Common Ground Electronics

Teardown 2025 Talk: Are we PLM yet? Teardown 2025 Talk: Are we PLM yet? A beginners introduction to product lifecycle management for KiCad.

I'll be speaking at @crowdsupply.bsky.social #Teardown2025 in just over a week!

I'll walk through how to automatically generate a #KiCad database library based on part data stored in Aligni #PLM software.

Slide deck PDF in the link below if you want to take a sneak peek:

cgnd.dev/posts/teardo...

I'll be giving a talk at #KiCon next week about setting up a basic PLM integration with KiCad. If you're attending the conference, come say hi!

A PCB hosting a Raspberry Pi Pico 2 board with a couple Simple Add-on (SAO) boards plugged in.

New @raspberrypi.com Pico #SAO Host boards just came in!

I made this breakout board so I could quickly play around with SAOs using the Pico, Pico W, Pico 2, Pico 2 W, etc.

If I made these available to buy, would anybody want one?

github.com/cgnd/rpi-pic...

This was an order for 30 2-layer boards from JLCPCB

Payment summary from JLCPCB showing a large increase in price due to duties & taxes.

Joined the tariff club today...

If you've wanted to try #ZephyrRTOS but weren't sure where to start, I wrote up a quick start tutorial that can help you get started on the $5 @raspberrypi.com Pico 2 board--no other hardware or debuggers required!

YouTube video by Artful Bytes I Shrunk Blinky to 0 Bytes

Another great microcontroller video from www.artfulbytes.com

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FTU...

First Steps with the Nordic Thingy:91 X A hands-on first look at the Thingy:91 X cellular IoT prototyping platform from Nordic Semiconductor.

A hands-on first look at the Thingy:91 X cellular IoT prototyping platform from Nordic Semiconductor.

Automatically activate Zephyr build environments with direnv Learn how to use the shell utility "direnv" to automatically activate Zephyr build environments when working in West workspaces. By Chris Wilson.

Learn how to use the shell utility "direnv" to automatically activate #ZephyrRTOS build environments when working in West workspaces.

www.hackster.io/cdwilson/aut...

W55RP20: Pioneering High-Speed Networking for IoT Solutions The W55RP20 leads the way in high-speed, precision networking, ideal for sophisticated IoT systems. With its robust data handling and networking capabilities, this ioMCU chip is perfect for developers...

Saw this today:

RP2040 & WizNet W5500 integrated in a single IC

wiznet.io/products/pow...

How to run Intel Quartus® Prime Lite Edition via Parallels on a Mac with Apple Silicon (ARM64) Learn how to run Intel Quartus® Prime Lite Edition via Parallels on a Mac with Apple Silicon (ARM64).

Short follow-up to yesterday's post showing how to run Intel Quartus® Prime Lite Edition via Parallels on a Mac with Apple Silicon (ARM64)

How to run Intel Quartus® Prime Lite Edition via Remote Desktop Learn how to run Intel Quartus® Prime Lite Edition via Remote Desktop

I recently got a Terasic DE0-CV #fpga dev board super cheap on eBay, but how to run the Quartus tools on my Mac... 🤔

Remote Desktop to the rescue! 🛟

Call for Participation: FPGA Peripheral Module (sCRUVI) - SGET Munich, December 2024 – Today, the Standardization Group for Embedded Technologies e.V. (SGET) launches its Call for Participation to establish a new Standard Development Team (SDT) for the FPGA Perip...

Saw this today about a FPGA peripheral module standard being developed by SGET. Looks interesting. They are looking for feedback.

"There may also be interest in using sCRUVI technology with MCU and SoC based products without FPGA."

sget.org/call-for-par...

Riding on the coat tails of this great article on USB/IP support in Docker Desktop, I spent a little time last night experimenting with VirtualHere as an alternative solution (to work around some of the current USB/IP limitations on macOS).

2 min overview of how it went:
cgnd.dev/posts/usb-ov...

