Hackaday Newsletter 0x85

Hardware vs Software: No Need to Fight! [HACKADAY]() Could Moon Dust Help Reduce Global Temperatures? [Read Article Now»]( Close to the Metal By [Elliot Williams]( Firmware is caught between hardware and software. What do I mean? Microcontroller designers compete on how many interesting and useful hardware peripherals they can add to the chips, and they are all different on purpose. Meanwhile, software designers want to abstract away from the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of the hardware peripherals, because code wants to be generic and portable. Software and hardware designers are Montagues and Capulets, and we’re caught in the crossfire. I’m in the middle of a design that takes advantage of perhaps one of the most idiosyncratic microcontroller peripherals out there – the RP2040’s PIOs. Combining these with the chip’s direct memory access (DMA) controllers allows some fairly high-bandwidth processing, without bogging down the CPUs. But because I want this code to be usable and extensible by a wide audience, I’m also trying to write it in Micropython. And configuring DMA controllers is just too idiosyncratic for Micropython. But there’s an escape hatch. In my case, it’s courtesy of the machine.mem32 function, which lets you read and write directly into the chip’s memory, including all of the memory-mapped configuration registers. Sure, it’s absurdly low-level, but it means that anything you read about in the chip’s datasheet, you can do right away, and from within the relative comfort of a Micropython program. Other languages have their PEEK and POKE equivalents as well, or allow inline assembler, or otherwise furnish you the tools to get closer to the metal without having to write all the rest of your code low level. I’m honestly usually a straight-C or even Forth programmer, but this experience of using a higher-level language and simultaneously being able to dive down to the lowest levels of bit-twiddling at the same time has been a revelation. If you’re just using Micropython, open up your chip’s datasheet and see what it can offer you. Or if you’re programming at the configure-this-register level, check out the extra benefits you can get from a higher-level language. You can have your cake and eat it too! From the Blog --------------------------------------------------------------- [Jenny’s Daily Drivers: SerenityOS, And In Particular, Ladybird]( By [Jenny List]( Jenny tries out a super-niche OS that features a custom browser. [Read more »]( [Tech in Plain Sight: Skyscrapers]( By [Al Williams]( We take buildings over 10 stories for granted these days. It was not always so. [Read more »]( [USB-C For Hackers: Build Your Own PSU]( By [Arya Voronova]( Arya teaches you to make a USB-C PD power supply from your old laptop PSUs [Read more »]( [Hackaday Podcast]( [Hackaday Podcast Ep 240: An Amazing 3D Printer, A Look Inside Raspberry Pi 5, and Cameras, Both Film and Digital]( By [Hackaday Editors]() What happened last week on Hackaday? The Podcast will get you up to speed. [Read more »]( If You Missed It --------------------------------------------------------------- [Wiring Up 100 Car Batteries So You Don’t Have To]( [How Not to Build an RP2040 Board]( [Micromanipulator Touches The Tiny Things, Cheaply]( [Tattoo-Removal Laser Brought Out of Retirement for a Megawatt of Fun]( [An In-Depth Comparison of Hobby PCB Manufacturers]( [Canada Abruptly Ends Official Time Signal]( [Hackaday]() NEVER MISS A HACK [Share]( [Share]( [Share]( [Terms of Use]( [Privacy Policy]( [Hackaday.io]( [Hackaday.com]( This email was sent to {EMAIL} [why did I get this?]( [unsubscribe from this list]( [update preferences]( Hackaday.com · 61 S Fair Oaks Ave Ste 200 · Pasadena, CA 91105-2270 · USA