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Episode: 1274
Title: HPR1274: Nathan Dumont on Open Source Hardware
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1274/hpr1274.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 22:47:46
---
Hi everybody, what you're about to hear is an interview that I did with Nathan Dumont
after his presentation at Agkamp 11, yes that's correct, Agkamp 11, I have, I have
apologized to Nathan in person and I would like to continue to apologize to him, finally
the show has been aired without further ado, I give you Nathan Dumont.
Hello everybody, my name is Ken Fallon and it turns out we have a special guest here
Nathan, how are you doing?
Fine, thank you.
We're outside Agkamp 11 in the Premier Inn and you've been exhibiting at the show
we're given a talk.
That's right, yeah, I had a pong game on Exhibit, it's based on the Chip Kit, you know
32 which is a new Arduino compatible open source hardware board and I was presenting on
open source hardware in general.
That was right beside the Hacker Public Radio booth and I will say thank you very much
for that doing that because it was a great, it's a tractor to get people over to the
pong table, so for a start I guess a lot of people might know what the Arduino board
is, can you tell us about that?
So the Arduino board has been around a few years, it's a basic microcontroller board which
contains all the extra components you need to actually make it run but the big step forward
with the Arduino was that it has software on it which makes it straightforward to program
without any special tools.
And what can you do with it?
So to start off with the classic example is blinking and LED, so you can write, that's
the flash example which is a few lines of code which starts you off but they've been
used in everything from GPS enabled clothing to matrix signs to display messages and space
probes.
Okay, fantastic, one of the projects that I've been really interested in getting into
if I wasn't doing Hacker Public Radio would be Arduino Hardware of the project for
our own mechanical engineer and the my project was involved having the computer do stuff
way back in the day.
So how could I get started, I want to revive my own just how would I go about getting
started again?
So if you're just working from home kind of thing you can look it up, Arduino.cc is
the home page for the Arduino project.
Link in the show not?
It's got example code and tutorials and reference material, everything's on there.
If you want a bit more help getting started or if the electronic side particularly bothers
you because the software is perhaps more familiar to open source people, a hack space,
your local hack space if you can find one is a great place to go, my local one in Bristol
a couple of weeks ago just around an Arduino workshop where you could pay a certain amount
for the course and certain amount extra and you got the Arduino to take home with you
at the end of the course and there's experts there to kind of show you how to build it
and how to code.
I think I heard a podcast about the creator of the Arduino board and the point of it was
that it was going to be so inexpensive that it would be the same price as a pizza, so
a student would have enough money to be able to afford the Arduino board, I thought
that was quite good.
Are you limited to the Arduino board, do you have any other stuff?
I'm an electronic engineer by trade so I go from the very very high end, I'm working
in a university and research department so we've got several thousand pound pieces
of open source hardware starting up from the Eterse research use, which is an amazing
FPGA based software radio which we can do digital TV streaming on and the all the way
through we're working on some Arduino hardware as well.
Tell us more about that.
So I've been looking at TV white spaces which is putting data networks like Wi-Fi through
gaps and TV spectrum created by turning our final log TV which is going on in the UK
and the US and around the world at the moment and we're using the open source usurp hardware
to actually monitor what's in the bands and develop algorithms for detecting gaps and
where you could set up data networks.
So the idea here behind white spaces I guess is to increase the amount of bandwidth without
interfering with existing transmissions I guess.
Luckily the 2.4 gigahertz license free band is getting quite full which is where Wi-Fi
works at the moment so there's some push into the 5 gigahertz band which is also a license
free but the higher the frequency you go the worse the signal distance the propagation
so it gets soaked up by walls and stuff quicker whereas TV as you know you can quite often get
a signal inside with an indoor area or on TV so the propagation is a good band to be
in for big networks.
Okay does it help to have electronics background I guess if you're getting interested in hardware
hacking?
It can do it depends what you want to do with it really I mean my I've come at it from
the electronics and so I'm interested in automating electronic systems rather than
necessarily the software from that point of view if you if you're not too bothered
about the software there's a lot of not too bothered about the hardware there's a lot
of shields and stuff that have been designed by electronics enthusiasts open source enthusiasts
who design the electronics and then it's basically plug and play so a shield is a simple
board which follows the same footprint which plugs on top as a kind of shield above the
main board and you can get these with everything from just extra outputs for plugging in LEDs
and things right up to touch screen LCDs for displaying graphics and input.
This seems like a fantastic idea if you were trying to get kids involved and you know
introduce to electronics what would you say to that?
