March 2024 Roundup
The Easter bunnies are jumping around - it must be time for another edition of Maker News!
Welcome to the March round up
It’s another bumper edition, we’ve got DIY GPUs, cats watching cats on TV, 3D oscilloscope graphics, desks that stand up by themselves, waving robots, and USB testers. And that’s just the videos.
There’s also a great list of articles to read - we’ve got enough in this edition to last you all the way to the next fantastic edition!
Read/Watch on and don’t forget to share the newsletter with your friends.
Things to watch
What is a GPU?
What is a GPU, well according to Clem from element14presents a GPU is anything that lets you offload graphics processing and output a video signal - and a Pi Pico can do exactly that!
Cat TV
The internet was invented for humans to watch funny cat videos. Or was it? Becky Stern seems to believe it was invented to entertain cats.
3D Graphics
On an oscilloscope! Low Byte Productions takes some basic electronic components and makes a 3D renderer on a scope!
Smart standing desk
Mellow_Labs has a standing desk, but unfortunately he still seems to always sitting down at it. The solution is a desk that stands up when he does!
Aloha world!
Monkey see, monkey do. Or in this case, with Jonathan R, it’s robot see, robot do as he teaches his robot arm to wave by showing it examples.
Is my USB cable any good?
After a couple of shaky starts, atomic14 creates a custom built USB tester - just look at all those lovely color LEDs!
But does it run DOOM?
What do you do with a toothbrush that contains an ESP32-C3? If you’re Aaron Christophel - the only thing to do is hack it! Does it run DOOM? Of course it does!
DIY Assembler
We’ve got a double whammy from bitluni - he’s opening up Rick Rolling to everyone with his latest PCB and home grown assembler.
And he’s getting into DIY ICs using the Tiny Tapeout project!
Tiny Tapeout 6
Would you like to be like bitluni and make your own IC? Tiny Tapeout 6 is open right now! You’ve got until April 19th to submit your designs.
Places to go
The 2024 Open Hardware Summit will be taking place on May 3 & 4, 2024 at Concordia University and LESPACEMAKER in Montreal, Canada.
Things to try
Having trouble affording that nice shiny oscilloscope? Why not make one at home! You can download the PDF here.
Things to read
USB in a Nutshell
Staying on the subject of USB - "USB in a NutShell” breaks down the USB specifications into something that anyone can understand.
ESP32-S3 SIMD
Larry is the man when it comes to high speed ESP32 code - famous for his high speed JPEG decoder. He’s made it 40% faster by taking advantage of SIMD instructions on the S3.
XY Monitors
Jed Margolin worked for Atari on these vector monitors - and he’s written down everything he knows about them!
What Nyquist didn’t say
And what to do about it. If you know anything about sampling an analog signal, then you’ll know the rule that you need to sample at twice the highest frequency you want to capture. But maybe things are a bit more subtle…
Cracking car key codes
If you haven’t heard about the Flipper Zero yet, then your mind is about to be blown. Let’s have a look at what’s going on in a car key fob signal.
NASA workmanship standards
Having gone through this amazing reference book, I feel like I need to up my game when it comes to wiring projects together.
OpenCat
Do you want a cat, but you don’t want all the hassle of trying to keep something alive? OpenCat may be the answer - it’s the open-source Arduino and Raspberry Pi-based quadruped robotic pet framework.
Closing thoughts
That’s it for March - I hope you enjoyed reading/watching it as much as I enjoyed putting it together. As always, keep tinkering and playing.
And if you do something interesting and want to show the world, why not let us know - you could star in the next newsletter!
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