Item — HN Reader

To be honest, without the sponsorship from PCBWay I would probably have stopped making videos on my channel.

It’s not a lot of money - but there is an informal commitment that I will try and produce a video a month. It’s also very on brand for my content - hobby electronics with a focus on embedded (ESP32 range of microcontrollers).

I think the videos are entertaining and educational. Actual viewer numbers fluctuate wildly and despite over 50K subscribers - a “successful” video for my channel is around 3000 views (channel is in my profile).

I still find it amazing that I can get PCBs manufactured at such an affordable price. Even SMD assembly is reasonably priced. Short production runs are more than doable at the amateur level.

4 comments

I learned circuit design and went from not knowing what a ground plane was to having an 8 layer board working in three years.

https://GitHub.com/oro-os/link

It probably wouldn't hold up super well to professional scrutiny but everything on it works.

I would not have been able to do it without companies like JLC. It made an entire industry approachable, which is old fashioned 'good business' IMO.

I absolutely love your project and I hope it will become a breakout success. It has all the right components for a computing environment that is not controlled.

Have you thought about RISC-V implementations of the kernel as well (iirc you're on ARM and on x64)?

Thank you! I'm working on a refactor of the kernel now that has all three, yes :)

Oh, it only gets better. Thank you so much. If you ever get to the point where you have something ready to order please drop me a line (mail in profile) and I'll buy one set to evaluate and if it works well I will get some more people on it.

Can you talk more about the design of the board?

Also, what's that large five pin connector in the bottom left for?

The board is part of the CI pipeline for the OS. The kernel is built in the normal CI pipeline, unit tested, etc. then platform-specific images are built.

Those are picked up by GitHub CI runners (could be anything but I'm using GH for now) that pull those image artifacts and send them over the internet to the board, which stores them on the microSD slot.

Then the board will boot the device-under-test (either by enabling a USB VBUS line, asserting PS_ON and pressing the power button, whatever the device needs) and will serve the image either a via USB mass device or by switching on access to the microSD card directly via a ribbon connector/custom microSD PCB and ribbon cable.

The kernel then communicates over serial back to the Link, which proxies that back up to the CI runner for evaluating test runs, etc.

Everything is configured using MQTT and mDNS. Using async Rust via Embassy for the firmware.

5-pin on the bottom left is for power - 5V 2A 'always on' supply (on the ATX24 adapters that's the 5vsb line), 5V 3A aux line (for VBUS, optional and not otherwise used to power the board itself), a sense line for the aux power (board will shut down and display an error on over-current of the main line if not sensed), active-low aux line enable signal (PS_ON for ATX24 sources), and ground.

This means that it's used to cut power on x86 machines, or to use a stock desktop PSU even for arm/riscv dev boards. In the future I want to make this all rack mounted and have a dedicated power supply for multiples of these.

Interesting thought. PCBWay and JLCPCB sponsoring channels to show use-cases of their capability, thus growing their market.

Would be similar to the distributer/producer of a food item sponsoring channels to use their ingredient in recipes.

Makes a lot of sense.

Long time fan of atomic14, thanks for all your videos!

It's interesting perspective and I'm happy to hear it works well for you.

Are you willing to say how much they pay you?

I watch all your videos by the way. By the PCB Way!

I can’t really say, but it’s honestly not very much.