1 00:00:04,000 --> 00:00:06,500 Hello, welcome to The Bootloader. I'm Tod Kurt. 2 00:00:06,500 --> 00:00:10,000 And I'm Paul Cutler. We've got another special episode for you today. 3 00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:16,000 If you remember, way back in Episode 6, about two years ago, Tod shared about his trip to Hackaday's Supercon. 4 00:00:16,000 --> 00:00:22,500 Well, if you're like me and had a feeling of missing out, Tod attended the most recent Supercon that was held November 1st to the 3rd. 5 00:00:22,500 --> 00:00:25,500 Tod, for those not familiar with Supercon, what is it? 6 00:00:25,500 --> 00:00:30,660 Okay, so the Hackaday Super Conference, or just Supercon, is a three-day conference that 7 00:00:30,660 --> 00:00:34,720 happens every year in Pasadena around the end of October at the Supply Frame Design 8 00:00:34,720 --> 00:00:37,780 Lab and its neighbor, the LA College of Music. 9 00:00:37,780 --> 00:00:40,580 It's like one building that's got sort of two units in it. 10 00:00:40,580 --> 00:00:45,420 About 500 people get together and hear a collection of talks on two stages from the Hackaday or 11 00:00:45,420 --> 00:00:48,340 larger tech nerd community. 12 00:00:48,340 --> 00:00:49,640 Supercon is now in its eighth year. 13 00:00:49,640 --> 00:00:51,300 How long have you been going? 14 00:00:51,300 --> 00:00:55,860 I've been going every year except for the very first one that was up in San Francisco, 15 00:00:55,860 --> 00:00:59,600 and the offshoot ones they have in Europe. I've been a big fan of Hackaday since reading 16 00:00:59,600 --> 00:01:04,979 it when it founded in 2004. My wife, Carlyn, and I co-founded Crash Space, a Los Angeles 17 00:01:04,979 --> 00:01:10,060 hackerspace that's going on its 15th year. By the way, if you're in SoCal on December 18 00:01:10,060 --> 00:01:14,460 7th, come by Crash Space for the Crash Space Art Show and 15-year celebration. There'll 19 00:01:14,460 --> 00:01:16,300 be a link to that in the show notes. 20 00:01:16,300 --> 00:01:22,840 When SupplyFrame bought Hackaday back in, I don't know, 2015 or something, they invited 21 00:01:22,840 --> 00:01:28,280 me and Carlin to come by and help them think about how to do a Hackaday hackerspace. 22 00:01:28,280 --> 00:01:31,920 And that eventually turned into the Design Lab, which is a much nicer and cleaner space 23 00:01:31,920 --> 00:01:32,920 than most hackerspaces. 24 00:01:32,920 --> 00:01:36,000 It's much more usable for conferences. 25 00:01:36,000 --> 00:01:40,500 Also I did a Design Lab residency at the Design Lab in 2017. 26 00:01:40,500 --> 00:01:45,040 So suffice to say, I'm a big fan of Hackaday and the Design Lab, and my thoughts are colored 27 00:01:45,040 --> 00:01:50,440 by the now 20 years of being in the Hackaday community. Sure. What's the biggest thing 28 00:01:50,440 --> 00:01:54,880 that's changed over that period? It's been really consistent. A lot of that is due to 29 00:01:54,880 --> 00:01:58,840 the consistency of venue because they have it in their own space. They can really like 30 00:01:58,840 --> 00:02:02,600 make it the way they want it to feel. It's not like you're in a hotel lobby or something. 31 00:02:02,600 --> 00:02:06,400 I think it's more crowded now than when it first started. Just it's become more popular. 32 00:02:06,400 --> 00:02:10,300 And the consistency is really strange. I'll see friends there that I only really interact 33 00:02:10,300 --> 00:02:14,780 with online because they live in New England or Germany and we're able to pick up right 34 00:02:14,780 --> 00:02:18,220 off where we left off like it's another day and hasn't been a whole year. 35 00:02:18,700 --> 00:02:19,340 It's very weird. 36 00:02:19,620 --> 00:02:23,700 As for conference content, they've struggled with the perennial tech world issue of 37 00:02:23,700 --> 00:02:25,940 having a bunch of old white guys like me on stage. 38 00:02:26,340 --> 00:02:28,940 They've been struggling and trying to get better. 39 00:02:28,940 --> 00:02:31,380 And I feel like this year they've made strides towards fixing that. 40 00:02:31,940 --> 00:02:34,220 I really look forward to Supercon every year and I'm glad they're working 41 00:02:34,220 --> 00:02:35,220 on making it more inclusive. 42 00:02:35,220 --> 00:02:39,459 You know, someone has, as someone who's felt like an outsider, uh, growing up, 43 00:02:39,500 --> 00:02:42,140 because, because it used to be nerds were considered outsiders. 44 00:02:42,739 --> 00:02:43,060 Right. 45 00:02:43,260 --> 00:02:49,459 It's like, I feel we have a duty of care to like be as inclusive as possible to everyone else who doesn't feel like they belong. 46 00:02:50,220 --> 00:02:54,459 I included a link to the first day of speakers in a recent newsletter that I sent out. 47 00:02:54,459 --> 00:03:02,299 And I did notice that the conference this year looked to be a lot more inclusive than it has been the last couple of years, which is great to see that kind of progress. 48 00:03:02,700 --> 00:03:03,140 That's good. 49 00:03:03,180 --> 00:03:03,440 Yeah. 50 00:03:03,440 --> 00:03:12,379 It's, as someone who's been a Vince over years and who knows a lot of the people that come every year, it's a real struggle because I want to see. 51 00:03:12,820 --> 00:03:22,580 what my friends have been working on. I want to see them up on stage, but that just leads to the same people talking every year. And so it's, it's, uh, it's really nice to see these totally new people and make new friends. 