[HN Gopher] Tomu - A tiny ARM microprocessor which fits in your ...
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Tomu - A tiny ARM microprocessor which fits in your USB port
Author : tildef
Score : 131 points
Date : 2023-01-09 20:28 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (tomu.im)
(TXT) w3m dump (tomu.im)
| Orangeair wrote:
| I looked pretty thoroughly through the site and the product
| pages, but I still cannot find any discussion of use cases for
| the Fomu. Is it just education, ie. learning how to program an
| FPGA? I'm having trouble telling if it even has any dedicated I/O
| or if you can exclusively interact with it through USB.
| MrOwnPut wrote:
| > I looked pretty thoroughly through the site and the product
| pages
|
| > trouble telling if it even has any dedicated I/O or if you
| can exclusively interact with it through USB.
|
| All the product pages say: "I have four contact pads that can
| easily be used to make two buttons. And I have an RGB LED,
| because everyone loves blinky things!"
| dheera wrote:
| Can we PLEASE have one with an IMU (accelerometer, gyroscope,
| magnetometer) in it? Even better if it can include a ambient
| temperature and barometer sensor as well.
|
| Just have it constantly output data at max rate over a
| /dev/ttyACMx device in some specified format, no fancy drivers
| needed.
| sweetjuly wrote:
| I'm curious what your use case is for such a specific combo of
| sensors. Most of these devices are meant for use on standard
| consumer laptops (as in most other situations a regular mini
| microcontroller dev board is more than suitable), but I can't
| imagine wanting to shake my laptop and know the temperature ;)
| dheera wrote:
| For one, it makes their sensor suite equal to what mobile
| phones have.
|
| The IMU can be used alongside the camera for visual-inertial
| mapping and navigation, the barometer could be used for
| localization across floors of a building (yes the barometers
| in a phone are good enough to pick up on a couple meters'
| pressure difference), the IMU can also be used for shake-
| related gestures e.g. ignoring sporadic mouse movements when
| you're using a laptop in a car, they can be used for gestures
| e.g. slapping the laptop left and right to switch virtual
| workspaces, ...
| moloch-hai wrote:
| Be the change you seek in the world.
| JackGreyhat wrote:
| "be the change you want to see in the world"
|
| ~Not Gandhi
| mithro wrote:
| The Tomu family also has;
|
| - The Fomu (FPGA Tomu) - https://fomu.im/ and
| https://workshop.fomu.im/
|
| - The Qomu (ARM+eFPGA Tomu) - https://tomu.im/qomu.html
|
| - The Somu (Secure Tomu) -
| https://www.crowdsupply.com/solokeys/somu
|
| The Fomu is also a great RISC-V MCU prototyping platform.
| mithro wrote:
| I also have a general offer to send people who contribute to
| the open source FPGA tooling and ecosystem free Fomu boards.
| tildef wrote:
| I stumbled upon the Tomu (and hence submitted this story)
| specifically because I wanted to get my hands on a small/cheap
| FPGA via the Fomu. Probably picking up the Somu as a Yubikey
| replacement too. Keep up the awesome work!
| makeitdouble wrote:
| The wireless/bluetooth ones could be interesting as static
| appliances sitting inside a USB charger. I'm thinking room
| beacons for instance, or canary plugs to track which plugs are
| powered at any time, etc.
| bartvk wrote:
| I hope to see such devices available for USB-C one day. It
| doesn't need to sit flush with the outside casing, a PCB with a
| vertically mounted USB-C connector would already be awesome.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I mean, theoretically you could nest one of these in a USB-C
| adapter and have it that way. But yeah, this project mostly
| seems to leverage the novelty of USB-B's size.
| [deleted]
| supermatt wrote:
| > this project mostly seems to leverage the novelty of
| USB-B's size.
|
| USB-A. A plugs into the host, B plugs into peripherals (its
| that square one that goes into printers, for example).
| smoldesu wrote:
| Oop, definitely time for that second cup of coffee.
| marcosscriven wrote:
| The YubiKey 5C Nano is a good example of this.
| bartvk wrote:
| Yeah I love that one.
| crote wrote:
| Be the change you want to see in the world! You're looking for
| a "brick nogging" connector like [0]. It's not a trivial
| project, but it _should_ be doable by a hobbyist.
