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About Jack Gassett
- Birthday 03/12/1974
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Website URL
http://www.gadgetfactory.net
Profile Information
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Gender
Male
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Location
Westminster Colorado
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Interests
Snowboarding, electronics, Open Source Hardware, guitar.
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Jack Gassett's Achievements
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Hello @AIY, Thank you for such great feedback, it is really appreciated and it confirms some of the things I was thinking. The direction that I'm heading in is away from making development boards like the Papilio. I've designed several nice prototype Papilio boards using the ICE and Gowin FPGA chips. But I keep hitting road blocks when I try to make the jump from prototype to product that can be manufactured. With Covid there were no chips available, and now that there are chips available the costs just don't make sense. A new Papilio board just cannot compete with a board like the Tang Nano 9K board. So I'm actually working on how can I build Papilio around the Tang Nano 9K board and add value and build up around this very nice and cheap board. The idea is to build new versions of the Papilio MegaWing boards that work with the Tang Nano 9K. Then I am going to focus on the software side of things and developing online learning courses to be used along with the MegaWing boards. So I'll spend a lot less time getting caught up in the details of developing and manufacturing new hardware and will be more focused on doing cool stuff with the FPGA hardware. I've been really impressed with LiteX and Migen which lets you build RISCV systems using python. This combination eliminates some of the pain associated with building Wishbone interfaces and connecting hardware components in an automated way. I'd like to figure out how to build your hardware design with LiteX under Platformio and then add your arduino C libraries using Platformio as well. This is what I've been thinking for the FPGA side of things, but I also really enjoy ESP32 based IOT/home automation projects as well. So I'm going to work on some of those types of projects too. I've designed a really cool platform for making Home Automation projects and have the first 10 prototype boards arriving in about a week. I should be posting more details and pictures soon. I also ordered 10 prototype boards of a Tang Nano 9K to Papilio MegaWing converter board so I can start working on porting the existing papilio code to the Tang Nano. I expect to have those boards in about a month. So making progress! The forum went down but it should be all sorted out now and I've been putting time into getting all of the Gadgetfactory websites back in order. The ssl error should be gone now for the forum. I'll be streamlining and consolidating the websites here in the next couple of months. First order of business is to get an updated learning website up and running so I can start writing online learning courses. Thank you all who are still here and participating in what has been a ghost town for the last couple of years. Hopefully things will start to turn around and interesting things will be found here again. Jack.
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@EtchedPixels Thanks for stopping by and checking in, it's good to see you. I intend to keep the forum and the wikis up and running indefinitely, I hope to develop new products and will need them again! @DougL Thank you for the tips for the esp32-c3 boards. Point 2 definitely tripped me up for a while. I've tested with so many dev environments that it's hard to keep them straight anymore: esp-idf esp-idf with matter-sdk esphome platformio - esp-idf platformio - arduino platformio - esp-idf with matter-sdk I'm currently trying to wake up out of light sleep from a gpio interrupt from the gesture sensor and send a message to the home automation controller in less than a second. The best I can get is about 6 seconds which is too long to wait when using the gesture sensor as a light switch. Without light sleeping the battery drains in less than a day.... I think I have a method that will work, which is to have one esp32c3 setup as an espnow gateway device which never sleeps. Then the light switches will use espnow to send their state within milliseconds of waking up. It is supposed to work. I also just received an esp32-c6 which has thread support. Will do some testing with both. I'll try to create a new forum thread about the progress, but I'm a little embarrassed by how slowly I'm moving on this. Maybe it will help me move faster if I post the results in the forum. Jack.
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Hello Doug, That sounds like a really great idea to build a story around electronics projects for kids. My kids say they want to learn how to make things, but lose interest pretty quickly if it is not fun. So seems like a great idea to keep them interested. Escape room gadgets, I'm going to have to learn some more about that topic. I have to admit I haven't visited an escape room yet... I'm currently working on some home automation projects with esp32-c3 modules. I'm getting close to having a gesture sensor based light switch and a doppler radar based motion detector ready. Hopefully will have something to share soon, and maybe they can be applied to some kind of escape room gadget... Maybe something like in Myst where you had to yank the chain twice to get it to skip the normal sequence and get to what is required... So use the gesture sensor to have people swipe left or right, but the trick is you have to swipe twice quickly to unlock the puzzle. Jack
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Thank you for you concern, support, and kind words. Since it is just not feasible to make my own FPGA product line right now I think it makes a lot of sense to focus on the Tang Nano 4k and Tang Premiere 20K FPGA boards/modules. I've been playing around with LiteX on the Tang Nano 4k and have been absolutely loving it so far. I heard the open source toolchain might be ready for use now, but the testing I did was with the Gowin toolchain. I don't mind using that toolchain until the opensource toolchain matures, which I think it will in no time.
