Hack session w/. I was impressed by his ability to arrive at big-picture insights. He is also kind and modest. Stay free, my friend!
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bunnie
@bunniestudios
Good at following directions. Bad at obeying rules.
Sponsor me on github: github.com/sponsors/bunnie
Trying out mastodon: @bunnie@treehouse.systems
bunniestudios.comJoined January 2010
bunnie’s posts
I’m making a mobile open source electronics platform, called Precursor. It’s 100% open and hackable, and designed to be carried in your pocket at just 7.2mm thick. Learn more about it, and sign up to be notified when the crowdfunding campaign goes live: crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi
We’re launching an electronics craftbook for children who might not normally find engineering interesting. Check out crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi
A few years ago, I crowdfunded and published "The Essential Guide to Shenzhen". It's now out of stock, so I've decided to share the PDF.
Thank you to all my supporters who made this possible!
bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5689
Can we build trustable hardware? I think it’s possible if we:
1) simplify the hardware
2) verify the entire system, not just chips
3) empower users to check and seal their devices
Our new Betrusted project embodies these principles, read more at: bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5706
Found a method to see inside some chips, without having to unmount or destroy the chips.
Best part - the method only relies on lightly modded off-the-shelf cameras and lenses.
Read more at bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=6712
Today we're launching the campaign to fund Precursor, a mobile open source electronics platform for developing secure applications. Let's kick off the journey to evidence-based trust in our gadgets!
What will you develop?
Visit crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi
I'm launching NeTV2, an open video dev board. Innovation should not be a crime, but #DMCA1201 makes it unlawful to innovate with encrypted materials. #NeTV2 is related to my lawsuit against the US govt to reform #DMCA1201. Please help by backing & RT! crowdsupply.com/alphamax/netv2
"Open Circuits" by and is a book of stunning cross-sections of electronics that made me go "wow" and "huh": their meticulously prepared photographs elevate electronics to a form of art.
My full review at bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=6558.
Still life in Shenzhen: "One that fell off the back of a truck"; or "TQFP in Autumn Rain Puddle".
Tomu: a tiny, open-source hardware computer that fits in a USB port! , my long-time collaborator and friend, has teamed up with to crowd fund this neat little idea on : crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi. Check it out & nab one of these handy things to hack on!
I wrote a sourcing guidebook for electronics in Shenzhen. Crowdfunding now at crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi. Please RT.
From "Could a Neuroscientist Understand a Microprocessor" journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/a: Transistors "knocked out" (lesioned) one at a time in a 6502; loss of function recorded across 3 video games. Some are unique a game. Conclusion: perhaps there is a "Donkey Kong transistor"? 🤔
I'm suing the US government: I want us to create without fear. bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4782
My loss is your gain: had to patch another Fomu. For multiple reasons USB D- wasn't connected (D- pogo pin in wrong location / D- solderball not connected) and so I made another sample to help locate the test jig issue. This time I bypassed an eyepiece to film it - enjoy! 🤪
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It’s called Precursor because with the right software it can be many things. For example, I’m adding secure comms software to Precursor for my Betrusted project. Read more at bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5921 We’re crowdfunding Precursor soon, so you can develop your favorite app, too!
Technology needs to be distinguishable from magic, else we become controlled by it. This guided tour of our mobile open hardware development platform, Precursor, pulls back the curtain and makes the motherboard more understandable and easier to verify. crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi
Why I'm modding the iPhone 6 with . Thursday 9am Boston time via livestream: mitsha.re/7zCy302muSf #forbiddenML
I wanted to understand Curve25519 cryptography better (and speed up #Precursor), so I built a hardware accelerator. Having no formal background in number theory, I struggled with the math. I took notes along the way; maybe these are useful to others, too:
bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=6140
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Every day I eat with the factory workers. This is the lunch served at this factory; everyone from the CEO to the lady who places the headphone jacks eats the same thing. It's spicy and tasty. I like that this factory allows me to bond with the workers, and to sit on the line.
Hipster hardware is now a thing: "retro" DIP chips trimmed and glued to a PCB for purely cosmetic purposes. Their pins don't actually touch the board. Sighted in Tokyo Midtown B1F.
I was invited to review Singapore's #TraceTogether contact tracing token. Thoughts at bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5820
My favorite insight: Singapore needs a token to serve two groups: the underprivileged, and iPhone users. Both don't own a phone, but for different reasons.
