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The Hardware Hacker: Bunnie Huang's Tour-De-force
- j_s 10y agoNon-affiliate link to the pre-order for Bunnie's new book: https://amzn.com/dp/159327758X https://amzn.com/dp/159327758X OP is ~450 word announcment summarizing each half of the new book - if you're interested (hardware manufactring and hacking), you'll already know it and can skip the ads.
- justin66 10y agoThank God for that. I was worried Boing Boing might earn five cents when I clicked on that Amazon link.
- j_s 10y agoThanks for your feedback! Amazon Affiliates get credit for purchases for up to 24 hours, including "an aggregate view of what people bought and in what quantities" (as of 5 years ago, but I believe this is still the case). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4157107 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4157107 I personally believe that added value is worth rewarding but this particular blurb didn't add much. @deutronium provided more value by linking to the actual publisher's early-access e-book page elsewhere in the thread, but that wouldn't make Cory/BoingBoing any money. Either way, I appreciate being made aware of the book's impending existence!
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- endgame 10y agoIt's published by nostarch, so if you get it from them directly you can get a DRM-free ebook: https://www.nostarch.com/hardwarehacker https://www.nostarch.com/hardwarehacker
- toomuchtodo 10y agoThere is also a coupon code on that page to get 30% off. Total cost for the ebook and the dead tree copy is $20 + shipping. A steal for Bunnie's usual high quality work!
- jaymcnuggets 10y agoExcited to give this a read - he's also got a good reference book for non-native Mandarin speakers on navigating the Shenzhen markets[1] Just bought mine from the publisher as an ebook + hardcover package for about $10 more than Amazon price for just the book, includes early access with code EARLYBIRD: https://www.nostarch.com/hardwarehacker https://www.nostarch.com/hardwarehacker [1] https://www.adafruit.com/product/3189 https://www.adafruit.com/product/3189
- danial 10y agoI bought a copy too. I was a little disappointed that the early access ebook has the last few chapters missing. https://www.dropbox.com/s/cjoxjb1pk1lmo5b/Hardware%20hacking%20early%20access%20PDF.png https://www.dropbox.com/s/cjoxjb1pk1lmo5b/Hardware%20hacking...
- beh 10y agoIf you haven't had the chance to read one of Bunnie's hardware teardowns, you're missing out. His teardown of the Form 2 3D printer (https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4641 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4641) is a great example of his work.
- Animats 10y agoThat's a nice description of the Form 2 3D printer. You don't see that grade of engineering from most startups. That Formlabs makes their own mirror galvanometers is impressive, but probably necessary. The off the shelf units are either low-precision ones for light shows, or small-volume scientific instrument components.
- joatmon-snoo 10y agoCan confirm the necessity, having interned there. COTS galvos at that price weren't good enough.
- agumonkey 10y agoHis SoC ISA reverse engineering through FPGA MitM made me smile a lot.
- zcarter 10y agoProminently featured in a recent documentary on manufacturing in Shenzhen. Recommended: http://www.wired.co.uk/video/shenzhen-full-documentary http://www.wired.co.uk/video/shenzhen-full-documentary
- joatmon-snoo 10y agoI watched that docu before realizing who he was, and man, they could not have chosen a more appropriate person to narrate it. His work is absolutely amazing.
- reubenmorais 10y agoI second the recommendation. The documentary talks in detail about the differing views on intellectual property between Western countries and China that is mentioned in the article.
- eltoozero 10y agoBunnie is also responsible in no minor way for both Chumby[1], and the Novena[2] open laptop. Met him briefly at Maker Faire and I made sure to thank him for all his excellent work. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chumby https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chumby [2]: https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/novena https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/novena
- andrewguenther 10y agoI really loved the idea of Chumby. Would have killed it if it had come out more recently as an IoT device.
- abetusk 10y agoNot likely. They centered the platform heavily around Flash so that it was difficult to do any development or hacking on it.
- andrewguenther 10y agoI meant more as a concept, I agree that Flash was a large detriment to its success.
- georgemcbay 10y agoIt was quite easy to do non-Flash development and hacking on the chumby if you wanted to, though admittedly there would then be no "market" for the app (not that Chumby really had any kind of market at all, you could upload community apps but there was no ability to sell them). The chumby was basically just a small, touchscreen ARM based Linux system, before the raspberry pi made that cool (and super cheap). I've hacked on them quite extensively professionally (I was a chumby employee) and personally in Flash/haxe/C/Python and even golang, and lots of others outside the company did as well. One of my favorite bits of work at chumby was helping NPR Labs (their director at the time, Rich Rarey, was a chumby fan) with this project: http://www.npr.org/sections/npr-extra/2013/05/28/177751307/breaking-the-sound-barrier-npr-labs-brings-radio-to-hearing-impaired http://www.npr.org/sections/npr-extra/2013/05/28/177751307/b... The prototype for this was the bigger 8" chumby (the Best Buy branded one at the time), hooked to a braille reader. I wrote drivers for the braille reader and an ActionScript player extension (I've seen the source code to the Flash player and lived to tell the tale!) so they could interact with it from ActionScript code. You can see a photo of the older chumby-based version here: https://sites.duke.edu/nab2012/2012/05/03/npr-demonstrates-technology-to-make-radio-more-accessible/ https://sites.duke.edu/nab2012/2012/05/03/npr-demonstrates-t... However, I'm also pretty skeptical that chumby re-imagined (without a serious shift in how it was targeted) would be successful if released today. The chumby (basically an Internet-connected alarm clock and radio and by the way, some random apps) made a lot of sense prior to the iPhone/Android revolution in smartphones, but not so much after that.
- anjneymidha 10y agoIn addition to this and the Wired doc, I'd recommend the keyboard.io blog post from October for those who haven't been to Shenzhen yet, but are in the 'deciding' stage: https://shift.newco.co/what-50-buys-you-at-huaqiangbei-the-worlds-most-fascinating-electronics-market-f0384d9fca32#.vsst8sjtu https://shift.newco.co/what-50-buys-you-at-huaqiangbei-the-w...
- tjmaglio 10y agoand to these, I would add a talk that he gave at FOSS Asia earlier this year about a hardware devicde made for Burning Man: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNtQsyysaGk&t=5s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNtQsyysaGk&t=5s The amount of thought put into the design and implementation is remarkable and inspiring.
- kasbah 10y agoI believe this book is a print edition of a selection of blog posts that have appeared on http://www.bunniestudios.com/ http://www.bunniestudios.com/.
- billpollock 10y agoIt's based on bunnie's blog but one of our editors poured her heart and soul into this. She's a EE with incredible passion. In other words, this isn't just a print out of his blog. It's a real book.
- kasbah 10y agoThanks, good to know.
- deutronium 10y agoThere's a table of contents of the book at: https://www.nostarch.com/hardwarehacker https://www.nostarch.com/hardwarehacker I'm really looking forward to getting my copy :)
- j_s 10y agoThanks for linking to a place that actually has the (early access) e-book available right now rather than real soon now.