Inside the Portobello Police Station clock tower, a Victorian-style gear train works alongside an early-2000s microcontroller, relays, and switches. This beginner-friendly tour explains how the clock was set, how the chime counts strikes, and why the controller can run a bell without containing a clock.
Cobalt is an open-source platform that lets compatible Kobo e-readers run signed apps. After a one-time USB setup, apps install/update/remove over Wi‑Fi, while a capability-based runtime keeps each app in its own unprivileged, permission-clamped sandbox.
RISC-V is an open standard ISA with modular extensions, and ecosystems like Zephyr already provide RISC-V toolchain support—making “can we build it?” a realistic question for embedded teams.
gpiozero’s source/values model treats GPIO devices as value stream producers and consumers, where `.source` wires an output to an iterator of changing values. gpiozero-flow turns those same relationships into a drag-and-drop canvas, then uses a WebSocket agent to rewire live gpiozero devices and stream real hardware state back.
Designing with ultra-compact MCUs shifts the engineering focus to power integrity, routing discipline, and event-driven firmware. This guide shows practical strategies for tiny footprints—decoupling, pin multiplexing, sleep/wake architecture, and layout checks.