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Nutcracker Challenge: Blob-Free WiFi and BLE
- testawi7676 6y agoimpossible
- Avamander 6y agoWhy do you say that? Blob-free Bluetooth LE for example has been done on other platforms.
- jononor 6y agoOn which platforms? Are you including the firmware runningon the BLE chip, or just what is on the PC CPU?
- pantalaimon 6y agonrf5x and DA1469x - the firmware running on the BLE chip. https://github.com/apache/mynewt-nimble/tree/master/nimble/drivers https://github.com/apache/mynewt-nimble/tree/master/nimble/d... There is no PC here - those are microcontrollers.
- jononor 6y agoGreat! Was not aware that there was an open alternative to the SoftDevice for the Nordic NRF5x. That makes these chips even more attractive than before.
- rasmantov 6y agoThe open alternatives for the Nordic NRF5x are not at the same quality level as the Softdevice: - the idle power consumption is noticeably higher, there are open bugs for more than 1 year about that - They are not validated by the Bluetooth consortium. You're gonna need to get your own certification to claim product supports BLE. If you're building a commercial BLE product - my advice: go with Softdevice.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- teruakohatu 6y agoAs we have seen before, when something is offered for free in exchange for commits, you get a lot of low quality commits. Right now I see three pull requests: one that adds an echo statement to a build script, another that deletes a file they claim is not needed and one that renames a directory and changes some paths in the README.
- riffraff 6y agothose may be low effort, but if are they useful I think it's still a net good, since they would also be easy to review.
- oriesdan 6y agoThis is also very efficient guerrilla marketing. Instead of asking users to tell their friends about your brand, you can make a lottery making them win t-shirts with your logo on it. They will be so happy to have won something they will wear it. In this link's case, if pine64 want to get people excited about that EVB and start hacking with it, it sounds like an efficient strategy. Whatever the real value of the commits are, it's the users who are committed :) At least, in this case, they ask for contributions on a repos they own.
- detaro 6y agoThat's always gonna happen with giveaways, and 1000 meaningful submissions would be expecting a bit much, so it's clearly planned in (it's also a fairly cheap board, so "wasting" a bunch isn't so bad). Still builds hype, and it's their own repo, so they can manage it how they see fit and don't annoy any third-party that isn't benefiting.
- LeonM 6y ago> Right now I see three pull requests: one that adds an echo statement to a build script, another that deletes a file they claim is not needed and one that renames a directory and changes some paths in the README. Sure, some people aim at low hanging fruit. But remember that this challenge was just announced. Actual quality contributions take time. It'll be interesting to check again in a month or so, and see what has been committed.
- 6y ago
- astorgard 6y agoI just downloaded it, and ran `firefox docs/html/index.html`... and everything is in Chinese :P It will require more than I thought to make a non-trivial commit!
- sradman 6y agoBlob-free [1]: > A proprietary device driver is a closed-source device driver published only in binary code. In the context of free and open-source software, a closed-source device driver is referred to as a blob or binary blob. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprietary_device_driver https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprietary_device_driver
- Uehreka 6y agoI always thought Blob stood for Binary Large OBject, so wouldn’t “Binary Blob” be like “PIN Number”?
- alexdw_mgzi 6y agoI think "blob" is being used in this case to refer to a "large undifferentiated mass".
- bityard 6y agoThe article was seeking to describe usage of the word(s), not the origin.
- WGH_ 6y agoSometimes tautology helps understands acronyms faster, without having to reconstruct context.
- older 6y agoBL602 is RISC-V based. There's DT-BL10 development board based on the same chip which sells for $5 on aliexpress already.
- stjo 6y agoIf I want to contribute meaningfully, I need hardware to test on. To get hardware, I must contribute something first. Is there something I'm not getting? Is this a filter to make sure only people that know git will get hardware to start hacking on top of?
