Some electronics books from the 50s claimed making triode tubes would be an impossible endeavour for amateurs. Today, there are at least two DIY laboratories making not only triodes but also all sorts of vacuum electron devices.

Three years after the first GPS satellite was launched, few people used the technology, which was perceived as very complicated and expensive. Yet, someone successfully operated his homebrew receiver made from hundreds of that time’s electronic parts.

These days, microchips are often thought to be impenetrable and
impossible to manufacture without large-scale facilities. But many individuals are reverse engineering microelectronics designs, often breaking security systems based on the obscurity of the silicon layout. Some are even devising DIY methods to replicate parts of the microchip manufacturing process, with impressive results.

What are the frontiers of DIY technology? The first Exceptionally Hard & Soft Meeting (EHSM) will feature presentations of the brightest DIY achievements. But we do not want to stop at DIY. In fact, we should not, because teamwork is the only way to get the big things done.

The open source ethos is about keeping the freedom and openness of DIY when many people are involved. At a time when thousands of developers from hundreds of companies contribute to Linux and the world’s largest physics laboratories share openly licensed hardware designs on OHWR, we will explore the cutting-edge open source hardware and software practices.

This premiere of the EHSM will be held in Berlin on December 28-30 2012. Everyone is welcome to attend it. Curiosity is enough to qualify, and we have kept the minimal entrance fee affordable. Please order your ticket as soon as possible, to help us make this event happen.

They are already coming
To give you an idea of what is coming up, we are pleased to announce that the following speakers will be presenting their awesome work:

• Jeffrey Gough will talk about and demonstrate metalwork techniques. How to go beyond extruded ABS coming from a 3D printer? There might even be a hands-on workshop coming up, stay tuned.
• Shawn Tan has been working on a new open source microprocessor design and will introduce it at EHSM.
• Ben Krasnow makes all sorts of seemingly impossible science experiments at home, such as creating aerogel (yes, that thing on spacecraft), Pop Rocks candy, or building a scanning electron microscope. He will talk about a yet undisclosed but promising topic.

More speakers will be announced as we confirm them, check this space!

Tickets and funding
EHSM is entirely supported by its attendees and sponsors. To help us make this event happen, please donate and/or order your ticket as soon as possible. EHSM is a non-profit event and most of the money will be used to cover speakers’ travel expenses.

Submit your presentation
Since we do not pretend to be aware of all the amazing tech out there, we are expecting your proposals.

Send a mail to orga AT ehsm.eu with at least the following information:

• Name of the speaker
• Short bio of the speaker and/or his/her team
• Speaker contact information (e-mail + mobile phone if possible)
• Where the speaker will be traveling from
• Title of the presentation
• Abstract
• Links to more information (if available)

The standard format for presentations is one-hour lectures, but we are flexible. Write us a note if you have special time or other requirements.

We are waiting for your presentations in these areas:

• Open hardware
• Big open source project management
• Licensing and business models for open source
• Manufacturing: metalwork, glass blowing, …
• Electronics engineering
• Signal processing
• Radars
• Semiconductors
• Rocket science
• Thin film technologies
• Hardware acceleration
• Satellite design
• Vacuum electron devices
• Millimeter wave technology
• Reverse engineering
• Applied quantum physics
• Thermodynamics
• Nuclear science
• Nanotechnologies
• Ultra high speed photography

…and anything awesome which is not listed here.

If you know of someone else’s work that would be relevant, feel free to tip us! (orga AT ehsm.eu)

For academia
While researchers are most welcome to present their work at EHSM, please note that this is not a traditional academic conference. We will not formally publish proceedings(*), and we do not claim affiliation with any institution. We are also OK with previously published work, we simply expect high-quality presentations.

(*) Contrary to the practice of most academic publishers, we will, however, do our best to ensure the free dissemination of information.

Dates
Doors open: December 28th, 2012, 09:00
Doors close: December 30th, 2012, 18:00
Early registration fee ends: July 15th, 2012
Submission deadline: November 21st, 2012
Notifications of acceptance : November 28th, 2012 (or sooner)
Full programme published: November 28th, 2012

Venue
TU Berlin, Hörsaalgebäude Elektrotechnik
Lecture room HE101
Straße des 17. Juni 136
10623 Berlin, Germany
U Bahn: Ernst-Reuter-Platz

We thank TU Berlin and Freitagsrunde for providing the venue.

WE ARE LOOKING FORWARD TO WELCOMING YOU IN BERLIN!
- the EHSM organizing committee

As with many amateur radio clubs, the first thing you notice is that the average age is high. And they know how to appreciate vintage equipment. We can find, for example, a neat exhibition of electronic glassware.

And how about this “Made in DDR” transceiver?

The electronics lab comes with a mix of old (but does such stuff really get old?) and more modern equipment. Do not miss the SMD tools at the right – which were refreshing to see after I have been called “totally crazy” for hand-soldering a 0402 component on top of another in a well-known Berlin hackerspace. Phew, some people really need to catch up with technology.

There can be very interesting things being built there, such as this modified TV antenna that can now be used to… talk to AMSAT satellites and the ISS (yes, the space station) on the VHF band, using for example the APRS digital protocol. So… if you’re growing sick of being told about mediocre computer-controlled plastic extruders and microcontroller+LED kits, pay them a visit. It’s probably going to be worth the rather long travel time.

The test results for the FPGA time to digital converter (TDC) core are available from OHWR. Except from one problem which I believe is due to external signal integrity problems, the core worked well on the SPEC. From these tests, the 2-sigma precision is +/- 52 ps.

Sometimes, when debugging some firmware or hardware, it is necessary to see how the internal state of a chip changes in response to external signals.

With microcontrollers, this can be accomplished by adding code that toggles some pin that is then used for debugging, and watching that pin with an oscilloscope. Such a pin can also serve as sophisticated trigger, e.g., to capture some input signal only when an error is detected.

With M1, we can do the same, e.g., make LM32 or Navre toggle an I/O under software control. But we can do better: we can also route “hardware” signals directly, without involving software.

Here are three ways to do this:

1. Change the Verilog to properly route the signal to the output pad. This is nice and clean but has the following disadvantages:
   • need to run the full build process for each change of taps,
   • need to edit the sources (and remember to undo all the changes once the problem is fixed),
   • the signals need to be propagated step by step up the module hierarchy (*), which means a lot of small changes in many files,

     (*) Verilog should support also direct references that “jump” the hierarchy, but this doesn’t seem to be properly implemented in the Xilinx tools.

2. The pros just edit the FPGA with a WYSIWYG editor (Part three shows how to route signals to a pad). What I don’t like about this is that it’s not script-friendly. I’d also suspect that the changes are lost or at least in danger when re-synthesizing.
3. Like above, but edit non-interactively. This is an experimental hack I’ve now implemented.

Read the rest from the Milkymist mailing list…

Milkymist One with Faderfox LV3

We are currently working on a software upgrade that will allow USB MIDI controllers such as the Faderfox LV3 to be used with the Milkymist One. The update will be compatible with all existing Milkymist devices, and will be installable easily.

Right now, you can already use traditional MIDI devices to control Milkymist One visuals. The update will make it possible to use those MIDI devices that only provide USB connectivity as well.

Updating is easy – just connect the M1 to the Internet (booting it with the Ethernet cable connected to a network with DHCP should do, or use the system settings to configure the network) and then press the first push button (labeled L) for a few seconds. It should display this:

Update in progress

Then, power off and on again your M1. The “About” dialog box will display the new versions (Flickernoise 1.0 + SoC 1.0.1):

New versions