Phew, just helped rework a Fomu. Had to rewire a ball under the CSP...which entails removing the CSP, applying UV soldermask to the pad, tacking fly-wire *next* to ball, then reflow a (new) CSP. Took two tries, but it seems to work now. Grain of rice for scale on left. 😅
Wow. Twitter from a factory floor. Toto, I don't think we're in China anymore. 🇰🇷👍
NeTV2 is just starting to roll off the SMT line! No matter how many times I do this, it's still terrifying to pass the point where bugs go from being a nuisance to being really expensive.
No matter how many times I've seen this, I always find this machine to be riveting. Beats hand soldering 0201s hands down 😂
New US tariffs are anti-Maker and will encourage offshoring. Taxes on basic components and tools punish US-based makers & educators, while outsourced supply chains are protected, ostensibly to insulate consumers from cost increases.
In-depth analysis at bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5349.
If we believe technology is magic, we risk becoming slaves to it.
Watch @BitmarkInc's video on why I'm passionate about open source. The world depends on technology; thus, free will depends on open source.
Full video at youtube.com/watch?v=aFrTJP
Marking my 999th tweet after 10+ years on twitter (incl replies). I don't tweet that frequently b/c my mom would always tell me: if I don't have anything useful or nice to say, then I should keep my trap shut. Makes me bad at social media--but I still think she's on to something.
Some days you wake up thinking you're going to make circuits. But if you keep yourself open to serendipity and collaboration, someday you may go to bed as an Artist.
Thanks for being my mentor in the arts! Exciting to see in the .
I have always wanted a computer that was open enough that it can be inspected for security, and also simple enough that I could analyze it in practice.
Precursor is a step towards that goal.
Check out my blog post on an intuitive motor that converts serial-to-position and back again: bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5215
You could even say it's "revolution"-ary!
Totally in awe of this guy's mad skills: youtu.be/nap0gtds5tQ?t=
I have so much to learn. o_O but very excited he's sharing videos!
Time to add feature to 7-year old Python script: 10 mins
Time to set up Python env so I could run script: 3 hours
Python scripts have a maintenance-free shelf life of a few years: it is not suitable for long-term codebases.
I wish someone told me before I started using Python.
Apple's "courage to...do something new that betters all of us" was to remove the headphone jack. Let's aim higher: hackable design broadens the scope for "all of us".
Read about the braille keyboard for Precursor and hackability's impact on diversity: bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=6031
This may look like just a tray of chips to you. But to me it triggers memories of months of battling and sleepless nights to get these chips here and now. The street value of the chips in this picture is about that of a small car, and brokers were charging multiples on that!
Exercising 1st amendment rights at JFK. Use it or lose it: a vigorous and engaged public is the ultimate defense of freedom #resist
I'm giving a talk at the Seattle #RISCV virtual meetup this Tuesday @ 7 pm PST/10 pm EST!
I'll be talking about how #RISCV enabled us to build a trustable mobile comms platform with a CPU that you can build from source, and much more!
Come join us -- us02web.zoom.us/j/86893051148
Product testing is a tedious but necessary part of hardware development. Here's what I've learned so far: bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5450
Complex SoCs contain undocumented logic for debugging, testing, and spare functions. This "dark matter" is a security concern. Precursor's FPGA-based SoC design source is 100% open for inspection.
Read more at crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi -- crowdfunding now!
If you're near Detroit, the Henry Ford museum has an exhibit featuring Wozniak's blue blox and the Xbox I hacked.
The "Break, Repair, Repeat: Spontaneous and Improvised Design" exhibit will run until September 1
Finally found time to build my EEZ BB3 power supply and it's now on my lab bench. I felt like a kid again, excitedly assembling kit electronics the day after Christmas 😀 Kudos to for another great product and awesome online documentation! Really raises the bar for OSHW...
Releasing my book "Hacking the Xbox" as a free PDF in honor of Aaron Swartz. nostarch.com/xboxfree
Precursor has passed 100% funding!
2 more days left to enjoy discount pricing and to buy the limited edition! If we reach $280k the battery gets upgraded.
You can also buy w/BTC at 's Lightning Store lightning-store.jp/product/precur and it counts toward the stretch goal!
When I first heard the term 'continuous integration', this is what I thought it meant. 🤦
Now personally testing the first 42 units to shake down the testers themselves. Who tests the testers? I do. 🙄
Everything I know about mechanical engineering has been gleaned from taking things apart, touring factories, scouring the Internet, and perhaps most importantly, advice from friends and mentors.
