Episode 27 - Don't call it a comeback
Welcome to the show
In this episode, Tod and Paul discuss the recent Hackaday Supercon, including a talk and a workshop, Microsoft open sources Zork, the return of 80s style computer magazines, and more.
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Show Notes
00:23 Supercon Recap
3:57 Arduino Uno Q (Tod #1)
The one workshop I went to during SuperCon was the Arduino Uno Q workshop. It was put on by Arduino and you got an Uno Q to take home. Is the Uno Q any good? What in the heck even is it?
I was curious to see how they made their new weird merging of a Linux computer and a microcontroller work. Over a decade ago, I deployed several hundred Arduino Yun-based devices for a contract gig, as the Yun was similar in concept and was really the only way to get a reliable WiFi for microcontrollers back then.
The Uno Q is essentially Raspberry Pi 3-level single-board computer with a fairly beefy STM32 MCU running Zephyr RTOS bolted on to do microcontroller tasks, all in the shape of a familar Arduino Uno.
Instead of the wide array of ports on a Raspberry Pi, you power it via a single USB-C that you can break out into Ethernet, video, keyboard, etc. It does run a version of Debian with a full desktop GUI but you don't have to use it. It works headless, so you can ssh into it and do everything via a terminal.
But Arduino would prefer you to use their new Arduino App Lab. It's a new IDE, distinct from the regular Arduino IDE, that let's you program the two aspects of the Uno Q. It's a web app that runs on the Uno Q. In one window you have what looks like a regular Arduino C++ sketch that runs on the STM32. In another window you have an Arduino-like Python script that runs in Linux. Arduino provides libraries to easily share information between the two. When you click the "Run" button, the IDE ships the source to the Uno Q, where your code gets compiled, turned into a custom Docker image, then that Docker image is run.
As you might expect, this takes a long time. Expect to wait 30 seconds from pressing "Run" to seeing your LED blink.
In the IDE, they're really pushing their "Bricks" coding blocks concept: a paired combination of Arduino C++ sketch and Python code to accomplish a task. They don't have many Bricks yet, but some of their examples are "Web UI to GPIO" and "AI Motion Detection".
And on the subject of waiting to getting going, if you get one of these expect to spend 30 minutes or more just installing software. Even though the App Lab runs on the Uno Q, the App Lab download is almost a gig in size. Once you run it, it will want to update itself. When first connecting your Uno Q, you'll need to update the bootloader, which is an additional gig download. After that, when connecting the Uno Q to App Lab, App Lab will want to update the Uno Q again (tho it's unclear what it's doing here), another gig download. And finally it will want to update the Arduino App Lab again. And all these steps: reflashing bootloader, reflashing Linux distro, reflashing App Lab can fail for inexplicable reasons, with no feedback from the board or the GUI. Some folks in our workshop just barely got a Hello World Blink going in the two hours.
If you're an instructor hoping to swap Uno Q boards in for your normal Uno boards, I would not recommend it. They are entirely different, with the Uno Q being much more complicated and harder to use. It's a shame they muddied up the Uno name for this otherwise interesting product.
Links:
13:21 Covert Regional Communication with Meshtastic (Paul #1)
If you've ever wanted to learn more about Meshtastic and how it works, this is the talk for you. Daryll Strauss gave a talk titled Covert Regional Communication with Meshtastic, which was the last talk of the day at Supercon.
Daryll covers what Meshtastic is, his motivations for using it, and how to make a covert communication system using Meshtastic. His goal in making it covert was to support his local communities during these troubling times, as well as:
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No eavesdropping
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Limited geographic area
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Difficult to locate transmissions
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Psuedononymous
17:18 The Supercon 2025 Badge
20:07 Ultra-wideband (UWB) chips for precise ranging (Tod #2):
I love Apple's AirTags. I have these little coin-sized Bluetooth beacons on everything I might misplace: my keys, my wallet, my suitcase. Maybe even my cat. Unlike other trackers, AirTags also do Ultra-wideband or UWB. This newish wireless technology allows, among other things, devices like AirTags to be tracked down to a few centimeters. With normal Bluetooth, the tracking resolution is a few meters. And there are now devboards we can play with that have UWB chip and ESP32 wifi.
