Technology and Engineering Services that enables home owners, businesses, makers, and hobbyists to take control of their network

Why are We Surprised that Alexa Recorded Private Conversations (and sent them to a stranger)?

Big Tech has had a long history of spying on us. It's in their DNA. If you have your doubts, then review this list of recent evidence.

Review of Connector Choices for Arduino Shields, Bases, and Compatibles

A review of configurations and connector choices for systems that are compatible with an Arduino form factor.

Build a BTC Footprint with Thermal Pad using SMD Window Approach and Altium Designer

BTC packages with thermal pads present a myriad of challenges. A recent approach to BTC PCB land pattern design is the use of an SMD Window. This article shows the construction of such a land pattern and results after reflow.

Use Python and Sockets to Create a Honey Pot and Catch Bad Network Actors

Article discusses using Python with sockets to create and deploy a honey pot for the purpose of detecting malicious activity on a network. A sample Python 3 script is provided.

Review of Ethernet Packet and Packet Processing using an FPGA-based Open Source Network Processor

We examine the fields within an Ethernet packet and discuss how they are processed by an open source FPGA network processor.

Serial Peripheral Interface Bus (SPI) Verilog Implementation for FPGA Open Source Networking Project

A description of the open source Verilog source for a SPI Slave implementation used on the Private Island Network Processor Project

Quick Install of Apache, WSGI, and Django on Ubuntu Linux 18.04

A Step-by-Step cookbook to install Apache and Django using WSGI on Ubuntu Linux

Build and test OpenCV 4 from Git on Ubuntu 18.04

This article reviews building a simple OpenCV 4 video playback application using the OpenCV Git repos on Ubuntu Linux 18.04.

PCS / SERDES Architecture for Lattice ECP5 FPGA Open Source Network Processor

A high level overview of the usage and configuration of the ECP5UM DCU (PCS/SERDES) for Private Island Open Source Project

SPI Basics and Protocol for FPGA Open Source Network Processor

Using the Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) Bus on Private Island to access internal FPGA memory including Ethernet packets

Use OpenOCD with Darsena on Linux

We review the steps necessary to use OpenOCD with Darsena on Linux. Also, we build OpenOCD from source using its Git repo and run it on an Ubuntu 16.04 system making use of an Eclipse-based IDE.

Documentation for the Private Island project

Architecture and Code Description for the Private Island System

Summarizing the Lattice ECP5 for FPGA Open Source Network Processor

A summary and concise reference of ECP5UM features and capabilities as applied to the Private Island open source project

Review of Ethernet SGMII Concepts

The Serial Gigabit Media Independent Interface (SGMII) is a popular Gigabit Ethernet PHY interface, and it holds various advantages over both GMII and RGMII. This article reviews some of the core SGMII concepts with the help of oscilloscope screen shots from our Rohde & Schwarz RTO1044.

Remote Oscilloscope Operation with Python and VISA

Example Python code is provided to perform basic remote operations with a Rohde and Schwarz RTO1044 Oscilloscope including waveform capture, display, and FFT.