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Tom Verbeure

@tomverbeure.bsky.social

380 followers 160 following 400 posts

Plays with FPGAs. There can never be enough LEDs. Hardware engineer at Nvidia, but my views here are my own. he/him. Also @tom_verbeure at the woolly elephant and the former bird site

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Tom Verbeure @tomverbeure.bsky.social · Nov 22

I’m Tom. When not giving in to my test equipment addiction, I play with LEDs and PacMan.

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Tom Verbeure @tomverbeure.bsky.social · 14h

Maybe I missed it in the (interesting!) article, but while it mentions radiation intensity, it doesn’t say how it compares to the actual radiation intensity in the LEO where the cubesat resides?

Reposted by Tom Verbeure

🌟Cyber City Circuits🌟 @cybercitycircuits.com · 2d

My new article on Harold Black and the invention of the Negative Feedback Amplifier has just been posted. I start the story with the invention of the telephone in the 1870s, to a patent lawsuit in the 1940s.

Check it out. Let me know what you think.

emedia.digikey.com/eMagazine-Vo...

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Tom Verbeure @tomverbeure.bsky.social · 2d

The article is excellent!

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Tom Verbeure @tomverbeure.bsky.social · 3d

The longevity of the Cyclone II EP2C5 is amazing. 21 years after introduction, it’s still the FPGA that I use most for hobby projects.

Reposted by Tom Verbeure

Sam Rose @samwho.dev · 7d

I'm writing about self-hosting and got wondering why ports <1024 are privileged on Linux, and require you to be root to bind to them.

Found this explanation and couldn't help but laugh. I'd always thought it was a bit of a hack.

utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/b...

$Based on the Unix versions available on tuhs.org, all of this appears to have been introduced in 4.1c BSD. This is the version that adds IPPORT_RESERVED to netinet/in.h and has the TCP/UDP port binding code check it in in_pcbbind in netinet/in pcb.c. In case you think the BSD people thought that this was an elegant idea, let me show you the code: if (lport) { u_short aport = htons (lport) ; int wild = 0; /* GROSS */ if (aport < IPPORT_RESERVED && u.u_uid != 0) return (EACCES) ; [...1 The BSD people knew this was a hack; they just did it anyway, probably because it was a very handy hack in their trusted local network environment. Unix has quietly inherited it ever since.$

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Reposted by Tom Verbeure

Tod Kurt (todbot) @todbot.com · 9d

Want easy capsense touchpad buttons? Just a PCB & 4 resistors. Coming soon to my Tindie store! If you want to make your own, files are here: github.com/todbot/touch...
This demo in CircuitPython but also works in Arduino w/ my TouchyTouch lib
#circuitpython #capsense #captouch #raspberrypipico

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Tom Verbeure @tomverbeure.bsky.social · 9d

Yeah, if that’s all you’re pulling it should be totally fine.

Tom Verbeure @tomverbeure.bsky.social · 9d

The 7805 is a linear voltage regulator. Its power consumption will be the current through it times the voltage drop. You have a pretty large drop of 14V, so the heat produced in the regulator could be significant. Something to keep in mind.

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Reposted by Tom Verbeure

Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · 14d

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin ✨ figured out what stars are made of ✨ when she was just 25. 🔭🧪

Her PhD thesis basically established the Harvard astro department — at a time when Harvard didn't officially allow woman students.

I wrote this little profile to mark the 100th anniversary of her thesis:

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Tom Verbeure @tomverbeure.bsky.social · Aug 22

My projects that require custom PCBs are on hold. 🥺

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Tom Verbeure @tomverbeure.bsky.social · Aug 20

Power Switch and Battery Replacement of an SR620 Universal Time Interval Counter

tomverbeure.github.io/2025/08/19/S...

SR620 with analog oscilloscope on top of it

Tom Verbeure @tomverbeure.bsky.social · Aug 14

“… and a baby alligator.” Because of course.