52 00:03:23,580 --> 00:03:28,020 Supercon's known for their conference badges. I understand they did something a little different this year. 53 00:03:29,100 --> 00:03:41,380 You hear the word conference badge and you think like the little piece of paper, uh, in a plastic holder that goes around your neck and it's got your name on it and the name of the conference. Maybe it's got like your title, like who you, maybe the company you work for. 54 00:03:41,900 --> 00:04:08,180 Well, these tech conferences, these nerd conferences like Supercon and Defcon, none of that applies. The badges are PCBs. They're little electronic circuits that do something interesting, usually visually interesting. And especially with Supercon, they present a puzzle to the attendees. Like it's not a puzzle in the traditional jigsaw puzzle sense. It's a here's this artifact, you have to figure out how it works. 55 00:04:08,380 --> 00:04:15,880 And so for some people, the conference is an entire weekend of hacking the badge, trying to figure it out and make it do something cool. 56 00:04:15,880 --> 00:04:23,080 Because you're given the badge and you're given some documentation about what it is, but you're not given the entire story. 57 00:04:23,080 --> 00:04:24,280 And that's kind of on purpose. 58 00:04:24,280 --> 00:04:30,380 I mean, sometimes it's because the badge makers have been running the last minute trying to get it to work. 59 00:04:31,080 --> 00:04:32,080 But usually it's on purpose. 60 00:04:32,080 --> 00:04:33,980 Usually it's like meant to be a bit of a puzzle. 61 00:04:34,579 --> 00:04:45,139 And it's hilarious that like, as this badge, this electronic badge idea has evolved over the last decade or so, the badges now have no spaces really to write your name. 62 00:04:45,659 --> 00:04:49,979 Like they've evolved beyond being a thing that identifies you. 63 00:04:49,979 --> 00:04:55,379 They sometimes will have the name of the conference you're at, but they won't have that. 64 00:04:57,259 --> 00:05:03,899 And so the functionality of badges have ranged from an FPGA board that runs Linux to a 4-bit 65 00:05:03,899 --> 00:05:09,259 retro computer that you program with switches like in the old days, a virtual vectorscope, 66 00:05:09,259 --> 00:05:13,819 or a mesh networking chat keyboard. Oh, that's crazy. I haven't seen that one. 67 00:05:14,379 --> 00:05:19,579 Yeah, yeah. And these are just the Supercon badges. There's other tech conferences that 68 00:05:19,579 --> 00:05:25,259 have done other really crazy things. Another aspect of these badges has been add-ons, 69 00:05:25,259 --> 00:05:29,419 little extra circuits that you can add to it that light up or add some functionality to the badge. 70 00:05:30,219 --> 00:05:34,299 I'm beginning to think that this started as a way to identify the badge holder, 71 00:05:34,299 --> 00:05:37,659 since the badges themselves have lost their ability to do that. 72 00:05:38,779 --> 00:05:43,499 For the last six years or so, these add-ons have been codified into a standard called SAO, 73 00:05:44,299 --> 00:05:50,539 which stands for Simple Add-on, originally Shitty Add-on by Brian Brenchoff, which is just a six-pin 74 00:05:50,539 --> 00:05:58,419 connector a little like standard six pin pin header that provides power an I squared C bus and two pins of GPIO for whatever you want 75 00:05:59,059 --> 00:06:03,819 but most add-ons just use the power to light up and do something like blinky and 76 00:06:04,159 --> 00:06:08,339 These these sao badge add-ons are generally pretty small. They're about two inches on a side 77 00:06:08,339 --> 00:06:11,019 if that this size and format allows for 78 00:06:11,539 --> 00:06:13,539 easy exploration of PCB art 79 00:06:13,919 --> 00:06:20,299 You can try out what different colors and different sort of visual textures you can get because you can put 80 00:06:20,299 --> 00:06:29,299 With standard PCBs you can put two different colors on each side of the PCB and then you can have the copper that's on the actual circuit show through or not. 81 00:06:29,299 --> 00:06:34,299 So you can get maybe six different shades of green or something. 82 00:06:34,299 --> 00:06:40,299 And then you can also add LED backlighting and have that show through the PCB if you've got clear spots. 83 00:06:40,299 --> 00:06:48,299 So, given the rise of these SAO add-ons, this year's badge for Supercon was primarily a platform to show them off. 84 00:06:48,299 --> 00:06:52,999 It has six SAO sockets on the front and a Pico W and batteries on the back. 85 00:06:53,559 --> 00:06:57,579 And it also comes with a small collection of starter SAOs so you can like 86 00:06:57,579 --> 00:06:59,539 immediately just plug them in and have to have it do something. 87 00:07:00,299 --> 00:07:05,299 But the real fun later comes as people give out and trade SAOs they've made all 88 00:07:06,679 --> 00:07:07,519 during the conference. 