Father, author, developer, maker. Please consider sponsoring my work.
Secure Computing with Zymbit's D35
Every few months, I try to test a number of new Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4-based projects, and at this point I've looked at over 100 boards that use the CM4 to fill some need—general computing, industrial controls, media playback, or even clustered computing!
This month, among other projects, I spent a bit of time with Zymbit's Secure Edge Node D35:
It's built in the same form factor as a 3.5" hard drive, but the guts are entirely different. Because of the form factor, it can be installed in a drive bay in another computer, or it can operate standalone or on a DIN rail mount.
…TV for one million: Exploring KSDK's broadcast tower
KSDK-TV broadcasts to well over 1 million households in the St. Louis metro area. And my Dad and I went to their broadcast tower last month to explore how the digital TV signal is delivered through the air to so many people.
On our tour, we explored over 75 years of television broadcast history, seeing how things transitioned from thousands of volts down to hundreds, and from analog audio and video to all-digital.
…Testing Raspberry Pi's new Global Shutter Camera
Today Raspberry Pi launched their new Global Shutter Camera.
Outwardly it is almost identical to the 12 Megapixel High Quality Camera, and like that camera it accepts C and CS mount lenses, or most anything else with the appropriate adapter.
But flipping it over reveals a black plastic cover over the back of the board that is not present on the HQ or M12 HQ Camera:
…RISC-V Business: Testing StarFive's VisionFive 2 SBC
It's risky business fighting Intel, AMD, and Arm, and that's exactly what Star Five is trying to do with this:
The chip on this new single board computer could be the start of a computing revolution—at least that's what some people think!
The VisionFive 2 has a JH7110 SoC on it, sporting a new Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) called RISC-V.
On board are four 1.5 GHz CPU cores, so it's no slouch. And the one I'm testing is the high-end configuration, with 8 gigs of RAM, an M.2 slot, USB 3.0, and two Gigabit Ethernet ports.
…My daughter's school took over my personal Microsoft account
This weekend I wanted to create a new App in Azure so I could help a local nonprofit automate one of their donor relations processes via email through Office 365.
So I tried registering an app by visiting the App Registration Portal. I signed in to my personal Microsoft account, clicked 'New registration', then was greeted by this page:
I thought that was a bit strange, since I shouldn't have any restrictions... but then I noticed it listed [redacted] School as the reason I couldn't do this.
Testing Raspberry Pi's new Debug Probe
Yesterday, in tandem with Raspberry Pi's announcement of their new $12 Debug Probe, I received one in the mail (pictured above).
The Debug Probe is powered by an RP2040, and lets you connect from USB to UART (serial) or SWD (Serial Wire Debug), perfect for debugging most embedded devices.
UART is useful to connect to a device's console when you don't have a display or other means of controlling it, and you can find UART/serial/console ports on almost any device with a processor or microcontroller.
…