I don't have them yet, but I ordered a few Makerfab ESP UWB boards. These $40 boards look like your standard ESP32 WiFi board but have a litle weird module that is the Qorvo DWM1000, which goes for about $20 on Digikey/Mouser. It's supposedly compatible with AirTags, so I'm hoping I can build my own "tracker tracker" base station.
The UWB technology is pretty interesting: instead of transmitting on a particular frequency with a particular channel width like WiFi with 20 MHz width at 5 GHz Bluetooth with 1 MHz width at 2.4GHz, UWB uses at least a 500 MHz channel at 6 GHz. Instead of transmitting information at the center frequency, UWB sprays pulses of varying amplitudes and polarity around that 500 MHz spectrum. If you could hear it, it would sound like noise, compared to the relatively pure chords of WiFi or Bluetooth. Being able to distinguish and decode these sprayed pulses gives you the benefit of being able to localize where the noise is coming from. It also lets you transmit enormous amounts of data, up to 675 Mbit/s.
The downside though is you have to be able to "hear" all the noise. UWB doesn't work well through walls, it's really more of an "in room" technology. It's really interesting and I can't wait to get these ESP32 UWB boards and see if I can spy on my AirTags.
Links:
24:30 Microsoft open sources the Zork 1 - 3 games (Paul #2)
In October 2023, Microsoft spent a cool $75 billion to purchase Activision Blizzard. Now two years later, we get a bonus from Microsoft, as they announced on November 20th that they have open sourced the Zork 1 - 3 games, which they acquired from Activision Blizzard, who owned the Infocom IP.
If you're not familiar with Zork, it was a text adventure game first released in 1977 to run on a mainframe and was developed at MIT. The player explolrers the ruins of the Great Underground Empire and you use text commands to travel to different locations, solve puzzles and collect treasure.
27:18 How to build an RP2040 devboard (Tod #3)
I love a well-designed devboard. The Raspberry Pi Pico is pretty good, but what if you want to make your own? Make a few changes in layout or connectors? The article "Let's Design an RP2040 Devboard!" by Kai Pereira walks you through exactly that.
In his post, Kai shows the entire KiCad design process and ending with soldering up the board. Starting with drawing the schematic, he shows how to pick schematic symbols and highlights good schematic practices to make it readable. So many schematics I see nowadays have little conception of what makes a good one. It's the primary way of getting across to others what the circuit actually does. So, just like writing a good essay, drawing a good schematic requires some knowledge of style and structure.
He then shows you how to take that schematic and turn it into a dimensionally-accurate PCB in KiCad. He shows Some of the power pin routing for the RP2040 can be tricky, but Kai shows to handle those, as well as the other critical bits like oscillator placement, USB and flash placement, and ground fills.
Some of the things Kai writes about are described in the RP2040 manuals, but it's really nice to see a single blog post (and not a video!) that delineates everything step-by-step, describing the reasoning behind it. Even if you know circuit design and RP2040 layout, the post is a great refresher. Thanks Kai!
Links:
30:03 Doctype the HTML Magazine (Paul #3)
Doctype is a magazine that you can purchase for $10. It includes ten web apps that you code right from the pages of the magazine, like we did back in the 80s when we were kids.
Their frequently asked questions on the home page sum it up nicely:
I don’t understand, it’s a magazine of HTML source code? Yes, you type it in then you get to play the games and run the apps.
Type it all in? Why?! Because it’s a lost form of software distribution. It was intriguing and rewarding back then, maybe it still is now.
With the holidays here, it might make an interesting gift for someone younger just getting into computers - learn the same way we did way back when.