Yes it'd be a good place to start a lot of projects in the past so kind of done robots
some things that kids are being really interested in some magazine 15 years ago I guess now
real robots or something which which let you build a robot up from parts but the problem
with that was it was all very closed and the great thing about Arduino is it can grow
with you so you can start off with the very basic and as you build confidence you can
build more and more complex so the pong game that I built the input control was textbook
Arduino very simple reading an analog value in but the output was really high level stuff
and I was using direct control of the hardware registers which meant I had to read the chip
data sheet so you can go from the really simple to really complicated with the same platform.
Absolutely phenomenal I think it's a gateway into hardware hacking I have a dream that my house
is going to be completely automated sometime I might do list.
Would you be interested in you know if somebody was interested in this sort of project first of all
can you tell me how much Arduino board would be there isn't an expensive hobby to get into.
In the UK there are around 20 pounds for the basic board you can get kids for between 30 to 50
pounds which will come with the board and a whole bunch of extra RGB LED which can give you
you can do colour mixing and the inputs and some motors and a book of example projects to get you
started they might not be very useful it might turn a motor forwards and backwards and then repeat
but at least it gives you the code and the circuits to get started with you know anything from
building a robot to having a light change color when you get a Twitter message.
Oh that's fantastic it's fantastic what website would suggest people go to if they wanted to
you know get into the community around the hardware.
There are a lot of communities around hardware hacking and really good place for an overview
of it is O'Reilly's Make magazine has a blog which blog.makezine.com I think
so that's a good place to kind of see what's going on.
They've got a huge archive of projects of everything from kind of Lego mind storm stuff to
Arduino projects to much more sophisticated you know scratch builds.
Okay fantastic listen I want to thank you very much for coming on doing an interview.
Are you was there anything I missed and they show that you'd like to get in there?
I don't think so.
How can people contact you if they are is there a IRC or a forum or something that
you would encourage people to go to if they had some questions?
If they want to contact me specifically or look at the slides from the
webcam presentation which covered a whole load of open source hardware they can go to my website
which is nathandoomont.com and yeah contact details are on there otherwise there are forums
for the Arduino for the chip kit that I used which is chip kit.org.
And what was that that seemed to be more like little bits and pieces that you were putting together?
The basis was very similar so the central board was the same. I'd added a few external components
to make up the controls and things and it was all on just one breadboard until Friday Thursday
when I had to solder it all together to make sure it didn't fall apart when people played with it
fell a bit apart a bit of the hack space when people had a go but didn't matter because I could
plug it back together. It's only a dozen or so simple components. What's the difference between
the chip kit and Arduino? The processor on board is much more powerful in the chip kit. It's
MIPS4K architecture made by microchip and it's a 32-bit processor that runs 80 megahertz
as compared to an 8-bit processor that runs at 16 megahertz. So the software hides this
difference from you so you can run that Arduino code straight on top of it. The delays will be
the correct length because of the way the language is worded and things but if you want to do
something that takes a lot more processing power and faster instructions like VGA generation
on the fly which is what the pong game did you can. Fantastic and are there more expensive than
I guess. Actually no the chip kit Uno in the UK is actually a pound or two cheaper than the Arduino.
They're very similar in the US depending on where you get yours from and around the world.
There's a mega equivalent which is called the max 32 gig n is within a pound or two of the
Arduino mega so very similar on price. Listen thank you very much for taking the time out to do
an interview thank you.
So by discussing what they've been sort of hilarious and that's being said in the last few months
actually but the definition is that they're still sort of hilarious and then we'll go through some
start something very quiet and not going to talk about not necessarily what these stuff
find at work and it's going to be interesting how far the source of power can get through some other
options and then look at some of the reports that we've got a problem downstairs and I've seen
the phone call and it's going to be a record to win.
So I think it's all started by this. There's got three lots of subullions, bags, tears, all of the
things and lays out who's supposed to be able to fill it up from the location of everyone
on the street. Every source of power is a bit different because physical content is quite
to capture a product but as a source of power we have a new index and that's also got
the requirements to open source and physical power back is different you.
There's still going to be an outcome so you can still sell it but there's something physical
that you can sell even if you could buy information to make.
So some of you are going to be seeing you are doing an original design and document it properly
and then you can buy it from the hand that it went back to the suit inside of the room.
You can build it on yourself. It requires a certain amount of tools and materials to be able to figure out.
And certainly brings an open source of their definitions to be able to deal with a library of their
location and the one you're here for, the co-exager wheel is, that should be drawn one next year
and requires that you have a appropriate documentation that the documentation is
to be called about. Such where the device has embedded software within it,
that software is either playing with the source, doing so in life, or defining well
in our case, it could be easily assumed to be titricated.