89 00:07:08,219 --> 00:07:10,699 I'll have to see if I can find some pictures of those and include them in the 90 00:07:10,699 --> 00:07:13,299 show notes too, because there's some pretty cool ones that we'll talk about 91 00:07:13,299 --> 00:07:15,219 later on as well. Yes, yes. 92 00:07:16,219 --> 00:07:25,819 So this year they invited some makers to create simple add-ons to give to the attendees. And I understand you were picked to design an SAO to give out. 93 00:07:26,179 --> 00:07:41,779 Yeah, it was it was cool. I was totally, they didn't really describe what was happening. But around back in August, Magenta and Giovanni of the Design Lab contacted me and said, "Hey, you want to make a SAO based off of my little CapTouch wheel gizmo that I've been playing with for the last year or so?" 94 00:07:42,219 --> 00:07:54,339 And I'm like, yeah, sure. And it was fun scaling down that project to something that's the size of a badge and uses a ATtiny microcontroller that's more appropriate for a badge versus a Pico or something similar to that. 95 00:07:54,899 --> 00:08:12,059 It was fortunate that my Arduino touch library worked well enough for this. So I was able to just kind of use that. And the Arduino core for the ATtiny816, which is a nice tiny chip for things like badges, works great. So I was able to write it all in Arduino, which is really nice. 96 00:08:12,059 --> 00:08:14,059 Not having to learn yet another 97 00:08:14,679 --> 00:08:19,439 SDK for a chip is like it's like super handy so I was able to do that in about a week and I got a bunch 98 00:08:19,439 --> 00:08:24,879 FABed and then we went through a couple design iterations because they wanted you know, like oh, let's try out this size chip 99 00:08:24,879 --> 00:08:26,879 Let's try out this these types of LEDs 100 00:08:27,239 --> 00:08:32,559 Yeah, they got produced at scale and the result is what I call the touch will SAO 101 00:08:33,279 --> 00:08:39,079 And how many did they make to give out? I think five or six hundred I forget it 102 00:08:39,879 --> 00:08:46,139 They made as many as there were attendees and then a little more and then they're going to be making some more for some 103 00:08:46,139 --> 00:08:47,899 Of their future conferences, I think 104 00:08:47,899 --> 00:08:52,019 The touch will sa o board it's got it's got the iPod like touch will on the front 105 00:08:52,019 --> 00:08:58,439 But then it's got three RGB LEDs on the back that shine through to indicate what sort of touch action is being done 106 00:08:58,579 --> 00:09:04,579 That's really handy with cap touch sensors to actually know that it's been that your touch is being registered and then it talks over I squared 107 00:09:04,579 --> 00:09:08,139 C to whoever whoever is controlling it and the ice would see protocol 108 00:09:08,139 --> 00:09:12,899 I designed I try to make it as easy as possible people to get touch data out and to control its LEDs 109 00:09:12,899 --> 00:09:16,239 I think I succeeded in that regard which is which is a bit happy 110 00:09:16,239 --> 00:09:17,719 I was I was worried that no one would use it 111 00:09:17,719 --> 00:09:21,039 But it turns out lots of people may be cool little hacks with a little bit of touch wheel 112 00:09:21,419 --> 00:09:22,179 Very cool 113 00:09:22,179 --> 00:09:30,219 And I wasn't convinced that the cap touch stuff would even work in the wild battery powered environment of the conference where all these other 114 00:09:30,219 --> 00:09:33,079 Weird circuits are plugged into a badge, but it seemed to work 115 00:09:33,099 --> 00:09:37,659 It was kind of surprising because cap touch can be really finicky when you're doing the sort of hacker 116 00:09:37,659 --> 00:09:44,139 way of doing it, not using like a custom touch chip and things like that. In retrospect, I think I 117 00:09:44,139 --> 00:09:49,619 should have used four interleaved pads instead of the normal three that I use for all my other stuff. 118 00:09:49,619 --> 00:09:55,179 Three is the minimum, but with four you can sort of downgrade to it just being a D-pad, like up, 119 00:09:55,179 --> 00:10:00,619 down, left, right, and that would have been a nice sort of way to make it ensure it worked reliably, 120 00:10:00,619 --> 00:10:05,899 at least. But it looks like we didn't need it, so that was great. Okay, so that was the SAOs, 121 00:10:05,899 --> 00:10:13,239 But the conference was about all the talks and at Supercon there's two stages. There's the main stage that's in the LA College of Music 122 00:10:13,459 --> 00:10:18,299 That's the larger stage and there's a smaller stage that's in the design lab and the way that 123 00:10:18,699 --> 00:10:26,379 Hackaday does it is they live stream the larger stages talks immediately and then a few months later the design lab talks come up 124 00:10:26,459 --> 00:10:29,179 so so Paul you were able to see some of the 125 00:10:29,579 --> 00:10:34,459 The main stage talks on the YouTube stream. What were some of you what were some of your favorites? 126 00:10:34,899 --> 00:10:41,879 There were a couple that I really enjoyed. I think one of my favorites was the one that was with Jorvon Moss and Shawn Hymel, 127 00:10:42,339 --> 00:10:50,099 talking about Digit, the little robot that Adjei created. The talk was a collaborative project between the two of them, and what they did was, 128 00:10:50,939 --> 00:10:59,339 Adjei built this robot that sits on his shoulder, and I'll see if I can get a picture of it, and it's a wearable, and he's got some requirements. 129 00:10:59,339 --> 00:11:03,719 It's got to be good and comfy with a unique design and the ability to be upgraded. 130 00:11:03,719 --> 00:11:08,919 and he wanted to integrate chat GPT this time so he could have a conversation with Digit. 