Cynthion Has Passed EMC and Tycho Has Shipped to Our Manufacturer
The title says it all! Cynthion has passed EMC testing which means it is ready for manufacturing and Tycho, our Cynthion-testing quality assurance rig, has been shipped to our manufacturer. Read the full update.
Cynthion Design Work Completed
We are happy to say that early this month we completed the design work for Cynthion! This milestone is the culmination of yet another three months' worth of work. Since our October update we have: Read the full update.
Improvements to Cynthion Hardware
Since our last hardware design update in April, we have been hard at work refining the Cynthion design in preparation for production. Believe it or not, we’ve completed and tested six design revisions since r0.6 described in April! Read the full update.
Moondancer: A Facedancer backend for Cynthion
One of the core features promised in the Cynthion announcement is the ability to create your own Low-, Full- or High- speed USB devices using the Facedancer library – even if you don’t have experience with digital-hardware design, HDL or FPGA architecture. If you’ve been eagerly anticipating this feature, we’re pleased to introduce Moondancer, a new Facedancer backend for Cynthion. Read the full update.
Cynthion Delivery Timeline Update
Hello, campaign backers and other supporters of Cynthion and Great Scott Gadgets! In this update, we hoped to tell you that manufacturing was in progress and that we were getting close to delivering the first Cynthions to you. Unfortunately, we have encountered more delays while getting the hardware ready to go to manufacturing. Read the full update.
Updated Cynthion Enclosure
About a year ago, we announced an FPGA substitution on the Cynthion project due to supply chain issues. Since then, the Great Scott Gadgets team has redesigned and enlarged the Cynthion board to accommodate the larger FPGA, and Timon has adapted the enclosure to fit the larger board. Read the full update.
Cynthion Hardware Design Update
We've completed the Cynthion r0.6 design! As mentioned in previous updates, we needed to modify the design to accommodate new components due to supply chain issues. In this revision additional changes were made to resolve some problems beta testers identified with both power input and power output. Read the full update.
Packetry: Building a High Performance Protocol Analysis Tool
In a previous update, we introduced our work on Packetry, our new front-end software for using Cynthion to capture and analyze USB traffic on the wire. In this update, we're going to talk a bit more about the design of that software and explain some of the work we're doing to make it as fast and easy to use as possible. Read the full update.
Renaming LUNA Hardware to Cynthion
Until now, the name LUNA has referred both to our USB multitool hardware platform and to the USB gateware framework that supports it. From now on, we want these projects to have separate names. We’ve decided to name the hardware platform Cynthion. The gateware framework will continue to be called LUNA. Read the full update.
LUNA Revision 0.5
We are happy to say that hardware revision 0.5 for LUNA has been completed and that revision 0.6 is well under way! Read the full update.
New Delivery Date
With almost every project, delays tend to happen. LUNA is no different. In good news, we have received all of the components needed for LUNA. In not-so-good news, we have not been as lucky in gathering components for the other products at Great Scott Gadgets. Read the full update.
Packetry Preview
Due to the delays caused by the chip shortage, there’s not been a lot to report on the LUNA hardware front recently – but behind the scenes, we’ve been hard at work on the software stack which will accompany it. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be making some more updates about that work. Read the full update.
FPGA Substitution
Global supply chain issues continue to be difficult to traverse, but once in a while we do get a little bit lucky! In a previous update we mentioned that Lattice had pushed out the lead time on our FPGAs for LUNA from 30 weeks to 60 weeks. Well, the expected delivery date for those FPGAs got pushed out again. Thankfully, we were able to purchase another ECP5 part for the first batch of LUNAs from an authorized Lattice distributor in a 381-ball package rather than a 256-ball package. Read the full update.
HyperRAM controller for USB analysis
One of LUNA's core features is the ability to perform protocol analysis of USB 2.0 low-speed, full-speed, and high-speed. For most target devices, LUNA can endlessly stream the capture directly to a host PC over its own high-speed port. However, for high-bandwidth target devices that can't be streamed in real-time, LUNA has 8 MiB of memory on board to buffer captured data before sending it upstream. Read the full update.
LUNA Now Uses Amaranth HDL
Over the next while we will be updating the LUNA project to use “Amaranth HDL”, which is the new name whitequark and other maintainers have chosen for their project. Amaranth is the hardware description language used in LUNA. Read the full update.
LUNA delayed
LUNA is delayed. All of us at Great Scott Gadgets are sad to have to give this news, but the global chip shortage and supply chain chaos has impacted our LUNA manufacturing and delivery timeline more deeply than anticipated. Unfortunately, LUNA is now expected to start shipping December 2022 because the lead time for the ECP5 FPGA chip we use on LUNA doubled between July and September. There isn’t a suitable substitute component for the ECP5, so our timeline depends on Lattice’s production schedule for this chip. Please know that getting LUNA into your hands as soon as possible is our highest priority, and has been since before the Crowd Supply campaign was launched. Read the full update.
Pmod Host Ports Added to Encased LUNAs
In our last update we asked you all for feedback about whether populating the optional Pmod host ports would be a welcome addition to LUNA, and whether they should be added to bare board LUNAs, encased LUNAs, or both. We got many comments through our Discord, direct messages, email, and GitHub. The feedback was overwhelmingly in favour of adding Pmod host ports to encased LUNAs only, so we are going ahead with that change! Read the full update.
Enclosure Details & Contest Winner
It is almost the end of the LUNA Crowd Supply campaign! Thank you so much for coming on this journey with all of us at Great Scott Gadgets by backing LUNA, reading these updates, attending our AMA, joining our Discord server, and asking questions. These last few hours are your final chance to purchase a LUNA board, or a LUNA in a case, before prices go up after the campaign. This update also includes details about our enclosure! Read the full update.
AMA Update
On August 18th at 1300h PDT we will be having an AMA on the Crowd Supply Discord server! We invite you to come hang out with Michael Ossmann, Mike Walters, and straithe as they answer questions you may have about the LUNA project. Click through to the full update for your Discord invite link. Read the full update.
The History of LUNA
Ten years ago this summer I quit my day job at a radio research lab and made Great Scott Gadgets (GSG) my full-time job. I dedicated myself and the company to our mission: to put open source tools into the hands of innovative people. Read on for the rest of the story and for a brief time line that shows how LUNA came to be. Read the full update.
Open Source Moon Music!
What is open source moon music? Read on to learn the story of our video soundtrack. Read the full update.
Q&A session on LUNA hardware connectivity
Michael Ossmann from Great Scott Gadgets answers all your questions about LUNA's hardware connectivity and compatibility. Read the full update.
A look at current progress on LUNA's case. And a contest!
Here's a peek at our current progress on the aluminum case for LUNA, and how we got here. Plus, a design contest for a custom etched case. Read the full update.
Our Campaign Is Live!
Every time USB hacking comes up, there's always someone who's convinced the conversation is about to veer into the deepest of dark magics. At GSG, we've always found USB to be much more inaccessible than it is complicated. USB feels like something every engineer, hacker, and maker would be able to have fun with – if only the tools weren't so expensive and limited! Finally, while teaching a class on USB, we decided to do something about it. The inspiration and sketches that followed became LUNA, a USB multi-tool designed to be ultra-cheap and way more capable than anything else out there. After nearly two years of development, we're thrilled to be launching this campaign. With your help, we'll put LUNA into the hands of innovative people everywhere! Read the full update.