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Bunnie Huang is really nice to work with.

I have been exchanging e-mail with him about having the T processor disable the IMU motion sensor in the U part (indeed, the whole U part) of the system during the time that sensitive keypad input is entered, as a security precaution, in case it is suborned. (The U hardware part is considered untrustworthy.) It looks like it can be done with no hardware changes.

It has clicky metal-dome buttons, so you probably also want to mask clicks by clicking the on-board speaker a lot, then, too. And, randomly fake-doppler-shifting the clicks to mask shifts from accelerations by the body, in case anything untrustworthy is listening.

On top of its actual value as a device and development platform, the whole project is a practical course in principles of security-in-depth.

I am positively in love with the idea of a Pi-like device but in the “ready for your pocket” form factor. And I love the limitations of the hardware.

I want to get a device like this and write some fun little Rust gadgets that uses the internet in some way. But I’m not sure if this device is for me. Is it lower level than that? Do I need to understand FPGA programming?

Are there any similar “ready for your pocket” devices?

The fpga here is already programmed to be an SOC. The skillset would just be embedded programming for a microcontroller with very little memory. Plus all the isolation features of this particular device.

"While the reference FPGA ships with a 32-bit RISC-V CPU running at 100MHz, it can be reconfigured to emulate a wide range of retro-CPUs, from the 6502 to the Z-80..."

https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/precursor

If you don't care about all the security stuff, I think you would enjoy an ESP32 or a Teensy a lot more. Both have some 3rd party guidance on using Rust with them. And both have more memory and better docs.

What I’m looking for is the “ready for pocket” device that has wifi, a screen, and some input like a keyboard. Are there any ESP32 or Teensy kits that yield that kind of thing in a pretty decent, durable result?

Thanks!

You could consider the Keyboard FeatherWing. It contains only the screen and keyboard part. You are meant to add a Feather format board that has a microcontroller and Wi-Fi, for example Adafruit’s ESP32 Feather board.

https://www.tindie.com/products/arturo182/keyboard-featherwi... https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-huzzah32-esp32-feather

Fun to read article from Bunnie.
We changed the URL from https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/precursor/updates... to what looks like the original source.
The blog and crowd supply project are controlled by the same person, so I'd say arguably neither is more original than the other
It's true, but at at site level the author's personal page feels closer to home than a crowdfunding site.