131 00:11:08,919 --> 00:11:14,959 But that didn't work because there's no internet connection. If you're out and about, you don't have a reliable connection for that. 132 00:11:14,959 --> 00:11:19,719 The Raspberry Pi didn't work as the large language model wouldn't fit on that. 133 00:11:19,719 --> 00:11:31,719 They did end up using a large language model from Meta called the Lama38B. That fit. It was still about a 30 to 60 second wait for an answer when talking to the large language model. 134 00:11:31,719 --> 00:11:39,799 So they decided to rip the Pi out and they replaced it with an NVIDIA Jetson Aura Nano, 135 00:11:39,799 --> 00:11:43,999 which worked, but it's a lot more expensive than a Pi at around $500. 136 00:11:43,999 --> 00:11:47,759 Shawn explains how the wake word detection works with the large language model in a Docker 137 00:11:47,759 --> 00:11:54,839 container and the text-to-speech is in a separate Docker container, both on the Nano device. 138 00:11:54,839 --> 00:11:59,239 And then working on prompt engineering, meaning it gives the robot personality. 139 00:11:59,239 --> 00:12:14,239 Odd Jay has used Southern and Passive Aggressive prompt engineering. So it'll say things like, "Bless your heart," which is usually not used in a nice way down South. So that's a perfect Passive Aggressive Southern prompt to go with it. 140 00:12:14,239 --> 00:12:15,239 That's hilarious. 141 00:12:15,239 --> 00:12:30,239 The talk and the demo were great. They played off of each other. So I highly recommend checking out the video. You want to see Digit in action. They ask it to tell a joke. And I'll link to Shawn's repository in GitHub with some of the code for it as well. 142 00:12:30,239 --> 00:12:36,039 Yeah, I really like trying to push the whole machine learning large language model stuff 143 00:12:36,039 --> 00:12:40,959 to the edge running on devices that you have around your person as opposed to going to 144 00:12:40,959 --> 00:12:45,079 the cloud because then you'll know it'll work even when your internet's down. 145 00:12:45,079 --> 00:12:48,959 Right, and one of the things I did appreciate is that they called it a large language model. 146 00:12:48,959 --> 00:12:53,139 They did not use the word AI, which just drives me crazy. 147 00:12:53,139 --> 00:12:59,439 So it was pretty cool to see a good, interesting use for a large language model. 148 00:12:59,439 --> 00:13:01,719 What was one of your favorite talks that you saw? 149 00:13:01,719 --> 00:13:08,359 For this podcast, I'm focusing mostly on the Design Lab stage talks, just because you won't 150 00:13:08,359 --> 00:13:13,559 hear about them until another couple of months, hopefully sooner. But for me, it's the Circuit 151 00:13:13,559 --> 00:13:18,759 Graver by Zach Frieden. And there's a post on Hackaday about it already that we'll have 152 00:13:18,759 --> 00:13:24,319 in the show notes. It's essentially a computer-controlled drag knife that can cut through copper-clad 153 00:13:24,319 --> 00:13:27,599 boards. And I don't know if you've ever seen these little computer-controlled drag knives, 154 00:13:27,599 --> 00:13:32,959 like the the cry cut I think but you you can use it to make custom vinyl stickers 155 00:13:32,959 --> 00:13:37,919 where you put in like a sticker sheet and you upload a vector art piece and it'll 156 00:13:37,919 --> 00:13:41,839 like cut out the sticker for you it's really cool yeah my wife has a silhouette 157 00:13:41,839 --> 00:13:44,719 and my laptop is covered in vinyl stickers that I've had her make me 158 00:13:44,719 --> 00:13:48,799 perfect perfect yeah and so and so it's a really it's really fun to watch because 159 00:13:48,799 --> 00:13:52,239 it's like a little exacto knife on a swivel that and the little head moves 160 00:13:52,239 --> 00:13:56,679 around and the knife sort of follows the head and cuts out the sticker and so 161 00:13:56,679 --> 00:14:01,379 So it's super simple in some ways, but it's like, you know, just an incredible bit of 162 00:14:01,379 --> 00:14:02,379 a little amazing engineering. 163 00:14:02,379 --> 00:14:04,759 But it can only cut through paper. 164 00:14:04,759 --> 00:14:09,219 And Zach has been working on making a thing that will cut through copper. 165 00:14:09,219 --> 00:14:11,359 And this required like a lot of downforce. 166 00:14:11,359 --> 00:14:16,539 And it's basically like, it's called the Circuit Graver because graver, graving is an action 167 00:14:16,539 --> 00:14:21,719 that like jewelers do and stuff to like sort of cut out designs from a piece of metal. 168 00:14:21,719 --> 00:14:26,479 He designed this whole custom CNC system that is a, that is this drag knife thing. 169 00:14:26,479 --> 00:14:31,099 And the cool thing about it is that the result looks a lot like a CNC milled PCB, but it's 170 00:14:31,099 --> 00:14:32,759 much faster. 171 00:14:32,759 --> 00:14:39,439 Because the CNC bit normally has to travel and kind of grind away the copper as it moves, 172 00:14:39,439 --> 00:14:44,039 whereas this one is just kind of like shaving off the copper. 173 00:14:44,039 --> 00:14:45,719 So it's really fun to watch. 174 00:14:45,719 --> 00:14:50,379 So Zach's a friend, I've known him for like almost 10 years I think, and he's been making 175 00:14:50,379 --> 00:14:54,719 crazy circuits by just carving copper by hand forever. 