Project Log: Pixelblaze Christmas Lights

Nathan Jones — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 17:17:09 +0000

Contents

Introduction
What's Pixelblaze?
The general idea
The parts arrive! Along with my first problems...
Now, how to weatherproof it?
And the hanging part?
Okay, but how does it look?
Closing thoughts

Introduction

It was a festive time of year! The merriest of times!

Also, my wife likes holiday decorations...

Breaking AES with an Oscilloscope

Nathan Jones — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 22:19:00 +0000

Contents

Introduction
Like a screen door on a submarine
What's "differential power analysis" (DPA)?
A brief overview of AES encryption
Conducting a DPA attack
Setting up the attack
Conducting the attack
Defending against a DPA attack
Conclusion
The Teardown Conference Call for Proposals is Open for Another Week!

Nathan Jones — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 02:05:23 +0000

Hey, friends! A fun conference is coming up in Portland, OR, USA, at the end of June: Teardown! Sponsored by CrowdSupply, Teardown is a laid-back conference with lots of fun things to learn and do. Previous talks or workshops include
- Open Sourcing the Secrets of Oscilloscope Design
- Pay it Forward
  
  Nathan Jones — Mon, 02 Dec 2024 01:00:33 +0000
  
  Let me ask you a question: what experience got you most excited to enter the field you're in now? What got you excited about coding or electronics? For me, I have vivid memories of playing with all kinds of science kits as a young kid: chemistry sets, rock tumblers, and probably six different crystal radios. And it was the electronics that grabbed my attention the most. I remember being in awe...
  
  Simulating Your Embedded Project on Your Computer (Part 2)
  
  Nathan Jones — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 13:23:50 +0000
  Contents
  
  Introduction
  
  Virtual Hardware
  
  Does the simulator support your microcontroller and/or the external components that you use in your system?
  
  The "Main Major" Pattern
  
  How easy is the simulator to learn and use?
  
  How easy is it to incorporate building and running the simulation with your current build...
  
  Simulating Your Embedded Project on Your Computer (Part 1)
  
  Nathan Jones — Thu, 03 Oct 2024 02:45:20 +0000
  Contents
  
  Introduction
  
  The benefits of simulation
  
  First, isolate the madness
  
  The simplest option: printf/scanf
  
  Making scanf/getchar non-blocking
  
  A Note About Race Conditions
  
  Making printf prettier
  
  What can I do with printf/scanf?
  
  Summary
  
  What I Learned From Crashing and Burning in Grad School
  
  Nathan Jones — Wed, 04 Sep 2024 15:30:14 +0000
  
  In the fall of 2018 I began a graduate program at North Carolina State University that would eventually earn me a Master's degree in Computer Engineering. I was still serving in the US Army at the time, having been selected to go to West Point Military Academy after my graduate program to teach Cadets there in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department. I was excited and...
  
  Write Better Code with Block Diagrams and Flowcharts
  
  Nathan Jones — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 18:33:15 +0000
  Contents
  
  Introduction
  
  Software block diagrams
  
  What is it?
  
  How do I draw one?
  
  Implementing a block diagram in code
  
  Ready for a small challenge?
  
  Flowcharts
  
  What is it?
  
  How do I draw one?
  
  Implementing a flowchart in...
  
  You Don't Need an RTOS (Part 4)
  
  Nathan Jones — Tue, 02 Jul 2024 12:54:21 +0000
  
  At least, probably not as often as you think you do. Using a preemptive RTOS can help make a system schedulable (i.e. help all of its tasks meet their deadlines) but it comes at a cost: "concurrently" running tasks can interact in unforeseen ways that cause system failures, that dreaded class of errors known as "race conditions". In part, this is because humans have difficulty thinking...
  
  You Don't Need an RTOS (Part 3)
  
  Nathan Jones — Mon, 03 Jun 2024 17:05:04 +0000
  
  At least, probably not as often as you think you do. Using a preemptive RTOS can help make a system schedulable (i.e. help all of its tasks meet their deadlines) but it comes at a cost: "concurrently" running tasks can interact in unforeseen ways that cause system failures, that dreaded class of errors known as "race conditions". In part, this is because humans have difficulty thinking...
  
  You Don't Need an RTOS (Part 2)
  
  Nathan Jones — Wed, 08 May 2024 00:37:44 +0000
  
  At least, probably not as often as you think you do. Using a preemptive RTOS can help make a system schedulable (i.e. help all of its tasks meet their deadlines) but it comes at a cost: "concurrently" running tasks can interact in unforeseen ways that cause system failures, that dreaded class of errors known as "race conditions". In part, this is because humans have difficulty thinking...
  
  You Don't Need an RTOS (Part 1)
  
  Nathan Jones — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 12:46:33 +0000
  
  At least, probably not as often as you think you do. Using a preemptive RTOS ("real-time operating system") can help make a system schedulable (i.e. help all of its tasks meet their deadlines) but it comes at a cost: "concurrently" running tasks can interact in unforeseen ways that cause system failures, that dreaded class of errors known as "race conditions". In part, this is because...
  
  Make Your Own MCU Boards (2023 Teardown Conference)
  
  Nathan Jones — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 20:22:39 +0000
  
  I just realized (probably very belatedly) that all (most?) of the talks from last year's Teardown Conference in Portland, Oregon, are now freely available online! This includes a talk I gave about designing your own breakout board or development board for a microcontroller, which is embedded below. Enjoy!
  References:
  
  Presentation...
  
  Embedded Systems Roadmaps
  
  Nathan Jones — Thu, 09 Nov 2023 16:37:07 +0000
  Introduction
  What does it mean to be an "embedded systems engineer"? What skills would it be beneficial for you to develop if you want to be a successful one? Whether you've only just finished your first Arduino project or you've been building embedded systems for decades, we could all benefit from periodically assessing our skills against a baseline and identifying new skills that we can...
  
  What does it mean to be 'Turing complete'?
  
  Nathan Jones — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 16:42:40 +0000
  Introduction
  It's possible that you've heard the term "Turing complete" before, probably in reference to a computer or a programming language. Certain programming languages are or are not "Turing complete" and occassionally odd stuff, like Conway's Game of Life, is called "Turing complete". But what, exactly, does this term mean and why is it important in the realm of computer science? To...

Nathan Jones Blog on EmbeddedRelated.com

Project Log: Pixelblaze Christmas Lights

Breaking AES with an Oscilloscope

The Teardown Conference Call for Proposals is Open for Another Week!

Pay it Forward

Simulating Your Embedded Project on Your Computer (Part 2)

Simulating Your Embedded Project on Your Computer (Part 1)

What I Learned From Crashing and Burning in Grad School

Write Better Code with Block Diagrams and Flowcharts

You Don't Need an RTOS (Part 4)

You Don't Need an RTOS (Part 3)

You Don't Need an RTOS (Part 2)

You Don't Need an RTOS (Part 1)

Make Your Own MCU Boards (2023 Teardown Conference)

Embedded Systems Roadmaps

What does it mean to be 'Turing complete'?