Please see our jobs portal page for more information and to apply, and feel free to send me a message if you'd like to know more about the technology we use, the team you'll be a part of and the culture we enjoy.
Do you want to put your software development skills to good use, delivering services that help protect and restore Scotland's nature? We've two vacancies in our Development team for Senior Software Developers and they're now open!
ejki.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...
#GetHired
My latest blog post: Using a Spy! Break! Inject! to Sniff I2C Traffic
mikecoats.com/spy-break-in...
I've been emailing about debugging I2C with my Spy! Break! Inject! and I thought that writing this up as a blog post might be useful to others.
#electronics #openHardware #reverseEngineering
A BambuLab A1 Mini printing a whole bed of Gridfinity bins.
My biggest print to date! π€
I've never "filled" the build plate before. These will be two 4x2 gridfinity bins with vertical dividers to hold my @lectronz.com and @tindie.com stock. I'm finally getting around to bringing at least a modicum of organisation to my office.
#3dPrinting
The back side of a Spy! Break! Inject! PCB. Vias have not been drilled all the way through.
The back side of a Spy! Break! Inject! PCB. Four vias have been successfully drilled all the way through.
Spot the difference!
(Other than one's been soldered up already.)
#electronics #openHardware #qualityControl
Some "absolute units" of snowflakes falling in Inverness at the moment.
#snow #uksnow #iv2
Snow piled up on a metal garden gate.
Finally got the snow that was forecast!
#snow #uksnow #iv2
My latest blog post: Presents from PCBWay
mikecoats.com/pcbway-prese...
In early December, Emily from @pcbwayofficial.bsky.social sent me a short message saying they were preparing some small gifts in time for Christmas and asking if I was interested in receiving them?
#sponsored
My latest blog post: Trusted Certificates for Private Servers - Part 3
mikecoats.com/trusted-cert...
In the final post in this series, I show how to retrieve trusted certificates for your internal infrastructure, performing DNS-01 challenges from within OpenWrt.
#code #openWrt #linux #networking
"Hello, world!" written several times on a receipt with 5 blank lines between each statement and no corruption or noise!
Test No. 5:
5 x LFs per string. That's more like it!
"Hello, world!" written several times on a receipt with many blank lines between each statement. There's no corruption or noise!
Test No. 4:
DE-9 connector re-seated and the noise and corruption has disappeared. The spacing between statements looks like it's more than 5 lines, though. I wonder if ?we really need CR & LF for newlines
"Hello, world!" written several times on a receipt with many blank lines between each statement. Some corruption is still visible.
Test No. 3:
5 x CR+LFs added per string. There's now enough spacing between runs that I can see the corruption and tweak the system "live". I wonder if my hacked together cable/connector isn't clean enough?
"Hello, world!" written several times on a receipt. Every time is corrupted in one way or another, but mostly, it's one statement per line.
Test No. 2:
Newlines added. There's still corruption, but it's hard to diagnose. These lines were too close to the print head to see until many more lines were printed and sometimes the only newline was when we overflowed the "page" width.
With the age of this machine, does it want CRs+LFs?
"Hello, world!" printed again and again with lots of corruption visible.
Test No. 1:
Apart from the obvious noise, introducing spurious characters and corrupting others, I forgot to add "\n" to my "Hello, world!\n".
My proofs of concept are complete!
I've managed to print "Hello, world!" on my 4610-TG3 from some Rust code running on an ESP32-C6. I've also dumped the opening screens from Zork to get a feel for where the project's going.
bsky.app/profile/mike...
#electronics #esp32 #rustLang #riscV #vintage
Bambu was closed sourced from the jump, still has numerous clones, and is still the market leader despite that. Open source isn't Prusa's problem, but he's really trying to become a problem for Open Source.
Rust code to set up a UART running at 9600 baud with 8N1 configuration.
Despite all of these improvements, it still always comes back to setting up a UART to run at 9600 8N1 with hardware flow control!
Today, for basically Β£0, I'm writing Rust code that runs on a RISC-V micro-controller, flashed over a USB-C cable.
I love the modern embedded firmware development ecosystem that's built up over the last few years.
A couple of decades ago you used to have to pay for your compiler, pay for an assembler, and pay for the programmer.
This is not an open source licence. oshwa.org/resources/op...
I really wish Prusa had tried to work with OSI, CC, and/or OSHWA instead of greenfielding a new license.
Even if the principle behind this license wasn't misguided, I don't think it's precise enough to legally accomplish any of the goals Prusa stated.
Please don't use this.
An IBM receipt printerβs self test output.
With a fresh roll of thermal paper and bench top power supply bodged to fit, the 4610-TG3 receipt printer lives once again!
Itβs pretty power hungry, though. Even with 24 of your finest DC volts heading its way, it still pulls down over 2 amps when itβs printing.
Power connector pin-out confirmed. Pin 1 has a very obvious ground plane connection, it looks like there's nothing on 2, so by deduction (and tracing) we must have our positive supply on pin 3.
#ibm #vintage #electronics #reverseEngineering
A raised IBM logo on a plastic case.
The top of a PCB. Along one side is a board to board connector and there is a row of ports across the bottom.
The bottom of the PCB. Solder points, traces and copper fills are visible.
Time to get ready for some holiday reverse engineering. 10 points to the first person to guess what this board is from.
#vintage #electronics #ibm
My latest blog post: momtag
mikecoats.com/momtag/
Introducing momtag, or Mike's Opinionated Music Tagger. Keep a small collection of music reasonably and consistently organised.
#code #linux #python #openSource
My latest blog post: Trusted Certificates for Private Servers - Part 2
mikecoats.com/trusted-cert...
In part two of this series, I'll show you how to retrieve trusted certificates for your private Caddy server, via Mythic Beasts.
#code #debian #linux #networking
My latest blog post: Trusted Certificates for Private Servers - Part 1
mikecoats.com/trusted-cert...
In part one of this series, I'll show you how to generate self-signed, untrusted certificates for your private Caddy server.
#code #debian #linux #networking
i did a 15 minute impromptu talk about glasgow/amaranth/yowasp/grebedoc and why i think these tools are interesting and special for @oshwassociation.bsky.social, you can watch a recording: youtu.be/Y_TtMzmuXoY?...
I use mine for building and disassembling electronics. It will handle battery compartment screws and M3 & M4 bolts no problem.
Building furniture, even mid-sized IKEA pieces, is beyond its capabilities.
I already had a set of compatible bits, so I picked up this one.
amzn.eu/d/8DFR0An
Like many Chinese suppliers with made-up almost-English names theyβve disappeared now but all of the other USB-C screwdrivers are pretty much interchangeable.