176 00:14:54,719 --> 00:15:00,239 would just take a piece of copper clad board and just carve out places where he doesn't want the circuit to be. 177 00:15:01,639 --> 00:15:02,399 That's crazy. 178 00:15:02,599 --> 00:15:04,919 Solder down parts and do these incredibly tiny things. 179 00:15:04,919 --> 00:15:06,719 And now he's got a computer, a computer can do it. 180 00:15:06,719 --> 00:15:07,919 It's just, it's just incredible. 181 00:15:08,079 --> 00:15:12,879 So hopefully the video will come out and so we'll have a follow up in some future episode. 182 00:15:12,879 --> 00:15:14,159 We'll all say, go watch this talk. 183 00:15:15,399 --> 00:15:20,319 So what's your second cool thing you saw in the Hackaday livestream? 184 00:15:20,799 --> 00:15:28,899 One of the ones that grabbed my eye because it had the word 3D printing in the title was Solving the Last Mile with 3D Printed Packaging by Christina Cyr. 185 00:15:29,339 --> 00:15:32,779 Christina is the CEO of Detour and created the Circle Phone. 186 00:15:32,919 --> 00:15:34,939 She's got a background as an electrical engineer. 187 00:15:35,379 --> 00:15:41,859 And I got to learn a new word, which is called Dunnage, which is the packaging that comes inside a box when you buy a product. 188 00:15:42,119 --> 00:15:49,899 So think about the tissue paper, the plastic bags, peanuts, bubble wrap, or molded, folded cardboard like smartphones have today. 189 00:15:50,339 --> 00:15:58,779 So what she wanted to do with her Circle phone was figure out how can you use a 3D printer to create that packaging inside? 190 00:15:58,979 --> 00:16:00,499 And there were a number of challenges. 191 00:16:00,539 --> 00:16:04,659 The first one is that typical CAD software isn't used for designing packaging. 192 00:16:05,299 --> 00:16:10,099 There are two specialty programs that do CAD design for packaging called RTL's CAD and Casemake. 193 00:16:10,459 --> 00:16:13,739 But you can't just scale your product design to allow for packaging. 194 00:16:13,779 --> 00:16:19,419 One of the materials she tried to print with was TPU and soft TPU didn't work at all. 195 00:16:19,659 --> 00:16:24,299 She tried both in a bamboo and an aprusa, but could print it on a Creality. 196 00:16:24,759 --> 00:16:27,459 One of the lessons she learned is that she could have shipped with bubble wrap 197 00:16:27,459 --> 00:16:31,359 that is made from 80% recycled nylon and is stronger than regular bubble wrap. 198 00:16:31,559 --> 00:16:34,899 But still, all the learnings that she shared around creating that dunnage 199 00:16:35,099 --> 00:16:38,139 were pretty cool. It's stuff that I've never thought about. 200 00:16:38,139 --> 00:16:41,939 And when you open a box, especially, you know, everyone uses Apple as an example. 201 00:16:41,939 --> 00:16:45,339 You open that Apple box and everything is laid out in different layers, right? 202 00:16:45,339 --> 00:16:48,239 That first layer, there's your there's your laptop. 203 00:16:48,239 --> 00:16:51,579 and then you lift that out and below that is the power supply kind of a deal. 204 00:16:51,899 --> 00:16:54,879 The thought and design that has to go into just that. 205 00:16:54,879 --> 00:16:59,679 Everyone's always focused on product design, but packaging design in and of itself 206 00:16:59,679 --> 00:17:01,679 is an art form, it seems like. 207 00:17:01,679 --> 00:17:05,339 It's fascinating that she mentioned that like there isn't really a CAD program 208 00:17:05,339 --> 00:17:08,739 for enclosure design, for I mean, for packaging design, because like when 209 00:17:08,939 --> 00:17:12,139 for the things that I've done with Thingamodel company, 210 00:17:12,999 --> 00:17:17,339 we pretty much just give a Illustrator file PDF 211 00:17:17,579 --> 00:17:23,779 that is the sort of unwrapped version of the box that with colors that indicate, oh, this is a fold line. 212 00:17:23,779 --> 00:17:24,899 This is a cut line. 213 00:17:25,159 --> 00:17:39,939 And then you have to like, talk to the person who is like the enclosure engineer, uh, that actually writes whatever custom software they use to, to do the packaging to like tell them to walk them through how the box goes together. 214 00:17:39,939 --> 00:17:41,659 And it's just like, yeah, okay. 215 00:17:41,659 --> 00:17:45,299 I, I guess I would not use Fusion 360 or Onshape for this. 216 00:17:45,699 --> 00:17:46,019 Right. 217 00:17:46,019 --> 00:17:46,659 What would I use? 218 00:17:46,659 --> 00:17:48,159 [LAUGHS] 219 00:17:48,159 --> 00:17:50,359 So it's just interesting, all the thought that really 220 00:17:50,359 --> 00:17:52,119 needs to go in, and especially when you have something 221 00:17:52,119 --> 00:17:54,439 like a phone that's got a bunch of different cables that go 222 00:17:54,439 --> 00:17:54,939 with it. 223 00:17:54,939 --> 00:17:57,199 You've got your 3.5 millimeter headphone. 224 00:17:57,199 --> 00:18:00,679 This phone in particular had USB-C and micro USB. 225 00:18:00,679 --> 00:18:04,799 So laying that all out and forming that packaging around it 226 00:18:04,799 --> 00:18:08,359 was pretty cool to hear how she brought that to market. 227 00:18:08,359 --> 00:18:09,919 Yeah. 228 00:18:09,919 --> 00:18:12,639 Tod, what's the next one that you saw that you liked? 