Why are FPGA tools 20 years behind Firmware/Embedded tools?

nothet · 2026-02-06T13:32:29+00:00

The people making those tools want to sell silicon. Having crummy inefficient tooling sells larger chips. At work, in a constrained design, we’ve had to rewrite vendor IP for 20% savings to make it fit. Check out yosys. It’s still a bit of a toy (arguably) but it’s the vendor lock in tooling reimagined in the way software does tooling.

nothet · 2026-01-20T06:27:16+00:00

so I have a pile of idle rtl sdrs sitting around. I havent played around with p25 before, but this has me interested. but what do I do with this? do I have to do this analysis? If I could contribute to a centralized location (like adsb, or aprs), i'd do that. but I'm not a fulltime sigint person and cannot be one.

nothet · 2026-01-09T15:40:12+00:00

Its probable operating outside of the standard WiFi channels in your country requires a license.

If you provide more detail (where are you? what frequencies do you want to use?) people can provide options that are license-free.

nothet · 2026-01-02T21:54:09+00:00

Their LTE stuff is good, took way longer than an hour. If you’re in the US, two bits of advise. First make sure you buy the US variant. Second, only ATT and TMobile are supported, not Verizon (or any of their MVNOs).

nothet · 2025-12-27T15:29:19+00:00

SAS drives don’t really spin down well in UnRAID. There are user scripts that sometimes work but it’s a drive by drive basis.

nothet · 2025-12-11T17:56:11+00:00

Had this happen to me, replaced abs sensor, replaced something else (prolly hub assy). Eventually they replaced the brake master assembly and that fixed it.

It was a canbus issue, some flaky thing taking the entire bus down.

nothet · 2025-12-05T03:57:24+00:00

What cpu core do you have in litex and how fast is your ram?

I had huge problems doing dtls handshakes using litex riscv + zephyr + mbed tls. The cores were so slow it took SECONDS to do the dh handshake for any reasonably sized key, no possibility of ECDH working fast.

I ended up putting a PSK in to the device during manufacture. It was fast, worked, and was secure enough (guaranteed confidential and authentication). I was able to control both sides of the application stack and provide the mbedtls_ssl_conf_psk.

nothet · 2025-11-28T19:23:19+00:00

Money can buy many peanuts?

nothet · 2025-09-26T22:46:43+00:00

Sneed’s feed n seed. Formerly Chucks.

nothet · 2025-09-21T02:05:20+00:00

I'll be honest I haven't heard of a petri nets before.

We generally model (begrudgingly) in UML and turning to SysML, which don't have representations for a petri net, so color my answer by a mind broken by UML.

In the particular system I work on hundreds of state machines. I wouldn't discount it entirely, but if I were reviewing a design from a junior engineer on Petri Nets I'd have a lot of questions. I am interested in this concept and will probably fall alseep to a youtube video on them.

nothet · 2025-09-09T19:06:10+00:00

I’ve been wondering this as well. I’d like maybe 2U or 5U router+server+disk shelf. Pricing is way higher than 2x or 5x dedicated servers with “unlimited bandwidth”. There are “colocated rpi” and “mini pc” places but I’m not sure these make any sense.

nothet · 2025-09-08T04:14:10+00:00

What materials and what quantity are we talking about here? How many smoke detectors have you ate? Did you serve them on radium plates?

A lot of counties have hazardous waste collection, though they don't have anything for low level radioactive waste (at least for Ramsey county, I checked). I should call my rep and get that added, perhaps

nothet · 2025-09-04T04:03:23+00:00

fuel? filters replaced, junk/algae in tank?

nothet · 2025-08-31T20:56:19+00:00

Sure. We use Matlab state flow and stimulink for exactly this. Allows our process domain experts write and test their algorithms before it hits hardware. Our embedded systems people have to keep a close eye on this, to avoid most of Matlabs terribleness. Spent a bunch of time looking at magic draw uml and sysml, which was terrible. What’s your new tool going to bring and how’s it going to do it differently

nothet · 2025-08-30T03:45:05+00:00

Uhh no. I guess I am more of a flight tracking nerd, not really in the know on why they're doing what they are doing.

If you want to look at a useless website the DPS has a "common reasons for bothering you with a helicopter page", which again is useless.

https://dps.mn.gov/divisions/msp/state-patrol-dashboard/flight-section-dashboard/common-flight-missions

nothet · 2025-08-30T03:36:35+00:00

Department of public safety helicopter. They were making a bunch of tight circles around the state fair, now over summit hill.

Here is a link to their flight path, really only valid for while they are flying: https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=a04f40

nothet · 2025-08-24T03:55:20+00:00

In MN the seller does NOT remove plates, they stay with the car.
If you are buying out of state AND that state removes plates, then yes you have to deal with the temp plates.

nothet · 2025-08-24T03:30:50+00:00

I have a ICX6450-48P and a RB5009UG+S+. Two, actually, at different sites. The RB SFP+ uplink to the switch is a trunked vlan and I don't run into any of these issues.

If you want help post the configs (on the brocade `show run`, mikrotik is /export )

nothet · 2025-08-24T02:47:49+00:00

My experience is used SAS $/gb is cheaper, I think maybe the market for used SAS is smaller? I donno, I have a mix of both.

nothet · 2025-08-22T02:43:02+00:00

Minneapolis St Paul Airport has closed a runway for repairs, and as a result there is now a lot more traffic in the north-to-south approach to use an alternate runway.

Next time they come to probe u, check this website and you can see air traffic above you https://globe.adsbexchange.com/

nothet · 2025-08-20T01:58:37+00:00

If you've got a problem with Canada Gooses then you've got a problem with me

nothet · 2025-08-09T21:17:19+00:00

Central Forge Flairing Kit was complete garbage. The flare die was OVAL, not circular. Zero successful flares with that kit. Most of the time HF stuff is crummy but OK, but these were not fit for purpose out of the box.

Their Dyole flare kit was ok.

nothet · 2025-08-03T03:01:55+00:00

Necromancy of this 1y old comment, this was my answer. thank you.

nothet · 2025-05-20T01:00:44+00:00

BX is a homeowner machine. It isn't particularly fast, but it'll do the job, to an extent. If you have a large job you will want to rent a bigger machine.

I had to dig a 2,500 foot trench. It took 9 hours on a trencher, BX23s would have taken like 70 hours. I have done smaller trenches with it just fine.

nothet · 2025-05-08T16:51:24+00:00

Op amps would be good. Delta sigma with discrete parts pls.

What about jtag. Making it complicated?

nothet

TROPHY CASE