Your goal should be to get weirder with age and im not kidding. Become that odd estranged extended family member that owns a whacky home wherein a powerful magical item is kept that is the catalyst for the story of a children’s adventure novel protagonist
This one is hopefully a bit easier to guess compared to last month’s ware! Pictured is just one board of a two board set, but the second board is a bit too much of a dead give-away so it’s been omitted. Thanks to Sam for thinking on her feet and snatching this board so that it could be donated to the contest!
Last month’s ware is an ADAS1010, described on the Analog devices website as a “15 Lead ECG Vital Signs Monitor Module with Respiration, Temperature and Blood Pressure Measurement”. It advertises a “robust, with electromagnetic interference (EMI), shock, and vibration resistant packaging”.
This is one of the more over-engineered solutions I’ve seen. I’m guessing that the middle layer of the three-layer stack is probably hollowed out, such that the surrounding boards create a Faraday cage. This would allow sensitive ECG front-end circuitry to be placed inside a shielded “container” that also doubles as a connector between the front and back boards.
This one was a real stumper, and it was interesting to see the discussion. I had redacted the DSP’s part number – ADSP-CM403 – because with that, an LLM could identify the board with a query such as “what boards have both an adsp-cm403 and an ice40 fpga”. That’s apparently a pretty unique part combination. When I saw it for the first time, I also couldn’t guess the ware; I kept on looking at the huge connector and assuming that some high-bandwidth, high-speed signals were involved. That’s an awful lot of pins for the advertised functions, but probably an insane amount of grounding/shielding is going on to isolate the sensitive ECG input lines.
I was betting the boards near-exclusive use of Analog Devices parts would be a tip-off that this was an Analog Devices module of some type, which would significantly narrow the space of possible functions. You kind of have to be on a very particular mission and/or have an unlimited budget to end up integrating that level of ADI parts on a board if you’re not actually ADI. To that end, megabytephreak got dangerously close to guessing it, so I’ll declare megabytephreak as the winner. Congrats, email me for your prize!
During the holiday shopping season, various bloggers host a gathering of creative people and small businesses as a virtual Winterfaire. You will see these around Dreamwidth, LiveJournal, Blogspot, author websites, and more. By supporting these, you help keep the internet a lively place and help creative people survive in the face of megacorps.
Winterfaires
The 2024 Whatever Holiday Gift Guide Starts Monday! -- by John Scalzi Monday, December 2: Traditionally Published Authors Tuesday, December 3: Non-Traditionally Published Authors Wednesday, December 4: Other Creators Thursday, December 5: Fan Favorite Day Friday, December 6: Charities
Are you shopping for holiday gifts? Browse the booths in these or similar events, where you'll find goodies not available in conventional stores.
Do you make and sell things suitable for holiday gifts? If so, post a booth in any suitable event.
Are you running a Winterfaire in your blog? Do you know of any similar events elsenet? If so, reply with a link so they can be added to the list. Yes, in this case it's okay to list things beyond Dreamwidth.
Do you enjoy chatting with creative people, and you're looking to make new friends on Dreamwidth? Look for the people posting booths, then check out their blogs to see if those might appeal to you.