Having quite a bit of fun with this development board. A fairly powerful embedded ARM, running at a core of 400MHz, with the whole system drawing about 2W of power. And yes, before anyone asks, I do have headphones plugged into it listening to streaming audio
(hey, you have to test all the features, even if they don’t end up on the final hardware, right?).

I’ve done some polish work and integration of various libraries in Yann’s Eagle library repository.
Get it here..
Noteworthy inclusions:
- NAND and SDRAM footprints
- Merging of various MSP430 footprints into the “texas.lbr” library.
- More crystals, including subminature parts (ABM10)
- Cleanup of the Atmel library
- Some TVS components from Tyco and Vishay are included
- Freescale HCS08 footprints for the QB and QK series
Just a small observation for tonight: I am doing a design which fits a bunch of hardware on to a USB key sized formfactor PCB. I’ve already given up on 0603 devices, simply far too big. This image doesn’t even show a third of the parts required! Too bad I can’t put parts on inner layers

Good news everybody!
LLVM, everyone’s favorite next generation compiler architecture, now has a MSP430 backend.
The bad news? It doesn’t really work yet. Its time to dust off my compiler skills and take a prod at it.
More information:
Thread on llvm-devel.
Zed Shaw has posted a well written discussion of why he uses the GPL series of licenses.
I have to say I agree with his reasoning on all counts. I have licensed software under the BSD or MIT series of licenses in the past, but often for small little utilities that I don’t think contain much intellectual worth or don’t represent new concepts or major time investments. Anything “big” comes under the GPL.
This is a good point to discuss the applicability of the Affero GPL license. If you are developing software which will likely never offered or downloaded to a client machine (the “distribution” step in the GPL, which is absent in most web applications and SaaS), but would like to force users to offer the modified source code to your product, this is the license to use. There are very few pieces of software which carry the AGPL license to date, however with the growing trend of cloud computing, it is well worth considering.
The only downside to the AGPL are libraries, which carry the full force of the GPL license. There is no “ALGPL” version, allowing linking of code into other products without bringing the requirements of the GPL with it.
If you’re into DIY electronics, you’ve probably heard of SparkFun before. Their original kits and reseller products, such as the Olimex development boards are a great tool to get up and running fast.
It looks like SparkFun is now hopping on to the Open Source Hardware bandwagon, licensing under the Creative Commons Share-Alike 3.0 License. This is great news! Hopefully more of their products could use this upgrade, and allow people to create derivatives (like fixing the bad analog signal quality on the Logomatic v2).
For reference, their ClockIt kit is now open source. A number of projects come with GPLed microcontroller source code, but not an open source hardware license.
A simple an inexpensive way to emulate HID and standard 125kHz RFID cards by just using a microcontroller, an optional capacitor, and a coil:
http://scanwidget.livejournal.com/32928.html

Quite a cool hack, especially since it can emulate the FSK based HID cards (think building access control).
Check out this OLED keyswitch NKK.
Full color 64×32 display, with a SPI interface, which is much easier to use than previous products (such as the ScreenKeys)
IS15DSBFP4RGB on Mouser
As a statistic for the internet, I would like to report that my Apple Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter works just fine. I purchased it from new stock at an Apple store on April 2nd, and am using it with a 2009 Mac Mini base model (+ putty knife upgraded RAM). The monitor is an NEC LCD3090WQXi, running happily at 2560×1600.
Which brings up two main complaints:
I know this is an active adapter, with a full DisplayPort to DVI protocol converter (and high bandwidth DVI for that matter). But why is it $99? That is 1/6th of the value of a new Mini.
And why does the new Mini still ship with the same gargantuan power brick that the original Mini shipped with? Its nearly 1/3rd the size of the computer! I know Apple has worked hard to miniaturize power adapters – every other adapter is much smaller! Even the Time Capsule has a built-in power supply…