Recent content on BogdanTheGeek's Blog
Background Continuing my work with arm debugging on free microcontrollers recovered from disposable vapes, I felt like using a $5 raspberry pi pico to program and debug these micros was a bit too extravagant, too bourgeoisie. A working man’s microcontroller deserves a blue collar debugger to match. I have been using the 10¢ ch32v003 RISC-V microcontroller for a few years now and I though it…
TLDR; You can find the project repository here. What? How? Why? A few Christmases ago, I was browsing the source code for the esp-idf heap allocator1 and thought: This is quite interesting, I should write my own allocator After a bit of looking around, I discovered that general purpose heap allocators are one of those problems that has no perfect solution (which is the kind of problem I really…
Preface This article is NOT served from a web server running on a disposable vape. If you want to see the real deal, click here. The content is otherwise identical. Background For a couple of years now, I have been collecting disposable vapes from friends and family. Initially, I only salvaged the batteries for “future” projects (It’s not hoarding, I promise), but recently,…
Why Bother? So, why would anyone bother making PCBs at home? The truth is that not many people do any more. In the year 2025, we have the ability to order high quality PCBs form China for next to nothing. If you just want a high quality board and you don’t mind waiting a week or two, these are a great option. I however, don’t like to wait. I want a PCB in my hands the same day I finish…
TLDR; You can use semihosting on any ARM CPU to send and receive data in a few lines of code. Click here to see an example implementation on a 10p “disposable” microcontroller. Context There are many ways to debug embedded projects. For high speed stuff, you might toggle a pin at the beginning and end of a subroutine. On a more advanced project, you might have structured logging to a…
TLDR; You can find the project repository here. Motivation I recently took up pottery as my new favourite hobby and I needed a better way to control the firing of my pots. For my first few pots, I just re-purposed my very cheap metal casting forge. I built this out of eight 1" thick fire bricks, some fire cement, an electric stove top “burner” and a cheap PID controller. The cheap PID…
The Collector I describe myself as a hobby collector. They mostly centre around making things, I have always been interested how things are made. How it All Began The first book I ever read was an science book. I learned English watching “Mythbusters” and “How it’s made” the Discovery channel. I have almost set fire to the house on many occasions as a young child.…
$(whoami) Bogdan Ionescu Embedded Engineer most of the time. Origami artist some of the time. Machinist on call. Hobby collector. More Instagram GitHub