IoT

September 25, 2026 by David Such Leave a Comment

The Sunset of the Independent Edge AI Chip

As semiconductor giants acquire edge AI startups and build neural processing directly into standard chips, what happens to the pioneers who helped bring AI onto our devices?

In this episode, we explore how edge AI is shifting from a specialized product to an everyday feature. We examine why increasingly complex language models are challenging early chip designs, how software and developer communities are becoming crucial to survival, and why standalone accelerators are being squeezed out of the market.

Could this consolidation bring faster, more private AI to everyone—or narrow the field of innovation just as it’s getting interesting?

September 19, 2026 by David Such Leave a Comment

Building an NFC-Powered PCB Business Card for Embedded AI

Tap a phone on the card and nine LEDs light up in sequence that emulates a neural network. The whole thing runs on whatever energy a mobiles NFC field can push into a loop of copper on a credit-card-sized PCB (about 5 mA at 2 V).

The card is to promote my new book, Embedded AI: Intelligence at the Deep Edge (No Starch Press), and Reefwing Software, the company behind it. Front Side: the book title, my name and the LED network. Back Side: Reefwing branding, a QR code, the web address and three programming pads. Both the NFC tag and the QR code point at a short URL.

The NFC business card is an open-source hardware and software project, with the design files and code released under the MIT licence. The Reefwing Software repository includes the EasyEDA schematic and PCB layout, artwork, Arduino firmware and programming instructions, so you can build your own card, adapt the design or use it as a starting point for another project. The design is still a prototype, so check the repository’s validation notes before ordering boards.

The Great Escape or Why are LLMs Good at Hacking?

Last week OpenAI and Hugging Face published a joint post-mortem on an incident that reads like the plot of a heist film. During an internal evaluation designed to measure cyber capability, a set of OpenAI models (GPT-5.6 Sol and an unnamed pre-release sibling, both run with their cyber refusals switched off) were told to solve a benchmark called ExploitGym. They could not reach the answers from inside the sandbox, so they went and got them. So why are Large Language Models so good at hacking? It’s the data stupid.

Listen to Podcast…

June 23, 2026 by David Such Leave a Comment

Who Is Accountable When the Robot Decides?

On the night of 18 March 2018, an Uber test car in Tempe, Arizona, struck and killed Elaine Herzberg as she wheeled a bicycle across an unlit road. The car had detected her 5.6 seconds before impact. Its software could not work out what she was. It cycled through “unknown object,” then “vehicle,” then “bicycle,” and never settled in time to brake. About 1.3 seconds before the collision the system concluded it needed to stop. It did not stop, because Uber had switched off the car’s automatic emergency braking during testing and was relying on the human in the seat to intervene.

The human in the seat was a safety operator named Rafaela Vasquez. She was watching a television show on her phone. She did not touch the brake until after the car had hit.

When the courts went looking for someone to hold responsible, they found her. Vasquez was charged with negligent homicide, later pleaded guilty to endangerment, and was sentenced to three years of probation. Uber faced no criminal charges. The federal investigators were blunt about the design: the company had removed the car’s ability to brake for itself and left a distracted person as the last line of defence. The system was built so that the only party who could stop the car was the one least equipped to.

Arduino Memory Usage and Persistent Storage on EEPROM

There will come a point where you will want to store data which isn’t lost when your microprocessor loses power. This is particularly handy for storing calibration or configuration values, to save you having to re-calibrate some piece of hardware (e.g., IMUs, and servos) every time the power cycles. One solution for Arduino boards is using EEPROM (Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory).

EEPROM is a type of non-volatile ROM that enables individual bytes of data to be erased and reprogrammed. It is used to store small amounts of data which are written occasionally and then read multiple times.

EEPROM is often contained within the microprocessor, and different boards will have different amounts. For example, the ATMega328P used in the UNO R3 and Nano, has 1024 bytes (1KB) of EEPROM. It is organized as a separate data space, and the EEPROM data bytes are addressed linearly between 0 and 1023.