229 00:18:12,639 --> 00:18:14,759 All right, so this is a pretty quick one. 230 00:18:14,759 --> 00:18:39,759 There's a talk called "In Living Color, A New World of Full-Color PCBs" by Joe Long. Joe runs Hackerboxes, a monthly subscription service that has cool little PCB-based nerd toys. He's been doing PCB art type things for a while because all of his PCBs look really interesting. And he's jumped in early on the full-color PCB services that both JLCPCB and PCBWay offer. 231 00:18:39,759 --> 00:18:47,399 I've been assuming to look into this myself, but like, there's this level of doing things that's different that I just haven't gotten over into. 232 00:18:47,399 --> 00:19:01,599 He went into his past attempts at doing full color stuff, which he did with stickers. Using like a Cricut or similar vinyl cutter, he would cut out stickers and register them on the PCBs, put them down, and that looks pretty good, you know? [laughs] 233 00:19:01,599 --> 00:19:07,519 But it's like a lot of work because you have to, you know, do hand accurate stickering onto things. [laughs] 234 00:19:07,519 --> 00:19:13,019 And so nowadays you can just upload a file to these PCB services when you're getting your PCB made. 235 00:19:13,019 --> 00:19:19,719 And so he walks through how to do that. And each company has a different way of doing it, but it looks pretty approachable. 236 00:19:19,719 --> 00:19:23,919 So like maybe in the near future you'll see a color PCB from me at some point. 237 00:19:23,919 --> 00:19:26,819 Oh, exciting. 238 00:19:26,819 --> 00:19:34,619 All right. And so for our final talk, let's talk about the craziest talk that was at the Supercon. 239 00:19:34,619 --> 00:19:40,219 Paul, why don't you talk about it first? Yeah, this one was way over my head and I'm just going to 240 00:19:40,219 --> 00:19:44,859 put that out there. And I took copious notes. I felt like I was almost in school, but the whole 241 00:19:44,859 --> 00:19:49,419 time I'm going, "You can do that with a microcontroller?" So the name of the talk was 242 00:19:49,419 --> 00:19:56,779 "Microcontrollers are Just Radios in Disguise" by Charles Lohr. And what he did is walk through how 243 00:19:56,779 --> 00:20:02,699 he took a microcontroller without a radio to get it to broadcast. So he has a few rules to his 244 00:20:02,699 --> 00:20:07,339 hardware hacking. The one to take away is using a microcontroller to do what the original chip 245 00:20:07,339 --> 00:20:16,299 designers expect to be impossible. So that's his goal. So he's a fan of the ATtiny85 and he figured 246 00:20:16,299 --> 00:20:22,219 out how to use it to transmit radio signals just using GPIO. There's no radio, there's no wi-fi, 247 00:20:22,219 --> 00:20:27,099 there's nothing built into this. So he's got a toolbox. He cannot use the built-in radios like 248 00:20:27,099 --> 00:20:32,379 I mentioned. So the tools that he does have available are a digitally controlled oscillator, 249 00:20:32,379 --> 00:20:39,659 frequency modulation, dithering, PWM for output, or harmonic output. So he was able to do it 250 00:20:39,659 --> 00:20:46,219 using all of that. And then, even crazier than just radio signals, he wanted to transmit NTSC 251 00:20:46,219 --> 00:20:52,139 video using these same tools, which is much more complicated than just sending FM. So he moved to 252 00:20:52,139 --> 00:20:59,499 an ESP8266, but he's not using the Wi-Fi that's built in. That was the hilarious, most hilarious 253 00:20:59,499 --> 00:21:06,299 part. Exactly. So there's no PWM in the challenge but it does have I2S used for audio so it can 254 00:21:06,299 --> 00:21:11,819 playback bit streams and broadcasting NTSC and black and white video just worked. The challenge 255 00:21:11,819 --> 00:21:17,899 was to get color working and using a simulator he figured out that the NTSC harmonics and reflections 256 00:21:17,899 --> 00:21:24,459 that allowed it. So he reverse engineered all this stuff so he can take a microcontroller using the 257 00:21:24,459 --> 00:21:33,179 the GPIO that broadcasts a signal to your old television that it can actually see. Then the next thing that he talked about was could they transmit 258 00:21:33,179 --> 00:21:54,019 LoRa on a microcontroller without a LoRa radio. LoRa stands for long range. It sends radio packets at 900 megahertz. So he first tried out on an ESP32-S2. That didn't work. Two chips did. The CH32V203 and an ESP8266, not using the radio again, but using PWM. 259 00:21:54,019 --> 00:22:00,659 He wrote his own entire LoRa stack to work with LoRaWAN and figured out how to send packets 260 00:22:00,659 --> 00:22:04,819 up to a half a kilometer away without a LoRa radio built in. 261 00:22:04,819 --> 00:22:05,819 Just crazy. 262 00:22:05,819 --> 00:22:08,659 Now, the transmitting is the easy part. 263 00:22:08,659 --> 00:22:11,539 Could he figure out how to receive and figure out the timing? 