Category Archives: site

Codebender web-based Arduino coding tool

Codebender is a web-based programming tool for Arduino. ” Traditionally, you would need to install an IDE, which includes all the necessary software, find and install the correct drivers, set permissions, etc. It can take 10-60 minutes. Or it can be a total mess. With Codebender, you can program your Arduino straight from your browser. […]

Filming for “On The E-Waste Trail” documentary

We were contacted by documentary crew to talk about the Shenzhen electronics markets because of our Huaqiangbei Geek Tour Video. This is filmed on the roof of MixC, a giant mall a few stops away from the market. The project grew out of ‘The Light Bulb Conspiracy‘, a film which features a brief sequence about […]

Altera’s free online technical training courses

Altera is making available a group of free online technical training courses covering the various aspects of FPGA design. Topics include the basics of programmable logic design, Verilog and VHDL basics, as well as introductory and advanced courses on the Quartus II IDE. You can check out the course listings at the Altera online training […]

How to ID your Arduino board

Which Arduino boards are commonly in use and how do you distinguish one from another? Alex Castle has posted a roundup of the most common Arduino boards on the market right now, with tips on how to distinguish between them based on processing capabilities, feature sets and form factor. This summary should be helpful to […]

Online source lets you send and receive Enigma cipher comms

The Enigma machine was a World War II era encryption device used by the German army. It was the subject of substantial efforts by Allied cryptographers which finally resulted in the successful cracking of the code, which led to decryption of German military comms. We found this website which allows you to encode and decode […]

CMU students organize high school hacking competition

Students from CMU will conduct a high school hacking competition from April 26th 2013 – May 6th 2013. The competition is the work of Toaster Wars, a collaboration of the Plaid Parliament of Pwning (PPP) of Cylab and Osiris of the Entertainment Technology Center, both student-run groups at CMU. The project has received sponsorship from […]

ITU radio regs online FREE for limited time

Drone has sent us this information which should be interesting to radio comm enthusiasts around the world. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has decided to offer the current (2012) full set of “Radio Regulation” documents (Volumes I-IV) for FREE download for a limited time (through mid-2014 perhaps). Yes, this set includes the “ITU-R” documents. The […]

VHDL tutorial using Xilinx CPLD

We’re always looking for good information on programmable logic devices, projects and tutorials. In our quest we discovered this tutorial on VHDL programming by the crew from StartingElectronics. The course is geared toward beginneers and provides a good introduction to the VHDL language through a series of tutorials that demonstrate the use of VHDL running […]

OpenRISC ASIC chip fundraiser

January 18 is OpenRISC day and the OpenRISC project currently is conducting a fundraiser. We are raising $250,000 to build the world’s first truly open source system on chip processor, tapping into global tech communities where affordable hardware drives growth in embedded systems and digital services. Help make this happen by donating to the project […]

Open pinball project

The Open Pinball Project is a cooperative effort to develop open source pinball hardware and software. Their stated goal is to “to build the perfect pinball machine, or at least a pinball machine for a reasonable price!” To date they’ve worked at restoring a number of old machines, learning valuable lessons in the process. Their […]

WordPress reinstall and site updates completed

Woohoo! WordPress comments were taking 10-15 seconds to post, now they’re working instantly again. Thanks for hanging with us. Here’s a run down on what we did today. We don’t know the cause, only that a fresh WordPress install helped. Backed up server Deleted /wp-admin/ and /wp-includes/ folders, replaced with new versions and set proper […]

WordPress reinstall in progress

Today we’re reinstalling WordPress, the blogging software. A server tune up has it running much faster, but comments and some back end stuff like comment moderation are still taking 10-15 seconds or longer. A secondary test site was setup yesterday and works much better, so today we’ll wipe and reinstall WordPress. You’ll notice sitewide slowdowns […]

A look at our spammer friends

The Akismet spam filter service we use on blog comments seems to be letting lots of spam through lately. We’re moderating all comments with links, as well as first time posters. That requires human interaction and increases lag between posting and seeing a comment, so we’ll continue to look for better options. Thanks to everyone […]