Maker Faire Bay Area 2019 - Three Presentations This Year
OpenPPS - How To Put Time in an Electronic Bottle
The current state of the art in low cost GPS/GNSS receiver modules can provide timing pulses with accuracy in the 10 nanosecond range compared to the atomic clocks that are in the satellites. The resultant Pulse Per Second (PPS) signals are very useful for precision timing applications. In the past however this required expensive receivers with antennas mounted outdoors with a clear view of the sky. I have found that it is now possible to build a system that can provide timing pulses continuously with only occasional GPS reception somewhere next to a window. In this presentation I will show how I accomplished this and what the potential applications for Makers might be.
For further information see my project description: OpenPPS Project
There was a write up on this project on my favorite tech blog, hackaday.com: What’s More Accurate than a GPS Clock? The OpenPPS Clock
Also it was discussed in the hackaday weekly podcast EP19: (podcast)
The presentation I made at the Maker Faire can be downloaded here:
OpenPPS
Getting Started With FPGAs - Programmable Logic For Makers
Sometimes you just can't accomplish what you are trying to do with a microcontroller and need to find a better solution. This was the case for me last year when a project I was working on required measuring the one second timing pulses from a GPS receiver to microsecond resolution or better. The obvious solution was a FPGA however it was quite a challenge to learn how to do this with no previous experience and to figure out what development tools and boards to use. In this presentation I will show you how to get started and how I managed to accomplish my objective using the IceStudio and IceStorm Open Source development tools and the TinyFPGA and IceStick development boards. This is a powerful solution for any electronics Maker!
For further information see my project description: OpenPPS Project
This presentation is on Youtube: (video)
The presentation I made at the Maker Faire can be downloaded here:
Getting Started with FPGAs
PlatformIO - It Just Works!
I have been using PlatformIO as a key part of my Maker software development workflow for the past year and a half and it has improved my productivity immensely. The Arduino IDE is a fantastic tool and has helped many people get started with embedded software development. It has many limitations however not the least of which is not being able to specify different boards for different projects. PlatformIO solves that problem along with many others resulting in greatly increased productivity. In this presentation I will show how I use it and what it can do for you. If you are only using the Arduino IDE right now you need to see this!
The presentation I made at the Maker Faire can be downloaded here:
PlatformIO