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Yeah man, I've prototyped several new Papilio boards and even some new product lines over the last couple of years. Every time I get stuck at chip availability and cost to assemble the boards. It's very tough right now to create something new... As far as why I went silent, I just hit a brick wall. I had three little kids back to back and undiagnosed sleep apnea which just sapped me of all energy. I ended up having to take a full time job outside of GadgetFactory and it was all I could do to hold on and perform that job. I'm getting to a better place now where the kids don't need so much care and the sleep apnea is treated to the point where I'm feeling back to my normal self again! Lot's of ideas are starting to go through my head again, along with the energy to start pursuing some of them.
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I've seriously been kicking around the idea of starting a new project to redo the RetroCade synth in the EuroRack modular format. I was thinking to make a main module that would have a Tang Nano 9k board as the FPGA, MIDI input, and audio output. Then make modules for SID Channel, YM2149 Channel, etc. They would have knobs and everything required to physically control a single voice and would be connected via ribbon cable to the main board. With the original RetroCade I think I made something that wasn't very usable because of the form factor, I'm thinking that adopting the EuroRack format might make it usable for more people.
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Hello all, I'm not sure if anyone still drops by here but just wanted to post an update if anyone does. Covid and the scarcity of chips on the market was the last straw for the Xilinx based Papilio FPGA boards. I've made new designs with Lattice UltraPlus and Gowin LittleBee FPGA chips but bringing those boards to market right now is just not very practical. The other consideration is that there are super cheap FPGA boards available now such as the Tang Nano 9k board. I'm not sure it makes any sense to try to make new Papilio FPGA boards to compete with the low cost boards that are out there so I'm thinking along the lines of what projects can be built on top of low cost and interesting modules such as the Tang Nano 9k, Raspberry Pi's, and ESP32's. I'm going to post some project ideas to this thread and see if anyone is still here to kick ideas around with.
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Hello, I generally took the output from the Retrocade and plugged it into an amplifier to increase the volume. The audio output was designed without any kind of amplification circuit so there is no practical way to increase the volume without an external amplifier. It's been years since I did anything with the Retrocade project, and looking back I don't think it was very useful for people to use it. I've been thinking about re-doing it so it is more useable and would love some feedback. I was thinking about redoing it in the Eurorack form factor. That would make it modular and you could put an already designed amplifier in the rack if you wanted to. What do you think?
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Jack Gassett changed their profile photo
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Is gadget factory moving sites or shutting down?
Jack Gassett replied to Mikkel Jeppesen's topic in DesignLab IDE
Hey guys, I'm very sorry for the hassle, I'm not shutting GF down or moving websites. I started a new job and went through a very intensive two week training period with 14 hour days so there was no time left to look at forum posts here. The hosting for the downloads just happened to expire during that period and I didn't see the emails. I saw it once the training was over and everything should be sorted out now. Things should calm down going forward and I should settle into a routine where I can keep up with forum posts going forward. Once again, sorry for the hassle. Thanks, Jack. -
Program the ATmega32U4 without boot loader via USB
Jack Gassett replied to Pooyan's topic in Papilio DUO
Hey Paul, glad you got is sorted out. Sorry for the slow response. Jack.- 2 replies
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- avr
- bootloader
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(and 3 more)
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Hello Sandro, The only thing that is different between the 2MB and 512KB boards should be that in the 2MB board there is one extra address line that the 2MB chip provides. The circuit board is exactly the same, its just that on the 512KB board that address line connects to a pin that does nothing while on the 2MB board it gives access to more address space. Jack.
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No, consider that code public domain code. Feel free to do whatever you like with it. Jack.
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Sparkfun must have made a mistake then... I didn't realize they were even still selling Papilio boards. I have a VGA wing here in front of me and R1, R2, R3 are 391 (390 ohm) and R4, R5, R6 are 821 (820 ohm). So if all six resistors on the board you have are the same value then they made a mistake when they manufactured the boards... We should get you a better board, are you in the United States? Jack.