The belated February 2024 Free Stuff recipient for the Great Scott Gadgets Free Stuff Program is Adam Drake! Adam, a teacher in Canada, sponsors three clubs at his high school - a competitive robotics club, a model railway club, and a D&D club. All of these clubs are fully funded from either internal school funds, the school PAC (Parental Advisory Council), or the NSHSS. This summer, Adam ran an RF Comms summer school where 18 students gained their amateur radio certification!

Following the success of the RF Comms summer school, Adam is now starting another after-school club: “RF Communications.” This club will teach students all about wireless communications, such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, cellular, and radio (HF, VHF, UHF, etc). Students will learn the theory of RF (radio frequency) communications, but the focus will be on practical uses of the technology. Students who do not yet have their radio licenses will have more chances to study and gain Canadian Amateur Radio licenses through this club.

We will be sending Adam a HackRF One to support these clubs and the students they impact. Thank you, Adam, for all you do in your community!

We’re pleased to announce that Cynthion is now available for purchase from our authorized resellers! This FPGA-based hardware platform from Great Scott Gadgets powered by LUNA gateware is your new go-to tool for discovering and exploring the world of USB at a fraction of the cost of existing High Speed USB analyzers. Whether you’re experienced with USB or you’re new and learning about it, Cynthion is a great multipurpose addition to your hardware experimentation toolbox! We’ve also developed custom open-source software tools that work with Cynthion:

• Packetry is a fast and intuitive open-source software that allows you to capture and analyze traffic between a host and Low-, Full-, or High-Speed USB devices.

• Moondancer is a Facedancer backend that enables you to reverse engineer USB devices and even create your own!

Cynthion comes in a beautiful and protective milled aluminum enclosure so that despite its small size (it fits in the palm of your hand) it has a solid feel and a nice weight. It is also currently available for sale without an enclosure at a lower cost. We’ve offered this option to make Cynthion as financially accessible as possible for hobbyists, students, and small teams.

You can learn more about Cynthion, including where to purchase it, by visiting our Cynthion webpage.

The January 2024 recipient for the Great Scott Gadgets Free Stuff Program is Marc, the author of PySDR.org. Marc is interested in learning more about HackRF One and potentially adding a chapter on HackRF One to the PySDR.org documentation. We look forward to working with Marc on this update to PySDR.org and helping even more folks with finding new ways to interact with their HackRF One.

Note: This is a crosspost of a Cynthion update on Crowd Supply: https://www.crowdsupply.com/great-scott-gadgets/cynthion/updates/cynthion-is-at-mouser

An 885 lb / 401.43 kg shipment of thousands of Cynthions has been received by Mouser (who will fulfill Cynthion orders for Crowd Supply)! We expect the Cynthions to start shipping to backers around the 5th of July. You will receive a notice when your Cynthion has shipped.

While you wait for your shipping notice and for your device to arrive, take a moment to read the Cynthion documentation. Cynthion does not ship with USB cables, so take a look at the connection diagrams in this documentation for different use cases and make sure you have all the cables you will need.

As you receive your Cynthions we would love to see your first pictures with your device! Please tag Great Scott Gadgets on X, Mastodon, Instagram, or post in the #show-your-gsg channel in our Discord.

Note: This is a crosspost of a Cynthion update on Crowd Supply: https://www.crowdsupply.com/great-scott-gadgets/cynthion/updates/cynthion-shipping-soon

The first few Cynthions have come off of the manufacturing line! Once the first full batch of Cynthions is completed we will send them to Mouser who will ship them to you, our backers. Shipping will happen soon, so please make sure your address on Crowd Supply is up-to-date. If you need assistance with an address change please contact Crowd Supply. We will post another update once the first orders leave the Mouser warehouse. Until then, please enjoy these photos from our contract manufacturer.

Batch of Cynthions before last USB component was soldered on.

Enclosed Cynthion ready to ship

Batch of enclosed Cynthions ready to ship

The December 2023 recipient for the Great Scott Gadgets Free Stuff Program is a STEM Camp where students will have the opportunity to use the requested HackRF One to do a Quantum Physics experiment with laser light and modulated RF. We are excited to see how the experiment goes and to see pictures from the camp!

The November 2023 recipient for the Great Scott Gadgets Free Stuff Program is Ryan. Ryan works as a wireless systems administrator for a public school. He coaches robotics and programming teams after school. Ryan has asked for a HackRF One to show the students in his clubs how to interact with the wirelss devices around them and to inspire them to explore RF as future career options.