So look at some extra I can still sell it from the very behind in
SS research made easy units which, in fact it's something called canoe radio which is a software
lab for radio processing on a PC. So with one of these you can do another thing from
watching TV to listening to that kind of radio, just the panel's home software, etc.
About 2,000 pounds each, so this is very high as it but there's everything from this
dramatic source code to the FBGA which is all open and pretty available to download
and get a lot of truth in this as a usual kind of open source approach.
Massive and powerful and the basis for some great interesting open source projects while you're
in the structure. High power, so this is a vehicle board and it's got a Texas instrument
which is an arm very similar to what you're working on inside the tablet and it can run
and work ugly, run Ubuntu, Ubuntu desktop that seems to take some while to load up,
and what I've got on there. It does run and it's got basically my output, it's got the
ODEX, it's got Ethernet built-in, USB ports, all this stuff.
And the old fashioned R2-3-2, so if you've got some machine automation or something
that you've got a complex control system for you, you need a programming system,
this kind of thing would do a whole lot of down-to-touch, you see.
You can call it a doll, and there are a couple of people who want to equip them in the base,
and all the alternatives are very similar hardware,
architecture, it's another way around processing, but these things are tiny,
but the names of objects are going to stick, so they're not the size,
that's the size of a circuit board, because people need to stick or something,
people need to know it. Because they're so small, they're aimed more, kind of
industrial and they're making way for machines to turn it to mountain,
and hopefully if they're sort of people, it's got the whole fraction of one inch pitch,
has a couple of things in there. So, but these avoid only in, kind of,
the ventilation is maybe a bit too long, and now it's a bit too long,
because that size is not enough,
and that's a good old thing out, so this,
but we know you've stopped it off, it's one far-right, this is set to,
don't even know that, I think it's always interesting,
this is the original one that they did, it's growing on from less to less,
at least half a dozen different versions, either on the arc we know,
sorry, itself, and then you get claims to seep in the free doing, because of the documentation.
So, the current one is the you know if you've changed the serial port, then you pick the stuff,
but as far as the users concern, it's still less the same thing,
plug it in with the USB, programming, and then with any external tools,
it's a job of putting down loads that you don't really think,
and you point, it's actually an approach to seeingp must be a lot of fault,
a lot of fault in it, so if you look at programming on these chips and
cdlc, it must must be strapped, you find you have to read,
you need some manage to know where all the registers are to control the different hardware,
whereas if you want to read parallel on this, you simply do a lot of read and pin on that thing,
to give you a value of that, and there's a lot of software that happens there,
and they are the basic unit, it's quite limited, because it's a slow issue,
it's the thing that you have to face with it, and it has a lot of background,
so you can do a lot of things, and there are some amazing projects which you've got
for graphic displays and televisions, like in white, done with just this chip,
and a few resistors, so you can get out of it, you can get out, but it's kind of
so there's a lot more versions, we are doing a mega results, exactly a vision of mine,
I think it's a much more powerful ADR, very similar style, it's got more on our own,
and more memory, but similar performance, so you obviously have to speed up using it,
but you can do a lot more complicated programs, navigation, and you can run web servers,
using new ART, but the background layer is more important, because we have to code the space
and a new one, I've only heard about this here, but I'm not very into it,
great to have the leaf mouse name, or which is an ARM SKZ2R contents,
which is an ARM embedded processor, for kind of microcontroller applications, but they've got,
and I'll do my live development environments, they've got bootloader, and they've got a similar
set of background like this, you don't have to get down for them,
7 to 2 million hertz, it's a lot faster, it's a 32-bit processor,
so it could be capable of a lot more complex tasks,
the chip kit, which has come out this year, is being sponsored by my chip,
who are part of those big competitors, and the chip kit is running an 80-made hertz,
MIPS 32-bit processor, so it's much, much more powerful, and it actually comes in
around this anybody's capacity, I'll do it again,
so the demo I've got downstairs, with all the things, is generally VGA on the fly,
with some resistors and no external competition power, it's very much more powerful than the
original, what we know, they do a max 32, which is thinking that of all the mega,
and that's getting more powerful again, so it's got more memory, and the AMA,
so there's more of those in the map, and it's,
the chip kit is actually software compatible with the Arduino as well,
not the chip, and digital power, so I think in the beginning,
community, community, chip kit all have built the compatibility libraries up,
so if you've got, if you've got a third-party library for the Arduino,
if you use this hardware, that'll be right for you, because it's a digital processor,
so it's going to be more supported, anything that uses the Arduino X abstraction layer,
so all the digital right, and the serial library is more, so next up, it has been imported
in the world run, faster, in fact, on the chip kit, without the wall, anything other than
just a read file for Intel, it uses that version of the, of the software that runs on
Java, but it's exactly the same, it's got an extra manual, which that's used that,
it's about the chip kit, which is you, all tools are made by a base on GCC,
and the download tool, which runs, again, with no external framework,
as well, which is a plenty in there.
