Tag Archives: Ice

Icestorm Tools Roundup: Open Source FPGA Dev Guide

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We like the ICE40 FPGA from Lattice for two reasons: there are cheap development boards like the Icestick available for it and there are open source tools. We’ve based several tutorials on the Icestorm toolchain and it works quite well. However, the open source tools don’t always expose everything that you see from commercial tools. You sometimes have to dig a little to find the right tool or option.

Sometimes that’s a good thing. I don’t need to learn yet another fancy IDE and we have plenty of good simulation tools, so why reinvent the wheel? However, if you are …read more

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Dark Markets’ Weakness? Cashing out the Bitcoin to USD!

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Over the years there has been an on-going battle between law enforcement and those who use technology-based anonymity to perform their illegal deeds.  Some of the FBI’s tricks to break through the anonymity have created interesting challenges, suc… Continue reading Dark Markets’ Weakness? Cashing out the Bitcoin to USD!→

FOIA: DHS Did Not Investigate Hundreds of Civil Rights Abuse Complaints

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DHS’s Office of the Inspector General says it has ‘limited resources’ to investigate hundreds of civil liberties and detainee abuse complaints, but one expert said the figures “demand a closer look.” Continue reading FOIA: DHS Did Not Investigate Hundreds of Civil Rights Abuse Complaints→

As Sadism Surges on the American Border, Our Collective Understanding of Cruelty Collapses

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The Stanford prison experiment, which helped us understand the worst atrocities in history for decades, is called out as a ‘sham’ at a moment when America is separating asylum seekers from their children at the border. Continue reading As Sadism Surges on the American Border, Our Collective Understanding of Cruelty Collapses→

Keeping Streets Ice-Free with the Raspberry Pi

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[Revanth Kailashnath] writes in to tell us about an interesting project he and his team have been working on for their “Real Time Embedded Programming” class at the University of Glasgow. Intended to combat the harsh and dangerous winters in Glasgow, their system uses a Raspberry Pi and a suite of sensors to automatically deploy a brine solution to streets and sidewalks. While the project is still only a proof of concept and hasn’t been deployed, the work the team has done so far runs the gamut from developing their own PCBs to creating a web-based user interface.

The core …read more

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Icoboard Software Defined Radio Platform

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The Icoboard is a plug-in for the Raspberry Pi with a Lattice iCE FPGA onboard. Combined with a cheap A/D converter, [OpenTechLab] build a software-defined radio using all open source tools. He found some inexpensive converters that cost about $25 and were fast enough (32 MHz) for the purpose at hand. The boards also had a digital to analog converter and he was able to find the data sheets. You can see a video with the whole project covered, below.

The video, by the way, is pretty extensive (about an hour’s worth) and covers the creation of a PC board …read more

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