Note: This is a crosspost of a Cynthion update on Crowd Supply: https://www.crowdsupply.com/great-scott-gadgets/cynthion/updates/cynthion-manufacturing-progress

Cynthion update time!

Final samples have been manufactured, some of them have been sent for RoHS testing (and each of them has passed), and manufacturing is under way. Everything’s going great so far, and we’re on track for June shipping!

Here is your first glimpse of finished Cynthions in their enclosures and in the boxes we will be shipping them in.

The significance of RoHS testing is that Cynthion had to pass that test in order for us to earn our CE marking, which allows us to sell Cynthion in the EU. RoHS stands for “Restriction of Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment” and this directive requires that electronic and electrical equipment does not exceed certain thresholds for lead, cadmium, mercury, and other hazardous substances. RoHS testing is completed by a third-party lab and the lab we chose used “destructive testing methods” which meant that we had to send a few completed Cynthions, including enclosure and packaging, for them to destroy.

Note: This is a crosspost of a Cynthion update on Crowd Supply: https://www.crowdsupply.com/great-scott-gadgets/cynthion/updates/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. Our next steps are to work closely with our manufacturer to create final product samples, ensure the QA process is achieving the results we expect at factory level, and receive the final product samples and test them in-house here at Great Scott Gadgets. We’ll have more for you soon!

Note: This is a crosspost of a Cynthion update on Crowd Supply: https://www.crowdsupply.com/great-scott-gadgets/cynthion/updates/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:

• revisited the EMC testing lab for another round of pre-compliance testing,

• used the EMC testing results to improve signal integrity on Cynthion and produce another hardware revision,

• ordered another revision of the Cynthion enclosure prototypes,

• designed and ordered prototypes of the Cynthion packaging,

• produced another Cynthion hardware revision to fix minor issues,

• rearranged the Cynthion schematic,

• updated documentation in Cynthion-related repositories,

• ordered a production sample of Cynthion,

• worked on the Cynthion manufacturing test jig and test scripts,

• worked on apollo, luna, saturn-v, packetry, and Facedancer (all of which are used in conjunction with Cynthion or as part of manufacturing testing), and

• scheduled another visit to the EMC testing lab for this week and taken Cynthion in for final evaluation.

Since we’ve only recently reached the milestone of finishing the design work, it means Cynthion delivery will be delayed until June to allow time for manufacturing and shipping. Here is what the current timeline to delivery looks like:

January

Since the completion of Cynthion’s design, we have pivoted to finishing up the hardware test jig (which we have named Tycho) that we will send to our manufacturer so they can test each Cynthion as it comes off the production line. Designing this test jig has required multiple revisions that have changed slightly with each revision of Cynthion. Since Cynthion is so unique in its design we have even had to develop custom cables for Tycho. This is a story we are looking forward to telling you all about once the Tycho team has completed their work.

February

Our manufacturer is based in China and they will be unavailable almost all of February due to Chinese New Year celebrations. We will spend this month continuing to work on Tycho, documentation for Cynthion and related projects, and improving software, firmware, and gateware. By the end of this month we will ship Tycho to our manufacturers.

March

Cynthion will be in manufacturing for month one of two. In this month our manufacturers will produce the Cynthion PCBs, enclosures, and packaging. PCB production is expected to take about 2-3 weeks. As soon as the PCBs are produced, we will get a few production samples from the manufacturer for extra verification and testing by our team at Great Scott Gadgets. During this month we at Great Scott Gadgets will continue working on all of the Cynthion-related repositories and documentation.

April

Cynthion will be in manufacturing for month two of two. In this month Cynthions will be assembled, tested, and packaged by our manufacturer. Like March, we at Great Scott Gadgets will continue working on all of the Cynthion-related repositories and documentation. Additionally we will provide technical support to the manufacturing test team.

May

Cynthions will be on their way from our manufacturer in China to Crowd Supply’s fulfillment partner (Mouser) in the United States. At minimum this is expected to take two weeks, but we have scheduled an entire month for shipping as there can be lengthy customs delays when shipping internationally. This means that if there are no customs delays you may get your Cynthion sooner! Wish us luck.

June

The moment you’ve been waiting for! Cynthions will be shipped to you! If you have moved, you’ll want to make sure that you’ve updated your address on Crowd Supply before this point. Don’t worry, we will post an update before June reminding you to update your address.