So, what's open source hardware, what I talked about now,
are mostly development boards to sell, and there's quite a few products as well,
which mean to great, these boards are designed, it's a retro app for you to print it,
it's designed by someone in the office across the wall, for me, at the university bar,
there's one of these in the slide, down in the exhibition area downstairs,
it's a 3U printer, which is capable of printing itself, you know, obviously a government
that's seeing worlds and things, for all these joints and connectors, a whole thing,
it can print and complete, but there are all connectors in each of them,
there's work in a moment on productive cases, that you can say,
in broad sense, there are keyboards, which you can have access to, I don't know,
self reproducibility, and the, let's say, bus drivers are a little tool,
logic analysing tool, which can be made source, quite interesting, it can analyze
the modifications to the reverse engineer, or just the local, and the open vocal,
you may have seen around 2008, 2009, there's an attempt to make the entirely open phone,
which is kind of a stop, so you're not producing any more, before I'm going to take it off,
there wasn't really anything else, you can kind of set it up, and then from
counter-designed to the case and circuit boards, right through to the such and that,
the whole phone was entirely open source,
so we're about to demo this, it's down in the exhibition,
like stepping on robust and the original prototype, which is on
old record board, it's going to be thinking, last, I think, it's way better, it's a lot,
so this is the chip kit, umu next, running VGA with the set of resistors,
and just basic controls, there's a sketch to do always about six sides of eight fours,
it's not in all of them, so now I'm going to have to cut down the tape as well,
and as you can see the circuit, external circuitry, so I'm going to do a few jump-wise
and look at the display, and it doesn't reach a bit,
there's some of the time I interact, it's quite smooth down,
but it is playable, and it does keep schools, and it's going to have a lot of work with that.
We've got prize and raffle, this is the most powerful chip kit board to stop,
whether it's from clock 8, ground, and significant power for an edit, my trip control board,
about 35 pounds each, which is being sponsored by Toronto Electronics,
who are an industry supplier, and they're looking to get into some of the holiest
market as well, but check it out, UK, Ireland, Ireland, Ireland, and that's it,
for the presentation, I've got the Jura, I'll talk to you out this year,
I'll just spot you on, later in the morning, I'll comment on such on camera,
so I don't have to, yet, so we've finished editing and talking, so I'll have a
little later in a few minutes, and you can get the slides, and the source camera,
and see how it's going to keep on going, and this is not perfect, so I'll just spot you on,
if you're interested. Thank you for this thing, all the other questions.
I don't know, I'm using it to do work, yeah, and I use rock flies,
they're coming recently, harder to find, the industry player,
I use it, I were at each 10th, yeah, since it's very hard to find,
I mean, as long as it's older, it's a lot of summer, it's old, and they're hard to find.
Is there any company on the list that's going to be thinking about building a
industry flyover attached to one of them, on rock, rock, rock, rock, rock?
I have no idea, I have actually what I'm building, I'm in this week,
from the strength of this open project, thanks for having me on, I'll see you soon.
I mean, I like it, but the end of this, there will be an end of three, and you're on,
right? Yeah, this is what I've brought, I've brought a lot of people,
off the head of the chain, but I haven't had anyone trying to do a hard work for a rock box,
I'm just going to add here. Yeah, maybe thanks for your grant,
but for that in a while, there's sort of a problem, it's nice to see the market chain back
after five years of late, finally realized that they are lacking in the space.
Yeah, that's a very bad question.
There are a bunch of them that are not opening up their tools,
none of the tools is in general, they are two months ago released,
and we call them in our ads, which is a new, snappy, and space,
cross-platform development, which is a place it's the older than being there in those 16-year-olds.
I mean, for the past of the late 80s and the 19th packaging,
where they prefer to use it to offer free development for this,
and so that was the real thing that kicked off, no cost at all,
because they say that needs a lot of backing, and the need is, obviously,
for the lives of an elderly, an army, an army, an army, an army, an army, and so on.
And there's a lot of support in this, but there's a small number of methods
that ABR program under there, it's as easy as to pick programming.
One time, a lot of things are going to be an entirely active source stack,
and it's a package called GPU tilt, which is a new package,
which takes compiler and length of it all,
but then it's very difficult to find the GPUs, GPUs, processors,
and there's a biocon pk2 column that's on the microchip,
so it works like the GPUs on there,
and a cheap program is from, and it's actually a program of the GPUs,
so it's reasonably straightforward.