Reposted by Tom Verbeure

America Xanadu @johnxuandou.bsky.social · Aug 13

This is one of the most beautiful things I have witnessed, the craft here is impeccable.

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Tom Verbeure @tomverbeure.bsky.social · Aug 13

"Application of AI for modelling and structural analysis of a parametric 2D frame with voice assistant"

This has nothing to do with anastruct either.

My only explanation is that the authors used AI to hallucinate a whole bunch of BS.

I want my money back!

Tom Verbeure @tomverbeure.bsky.social · Aug 13

The paper is behind a paywall. But since the suspense was killing me, I bought the paper. There it in a black an white: "[anastruct] was developed by Tom Verbeure with the aim of making structural analysis available, ..."

I'm flattered!

It uses [16] as reference. Let's check that out...

My name highlighted in a paragraph that lists as developer of the "anastruct" open source Python library.

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Tom Verbeure @tomverbeure.bsky.social · Aug 13

I think AI hallucinated me into a paper about Modelling and Solving 2D Truss System! Something I know nothing about.

A few days ago, I submitted a blog post to Hackaday. Today I googled my name to see if it had been picked up. Instead it found this weird hit.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Screenshot of a google search that says: "Wiley Online Library
Python‐Powered Structural Analysis: Modeling and ...
3 days ago — It was developed by Tom Verbeure with the aim of making structural analysis available, insightful, and efficient for students, educators, and professionals."

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Tom Verbeure @tomverbeure.bsky.social · Aug 12

Not very typical, I hope?

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Tom Verbeure @tomverbeure.bsky.social · Aug 12

The Video Timings Calculator is my most popular webpage in Google Search by far, with most of clicks coming from Taiwan. Those are engineers working on monitors, TVs, laptops etc.

Traffic drops on Friday morning and ramps back up Sunday afternoon. It also drops the week of Lunar New Year.

Search traffic to video timings calculator. A red arrow points to the drop in traffic around Lunar New Year.

Tom Verbeure @tomverbeure.bsky.social · Aug 12

3 new features for my Video Timings Calculator:

1. 10K, 12K and 16K resolutions added.

2. HDMI 2.2 96/80/64 Gbps data rates added.

3. You can share timings by copy and pasting the URL. Thanks SnowSquire@github!

Check it out here: tomverbeure.github.io/video_timing...

Drop-down with 16K, 12K and 10K resolutions

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Tom Verbeure @tomverbeure.bsky.social · Aug 11

I have a 5359A, but other than creating short pulses, I don’t really know what to do with. The 5370A and the 5359A use the same chassis, power supply, reference clock board and CPU system. I believe they even share the dual vernier circuit to get below 5ns precision.

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Tom Verbeure @tomverbeure.bsky.social · Aug 10

Me too! 😀

The electronics flea market is a wonderful thing.

HP 5335A on top an HP 8656A on top on an HP 5370A.

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Tom Verbeure @tomverbeure.bsky.social · Aug 10

Repairing an HP 5370A Time Interval Counter

tomverbeure.github.io/2025/08/10/H...

HP 5370A with open top showing a frequency of 9,999,999.999,25 MHz

Internals of the HP 5370A seen from the top

Annotated schematic of the HP 5370A reference clock buffer

Workbench showing the reference clock bench PCB with probes, oscilloscope and laptop

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Tom Verbeure @tomverbeure.bsky.social · Aug 4

I find it amazing that this scope was last calibrated in 2023. (Could also be 1923, but I don’t think so. 🙂)

Tom Verbeure @tomverbeure.bsky.social · Aug 4

They’re probably more expensive than the $10 I paid for this scope!

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Tom Verbeure @tomverbeure.bsky.social · Aug 4

The SR620 time interval counter came to market around 1986, just before VGA was a thing. But analog oscilloscopes were everywhere, so it cleverly (ab)uses the XY mode to render images.
It’s unusable on a digital scope, it’s readable on an analog one.

SR620 time interval counter with an oscilloscope on top of it. The scope shows a screen with frequency and other data.

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