264 00:22:11,539 --> 00:22:17,819 So he used the CH32V003 chip, which is only 10 cents, and he figured it out and had to 265 00:22:17,819 --> 00:22:20,659 figure out why it was working and why it was so weak. 266 00:22:20,659 --> 00:22:26,099 he could pick up the signal at 500 feet without any radio hardware. And he ended up using 267 00:22:26,099 --> 00:22:31,499 the CH32V203 to create the receiver as it was slightly faster and needed for tuning 268 00:22:31,499 --> 00:22:36,839 the AM frequency. I recommend checking out this talk. I'm not doing it justice because 269 00:22:36,839 --> 00:22:41,299 half the technical jargon that was used was way over my head. But you could tell that 270 00:22:41,299 --> 00:22:45,819 the crowd was really into it and jaws were just hitting the floor at what he was able 271 00:22:45,819 --> 00:22:46,819 to do. 272 00:22:46,819 --> 00:22:55,459 who has used the ATtiny85 since 2005, it just boggles my mind. You think of like, "Oh, radios 273 00:22:55,459 --> 00:23:02,259 must be a special thing. They must have a bunch of special components and have an antenna." But 274 00:23:02,259 --> 00:23:10,979 no, it turns out, what is a radio signal but just a wiggle on an electrical line before the electrical 275 00:23:10,979 --> 00:23:16,019 line becomes just the antenna. So what can microcontrollers do? They can wiggle the voltages 276 00:23:16,659 --> 00:23:24,659 on their GPIO lines and and they run at like several megahertz. So I can twiddle the GPIO line 277 00:23:24,659 --> 00:23:30,339 at several megahertz. That's cool. Okay, so I can I can see how I can do a several hundred kilohertz 278 00:23:30,339 --> 00:23:38,099 AM radio station with an ATtiny, say, but he's doing these signals that are up into the hundreds 279 00:23:38,099 --> 00:23:44,899 of megahertz range in the case of Laura because he's using the fact that when you wiggle a signal 280 00:23:44,899 --> 00:23:52,179 at like say 10 megahertz it's actually creating all these harmonics at higher frequencies above 281 00:23:52,179 --> 00:23:57,539 that because of just how how signals work like anytime you make you make one signal you're 282 00:23:57,539 --> 00:24:03,219 actually making a bunch of signals because square waves have in them a bunch of sine waves that's 283 00:24:03,219 --> 00:24:07,379 That's called Fourier analysis, which I used to know a long time ago. 284 00:24:08,059 --> 00:24:12,459 And so, yeah, he's not outputting very much power, but it turns out, 285 00:24:12,459 --> 00:24:17,299 Laura is designed for not very much power, so he can use the super low, 286 00:24:17,299 --> 00:24:21,059 900 megahertz harmonic of whatever real signal he's generating. 287 00:24:23,299 --> 00:24:26,019 It just makes no sense. So, yeah, please go watch this video. 288 00:24:26,259 --> 00:24:28,339 Even if you don't understand it, it's an amazing ride. 289 00:24:29,539 --> 00:24:32,059 All of the videos that I talked about are live on YouTube. 290 00:24:32,539 --> 00:24:34,499 And we've got links in the show notes to them. 291 00:24:34,499 --> 00:24:36,379 And as Tod mentioned, the talks that he mentioned 292 00:24:36,379 --> 00:24:37,499 will be up in a few months. 293 00:24:37,499 --> 00:24:39,659 So keep an eye out on the Hackaday YouTube channel 294 00:24:39,659 --> 00:24:41,219 for those. 295 00:24:41,219 --> 00:24:44,579 Wrapping up, let's go back to the simple add-ons. 296 00:24:44,579 --> 00:24:47,619 They have about a 90-minute video. 297 00:24:47,619 --> 00:24:48,499 It was pretty long. 298 00:24:48,499 --> 00:24:49,939 I skipped through it. 299 00:24:49,939 --> 00:24:51,999 That actually is the award ceremony 300 00:24:51,999 --> 00:24:53,339 for the different simple add-ons. 301 00:24:53,339 --> 00:24:55,959 So I just wanted to call out a couple that I saw that I thought 302 00:24:55,959 --> 00:24:59,499 were pretty cool that were part of the award ceremony. 303 00:24:59,499 --> 00:25:02,939 The first one was an Etch-a-Sketch SAO, a tiny little, 304 00:25:02,939 --> 00:25:04,579 like you said, these are two inch, 305 00:25:04,579 --> 00:25:08,659 these aren't big PCBs or products that they're building. 306 00:25:08,659 --> 00:25:11,259 And he's got a full-blown Etch-a-Sketch working on it. 307 00:25:11,259 --> 00:25:15,779 The one that won best overall was a digital multimeter 308 00:25:15,779 --> 00:25:18,579 that's working built into the badge. 309 00:25:20,579 --> 00:25:21,419 - It's so nice. 310 00:25:21,419 --> 00:25:22,939 And it looks like a Fluke multimeter 311 00:25:22,939 --> 00:25:25,119 with like the yellow case and with probes. 312 00:25:26,979 --> 00:25:29,179 - One of my favorites, though it was ineligible 313 00:25:29,179 --> 00:25:33,819 due to using last year's badge, was Instant Arcade's Pac-Man SAO. 314 00:25:33,819 --> 00:25:36,259 And the way it worked is it had a little circular screen 315 00:25:36,259 --> 00:25:38,419 where you could actually play Pac-Man. 316 00:25:38,419 --> 00:25:43,139 And oh, on top of the SAO were a Pac-Man and four ghosts. 317 00:25:43,139 --> 00:25:44,619 So that's on the top. 318 00:25:44,619 --> 00:25:47,459 And then it's connected to the little circular piece 319 00:25:47,459 --> 00:25:49,139 where you actually play the game. 320 00:25:49,139 --> 00:25:50,979 And when you eat a power pill, 321 00:25:50,979 --> 00:25:53,779 the colors of the ghosts actually change. 322 00:25:53,779 --> 00:25:55,819 So you can see the state that they're in 323 00:25:55,819 --> 00:25:57,979 based on the game state. 324 00:25:57,979 --> 00:26:00,259 That just cracked me up. 325 00:26:00,259 --> 00:26:02,059 - He showed an early version of that, 326 00:26:02,059 --> 00:26:04,739 that polar orientation Pac-Man last year, 327 00:26:04,739 --> 00:26:05,759 because that was last year's badge 328 00:26:05,759 --> 00:26:07,179 that had the round display on it. 329 00:26:07,179 --> 00:26:10,259 So having a round Pac-Man seemed appropriate. 