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Precursor – A mobile, open source electronics platform
Precursor (pre·cur·sor | \ pri-ˈkər-sər): 1. one that precedes or gives rise to; a predecessor; harbinger 2. a pocketable open development board
bunnie's blog
Another contribution from FETguy and Renew Computers ! I found this board to be interesting mainly because I always wondered how these things worked . The construction reveals a trick which ended up as a surprise, at least to me!
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Visit bunniestudios.com → RSS feedOn Hacker News Dec 2012 – Mar 2026
Hardware & Electronics 26Tech Industry & Business 12Society, Policy & Culture 7Security & Privacy 7Open Source 7Life, Learning & Writing 6
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On Liberating My Smartwatch from Cloud Services
I’ve often said that if we convince ourselves that technology is magic, we risk becoming hostages to it . Just recently, I had a brush with this fate, but happily, I was saved by open source.
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The New Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzhen
Some might remember a book I released in 2016, “The Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzhen”. A lot has changed in the world since then, and Shenzhen is no exception.
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On Hacking MicroSD Cards
Today at the Chaos Computer Congress ( 30C3 ), xobs and I disclosed a finding that some SD cards contain vulnerabilities that allow arbitrary code execution — on the memory card itself. On the dark side, code execution on the memory card enables a class of MITM (man-in-the-middle) attacks, where the card seems to be…
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Update on Novena Open Laptop
Back in December, I posted that we’re building an open laptop . The post generated hundreds of comments, and I was surprised there was so much interest.
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Building my Own Laptop
We are building an open laptop, with some wacky features in it for hackers like me.
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Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop
We’re launching a crowdfunding campaign around our Novena open hardware computing platform. Originally, this started as a hobby project to build a computer just for me and xobs – something that we would use every day, easy to extend and to mod, our very own Swiss Army knife. I’ve posted here a couple of times about…
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I Broke My Phone’s Screen, and It Was Awesome
So this past week has been quite a whirlwind — we wrapped up the Novena campaign and smashed all our stretch goals, concluding with over $700k raised , and I got my hair cut in a bar at midnight by none other than the skilled hands of Lenore of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories ( I blame Jake ! :). It was an…
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What is a System-on-Chip (SoC), and why do we care if they are open source?
Note: This post originally appeared as an update in the crowdfunding campaign for Precursor.
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Open Hardware on Its Own Doesn’t Solve the Trust Problem
A few years ago, Sean ‘xobs’ Cross and I built an open-source laptop, Novena, from the circuit boards up, and shared our designs with the world. I’m a strong proponent of open hardware, because sharing knowledge is sharing power. One thing we didn’t anticipate was how much the press wanted to frame our open hardware…
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Fixing a Tiny Corner of the Supply Chain
No product gets built without at least one good supply chain war story – especially true in these strange times. Before we get into the details of the story, I feel it’s worth understanding a bit more about the part that caused me so much trouble: what it does, and why it’s so special.
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Building a Curve25519 Hardware Accelerator
Note: this post uses a $\LaTeX$ plugin to render math symbols. It may require a desktop browser for the full experience…
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Towards a More Open Secure Element Chip
“ Secure Element ” (SE) chips have traditionally taken a very closed-source, NDA-heavy approach. Thus, it piqued my interest when an early-stage SE chip startup, Cramium (still in stealth mode), approached me to advise on open source strategy. This blog post explains my reasoning for agreeing to advise Cramium, and…
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Regarding Proposed US Restrictions on RISC-V
A bipartisan group of 18 lawmakers in the US Congress have recently amplified a request to the White House and the Secretary of Commerce to place restrictions on Americans working with RISC-V (see also the initial request from the Senate ) in order to prevent China from gaining dominance in CPU technology.
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From Gongkai to Open Source
About a year and a half ago, I wrote about a $12 “Gongkai” cell phone (pictured above) that I stumbled across in the markets of Shenzhen, China. My most striking impression was that Chinese entrepreneurs had relatively unfettered access to cutting-edge technology, enabling start-ups to innovate while bootstrapping…
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Wired Documentary on Shenzhen
This shoot was a lot of fun, and it was a great pleasure working with Posy and Jim. I think their talent as producer and director really show through. They also did a great job editing my off-the-cuff narratives. The spot in the video where I’m pointing out Samsung parts isn’t matched to the b-roll of Apple parts, but…
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The $12 Gongkai Phone
Recently, I paid $ 12 at Mingtong Digital Mall for a complete phone, featuring quad-band GSM, Bluetooth, MP3 playback, and an OLED display plus keypad for the UI. Simple, but functional; nothing compared to a smartphone, but useful if you’re going out and worried about getting your primary phone wet or stolen.
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BIO: The Bao I/O Coprocessor
BIO is the I/O co-processor in the Baochip-1x, a mostly open source 22nm SoC I helped design. You can read more about the Baochip-1x’s background here , or pick up an evaluation board at Crowd Supply .
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Help Make “The Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzhen” a Reality
Readers of my blog know I’ve been going to Shenzhen for some time now. I’ve taken my past decade of experience and created a tool, in the form of a book, that can help makers, hackers, and entrepreneurs unlock the potential of the electronics markets in Shenzhen. I’m looking for your help to enable a print run of this…
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Formlabs Form 4 Teardown
Formlabs has recently launched the fourth edition of their flagship SLA printer line, the Form 4 . Of course, I jumped on the chance to do a teardown of the printer; I’m grateful that I was able to do the same for the Form 1 , Form 2 , and Form 3 generations. In addition to learning a lot from the process of tearing…
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Precursor’s Custom PCBs
While the last few updates about Precursor have focused on evidence-based trust and security, this update is more about the process of making Precursor itself. There is an essential link between evidence-based trust and understanding the manufacturing process: to convince yourself that something has been constructed…
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A Tale of Two Zippers
Recently, Akiba took me to visit his friend’s zipper factory. I love visiting factories: no matter how simple the product, I learn something new.
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Infra-Red, in Situ (Iris) Inspection of Silicon
Cryptography tells us how to make a chain of trust rooted in special-purpose chips known as secure elements. But how do we come to trust our secure elements? I have been searching for solutions to this thorny supply chain problem . Ideally, one can directly inspect the construction of a chip, but any viable inspection…
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The Factory Floor, Part 1 of 4: The Quotation (or, How to Make a BOM)
This month, I will be teaching a few MIT Media Lab graduate students and doing a bit of a “geek tour” of Shenzhen – we will visit several factories and live among the electronic markets to facilitate new directions and expand horizons in the students’ hardware-oriented research projects.
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MicroSD card FAQ
A while back I wrote an analysis of fake microSD cards. As a result of the post, I’ve received this question regularly via email:
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On MicroSD card problems (2010)
The microSD ware for January 2010 was not an incidental post. It is actually snapshot of a much longer forensic investigation to find the ground truth behind some irregular Kingston memory cards.