Read some adventures I've had designing Precursor's case at bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=6023
Finally! A BLDC motor that takes commands via UART. I'm so excited! The IQ Position Module, crowdfunding at crowdsupply.com/iq-motion-cont, makes motion control simple. Command&read position via serial; motor takes care of acceleration & velocity. Motion copy demo hacked up in <30mins!
As a maker, I enjoy crafting/designing my electronics and getting to know my suppliers personally. Read how I make highly customized PCBs for Precursor's bezel, and how laser-drilled "high density interconnect" (HDI) boards are made: bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=6011
So I just woke up and saw that the Precursor campaign closed at $398k. Thanks to everyone for making the campaign a huge success!!! We blew past the stretch goal, and we're already busy marshaling production resources!
My expression when I woke up today and checked the stats:
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If art was taught the same way computer science is typically taught... [photo from fabiensanglard.net/floating_point]
I've had to learn a lot of Rust and Python for precursor.dev.
My impression so far is that one writes Python with the mindset of a storyteller, while one writes Rust with the mindset of playing chess with the compiler (or perhaps more precisely, the borrow checker).
Python as a hardware design language? I finally give LiteX (misoc/migen soft fork) a try; initial impressions at bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5018
hey ! Dems won't pardon - only a real BOSS can! Pardon , and every media outlet would be talking about it, plus you'd hit the "deep state" really hard. Change the course of history! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 #MAGA
Here's an open source design for a near ultrasound data link that and I packaged up. Might be useful for provisioning low-cost IoT devices.
Summary at bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5847 or just clone it straight from github at github.com/simmel-project
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That's Naomi helping me pick soldering microscopes at the market back in April. I'm low tech but I have an eye for wires...🤔👍😁
And here's the DOI for the article:
10.21428/12268
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In TJOE today, "Against the Law: Countering Lawful Abuses of Digital Surveillance" by @bunniestudios and @Snowden pubpub.org/pub/direct-rad
I did a teardown on latest Form 3 3D printer. Their completely new "light processing unit" (LPU) is an impressive bit of engineering that has a the potential to scale in both speed and in build volume.
As usual, I learned a lot! Full post at bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5701
Releasing my book "Hacking the Xbox" as a free PDF in honor of Aaron Schwartz. nostarch.com/xboxfree
Paper as a substrate for prototyping circuits? Paper is SMT & TH compatible, capable of PCB-like impedance control & thermal management, bendable/foldable into 3-D shapes, and natively supports comments. Read more at bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5259.
If you're at #36c3, tomorrow I will be presenting my latest thoughts on trustable hardware at Hall Clarke, "bright and early" at 11:30AM, right after the opening ceremony. Hope to see you there!
fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2019/
#TIL: showed me this little gem: onsemi.com/pub/Collateral
I2C EEPROM w/ embedded NFC RFID. ~$1. Pin-compatible with, say, the SPD EEPROMs on a DIMM that you'd put in your laptop.
That'd be a classy way to exfil data...I wonder what other chips can hide NFC interfaces? 🤔🤫
Finally running the main boards! I'm on pins and needles all day today. A bit of photo spam incoming, apologies in advance...
Is #LovetoCode the first kit to teach multithreading to children? Now available at: chibitronics.myshopify.com/collections/ad
Received shipment of XC7A100T FPGAs, some of the last inventory in China with pre-trade war pricing (upon which #NeTV2 campaign pricing was based)! Orders were placed literally the hour the campaign closed, parts arriving just barely in time..this is manufacturing in "boss mode"!
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I finally put an end to my unintentional experiment to answer the question of "how many dodgy lithium batteries can one house store before it burns down?". Out of 93 batteries, 8 had severely degraded (8.6%), in that they displayed outwardly worrisome characteristics...
Making and breaking security go hand in hand.
After designing Precursor (precursor.dev), I took a crack at breaking it. I found the developer access port (JTAG) to be a weakness. It must be glued shut to ensure security. More nuances at bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5979.
I didn't think I could fall in love with PCB routing again, but here we are. 's improved curve-route works w/diff pair, multi-routes!
Really impressive and comprehensive write-up by on designing custom hardware for embedded Linux. A must-read for anyone thinking about building their own gadgets, or migrating from a SoM to an in-house design.