- pantalaimon 6y agoThe hardware is just $5 though https://aliexpress.com/item/1005001459376242.html https://aliexpress.com/item/1005001459376242.html
- squarefoot 6y agoAlso available for $3.69 at vvdoit.com which, unlike many Aliexpress vendors, accepts Paypal.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- hlandau 6y agoI'm a bit confused why pine64 has decided the BL602 should be the target of deblobbing efforts. Surely the ESP32 would be a better, more popular and more available target? (Some background: Most western designs of wireless MCU have a user-programmable core and another core handling Wi-Fi running a proprietary blob. Often the flash on the Wi-Fi side of these is inaccessible to the user core and thus deblobbing them would be hard. The ESP8266 and ESP32 are unusual in that the Wi-Fi "blob" is just a proprietary static library (.a file) linked in with your application, so it would be entirely feasible to deblob it. The BL602 seems to be trying to compete with ESP parts, follows a similar design, and thus can also be deblobbed, but is presumably much less available and much less documented.)
- pantalaimon 6y ago> The BL602 seems to be trying to compete with ESP parts, follows a similar design, and thus can also be deblobbed, but is presumably much less available and much less documented. Wasn't the BL602 just released last week? Bouffalo Lab is also a rather new company so trying to gain market share & attention with a more open strategy sounds like a good idea.
- rasz 6y ago? Its their own core, if Bouffalo Lab wants to gain market share & attention they could start by releasing all the sources to begin with.
- punnerud 6y agoI primarily use Bluetooth connection to ESP32. BL602 support Bluetooth 5.0 with longer range, mesh network, lower power consumption ++ For me this makes BL602 a winner, if the SW can catch up.
- baybal2 6y ago> I'm a bit confused why pine64 has decided the BL602 should be the target of deblobbing efforts. Surely the ESP32 would be a better, more popular and more available target? Because RISC-V
- 6y ago
- Reventlov 6y agoNot really worth it to be honest, as the BL602 is 2.4GHz only (it's aimed at IOT after all), and only b/g/n (no ac, let's not even talk about ax). I don't get why Pine64 would look at this, and not let's say mt76 based devices… MT76 firmwares are pretty small (of the order of 100kB), while Intel Iwlwifi firmwares are like 1MB, and ath10k-ct is like 200kB big, so it means reversing MT76 firmware is probably a bit easier. Oh, yeah, it's probably not RISCV so no hype. Good luck to them anyway, more "open" firmware, the better.
- Avamander 6y ago> I don't get why Pine64 would look at this, and not let's say mt76 based devices… There isn't a blob-free WiFi/BLE IoT chipset. It would be appealing for many. > Oh, yeah, it's probably not RISCV so no hype. It is though?
- pantalaimon 6y agomt76 is an application processor (running Linux) whereas BL602 is a microcontroller (running the RTOS of your choice). Entirely different categories in both electrical and compute power.
- monocasa 6y agoThere's a lot of mt76 chips. Some are application processors with MIPS cores, some are dedicated wireless chips with just a Cortex R4 and a Cortex M4. Their marketing/product folk really aren't doing them any favors.
- swiley 6y agoIMO 2.4GHz is fine, even in the crowded high rise I live in. If I really need high speed for something I just use Ethernet.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Dahoon 6y agoHow ironic when a website for a privacy niche product uses browser canvas fingerprinting.
- heyoni 6y agoAny good extensions out there yet for blocking these or are you checking manually?
- squarefoot 6y agoCanvasblocker for Firefox seems to do its job.
- rasz 6y agoIs it canvas fingerprinting or just trying to determine if emojis are properly rendered(toDataURL calls)? that part seems to be default WordPress emoji Javascript
- Avamander 6y agoInteresting update: https://github.com/bouffalolab/bl_iot_sdk/issues/1#issuecomment-717996607 https://github.com/bouffalolab/bl_iot_sdk/issues/1#issuecomm... The vendor plans on releasing a low-level radio API.
- megous 6y agoAnd it's gonna be more open than it is now: :) https://github.com/bouffalolab/bl_iot_sdk/issues/1#issuecomment-717996607 https://github.com/bouffalolab/bl_iot_sdk/issues/1#issuecomm...