[HN Gopher] Programming a CH32v003 with light
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Programming a CH32v003 with light
Author : blutack
Score : 146 points
Date : 2024-08-02 11:00 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (mitxela.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (mitxela.com)
| netrap wrote:
| Damn that is cool.
| blutack wrote:
| There's also a short associated YouTube video showing it in
| action.
|
| https://youtu.be/IHD3ji-F600
| voidUpdate wrote:
| If you've not seen any of Mitxela's stuff before, I'd check out
| more of their website and their youtube channel, they do some
| really fun stuff
| bitwrangler wrote:
| I didn't realize this was the same creator of the tiny LED
| matrix earrings. I love the attention to detail in the work and
| the article. Super interesting!
|
| https://mitxela.com/projects/ledstud
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| So it's cool regardless and I have to think that it has some
| benefits, but I have to ask... What's the benefit over pogo pins,
| especially for programming the chip? I guess less special
| hardware on the computer doing the programming?
| monocasa wrote:
| I'm not sure if it's useful in this incarnation, but I am
| reminded of the localizers in A Deepness in the Sky, an early
| description of smartdust which were relatively omnipresent and
| capable of communicating and being reprogrammed by light
| patterns.
| theamk wrote:
| There is no special hardware at all, which is a _huge_ deal.
|
| This is especially important for consumer devices like badges.
| Anyone can find a device with screen that can run a webpage,
| but very very few people would have a right programmer with
| right pogo pins.
|
| Plus, pogo pins at less than .100" spacing are pretty fragile,
| and the projects author uses are so small they'll need a much
| finer pitch.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Have you considered a positive feedback capacitor with the op-
| amp, to try to make an oscillator?
|
| Then the illumination on your LED will affect the phase of the
| oscillator. By trying to make it oscillate at ~10Mhz, and then
| sampling the data, you should avoid the clipping problem, and
| you'd have a lot more data to use to potentially extract
| interesting things with clever math.
|
| Even if the oscillator runs at 10Mhz, you don't have to sample at
| 10 Mhz - you could sample at a lower frequency (which must be
| clock cycle accurate) and make use of aliasing to still measure
| phase shifts very accurately.
|
| You're totally going to measure the power supply, temperature,
| radio signals and a whole host of other things at the same time,
| but with the right signal processing/modulation you should be
| able to extract the effects you need.
| blutack wrote:
| Sorry I'm not mitxela, I just find pretty much all their
| projects old school hacker awesome.
|
| Good suggestion but from their article it seems like there's
| some really odd silicon level interactions going on so who
| knows? Might be worth getting a CH32v003 and finding out!
| knotimpressed wrote:
| I swear I remember reading somewhere, probably 10+ years ago, and
| probably in a MAKE magazine catalog, about projects that you
| could reprogram (POV displays and the like, text only) by holding
| up to your computer screen. I have no idea what the name was, but
| I'm pretty sure they used a photocell and nothing else, and
| communication was of course one way. I never bought one, but they
| seemed pretty cool.
| nereye wrote:
| This would likely have been the Mintronics POV kit (MAKE had a
| whole series of kits that shipped in an Altoids/mints tin, e.g.
| the Mintronics survival pack [1], which had a mini breadboard
| and 60+ components), here is a picture:
|
| https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/make-mintronics-blink...
|
| It seems to be based on the Blinky POV:
|
| https://www.wayneandlayne.com/projects/blinky/
|
| A similar idea (transferring data via computer screen) goes
| back to 1994's Timex Datalink:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Datalink
|
| 1 https://makezine.com/article/technology/in-the-maker-shed-
| mi...
| X-Cubed wrote:
| There was also the Timex Datalink series of watches:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Datalink
| cnlohr wrote:
| Best quote I've heard in a while:
|
| When I set out to do this I was expecting to make a new version
| of the badge with a different circuit originally I had to add a
| bunch of components just to make the amplifier work. But, I just
| kept optimizing and whittling it down and eventually ended up
| back with the original circuit. This badge is the same one I
| showed off six months ago. It's unmodified there are no hardware
| changes at all. So in a sense, the ability to do wireless updates
| was there all along - we just had to unlock it, by thinking
| really hard about the problem.
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