The RP2040 has quickly become a hot favorite with tinkerers and makers since its release in early 2021. This is largely attributed to the low cost, fast GPIOs, and plethora of bus peripherals. [xyphro] has written the I3C Blaster firmware that helps turn the Raspberry Pi Pico into a USB to I3C converter.

The firmware is essentially a bit-bang wrapper and exposes an interactive shell with a generous command set. But it is a lot more than that. [xyphro] has taken the time to dive into the I3C implementation standard and the code is a fairly complex state-machine that is a story on its own.

[xyphro] provides a Python script in case you feel like automating things or drawing up your GUI. And finally, if you are feeling adventurous, the I3C implementation is available for your project tinkering needs.

We loved the fact there is a branch project that lets you extend a Saleae Logic Analyzer to decode I3C and associated protocols by adding a Pico on the cheap. The last update to the project log shows the addition of a MIPI I3C High Data Rate Mode which operates at 25 Mbps which is right up the RP2040s.

[xyphro] gave us the Home Brew Version Of Smart Tweezers a decade ago and we expect there is more to come. If you are interested in reading more about the I3C bus, have a look at I3C — No Typo — Wants To Be Your Serial Bus.

hackaday.com/2025/01/18/i3c-bi…

Recently a video surfaced from someone claiming that certain USB-to-Ethernet dongles contained ‘malware’ among other big claims. Basically these dongles were said to be designed by China (and Russia) to spy on users and so on, but how much of this is actually grounded in reality? When [lcamtuf] dove into the topic, what he found was not so much a smoking gun, but rather a curious relic from the era when drivers-on-CD were being phased out.

The item that the video went bananas about was namely an additional SPI Flash chip on the PCB alongside the USB 2.0 – Ethernet IC, with many conspiracy theories being floated as to what it would be used for. After some digging, [lcamtuf] found that the IC used in these dongles (SR9900) is by a company called CoreChips Shenzhen, with a strong suggestions that it is a clone of the (2013-era) Realtek RTL8152B.

Both chips have an external SPI Flash option, which is used with the USB side to present a ‘virtual CD drive’ to the user when the dongle is plugged in. This was borne out with the SR9900 Windows system mass production tool that [lcamtuf] obtained a copy of. Included with the flashing tool is a 168 kB ISO image (containing the SR9900 driver package) which happily fits on the 512 kB Flash chip.

Although it’s always possible for chips and firmware to contain backdoors and malware, in this particular case it would appear to be that it’s merely a cruel reminder that 2013 is now already vanishing into the realm of ‘retro computing’ as us old fogies cling to our driver installation floppies and CDs.

hackaday.com/2025/01/18/invest…

With so much data being thrown at our eyeballs these days, it’s worryingly easy for the actually important stuff to slip by occasionally. So when [Liam Jackson] wanted a way to visualize the number of test failures popping up in the continuous integration system at work, he went with a novel but effective solution — universal motorcycle tachometers.

It turns out these little gauges can be had for under $10 a piece from the usual overseas retailers, and are very easy to drive with a microcontroller. As [Liam] explains, all you need to do other than providing them with 12 volts, is feed them a PWM signal. Even though the gauges are designed for a 12 V system, they apparently don’t have any problem responding to the 5 V logic level from the Arduino’s pins.

As for the frequency he says that 1,000 RPM corresponds to 16.66 Hz, so you can just multiply up from there to show whatever number you wish. That said, [Liam] warns that the gauges draw several hundred milliamps once the needle gets into the two digit range, so keep that in mind. Conveniently, those number happen to be in red anyway…

For his particular application, [Liam] put three of the gauges together to create a very handsome dashboard. If you want to recreate his setup exactly he’s made the STLs available for the gauge cluster housing. Note the small OLED at the center, this offers a way to show a bit more context than the three analog gauges alone can express, especially if you’ve got an application where you might be switching between multiple data sources.

Over the years we’ve seen several projects that repurposed analog gauges of various types, often for showing computer performance, but they generally involved having to drive the galvanometers directly. That these tachometers can simply be fed a simple digital signal should make implementing them into your project much easier.

hackaday.com/2025/01/18/puttin…

TikTok ha annunciato l’intenzione di sospendere le proprie operazioni negli Stati Uniti da domenica 19 gennaio, a meno che non intervenga l’amministrazione Biden. L’azienda sta cercando una dichiarazione del governo che protegga i suoi partner chiave, tra cui Apple, Google, Amazon e Oracle, da potenziali conseguenze legali.