The 2024 Hackaday Supercon SAO Badge Reveal We’ve been hinting at it for a few months now, running a series of articles on SAOs, then a Supercon Add-On Challenge. We even let on that the badge would …read more

The 2024 Hackaday Supercon SAO Badge Reveal

SAOP (like “soap”) simple-add on for Hackaday Supercon badge contest.

Got the PCBs in for the 🧼 #SAO last night lol

This one started out with me trying to stick a SAO connector into an actual block of soap…turns out it's REAL hard to get things to stick to soap. So it became a PCB instead.

hackaday.io/project/1984... if you want to follow along.

#hackaday #supercon

SAO Explorer simple add-on with a MikroE Weather Click board installed, plugged into a RPi Pico 2 board.

CircuitPython console output showing weather readings from the MikroE Weather Click board.

SAO Explorer with backlit logo turned on.

Finally got this PCB assembled and tested with a #mikroe Click board that has a BME280 sensor. The backlit logo experiment turned out pretty neat looking!

I don't actually have a real conference badge (yet), so I put together a quick “SAO host" #rpi #pico breakout board.

#hackaday #supercon #SAO

NEW BOARDS! NEW BOARDS! NEW BOARDS!

(even after years of doing this, I still get a rush of excitement whenever new PCBs get delivered!)

This one is a fun weekend side project for the @hackaday-feed.bsky.social #supercon #SAO contest.

hackaday.io/project/1984... if you want to follow along.

Trying out a new short-form post style for quickly sharing tidbits I learned

cgnd.dev/posts/array-...

Quick mid-year retrospective about how I got started consulting and what I've been working on over the last year.

cgnd.dev/posts/2024-m...

I built a cloud-connected serial logger prototype in a couple hours last week using Zephyr + @golioth.io

Tools like these are shrinking the gap between developing "throw away" wireframes vs. "costly" engineering prototypes for validating new IoT ideas.

cgnd.dev/posts/goliot...

#ZephyrRTOS #IoT

Zephyr Weekly Update – HTTP Server FTW! 🥳 - Benjamin Cabé A new long awaited HTTP server, some very cool shell commands for power management, and more.

Achievement unlocked! got a small PR (adding the MikroElektronika Weather Click shield) mentioned in the Zephyr Weekly Update from @kartben.bsky.social 🎉

There's tons of neat stuff in this week's update. Make sure to check it out!

blog.benjamin-cabe.com/2024/05/03/z...

#ZephyrRTOS

Debugging nRF9160 Zephyr applications with Ozone - Golioth Multi-thread Zephyr applications can be tricky to troubleshoot. This setup guide covers debugging nRF9160 Zephyr apps with Ozone.

Wrote a new article for the @golioth.io blog about how to debug nRF9160 Zephyr apps with SEGGER Ozone

"A Beginner’s Guide to Designing Embedded System Applications on Arm Cortex-M Microcontrollers"

Pretty neat this textbook from ST & ARM is available for free!

#electronics #embedded #arm

EMC radiated emissions problems from Riverdi LCD panel - Unit 3 Compliance EMC radiated emissions from an LCD panel digital interface are nothing new. What makes this case interesting is that the display was the source...

I love reading stories like this about how people troubleshoot and fix EMC issues in their products.

If you know of more articles like this, send them my way!

#electronics #emc #radiatedemissions

‎The Agile Embedded Podcast: Rapid Hardware Iteration with Luka Mustafa on Apple Podcasts ‎Show The Agile Embedded Podcast, Ep Rapid Hardware Iteration with Luka Mustafa - Apr 19, 2023

I really enjoyed this episode of the Agile Embedded Podcast. It's a really interesting look into how product development firm IRNAS is able to "iterate faster in hardware than in software".

Ever wondered how to automatically install and run code style checks on your Zephyr app's source code?

In this article, I’ll describe how embedded firmware developers can leverage pre-commit to automate and enforce code quality checks in their Zephyr RTOS embedded firmware projects.