The little Meshtastic node inside of my ThinkPad T420s is surprisingly good (one of the antennas measured quite well for the frequencies used, so I wired it in. I assume it was meant for GNSS? Or UMTS?).
The PCB is a quick custom design I whipped up in EasyEDA to connect an ESP32-S3 with an SX1262 radio chip. It uses the USB pins of the MiniPCIe slot originally intended for a WWAN modem in this laptop :3
Very cool. I really should figure out some use for the empty wan slot in my X395, assuming Lenovo hasn't locked out all use in the bios or something.
One thing I've thought about is how almost all current models no longer come with SD/Micro SD readers. I like having a large capacity card inserted in my laptops as a drive for disk image backups, so I can quickly restore my system on the go or just have some additional space in addition to the one NVME drive of most laptops.
@Infoseepage Heh. Yeah this one was locked down. I had to flash a modified bios on and also then flashed a stripped down Intel ME firmware for good measure.
What a pain. This wouldn't be such an issue if laptops still just included something like Expresscard still. Having a single NVME slot is not enough for me when combined with the lack of a SD/MicroSD slot.
@JustinDerrick @KayOhtie Those little resistors/capacitors were a bit annoying but honestly it wasn't too bad I screwed up one of them because it was my first time soldering small castellations, but the second one is the one you see in that picture. Done with a small and a big soldering iron and lots of flux.
You could prolly ask your favorite PCB maker to assemble it for you given it only has components on a single side so it should be quite cheap as well as an option
Sure thing. I used EasyEDA (Std) to design it. It seems KiCad can import it quite successfully as well via "Import Non-KiCad Project -> EasyEDA (JLCEDA) Std Backup" and then pointing it at this ZIP.
Also, this whole repo which adds support to meshtastic for my PCB (just defines the pinout pretty much): github.com/Doridian/meshtastic…
The only non-obvious thing about the PCB design: You need to bridge either +3V3 or +3V3AUX to VCC on "H2" (+3V3AUX is powered during standby on some laptops, +3V3 is never, hence the option)
One thing I realized I forgot: If you do end up ordering this, or making one: MiniPCIe cards require a non-default height. I think it was 1.0mm total PCB height, but do cross-check me on that.
Aha. Thanks. OK. I did not realise they can be ordered. I must confess I tried the easyEDA route and installing the software was not possible in view of the provenance of the code and the non FOSSness of it so I could not check it out. I used the online site and your kindly provided zip of the pcb data. I am hoping to go via kicad but got the fright of my life about how that works. I think I need to go back to baby steps. The site seems not to have the parts BTW.
@adingbatponder Yeah, I did solder the PCB myself, don't know if anyone sells the Core1262 for pre-assmbly. But the rest is fairly standard components.
If you do end up obtaining one of these, make sure it is the right Core1262 (HF or LF, depends on your jurisdiction, US is HF, EU I think would be LF)
#Google trips over its own words, when they sell you #Android it's the best computing device in the world that does everything. After you bought it Google doesn't let you do anything *you* want to.
#Sideload is a made-up term. Putting software on your computer is simply called “installing”, regardless of whether that computer is in your pocket or on your desk.
What Do You Talk About When You Talk About Sideloading?
We recently published a blog post with our reaction to the new Google Developer Program and how it impacts your freedom to use the devices that you own in th...
heresy! The 68030 wore it better! . . . Which is another way of saying “this is very cool”, and “could you please make a 68030 or 68040 of it?” (No 68LC040, please.)
pam_bcpasswd lives! (^o^) Now you'll be able to avoid transmitting your password in clear text over the air, especially useful if you have a backup access over AX.25. I need to check if I can use it directly with axspawn during the initial authentication... Sources to be published once the debian package can be built. I've got a few ideas for secure password rotation (using OPAQUE) and to implement a 3-way alternative of SCRAM to provide mutual authentication :3c
It works like the original challenge-md5 mechanism in axspawn: it issues a random challenge (size adjusted to provide better randomness), and then checks that ascii-hex(md5(concat(challenge,password))) matches.
In terms of security, this is far from being perfect (which is why I'm hoping to replace it by SCRAM in the long run), but at least it's better than cleartext password or baycom authentication, for now.
I may be a sinner for building a Layer 7 HTTP accelerator for constrained ham channels, but I never wrote (and will never write) a Network/Port Adress Translator there are limits to a lack of decency 😸
A REQUEST: If you own a French CD-ROM computer game called "Pop Anim'", please let me know. I could use it for some research but haven't been able to find a circulating copy yet. (It's at the BnF but I can't get there right now.)
C'est un rapport factuel, donc qui contient les données techniques. L'analyse de l'origine sera publiée dans le rapport qui devrait sortir dans 4 mois environ.
TIFO axspawn (the linux utility to handle incoming AX.25 connections) has a built-in inline compression feature (your client needs to send "//COMP ON\n" once the LAPB bearer is established. Axspawn then sends "\rCOMP 1\r" and turns on huffman compression).
Currently working on an ALS162 time receiver. Getting my paws on NF C 90-002 really helped to think of an easier strategy to acquire and sync with the signal.
Turns out this signal is a 40Bd 3-state TCM.
First step, however, is to write a stub that will generate a baseband clone of the signal. For now I'm able to generate a static frame. The scrambler is implemented, and I'm working on the CRC-13.
Honestly, the choices that were made are quite elegant, imho: out of 9 phase transitions, you can recover up to 4 bits in 4 cases, more than 1 bit for 4 others, and the last, which is the XOR of the 3 previous bits. This means you can recover erasures in many cases ✨💜✨
- Thunderstorms depends on it to grow. - It juts out into the sea, watching waves crash below. - You won’t find it on common folk, but legends let it billow.