Our example application will save calibration data for six servo motors. This is well suited to saving in EEPROM as it doesn’t often change and reading the values are not time critical. You can read the full Arduino EEPROM article on Medium.

October 31, 2023 by David Such Leave a Comment

Arduino Library for the Stewart Flight Simulator Platform

The Stewart Platform, also known as a hexapod, motion base or parallel manipulator, is a mechanical system that consists of a platform connected to a fixed base through six independently actuated legs. This arrangement allows for precise and versatile motion control in all six degrees of freedom (DOF): three translational (surge, sway, heave) and three rotational (roll, pitch, yaw).

In the context of flight simulators, the Stewart Platform is utilized to replicate the dynamic movements and sensations experienced by pilots during flight. It provides a realistic simulation of aircraft motion, enabling pilots and trainees to practice flying maneuvers, emergency procedures, and various flight scenarios in a controlled environment. By synchronizing the movement of the platform with visual and auditory cues, flight simulators enhance the training experience and help pilots develop their skills without the risks associated with actual flight.

The Stewart platform is used in car/flight/VR simulators, machine tool technology, animatronics, crane technology, underwater research, simulation of earthquakes, air-to-sea rescue, mechanical bulls, satellite dish positioning, the Hexapod-Telescope, robotics, and orthopedic surgery.

We will be using it to test our drone flight control hardware, IMUs and associated software. You can read the full Stewart Platform article on Medium.

October 31, 2023 by David Such Leave a Comment

Reefwing AHRS Arduino Library for Drones

The Reefwing AHRS library provides an Attitude and Heading Reference System (AHRS) class for use with Arduino compatible boards. The library has been tested with the Arduino Nano, Nano 33 BLE, Nano 33 BLE SENSE (REV 1 and REV 2), Nano 33 IoT, MKR Vidor 4000, Portenta H7 and the Seeed XIAO nRF52840 Sense boards.

An Attitude and Heading Reference System (AHRS) takes information from the Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) and processes it to provide reliable roll, pitch and yaw angles.

The full AHRS article is available on Medium.

April 25, 2023 by David Such Leave a Comment

An Arduino Library for the x-IMU3 GUI, IMU Data Visualisation Tool

IMUs with 3 sensors each measuring 3-axes, pump out a lot of data. It can be difficult to work out how your IMU is performing, which is why the free open source data visualisation tool from x-io Technologies is so great. It is available for all major operating systems (Windows, macOS, and Linux). #arduino #imu #datavisualisation #datavisualization

Read all about it in our latest article on Medium:

https://reefwing.medium.com/an-arduino-library-for-the-x-imu3-gui-imu-data-visualisation-tool-e5aaacf894a7

April 13, 2023 by David Such Leave a Comment

Reefwing LSM9DS1 Library for the Nano 33 BLE Sense

This article explains how to write a C++ library to control and monitor the LSM9DS1 IMU sensor using an Arduino. If you want to really understand how a sensor operates, then write a library for it. It will take longer than you think, but the effort is worthwhile. This library can be downloaded using the Arduino IDE Library Manager or directly from our GitHub repository.

Read the rest of the article on Medium…

February 12, 2022 by David Such Leave a Comment

NexgenTimer Arduino Library

LiPo batteries are great for drones but you don’t want to over discharge them. To allow our Flight Controller to monitor battery capacity we used a non blocking scheduler and packaged our requirements up as an Arduino Library, NexgenTimer.

Our library is an amalgamation of the MillisTimer and ElapsedTimer libraries with some application specific examples and an extra Timeout class. It only uses functions from the Arduino core API and hence should work on all Arduino boards.

It can be downloaded using the Arduino Library Manager and you can read all about it in our latest article on Medium –

https://reefwing.medium.com/how-to-write-your-own-flight-controller-software-part-6-7ce0fa3e8008