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February 2024
New best story on Hacker News: Show HN: Reverse-Engineering a Switch Lite with 1,917 wires
Show HN: Reverse-Engineering a Switch Lite with 1,917 wires
458 by uSoldering | 94 comments on Hacker News.
Hey Hackers. This is a project I solo-developed that turns completed PCB assemblies into an easy to use boardview with some accompanying boardscans. There are lots of easier and better ways of doing this, but this is an experimentation to do it as cheaply as possible, with the highest quality and lowest chance of errors. The technical details are in the link. Most public boardviews are almost entirely the result of industrial espionage, other than a few encrypted subscription based software platforms that provide extensive access. The process output is released as donationware, as my main concern is that even released as a low-cost purchase, there is a very strong culture to share this type of information at no cost. I would like to have a more sophisticated suggested donation system adaptive to user country, but I wasn't able to find a good solution. In terms of 'good startup ideas', I don't think this is one of them. The very high level of soldering skill required makes it difficult to scale, and the prevailing piracy culture makes it challenging to monetize. My main advantage is that costs are very low now that I have the entire thing working. Other than forge ahead at a loss and hope for the best, or to pivot hard leveraging the imaging technology, I'm not sure what other options I have. It feels too complicated and repetitive for shoft-form video content. If you have any feedback, questions, suggestions, etc., I'd love to hear them.
458 by uSoldering | 94 comments on Hacker News.
Hey Hackers. This is a project I solo-developed that turns completed PCB assemblies into an easy to use boardview with some accompanying boardscans. There are lots of easier and better ways of doing this, but this is an experimentation to do it as cheaply as possible, with the highest quality and lowest chance of errors. The technical details are in the link. Most public boardviews are almost entirely the result of industrial espionage, other than a few encrypted subscription based software platforms that provide extensive access. The process output is released as donationware, as my main concern is that even released as a low-cost purchase, there is a very strong culture to share this type of information at no cost. I would like to have a more sophisticated suggested donation system adaptive to user country, but I wasn't able to find a good solution. In terms of 'good startup ideas', I don't think this is one of them. The very high level of soldering skill required makes it difficult to scale, and the prevailing piracy culture makes it challenging to monetize. My main advantage is that costs are very low now that I have the entire thing working. Other than forge ahead at a loss and hope for the best, or to pivot hard leveraging the imaging technology, I'm not sure what other options I have. It feels too complicated and repetitive for shoft-form video content. If you have any feedback, questions, suggestions, etc., I'd love to hear them.
New best story on Hacker News: Show HN: Multi-monitor KVM using just a USB switch
Show HN: Multi-monitor KVM using just a USB switch
388 by fiddyschmitt | 175 comments on Hacker News.
Simple KVM lets you control multiple PCs from one mouse, keyboard and monitor(s). It is similar to Haimgel's display-switch ( https://ift.tt/NQHn3ug ), but it provides a GUI which hopefully makes it a bit easier to set up. It also supports hotkeys which effectively lets you alt+tab between computers. I was surprised by the star-to-download ratio (55:400) on GitHub, so I thought I'd post it here as it might be useful to someone. Feedback welcome! Thanks, Fidel
388 by fiddyschmitt | 175 comments on Hacker News.
Simple KVM lets you control multiple PCs from one mouse, keyboard and monitor(s). It is similar to Haimgel's display-switch ( https://ift.tt/NQHn3ug ), but it provides a GUI which hopefully makes it a bit easier to set up. It also supports hotkeys which effectively lets you alt+tab between computers. I was surprised by the star-to-download ratio (55:400) on GitHub, so I thought I'd post it here as it might be useful to someone. Feedback welcome! Thanks, Fidel
New best story on Hacker News: Show HN: Improve cognitive focus in 1 minute
Show HN: Improve cognitive focus in 1 minute
451 by junetic | 218 comments on Hacker News.
Staring at something for 30-90 seconds has been proven to improve & boost mental focus on subsequent tasks (from Andrew Huberman - https://youtu.be/CrtR12PBKb0?t=3367 ). So I made something simple you can look at (and simultaneously meditate) for 1 minute to improve focus for your next task :) Let me know if it works for you
451 by junetic | 218 comments on Hacker News.
Staring at something for 30-90 seconds has been proven to improve & boost mental focus on subsequent tasks (from Andrew Huberman - https://youtu.be/CrtR12PBKb0?t=3367 ). So I made something simple you can look at (and simultaneously meditate) for 1 minute to improve focus for your next task :) Let me know if it works for you
New best story on Hacker News: Show HN: Atopile – Design circuit boards with code
Show HN: Atopile – Design circuit boards with code
469 by Timot05 | 246 comments on Hacker News.