It's actually developed a hateful way of looking,
a lot of the other, a lot of the other, a lot of the other,
a lot of the other, a lot of the other, a lot of the CPUs, a lot of the other ones.
I've got one final thing for the link,
but if you're in the best of the node,
you're hard to find out where it's speaking in the great port,
there's three DMS, four paddermin,
and a lot of that's a success.
Good.
And hand spaces, let's get to the next one,
the project is taken to the next step,
so you can buy that.
And generalize the project in class.
Yep, you said you think that it's a big summer
to do for a project, a lot of the go, a lot of it.
I found that, yeah, to be able to do what we've done
with Bandit Palette, a dozen minds of coaches,
and some of the big set-up of references,
and so on, you know, for all kinds of stuff.
And be sure, I'm doing another video with one line of the year.
But that, the roundup was what made it,
it went and got part of the piece.
I mean, we got the example of that.
No, absolutely, when we were talking about things,
maybe a pickaxe programming makes you serve a higher level of the thing,
which as a abstraction would be a pick-based equivalent of all.
I'm just curious if it's changed since two years ago,
and if I look at a bit where everyone looks.
There's still a bit of an X.
I still, there's nothing really in this kind of abstraction
that does the network for the 32-bit X, like, the chip,
but I do chip it, they've got a full library.
And in fact, most of the pick 32-bit Devon 40,
not the, you know, in fact, you're not being able to,
you can run the Arduino layer,
and then, but these really seem a long line of instructions to be now,
or how you're having to be, let me say all of a set,
you know, we're just, you know.
The purpose we give it to is that it's very serious.
Yeah, I remember the rules,
means we have the rules, then we use it as well.
The Arduino type format, this is ideal for your experience,
for example, because if you plug it in,
you always tend to sort of design it,
like this one, and you, yeah, get stuff.
So, I guess one, which kind of one you can set,
set different wires and lights, and so on,
and in parameters, you put this right,
and you build up the necessary platforms
on which to be able to do it for hard work,
or you can do something.
So, the Arduino type,
for example, Serif, I can,
or Freak, or Seaking,
always kind of things,
or, you know, Platon's Plan.
I remember the other time,
of course, after a while,
we used this board,
one of the wildest shields and stuff.
You can use your powerhouse.
Yeah, you need to check that with the board,
and there are a compatibility issues
between board shields, you know,
from the name, to the Bruno,
and certainly with the new chip,
it belongs to the chip,
it belongs to the Arduino,
very, very large switch,
is, of course, a problem with a lot of the shields,
but there are a few,
the last bits,
which are five miles,
and there's several kinds of issues.
And so, the originally,
I worked with most board shields,
it's the most popular,
the most developed,
to be done around it,
and there's a lot of them.
Right.
When you buy shields,
I'm sure the most,
that's the very electricity,
it doesn't work for this kind of work,
where it works,
and it's the most difficult work.
And so, the unit's got the biggest number,
and it's the same,
a amount of room,
and you've got questions.
Another question?
There are also a question about,
I had owned hashtags,
in 2015 they said we say we were not cying in our list,
who had the promotion of Hazard Gear,
and there are also origins
for the increase of health,
health points,
and translation of their code we're doing,
There's been a number of young women from rural Backtalksiac,
which has had a really great impact on häufigation.
I've discussed the numbers of
young women around work.
We have experienced a lot of other
outcomes like operating through Basque,
population, which consists of all of them.
If there is a group of women, like some of you,
who are young, health types,
practitioners bring salt and eggs,
and our human world, who comes out of the fire,
who comes to pair of gigantic instruments,
and when she's quiet, what's the salt and eggs,
what's the white and the white and the white and the white,
women, who are stordinary women.
They expend 30 seconds that's sort of many of them.
You all fight because of the protection.
Yeah.
That's why there are not people sitting at those gas stations
who may ask some of them to see them,
not all that much about electronics and everything
So, you know, you may be directly engaged by a profession or been doing it for years and
can help with setting up the circuits, if you're in sync with the program, the art effect
or just the return of the assignment and see the way to get it to happen and learn how to
make sure that the program is to get in and listen.
Yeah, I was just curious to hear from you if you were interested in the software side of
the open source and how you were interested in the art as well.
I think that's if you just had a picture as to say how many people you want or the other
or both.
Yeah, I mean, so if you come many because you're interested in the hardware side, the source
is for the software cent, you see what you're doing, so that's it.
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