2017 10:13

In the process of bringing up Palawan DVT1, I’ve run across a number of bugs in Grainuum. Most notably, several subtle timing errors where the loop was one cycle too short or too long. Or in the case of the end-of-packet signal, four cycles too short.…

Love-to-Code Debug Shoe

https://xobs.io/love-to-code-debug-shoe/

Published: March 30, 2017 13:30

Looking to debug your Chibitronics Love-to-Code board, but don’t want to solder on headers? If you have access to a 3D printer, grab the LtC Debug Shoe, print it out, and crimp on some tinned wires. Read on to learn more about the project. I’ve been…

Clustering Novena

https://xobs.io/clustering-novena/

Published: March 15, 2017 13:12

Server clustering is a topic I’ve been cirous about for a rather long time, from back in the Slashdot days where one would constantly “imagine a beowulf cluster of” any given low-powered device. With modern clustering software, such thoughts become…

Palawan DVT1 Build

https://xobs.io/palawan-dvt1-build/

Published: March 5, 2017 10:49

I’ve just finished taping out Palawan DVT1. This is the first build in a long time, and is a rather heavy redesign. The three biggest changes are: New CPU/Radio pair 433 MHz operation Redesigned in KiCad KL02 and RFM69HW Previously, Palawan was based on a…

Palawan's USB Stack is Now Known as Grainuum

https://xobs.io/palawan-s-usb-stack-is-now-known-as-grainuum/

Published: December 21, 2016 08:00

The USB stack from project Palawan has grown beyond its original scope. The bootloader contains a completely separate copy, and it has been ported to at least one other platform. It is confusing to refer to both the hardware platform and the USB stack as…

Seafile: Filesharing that's pretty great

https://xobs.io/seafile-filesharing-thats-pretty-great/

Published: November 10, 2016 02:37

Seafile is a piece of software that I use every day that I find exceedingly handy. The elevator pitch is something along the lines of “Like Dropbox, but self-hosted, with versioning.” I use it on all of my stuff, and it is fantastic. I run it on Linux,…

Promising URLs for the future

https://xobs.io/promising-urls-for-the-future/

Published: October 31, 2016 13:35

A statement floating around on Twitter is that “A URL is a promise”. A fine sentiment, and I hope that link continues to work in the future. The Internet is not a static thing, but being able to send someone a link and have it continue to work. I broke a…

Novena-as-a-Keyboard

https://xobs.io/novena-as-a-keyboard/

Published: October 15, 2016 15:32

There’s just something magical about watching text flow along a screen. It’s the basis for Defcon boards made popular by the movie Wargames, and is popular in the background of most movies. It’s rare that such a display happens in the real world, but I…

Palawan: Part Selection and Schematics

https://xobs.io/palawan-part-selection-and-schematics/

Published: May 8, 2016 13:09

When starting a project, the first step is obviously to decide what it should do. Do you want to do a light blinker or a laptop? Maybe you have something prototyped already on something like an Arduino, and you’d like to move to Mass Production (MP).…

Introducing: Project Palawan

https://xobs.io/introducing-project-palawan/

Published: May 8, 2016 01:50

I want to learn more about hardware design, and the best way to learn something is to do it. I’ve started work on a new project to create an easy-to-use hardware input platform. The project, codenamed Palawan, allows you to make contraptions that show up…

Novena Beta Repo

https://xobs.io/novena-beta-repo/

Published: February 6, 2016 02:52

I have a private Novena repo of my own that contains packages that have not yet been released, but are good enough for testing. They may be unreliable in certain ways and have new bugs, but they also fix old bugs, add new features, and pull newer versions…

Desktop Factory Test

https://xobs.io/desktop-factory-test/

Published: December 15, 2014 07:28

We've just shipped the desktop factory test off to the assembly line, and they'll soon begin the process of turning bare boards into desktop models. We ran the initial factory test -- the one I mentioned earlier -- on every board we produced. This first…

Senoko Battery Board as a Device

https://xobs.io/senoko-battery-board-as-a-device/

Published: November 18, 2014 06:22

The Senoko battery board contains an STM32 chip, and runs its own separate operating system. The computer itself has 10 kilobytes of RAM and 64 kilobytes of storage space, where the operating system lives. This operating system is responsible for keeping…

Factory test

https://xobs.io/factory-test/

Published: November 16, 2014 03:08

We're doing the factory runs in batches, since there are multiple configurations of boards. Every board that leaves the factory will start out life as a "bare board", and will have features added to it later on. The factory test itself serves to do two…

Novena First Run

https://xobs.io/novena-first-run/

Published: October 12, 2014 01:32

Right now, I'm in the middle of packaging up various bits and bobs for the final Novena disk image. We have a kernel mostly decided, and we have a base set of packages. Furthermore, we have a script that creates a bootable disk and installs all of the…

Novena progress: RTC, Headphone, Suspend

https://xobs.io/novena-progress-rtc-headphone-suspend/

Published: October 1, 2014 20:18

When designing your own laptop, the most mundane of things become exceptional. When you get something working, life becomes that little bit sweeter. Like cracking your knuckles, or getting that bit of food from between your teeth, getting even the smallest…

Audio driver merged

https://xobs.io/audio-driver-merged/

Published: August 17, 2014 01:09

The es8328 audio codec driver has been accepted by the ASoC maintainer. That means the driver will make its way upstream, and should land in Linus' tree in a few weeks. One more hurdle down on the road to mainstream. This week we'll be focusing on getting…

Progress report: Sleep, Audio, and Power

https://xobs.io/progress-report-sleep-audio-and-power/

Published: July 9, 2014 07:45

It's been a month since my last post, and things are moving along. We've been hard at work improving both the hardware and software. There's a backer update describing much of what we've been up to, and snce I'm working with the kernel I'll go into some…

Thank you to our supporters! Here's what we'll work on:

https://xobs.io/thank-you-to-our-supporters-heres-what-well-work-on/

Published: May 21, 2014 10:16

Thank you to each and every one of our supporters. I'm honoured by all of the positive talk about the project. Now that the campaign is over and funded, it's time to get started. Or rather, continue our work. If you've seen either bunnie or myself at…

From Chips to a Laptop

https://xobs.io/from-chips-to-a-laptop/

Published: May 10, 2014 00:29

There's a certain thrill to board bringup, to be the first person in existence to have code running on a brand-new board. To even get your first "Hello, world!" requires a lot of components to be running correctly. Computers are complicated beasts, but…

Pre-Boot enviroment weirdness

https://xobs.io/pre-boot-enviroment-weirdness/

Published: March 14, 2014 07:00

The world of early board boot is a weird one. Hard-and-fast rules of programming don't necessarily apply here, and things have an annoying tendency to work only sometimes. I finally revisited the pre-boot environment this week, due in part to bringing up…

Novena PVT / Senoko DVT

https://xobs.io/novena-pvt-senoko-dvt/

Published: February 21, 2014 05:26

This post is coming to you from Novena PVT, running off of Senoko PVT on battery. In engineering, there are several different versions of pre-release hardware. Novena itself has gone through three: EVT (engineering verification test), DVT (design…

Fernvale: The Path Not Taken

https://xobs.io/fernvale-the-path-not-taken/

Published: January 28, 2014 09:54

Today at 31c3, bunnie and I gave a talk on the Fernvale platform, the core of which is a Mediatek MT6260 System-on-a-Chip. This chip is appealing because it is a 364 MHz ARM chip with four megabytes of built-in flash and eight megabytes of RAM.…