Stephen's Weblog

Not a whole lot has happened since my last post; at least not a whole lot of projects that I’m talking about :)

I’ve been busy working on a Windows Phone 7 game, writing VHDL for one hardware project, thinking through a second hardware project, and will be working on yet another hardware project soon ;) These I will probably post about eventually, but not until they’re further along…

Some of these projects are explicitly going to have the first revision done in 2 weeks though, so I should have plenty to talk about then!

I have started getting set up to compile code for the LPC134x chips that I’m using in everything recently, as I will need to be able to program them shortly – I’ve got the devkitARM toolchain installed and am modifying the GBA compilation toolchain to be able to compile for these devices. Just started that earlier today and not quite done yet.

I’ve also designed circuit boards for a toaster oven reflow controller (including images below) – This is a two-board solution, one deals primarily with switching the high voltage using optoisolated triacs (thanks eagan for pointing me in this direction, I was originally thinking of relays) – The other board is another LPC1342 with a flash chip to store configuration and run data. It has some buttons and an LCD for user interface.

These will be in Laen’s Jan. 3rd order, and I will be trying oven reflow very shortly after they come back :) I also have come up with a few other interesting things to control with this, and will have to report back on my success with that at a later time…

Nothing really big to show off, but a few things are moving along:

First, I’ve started a Flickr page! Pictures I take (typically of stuff I’m working on or taking apart) will be auto-uploaded to http://www.flickr.com/photos/sgstair/

I don’t always update the descriptions but any questions posted in the comments will be answered :)

Second, there has been some progress on bitbox; After some early failures, I now have the bitbox_test board working! I misread the datasheet for the LPC134x chips initially – The USB bootloader requires an external crystal; I’m not quite sure why I thought otherwise. For the bitbox I am attempting to do USB without a crystal even though the internal RC OSC might be slightly out of spec. Maybe I’ll need to revise it.

Next I’ll be writing some initial firmware for this board and then all things bitbox should start to move along.

I also ordered some laser cut acrylic for the test fixture, and should get that back in a bit over a week – this test fixture has been interesting to design – it’s a little overengineered in hindsight, I’ve since designed another fixture (for another project) that’s far simpler. Below is my laser cutting pattern with a few designs:

I’m using Ponoko to have this produced – will have to talk more about it next time.

One big thing I’ve been working on lately is bitbox! Bitbox started as just a clever idea, but it was just so interesting that I had to make it :) Bitbox is essentially a tiny music player that will play 8-bit music – sorta like a boombox, but a bit smaller ;)

I still have some software work ahead of me, but here’s the (nearly) final circuit board:

(I say nearly final because I did go on to make some tweaks after taking this image)

Read on for a train of WIP images and more information… (more…)

Hi again,

More projects are incoming – but I have got a few things partway done, here’s one of them:

This circuit board is  a very basic tool that I’m going to use to monitor the SMBUS data in a computer; I have some things I’d like to find in it, but I’m also curious as to what all traffic exists on this bus. I’ve already sent this board to be produced, so should have some results from it in the near future :)

I’ve also been doing some work on PC booting; I’ve written a boot sector that does some stupid stuff; still exploring this space, and I’ll talk more about it later.

Still nothing to speak of, but a few things are in the pipeline for next time :)

Still nothing major to report on.

Several of my projects are still making progress, though incremental at best; I may just need to rethink the set of things I’m working on in order to move more quickly again. Or just somehow become less lazy ;)

Well, I’ll say more later.

I’m still off doing a number of other random things, and haven’t done anything interesting enough to post about it yet.

• Limited progress on the PCI Express firmware… Should get back to that. Have learned a lot about high speed serial, and a lot of related fields.
• I have obtained some cheap wired 3d shutter glasses and a 120Hz projector… this may be interesting.
• Also been reading books, this one has been really interesting.
• And, dealing with some failing hardware :\ one of my RAID cards died recently.
• Been dabbling in high speed video, but nothing interesting here yet…
• Have a few PCB projects staring at me waiting for me to complete them :)
• …And a growing collection of other projects doing the same.

Well, maybe next time I’ll have more to say, wish me luck.

Disappointment! I’m deep in work and not writing up anything yet again…

Come to think of it, I have completed the firmware for my little PCI card, which is now actually a useful port 80h monitor, but that’s just an incremental update to its previous firmware.

This weekend I’m working on trying to build PCI Express firmware for a FPGA card; This is a lot of new stuff to me and I’m not sure I’ll make it this weekend, but it should be fun!

Below is a picture of the system I’ve set up to test with:

I haven’t done anything worth mentioning, so here’s a picture of some PCBs! :)

This is the USB Jtag PCB I previously mentioned, and I had it produced in a group PCB order managed by Laen – They turned out nice and came back pretty quickly, I’ll definitely be sending him more PCBs

As I was on vacation though, I just recently ordered the parts to complete these boards, and haven’t got them yet. I’ve also been thinking about priorities and am working more heavily on some projects which I won’t blog about :)

Things are still developing though, keep watching and I should have more to talk about in 2 weeks.

Ah right, I was planning to post last weekend;

I haven’t actually done anything too interesting though :) just messing around with some stuff while I’m away on vacation; Mostly doing less than usual though – that’s ok every now and then.