Still waiting for someone to make an x86 platform that just shoves uboot and/or a kernel/initramfs, plus a DTB, into SPI flash and just boots straight from that without needing any "firmware" at all.
@azonenberg flat device trees aren't cute. Device trees are only flat when they are stressed.
Basically, the idea that you need a DTB to boot is wrong. The device tree needs to be provided by the firmware. We went through this with ACPI already, people replacing their broken tables on the command line, and it had not suddenly become a sensible strategy twenty-five years later.
@GyrosGeier it makes much more sense to have a data driven boot process and not have code running on the platform before the OS starts.
(Doing this right would of course require that things like RAM init be handled in silicon or by the kernel, which is a whole other can of worms where silicon vendors are concerned...)
Isn't that the whole point of SPD (since PCs ~always used DIMM/SODIMM based memory)? You just need some board-independent init code that reads the eeprom from each slot, figures out how much is there, and brings it up.
I don't see why you need per-board firmware when the entire point of the eeprom is discoverability.
Basic summary of my comment to FCC filing 25-201, with regard to a secondary spectrum allocation on the 430-440MHz band (you have until 2025-07-21 if you wish to do it too: fcc.gov/ecfs/filings/express?p…)
Currently writing a middleware that interfaces a D-Star Radio with packet applications. On this video: Winlink e-mail transfer over DV Fast Data. youtube.com/watch?v=rKkFJ9TmqQ…
Rewrote my DExtra / D-Star dissector, I'm able to read DV Slow data packets, DV Fast Data should come quickly once I'm laying my paws on a pcap trace to validate a few assumptions. Payload reassembly, superframe-wise, is being written.
FBB Dissector for Wireshark: here you go, code qualification has not been completed, I need to continue bug hunting (some additional traces needed). github.com/dscp46/dissectors
Finally took another take to implementing the FBB protocol dissector. The command interpreter is almost finished. The last obstacle is to implement LZHUF decompression in LUA to decode payloads.
De moins en moins d'écrans CRT fonctionnent et c'est normal, les composants s'usent notamment les condensateurs. Beaucoup d'écrans ont été jetés et ça devient de plus en plus rare d'en trouver alors si possible ne les jetez pas, vendez-les ou donnez-les pour pièces.
(ceci était un message du Comité de Restauration des Tubes)
Add passkeys to the list of things that didn't advance as much in 2024 as we thought they might. That's because some companies are still making the process complicated. pcmag.com/news/the-passkey-fut…
GrumpSec Spottycat
in reply to Doridian • • •Doridian
in reply to GrumpSec Spottycat • • •@kyhwana I mean. It is now collectible because crucial won't make it anymore >.<
But also it's DDR3 so I dunno. :3
Infoseepage
in reply to Doridian • • •Very cool. I really should figure out some use for the empty wan slot in my X395, assuming Lenovo hasn't locked out all use in the bios or something.
One thing I've thought about is how almost all current models no longer come with SD/Micro SD readers. I like having a large capacity card inserted in my laptops as a drive for disk image backups, so I can quickly restore my system on the go or just have some additional space in addition to the one NVME drive of most laptops.
Doridian
in reply to Infoseepage • • •Infoseepage
in reply to Doridian • • •Kay Ohtie
in reply to Doridian • • •Doridian
in reply to Kay Ohtie • • •@KayOhtie I can send the PCB schematics over if you want. :3
Not that it really is anything complex in the first place x3
adingbatponder
in reply to Doridian • • •Justin Derrick
in reply to Doridian • • •@KayOhtie How difficult was the soldering?
I’m curious to know if this could be adapted to run inside a router to provide a LoRa to LAN gateway.
Doridian
in reply to Justin Derrick • • •@JustinDerrick @KayOhtie Those little resistors/capacitors were a bit annoying but honestly it wasn't too bad I screwed up one of them because it was my first time soldering small castellations, but the second one is the one you see in that picture. Done with a small and a big soldering iron and lots of flux.
You could prolly ask your favorite PCB maker to assemble it for you given it only has components on a single side so it should be quite cheap as well as an option
adingbatponder
in reply to Doridian • • •How cool is that !
adingbatponder
in reply to Doridian • • •Doridian
in reply to adingbatponder • • •Sure thing. I used EasyEDA (Std) to design it. It seems KiCad can import it quite successfully as well via "Import Non-KiCad Project -> EasyEDA (JLCEDA) Std Backup" and then pointing it at this ZIP.
Backup ZIP: github.com/Doridian/meshtastic…
Also, this whole repo which adds support to meshtastic for my PCB (just defines the pinout pretty much): github.com/Doridian/meshtastic…
The only non-obvious thing about the PCB design: You need to bridge either +3V3 or +3V3AUX to VCC on "H2" (+3V3AUX is powered during standby on some laptops, +3V3 is never, hence the option)
GitHub - Doridian/meshtastic-firmware: Meshtastic device firmware
GitHubadingbatponder
in reply to Doridian • • •Doridian
in reply to adingbatponder • • •adingbatponder
in reply to Doridian • • •adingbatponder
in reply to Doridian • • •Doridian
in reply to adingbatponder • • •@adingbatponder Yeah, I did solder the PCB myself, don't know if anyone sells the Core1262 for pre-assmbly. But the rest is fairly standard components.
If you do end up obtaining one of these, make sure it is the right Core1262 (HF or LF, depends on your jurisdiction, US is HF, EU I think would be LF)