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Here's my new write-up of ten Linux-capable chips you really ought to know about, plus some background on how to get started in embedded Linux development: jaycarlson.net/embedded-linux/
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"They’ve essentially saddled ‘Made in America’ with 25 percent tariffs whereas stuff made in China has no tariffs. It’s really ironic." mktplc.org/2MHgwSb
1st print run for #LoveToCode Volume 1! The smell of printing ink is becoming familiar, like solder flux and cutting fluid...
What of the Note 7's supply chain inventory? Eyes on the gray market: one giant's carcass as fertilizer for 100's of Shanzhai ideas.
Super cool project by ... now you can compile a customized RISC-V to gates and stick it in your USB port as an enclave. One step closer to the libre silicon dream!
Teaching an old machine new tricks. Every Precursor is 100% optically inspected for defects. The inspection equipment predates deep learning by about two decades so it takes a human many hours of time to train it.
If you can code a Raspberry Pi, you can code a #NeTV2! It's an easy and open way to integrate apps onto the biggest screen in your home - the TV.
Check out the demo video below & visit crowdsupply.com/alphamax/netv2 to back the campaign, or bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5331 for tech details.
Before Open Hardware, hardware was open. Classics remind us that schematics were expected bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4673
I had high expectations for , and the movie exceeded all of them. Would recommend, five stars, will watch again (and again)!
Just got my absentee ballot!
but... can you spot the error?
...now what? 🤔 does my vote still count if the ballot has an error like this? 😔
was feeling depressed about the news coming from America today, so I bought some test equipment to cheer myself up. #GuiltyPleasure
Holy cow LiteX is cool! Connected a TTY to my new FPGA design for the first time and I'm greeted with a *bios* prompt. Feels like magic -- REPL for an FPGA that "just works" out of the box! Thanks
Welcome to Singapore! -BTW, there are some local customs you might want to be aware of...
In case you missed it: my talk at #lca2018 about paper electronics (via ), open source, and changing the culture of tech so more of society feels welcome to contribute, participate, and ultimately value open source.
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My first peer-reviewed academic paper with the brilliant @bunniestudios is now available @OpenEngr. We hacked an iPhone to watch your back: twitter.com/OpenEngr/statu
Want to learn more about #NeTV2? Check out my keynote at #Teardown2018, tomorrow at Saturday, 1PM Pacific time. It will be live streamed at crowdsupply.com/teardown-stream!
Check out , lowrisc.org! Finally, a CPU open-sourced down to the silicon level, based on RISC-V architecture. #cantwait
I placed the headphone jack reverse of its typical orientation to save on height. Unfortunately, that means the part is upside down in the tape and reel, so now this lady has to place each one by hand. The things we do to shave a mm off our gadgets' thickness...
Check out my piece on tariffs: edition.cnn.com/2018/07/17/opi #MakeCircuitsNotWar
I also made an infographic that didn't make the cut, but you can see it here on Twitter!
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She's a fast learner yet quick to correct misconceptions about her skills. Faces more direct challenges to prove her tech chops than I do.🤔
A thoughtful gift of masks from my friends at in China. Kindness begets kindness.
Card reads:"Dear Bunnie, thank you for all the understanding during the outbreak of Coronavirus in China. Please stay safe and healthy as well. We are here in China to back you up anytime!"
best. speaker. green room. evar! http://digital.rojak's pecha kucha speaker green room is the disco ball pit at the national gallery!
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For example, I noticed this curious spiral inductor on the back of their DCP405 power module and was really pleased to find a detailed explanation on their site. envox.hr/eez/eez-bench-
This is how I learned electronics! back when vendor docs were the norm, not the exception...
From 's thesis: 75% of users are
female. Proud to be making tech that resonates with women!
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Spectre/Meltdown pits transparency against liability: which is more important to you? bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5127 -- my thoughts on how this could be an opportunity to drive transparency: give hardware makers the option to settle warranty disputes with documentation instead of money.
Wooo just got my EEZ H24005 open source power supply! Excited to build it. crowdfunding that delivers! crowdsupply.com/envox/eez-h240
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. My profile says: "Follow me at your own risk". I will not be censored; I exercise my right to free speech.
When is random truly random?
I've added on-line health monitors and conditioning to Precursor's true random number generator (TRNG), and turned it into a step-to-step guide on how to add a feature to our FPGA-based SoC, from idea to hardware to OS.
bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=6094
I thought that 'enema' was engrish but after seeing the icon I'm not even going to try pressing the button. #wtf
