Open Hardware: Many Projects and Devices, Including RISC-V

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jan 06, 2023

• Getting Started With Z80ASM On The RC2014

  Happy New Year.

  We’re going to start the new year by going down to the metal. The RC2014 Classic II and Pro ROM images both contain copies of the Small Computer Monitor. SCM is a machine code monitor and assembler for Z80 systems.

  We’re going to switch a RC2014 Classic II from booting 32K BASIC to SCM, assemble an example program using z80asm, convert it to Intel hex code, and run that code on the RC2014.

• Getting to 1.5 Gbps WiFi 6E on the Raspberry Pi CM4

  In the past, I had some faltering attempts where sometimes things would work—sort-of—using WiFi 6 (802.11ax, 40 MHz bandwidth, 2x2) using an Intel AX200 M.2 card on the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4.

  But Netgear saw my post about upgrading to 2.5 Gbps networking and decided to send me an upgraded Insight WAX630E access point—the one that does WiFi 6E with full support for 6 GHz and 160 MHz channel width. I had previously tested on an ASUS RT-AX86U (WiFi 6 only) and Netgear WAX620 (also WiFi 6 only), and it was high time I tried everything on the latest version of Raspberry Pi OS.

• SparkFun Turns 20

  I guess I never really realized it, but as I look back at the history of SparkFun, it’s puzzles all the way down. SparkFun turns 20 years old this week, and next year I’ll have worked at SparkFun half of my life. Since SparkFun opened its doors, there was always work to do. The challenge of getting a little faster to market, writing a little cleaner code, open sourcing more technologies, and increasing the production yield rate a few fractions of a percentage more was, and continues to be, thrilling. I get to puzzle for work, and I’ve got a whole team of like minded folks that makes another twenty years of SparkFun sound absolutely delightful.

• The MOS 6502 is (mostly) Turing-complete without registers

  These tricks work primarily because the ISA allows memory-to-memory operations, i.e., altering a memory location without explicitly moving data through a program-visible register, a historical holdover from its roots in the Intel 8086 and its ancestors. (Let's not even talk about its Turing-complete faults.) Other pre-RISC CPUs of that era also have memory-to-memory addressing, including the MOS 6502, which despite its simplicity being inspiration for the RISC ARM architecture is not itself RISC. It should be no surprise you can make the 6502 do this trick too even with its more constrained instruction set, and we can do it with just four instructions, not counting rts to return to the operating system.

• Teaching an Old Robot New Tricks

  Robotics is increasingly present in our daily lives in one way or another. Although many hear the word 'Robotics' think of humanoid-type robots or even robotic arms used in industry, the reality is that robotics has many forms and applications, from autonomous mobile robots (AMR) to standard industrial robots. Robots range in size from as small of the palm of your hand, to robots capable of reaching the top of an airplane.

• Gender Balance in Computing — the big picture

  Improving gender balance in computing is part of our work to ensure equitable learning opportunities for all young people. Our Gender Balance in Computing (GBIC) research programme has been the largest effort to date to explore ways to encourage more girls and young women to engage with Computing.

• This DIY Logic Gate Game Is Perfect for Learning Computing Fundamentals - Hackster.io

  You’re reading this article, so we can safely assume that you know how to operate a computer. But do you understand how that computer works? Most people don’t — and that includes many technical people who work on computers for a living. That’s because computers, at their lowest level, rely on Boolean logic that isn’t intuitive to the human brain. If you’re interested in gaining an understanding of Boolean logic and computing fundamentals, then Bkriet’s DIY logic gate game is a great way to start.

• Espressif presents new dual-core ESP32-P4 RISC-V SoC

  Espressif System shared details about the upcoming Dual-core RISC-V ESP32-P4 SoC. The announcement mentions that this 400MHz ESP32-P4 SoC includes an “AI instruction extension, an advanced memory subsystem, and integrated high-speed peripherals.”

• Espressif ESP32-P4 - A 400 MHz general-purpose dual-core RISC-V microcontroller - CNX Software

  Espressif ESP32-P4 is a general-purpose dual-core RISC-V microcontroller clocked at up to 400 MHz with AI instructions extension, numerous I/Os, and security features.

  It also happens to be the first microcontroller from Espressif Systems without wireless connectivity, and as such, it should probably be seen as an alternative to STM32F7/H7 or NXP i.RT Arm Cortex-M7 microcontrollers/crossover processors, and likely offered at a significantly lower cost. It should also offer lower power consumption than other ESP32 chips thanks in part to a third RISC-V core clocked at 40 MHz that can keep the system running while the other two high-performance cores are down.

• PCB Gets Weighty Assignment

  [Curious Scientist] tried building an integrated strain gauge on a PCB, but ran into problems. Mainly, the low resistance of the traces didn’t show enough change under strain to measure easily. Even placing a proper strain gauge on the PCB had limitations. His new design uses a bridge design to make the change in the gauges usefully large. You can see a video of the project below.

• New And Improved Arduboy Mini Smashes Funding Goal

  Just before the holidays, we brought you word of the Arduboy Mini — the latest in the line of open source 8-bit handheld gaming systems designed by [Kevin Bates]. He was good enough to send along a prototype version ahead of the system’s Kickstarter campaign, and we came away impressed with the possibilities it offered for customization.

• Developing An Open Source Bike Computer

  While bicycles appear to have standardized around a relatively common shape and size, parts for these bikes are another story entirely. It seems as though most reputable bike manufacturers are currently racing against each other to see who can include the most planned obsolescence and force their customers to upgrade even when their old bikes might otherwise be perfectly fine. Luckily, the magic of open source components could solve some of this issue, and this open-source bike computer is something you’ll never have to worry about being forced to upgrade.

• How to use a Relay with Raspberry PI Pico and MicroPython

  How to use a Relay with Raspberry PI Pico. Explaining how relays work and how to use it with a water pump inlcuding MicroPython code