Quozl's Open Source

Embedded.fm on Telescope

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Quozl was interviewed on embedded.fm about working at a telescope:

518: Nothing We Can Do About Frogs,

Errata:

400 fibres is actually 200 targets per plate,
satellite solar panel glinting is in the south east before dawn,
OpenVMS was used in other roles, not the telescope control system,

Fluke PTi120 Calibrating

Tue, 22 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Quozl found his Fluke PTi120 thermal imager would pause to calibrate every few seconds. Often this got in the way of measurements.

A fix was to use adb shell to set boolean auto_shutter_switch to false in the file /data/data/com.guide.pocket.main.pocketmeasure/shared_prefs/com_guide_pocketmeasure_expert_settings.xml, if necessary by adding it, and then rebooting.

However, measurements after a while are affected by temperature changes and another recalibration will be needed; by rebooting as there's no user interface for the feature.

C Forth for PlatformIO

Sat, 19 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Quozl brought up C Forth on PlatformIO for these target boards;

Raspberry Pi Pico RP2040,
Adafruit Feather M0,
Teensy 3.1, 3.2, 3.5, 3.6, and 4.0,
Espressif ESP32.

C Forth is a Forth language environment optimised for embedded use in semi-constrained systems such as System-on-Chip processors.

See Mitch Bradley's C Forth repository on GitHub.

IP over serial on Raspberry Pi

Sun, 25 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

How to set up IP over 3.3V serial between a Raspberry Pi and a host computer running Linux.

Prepare the host computer;

install the ppp package
```
sudo apt install --yes ppp
```
attach a USB to 3.3V serial adapter to the appropriate GPIO pins, and plug it in to the computer,
identify the device, let's assume it appears as /dev/ttyUSB0,
run as root
```
pppd nodetach debug noauth nocrtscts local passive /dev/ttyUSB0 115200 lcp-max-configure 10000
```
(this will repeatedly try to establish a connection, because the LCP configure-request transmission count is set very high).

Prepare the Raspberry Pi;

install the ppp package
```
sudo apt install --yes ppp
```

add two lines to /etc/rc.local before the exit

systemctl stop serial-getty@ttyAMA0.service
pppd updetach debug nocrtscts noauth local 10.1.0.1:10.1.0.2 /dev/ttyAMA0 115200

reboot

The link will be established, and you can ping or SSH to 10.1.0.1.

Use different addresses if required.

What it looks like on the host computer

using channel 9
Using interface ppp0
Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/ttyUSB0
sent [LCP ConfReq id=0x1    ]
sent [LCP ConfReq id=0x1    ]
sent [LCP ConfReq id=0x1    ]
sent [LCP ConfReq id=0x1    ]
sent [LCP ConfReq id=0x1    ]
sent [LCP ConfReq id=0x1    ]
sent [LCP ConfReq id=0x1    ]
sent [LCP ConfReq id=0x1    ]
sent [LCP ConfReq id=0x1    ]
sent [LCP ConfReq id=0x1    ]
sent [LCP ConfReq id=0x1    ]
sent [LCP ConfReq id=0x1    ]
sent [LCP ConfReq id=0x1    ]
sent [LCP ConfReq id=0x1    ]
sent [LCP ConfReq id=0x1    ]
sent [LCP ConfReq id=0x1    ]
rcvd [LCP ConfReq id=0x1    ]
sent [LCP ConfAck id=0x1    ]
rcvd [LCP ConfAck id=0x1    ]
sent [LCP EchoReq id=0x0 magic=0x25b9b80a]
sent [CCP ConfReq id=0x1   ]
sent [IPCP ConfReq id=0x1  ]
rcvd [LCP ConfAck id=0x1    ]
rcvd [LCP ConfAck id=0x1    ]
rcvd [LCP ConfAck id=0x1    ]
rcvd [LCP ConfAck id=0x1    ]
rcvd [LCP ConfAck id=0x1    ]
rcvd [LCP ConfAck id=0x1    ]
rcvd [LCP ConfAck id=0x1    ]
rcvd [LCP ConfAck id=0x1    ]
rcvd [LCP EchoReq id=0x0 magic=0xa67760f]
sent [LCP EchoRep id=0x0 magic=0x25b9b80a]
rcvd [CCP ConfReq id=0x1   ]
sent [CCP ConfAck id=0x1   ]
rcvd [IPCP ConfReq id=0x1  ]
sent [IPCP ConfAck id=0x1  ]
rcvd [LCP EchoRep id=0x0 magic=0xa67760f]
rcvd [CCP ConfAck id=0x1   ]
Deflate (15) compression enabled
rcvd [IPCP ConfNak id=0x1 ]
sent [IPCP ConfReq id=0x2  ]
rcvd [IPCP ConfAck id=0x2  ]
local  IP address 10.1.0.2
remote IP address 10.1.0.1
Script /etc/ppp/ip-up started (pid 80399)
Script /etc/ppp/ip-up finished (pid 80399), status = 0x0

Fund Me

Sun, 17 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Hello. Quozl is twiddling his fingers right now.

Do you need his help? Quozl does engineering mentoring, product management, software and firmware engineering, code reviews, quality assurance, testing, and teaching.

Or would you like to conserve native regrowth forest? Quozl helps manage a few million trees in outback Australia, and the project could do with some funding.

Contact quozl at laptop dot org. Thanks!

C Forth build flow

Sat, 12 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Deep dive into how C Forth is built gave this graph.

And this is just one target that C Forth supports; the target for a host-based serial device test harness.

Hector Spectrograph

Thu, 09 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Quozl was a telescope night assistant during the recent commissioning of the new Hector multi-integral field instrument and spectrograph. A really busy team of scientists and engineers working together to make research happen. It was fun watching them work. Inputs included tea, coffee, muffins, tim-tams, pavlova, and occasional sleep. Outputs were C++, Python, electronics, and data.

Netrek - Vanilla 2.19.0 released

Tue, 06 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

New version of the Netrek Vanilla Server, with many changes.

more information, sources, packages

Embedded.fm on Forth

Thu, 20 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Quozl was interviewed on embedded.fm about the Forth language:

172: Tell Forth You Me Please (1.25 hours, 53 MB),
Using C Forth to reverse engineer the Milo Champions Band fitness tracker protocol,
C Forth for ESP8266, a fork of C Forth by Mitch Bradley,
NodeMCU underlay for C Forth,

C Forth for Teensy 3.1

Mon, 11 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Quozl brought up C Forth on the Teensy 3.1 module. See all the details.