|
| [0]: https://www.lcsc.com/product-detail/USB-Connectors_Jing-
| Exte...
| myself248 wrote:
| Out of curiosity, do you have any idea how the term "brick
| nogging" came about? To me that's a vertical PCB mount
| connector, and I cannot fathom the tortured translation
| path...
| Terr_ wrote:
| I don't know enough to confirm it, but one potential
| explanation from a forum thread [0]:
|
| > As a native Chinese speaker, "brick nogging" is gibberish
| and completely incomprehensible to me. :-DD I was curious
| and just looked it up, apparently it was a mistranslation
| of "Li Tie ".
|
| > "Li " means "standing" or "vertical", and "Tie " is the
| short-hand for "Tie Pian ", which means "pick-and-place" or
| "SMD", so it just means "vertical SMD".
|
| > One thing to know about Chinese is that one can create
| almost entirely arbitrary abbreviations and short-hands by
| combining characters from different words, a bit similar to
| Soviet and Russian government agency names like GosPlan,
| RosCosmos, or RosKomNadzor.
|
| > The result is often not found in the dictionary, or by
| coincidence, they may clash with another existing but
| obscure word in the dictionary. In both cases, machine
| translation would produce incomprehensible results. For
| example, in this case it happens to form a word from
| architectural history.
|
| [0] https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/where-does-all-the-
| weird-...
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| You could buy an adaptor from A to C and it wouldn't be flush .
| Honestly I have one of these and bought a small adaptor for
| that purpose . I really don't want to mess up a USB port and
| easy removability is a win for me. Also I don't think these
| will get fast speeds anytime soon so an adaptor is probably the
| best solution by far.
| thrwawy74 wrote:
| I'm silly. So many 'convertible' laptops cannot be used as tablet
| substitutes because they don't have volume or mute buttons at the
| edge of the enclosure when in tablet mode. I'd use one of these
| for volume up/down, mute, blanking the screen, locking the
| device, and authenticating. A bunch of "press this 3 times", etc.
| functions
| ant6n wrote:
| I'm liking the chip tune music in their kickstarter video
|
| https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/tomu/
| matthijs_hofman wrote:
| This seems like an interesting way for hacking whatever has a USB
| port. It is affordable, easy to use. I think this might interest
| any kid that wants to be remembered forever by hacking his school
| or university.
| brink wrote:
| > I think this might interest any kid that wants to be
| remembered forever by hacking his school or university.
|
| To any kids who want to be remembered forever reading this: be
| careful, the school may vindictively press felony hacking
| charges if they find out it's you. Source: This happened to me.
| Thankfully the charges were dropped by the judge.
| cparsnipson wrote:
| Wow! Good to know that you seem to be doing fine. It hasn't
| always ended well. :(
| aliqot wrote:
| >To any kids who want to be remembered forever reading this:
| be careful, the school may vindictively press felony hacking
| charges if they find out it's you. Source: This happened to
| me. Thankfully the charges were dropped by the judge.
|
| Which case is yours?
| hinkley wrote:
| "I want my name to be mentioned in the same breath as the
| Mona Lisa"
| mithro wrote:
| https://antmicro.com/blog/2022/01/fomu-keystroke-injector/
| lucideer wrote:
| Not quite as affordable, but the o.mg cable is an existing
| option for this that's likely a lot easier to use.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Tomu - An ARM microprocessor which fits in your USB port_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28395169 - Sept 2021 (53
| comments)
|
| _Tomu, a tiny ARM microprocessor which fits in your USB port_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17719848 - Aug 2018 (86
| comments)
|
| _Tomu: An ARM board which fits inside your USB connector_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16114778 - Jan 2018 (4
| comments)
| tildef wrote:
| Thank you Dang, as always! However, I wonder if it's worth
| keeping the "family of devices" title from the website still.
| I'm personally not that interested in the ARM part of Tomu, and
| the reason I submitted the link was for non-ARM reasons
| (specifically because I think the Fomu is really cool). It
| seems like Tomu/Fomu is more of a series of microcomputers
| fitting into the USB form-factor at this point. I'm sure a Tomu
| expert can correct me if it's still primarily an ARM project.
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(page generated 2023-01-09 23:00 UTC)