Firmware

The WS2812 aka the Neopixel is a very well know LED, it combines a fully self-contained PWM driver ic with RGB led’s in a cheap and (relatively) painless to work with package. The downside to these is their not-very-fun protocol that requires effort to ensure you drive it at the correct timing. Other fantastic people have already done a deep dive into this protocol. The TL;DR is that the protocol works out to encode the bit as 0 or 1 based on the pulse length, with minimum off times between bits. Otherwise, there is a very long off time to latch the data and reset the state machine. Thats it. ...

The stupid state of JMicron drive interface IC’s If you have ever tried to use a USB3.0 hard drive enclosure based on a JMicron chipset with TrueNAS (formerly FreeNAS); you may have come across multipath errors or serial numbers that make no sense. Or simply SMART and TRIM not functioning. Additionally, you may have run into the stupid way these units power down the drives after 10 minutes of inactivity forcefully. Completely ignoring OS or HDD settings. This is infuriating if you want the drives to do what you tell them. ...

Review The TS100 is possibly the best soldering iron I have used for under $200. It is very lightweight and portable, runs off a wide range of power sources and has full PID temperature control built in. The built in accelerometer provides a protective sleep mode to prolong the length of your tip. With the 65W power rating, it heats to 360 Celsius in under 8 Seconds. Main Features 65W rated output (24V Input). Interchangeable Tips (<$10 Each). Accelerometer puts the unit to sleep automatically Runs excellently off LiPo Batteries in the field (Drill or Quadcopter or Car Battery). Also runs off most Laptop power supplies that you have around. Solid construction, fairly tolerant of being thrown in a field bag. Open Source Firmware allows feature additions. TS100 by Miniware firmware Over seven months ago I wrote about the new to me TS100 soldering iron, which I started a fork of the firmware for. Over this period both the firmware, I initially wrote to provide a menu system for configuration has evolved to provide more and more features at the request of users. Miniware have now released the 2017 update to their offical firmware which adds a nice menu system to the iron as well! So both are worth checking out. ...