L’annuncio di TikTok arriva dopo che una sentenza della Corte Suprema degli Stati Uniti, la quale ha confermato una legge che imporrebbe alla società cinese ByteDance di vendere la propria partecipazione nell’app. Se questa condizione non viene soddisfatta, TikTok sarà bandito nel Paese.

L’amministrazione Biden ha affermato che l’ulteriore attuazione della legge sarà trasferita all’amministrazione Donald Trump, che inizierà i lavori lunedì 20 gennaio. Il presidente Trump aveva precedentemente promesso di preservare TikTok mentre discuteva la questione con il presidente cinese Xi Jinping.

Il Dipartimento di Giustizia degli Stati Uniti sostiene il divieto, affermando che la sicurezza nazionale del paese è a rischio a causa del potenziale accesso ai dati degli utenti americani. Tuttavia, alcuni politici che hanno sostenuto il divieto hanno iniziato a cambiare idea. Il senatore Chuck Schumer ha osservato che l’attuazione della legge potrebbe avere un impatto negativo sull’eredità di Biden.

TikTok ha affermato che se non verrà raggiunta la chiarezza, l’app non sarà più disponibile per i suoi 170 milioni di utenti americani a partire dal 19 gennaio.

L'articolo TikTok verso la chiusura negli USA: scatta l’allarme per 170 milioni di utenti proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

Buried in a talk on AI from an artist who is doing cutting-edge video work was the following nugget that entirely sums up the zeitgeist: “The tools are changing so fast that artists can’t keep up with them, let alone master them, before everyone is on to the next.” And while you might think that this concern is only relevant to those who have to stay on the crest of the hype wave, the deeper question resounds with every hacker.

When was the last time you changed PCB layout software or refreshed your operating system? What other tools do you use in your work or your extra-curricular projects, and how long have you been using them? Are you still designing your analog front-ends with LM358s, or have you looked around to see that technology has moved on since the 1970s? “OMG, you’re still using ST32F103s?”

It’s not a simple question, and there are no good answers. Proficiency with a tool, like for instance the audio editor with which I crank out the podcast every week, only comes through practice. And practice simply takes time and effort. When you put your time in on a tool, it really is an investment in that it helps you get better. But what about that newer, better tool out there?

Some of the reluctance to update is certainly sunk-cost fallacy, after all you put so much sweat and tears into the current tool, but there is also a real cost to overcome to learn the new hotness, and that’s no fallacy. If you’re always trying to learn a new way of doing something, you’re never going to get good at doing something, and that’s the lament of our artist friend. Honing your craft requires focus. You won’t know the odd feature set of that next microcontroller as well as you do the old faithful – without sitting down and reading the datasheet and doing a couple finger-stretching projects first.

Striking the optimal balance here is hard. On a per-project basis, staying with your good old tool or swapping to the new hotness is a binary choice, but across your projects, you can do some of each. Maybe it makes sense to budget some of your hacking time into learning new tools? How about ten percent? What do you think?

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hackaday.com/2025/01/18/learn-…

David Lynch per la mia generazione è stato indispensabile, per noi giovani un po' provinciali negli anni novanta, che ci avvicinavamo alla musica al cinema all'arte e che probabilmente avevamo un po' più di curiosità rispetto a quello che avevamo intorno.

Il mio David Lynch inizia con Dune metà degli anni 80: ricordo che diedero il film alla TV.
Mio padre aveva letto il libro e questo film fu strano per me che a dodici anni avevo un approccio alla fantascienza un po' giustamente ingenuo. #Cinema

iyezine.com/david-lynch

David Lynch

David Lynch - David Lynch per la mia generazione è stato indispensabile, per noi giovani un po' provinciali negli anni novanta, che ci avvicinavamo alla musica al cinema all'arte e che probabilmente avevamo un po' più di curiosità rispetto a quello c…

^{Gianluca Perata (In Your Eyes ezine)}