330 00:26:10,259 --> 00:26:14,579 - Steven, a Simon clone was shown, which used your SAO, 331 00:26:14,579 --> 00:26:16,579 which I thought was kind of cool. 332 00:26:16,579 --> 00:26:18,619 And the two that I wish I could have seen, 333 00:26:18,619 --> 00:26:21,699 and I heard about that, that someone had like a turntable SAO 334 00:26:21,699 --> 00:26:23,899 and me being such a big vinyl music lover. 335 00:26:23,899 --> 00:26:26,339 I'm curious to learn more about that one. 336 00:26:26,339 --> 00:26:34,339 And then one that I actually saw a couple months ago when it was in development, not realizing what it was for, was someone created a Marvel X-Men SAO. 337 00:26:34,339 --> 00:26:40,339 And you have to see Wolverine and how they created the PCB with Wolverine's claws. 338 00:26:40,339 --> 00:26:45,339 And that's how I came across it. He was talking about it on social media originally. 339 00:26:45,339 --> 00:26:49,339 But it's one that I wanted to see the final product that I thought was pretty cool. 340 00:26:49,339 --> 00:26:54,339 Yeah, I saw that post too, but I didn't see it in real life. I think I just didn't run into the person who had made it. 341 00:26:54,339 --> 00:26:59,459 I did see the the turntable SEO. It's it's a there's a link. They'll be linked to it in the show notes 342 00:26:59,459 --> 00:27:05,779 It's called the record scratch SEO by Simon Sorensen looks like a little record you can scrub your hand 343 00:27:05,939 --> 00:27:12,939 You're sorry scrub your finger along the record and it'll make scritch-a-scritching noises and then we let up it'll it'll play the record because 344 00:27:13,339 --> 00:27:19,579 Underneath in on the other side is a full like rp2040 Pico like system that has 345 00:27:19,819 --> 00:27:25,719 100 and a flash memory to store a sample and some clever code to do the audio scrubbing of course the top is a 346 00:27:25,859 --> 00:27:30,879 Is a cap touch wheel kind of like my kind of like my wheel and so yeah, it's just it works really well 347 00:27:30,879 --> 00:27:32,959 I have one one of one of my favorite ones 348 00:27:33,799 --> 00:27:39,839 That also was a cap touch on the front and an awful rp-2042 in the back was the TARS 349 00:27:39,999 --> 00:27:46,279 SAO by Dave Darko it looked like the TARS robot from interstellar Dave makes a ton of SAOs 350 00:27:46,279 --> 00:27:50,839 He's like a really good SAO maker to crib from if you ever want to like make some of these yourself 351 00:27:50,839 --> 00:27:56,579 He's got a bunch of his designs up on github and you can like learn so much just by looking at like the techniques 352 00:27:56,579 --> 00:28:01,979 He used the Atari's SAO has a full color TFT display a speaker the touch pads 353 00:28:01,999 --> 00:28:05,919 It's driven by this wave share rp2040 zero board. So it wasn't even like a 354 00:28:07,159 --> 00:28:10,699 His approach was like my approach which was like let's use a pre-existing board 355 00:28:10,699 --> 00:28:14,859 You can just sort of like plug on rather than like implementing the entire circuitry again 356 00:28:15,159 --> 00:28:20,039 And it comes with a bunch of different fun little apps a little piano app and a I scored C scanner 357 00:28:20,039 --> 00:28:22,039 Which is really handy when you're doing SAO stuff 358 00:28:23,079 --> 00:28:27,939 It's so cool to see the creative genius at work and all these different SAOs that people are working on 359 00:28:27,939 --> 00:28:33,039 I I can't imagine coming up with all those different ideas and then actually bringing those projects to life 360 00:28:33,039 --> 00:28:37,079 It's just it's so cool watching it from afar. Yeah, it was it was really cool 361 00:28:37,079 --> 00:28:43,999 There's I think like one of the things that that I was always a little bit jealous of in past super cons is that a 362 00:28:44,519 --> 00:28:52,099 Lot of people would like just dive into figuring out the badge and the badge was usually really complicated and like I didn't want to 363 00:28:52,659 --> 00:28:57,859 Like avoid everybody and try to like dive into this thing and also I can't really work 364 00:28:58,299 --> 00:29:02,659 Well in a big crowd of people like that during a conference, so it's like I feel like well 365 00:29:02,659 --> 00:29:06,939 Geez, should I go somewhere else to figure this out or like no, I just won't work on it 366 00:29:06,939 --> 00:29:10,699 I'll just like write my name is Sharpie on the badge and that'll be my hacking of the badge 367 00:29:11,819 --> 00:29:26,819 And so I think a lot of people felt like that. And so having it be a very SAO-focused badge where everyone can kind of like, pre-think about their circuit and have it made and like maybe make several of them and give out to friends and stuff when they're there, it made it a lot more egalitarian, it felt like. 368 00:29:27,819 --> 00:29:33,339 Well, that's Supercon 2024. I hope that you, like me, no longer have a feeling of missing out, 369 00:29:33,339 --> 00:29:36,619 you've learned a little bit, and have a couple talks that you might want to go watch. 370 00:29:37,339 --> 00:29:41,819 For detailed show notes and links to all of these shows, visit thebootloader.net, 371 00:29:41,819 --> 00:29:45,018 and don't forget to sign up for our newsletter when you're there. 372 00:29:45,018 --> 00:29:51,339 Thanks for listening, and until next time, stay positive.