Hey HN! We are the founders of atopile. We’re building a tool to describe electronics with code. Here is a quick demo: https://youtu.be/7-Q0XVpfW3Y Could you imagine the pain of building an entire software product using only assembly code? That’s about how we felt designing hardware. We don’t currently have good ways to describe what we need, reuse existing designs and compile that description down to a product. We started atopile to fix this. atopile is an open-source language and toolchain to describe circuits with code. The compiler is here: https://ift.tt/t6o8rFO Docs are here: https://ift.tt/JaLyZh7 . For a detailed deep dive designing an ESP32 module, see this video: https://youtu.be/eMWRwZOajdQ We realized this was a problem in our previous jobs. Narayan and I (Tim) had to manually, draw and export all our electronic circuit boards. This lasted until our friend Matt, a software engineer, showed us his development workflow. All his projects were built, tested, and merged automatically via GitHub. So we asked: Can we build the same for hardware? We observed that the ability to abstract electronics effectively hinged on using a language to describe the requirements, so we came up with the “ato” language. In ato, you can break down circuits into modules, components and interfaces. You can nest and connect those blocks with each other. Here is an example with an RP2040 microcontroller: import RP2040Kit from "rp2040/RP2040Kit.ato" import LEDIndicatorBlue from "generics/leds.ato" import LDOReg3V3 from "regulators/regulators.ato" import USBCConn from "usb-connectors/usb-connectors.ato" module Blinky: micro_controller = new RP2040Kit led_indicator = new LEDIndicatorBlue voltage_regulator = new LDOReg3V3 usb_c_connector = new USBCConn usb_c_connector.power ~ voltage_regulator.power_in voltage_regulator.power_out ~ micro_controller.power micro_controller.gpio13 ~ led_indicator.input micro_controller.power.gnd ~ led_indicator.gnd led_indicator.resistor.value = 100ohm +/- 10% From there, the compiler produces a netlist that describes how the circuit is connected and selects jelly-bean components for you ( https://ift.tt/lyoc0KU ). Our next focus will be to add layout reuse, mathematical relations between values and define circuits by traits (similar to Rusts’). At the moment, atopile is intended to design all types of printed circuit boards (PCB) with low to medium complexity. The circuit complexity that the compiler can handle will steadily increase until it becomes suited for production usage. We often get asked if the compiler is meant for chip design rather than PCBs, but that is not the case. The language is exclusive to PCBs. At least for now..! A big part of why the software community is so prolific is thanks to open source and open core technology. The ability to share software packages with each other and efficiently chain tools together has made the software world an awesome place for developers. As hardware engineers, we would love our field to benefit from this as well. That’s why we’ve made atopile’s core open source (Apache 2.0). We plan to generate revenue by selling entreprise targeted features, similar to GitLab. We would love to have your thoughts on the compiler! What’s your story in electronics? What would you want us to build?
469 by Timot05 | 246 comments on Hacker News.
Hey HN! We are the founders of atopile. We’re building a tool to describe electronics with code. Here is a quick demo: https://youtu.be/7-Q0XVpfW3Y Could you imagine the pain of building an entire software product using only assembly code? That’s about how we felt designing hardware. We don’t currently have good ways to describe what we need, reuse existing designs and compile that description down to a product. We started atopile to fix this. atopile is an open-source language and toolchain to describe circuits with code. The compiler is here: https://ift.tt/t6o8rFO Docs are here: https://ift.tt/JaLyZh7 . For a detailed deep dive designing an ESP32 module, see this video: https://youtu.be/eMWRwZOajdQ We realized this was a problem in our previous jobs. Narayan and I (Tim) had to manually, draw and export all our electronic circuit boards. This lasted until our friend Matt, a software engineer, showed us his development workflow. All his projects were built, tested, and merged automatically via GitHub. So we asked: Can we build the same for hardware? We observed that the ability to abstract electronics effectively hinged on using a language to describe the requirements, so we came up with the “ato” language. In ato, you can break down circuits into modules, components and interfaces. You can nest and connect those blocks with each other. Here is an example with an RP2040 microcontroller: import RP2040Kit from "rp2040/RP2040Kit.ato" import LEDIndicatorBlue from "generics/leds.ato" import LDOReg3V3 from "regulators/regulators.ato" import USBCConn from "usb-connectors/usb-connectors.ato" module Blinky: micro_controller = new RP2040Kit led_indicator = new LEDIndicatorBlue voltage_regulator = new LDOReg3V3 usb_c_connector = new USBCConn usb_c_connector.power ~ voltage_regulator.power_in voltage_regulator.power_out ~ micro_controller.power micro_controller.gpio13 ~ led_indicator.input micro_controller.power.gnd ~ led_indicator.gnd led_indicator.resistor.value = 100ohm +/- 10% From there, the compiler produces a netlist that describes how the circuit is connected and selects jelly-bean components for you ( https://ift.tt/lyoc0KU ). Our next focus will be to add layout reuse, mathematical relations between values and define circuits by traits (similar to Rusts’). At the moment, atopile is intended to design all types of printed circuit boards (PCB) with low to medium complexity. The circuit complexity that the compiler can handle will steadily increase until it becomes suited for production usage. We often get asked if the compiler is meant for chip design rather than PCBs, but that is not the case. The language is exclusive to PCBs. At least for now..! A big part of why the software community is so prolific is thanks to open source and open core technology. The ability to share software packages with each other and efficiently chain tools together has made the software world an awesome place for developers. As hardware engineers, we would love our field to benefit from this as well. That’s why we’ve made atopile’s core open source (Apache 2.0). We plan to generate revenue by selling entreprise targeted features, similar to GitLab. We would love to have your thoughts on the compiler! What’s your story in electronics? What would you want us to build?
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