Driving WS2812 LED's with STM32 DMA+Timer

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....

July 1, 2021 · 12 min · Ben V. Brown

Fixing stupid JMS578 HDD Enclosure issues

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....

January 10, 2021 · 5 min · Ben V. Brown

TS100 Review

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)....

June 11, 2017 · 5 min · Ben V. Brown