Hi everybody, we're back. This is Dave Vellante. This is the cube and we're here at the tug event with Justin Borgman Who's the CEO of adapt cube alum Justin welcome back good to see you again. Thanks Dave great to be here So we saw you at hack reduce which was right after strata You guys won the best in show at strata that must have felt really good But you come home and it's like all right now. We really got to get to work. So give us an update What's been going on since the fall? Yeah, I mean I think for us now. It's all about execution You know, we're really excited about the way the market has taken to this notion of doing sequel analytics on Hadoop And I think you know increasingly you see others in the market now pursuing that strategy And that's that's only going to drive more interest. I think in the customer customer community So we now have customers and financial services in the internet space doing customer behavior analytics web analytics Using our platform as a way to work with both structured and unstructured data all based in on Hadoop And so it's it's really gratifying. I think to see you know How far we've come from the humble beginnings we had at Yale spending out of that research to now being you know Actually in production with real customers. Okay, so you're shipping in production. You're out of beta. Is that right? That's correct Yep. Okay. Good.  We absolutely do absolutely do outstanding So talk a little bit more about how they envision Using the the platform and how it's going to affect their business So I mean most of our customers are folks that have already bought into the notion of Hadoop being an important aspect of Building out that big data infrastructure and being you know really key component to aggregate all of that data structured and unstructured data And so that's that's really the way we call qualify our customers Do they know what Hadoop is are they already bought into the notion of you know, this is going to save the money It's going to allow them to do new kinds of analytics and an ability to store all of their data And at that point, you know, we basically help them accelerate that into production So a lot of our customers are people that have played with Hadoop in an experimental environment They're now looking to do something really real with it something that's going to deliver real business value and in order to do That that's where sequel becomes increasingly valuable as a bridge between This new world and all the legacy tools and applications that they built and the skill sets that they have today So we would just say they are they've obviously kicked the tires They've sort of played around it maybe made a business case have they figured out how to actually Monetize it make money at it get competitive advantage save lives and where are we at in that spectrum? Yeah, I mean, I think the early adopters absolutely have so you know a little bit Later this quarter was we'll start to talk about some of the customers that are actually using our platform And you'll find that there are internet companies Software as a service-based companies that are using our platform to actually drive new revenue things like you know How do I convert customers from my sort of entry-level product to my more premium product? How do I tie in social media and and blogs and frequently asked questions and tile of that into the analysis of how people are using my platform So it's now able to actually deliver real revenue which ultimately, you know is benefiting the bottom line at the end of the day I want to go back to the platform a bit So we had Ming sheng hong on the on the cube gave us a great demo And then he came back to our office in Marlboro and really we got into it We talked about some of the unique aspects of the platform specifically things like user-defined queries the integration of Things like Tableau some of that rich function and it seemed like you had a market lead I think you know at a Riley at the Stratoconference and a jupe world that was confirmed At a high level We're a customer's pushing you and what direction are they pushing you you know functionally what's on the to-do list? Yeah, I mean I think increasing support of different tools is something that's interesting people want to use are people want to use SAS people want to use Tableau Pentaho micro strategy cogniz business objects We intend to be able to support all of these In the near future and by building a standard sequel interface rather than something like hive QL We're able to actually you know deliver on that vision So you know that's an area that we see increased interest and also again You know how can I make this easier to consume for the business analyst? I think that's another important theme that we're really trying to to drive off So that's really important what you said about the sequel interface because that allows you to scale without having to tick off all these integration Capabilities, you know one at a time and you know your CEO you got a limited R&D budget to spend right absolutely So okay good, so let's talk about kind of what's next for adapts. I mean event-wise What's on your you know sort of 2013 priority list? Yeah, so we'll be doing a number of the same conferences that I know we'll see you guys at strata get going as well The Gartner BI summit I know we'll be at so I think that's all in the first half of this year And we'll also be participating in increasing numbers of Hadoop meet-up groups, which we find actually to be really good I was just at one in New York at Bloomberg about a week and a half ago Meeting with a lot of interesting folks doing real things with Hadoop And I think that's a great way for us to reach out and talk to Hadoop Enthusiasts directly and find out the kinds of things that they're trying to do with with Hadoop awesome You mentioned Bloomberg. I think Bloomberg's got an event in April in Boston And I think John Furrier is gonna be hosting a panel so we'll be at that with the Cube Hopefully see you there Justin. Thanks for spending some time with us always a pleasure my pleasure Good to see you a dapped hot company keep your eye on this firm. We'll be watching. This is the Cube This is Dave Vellante. We'll be back right after this


Okay. We're back.  And we came back. Here it is, Tuesday at one o'clock block with Tom Yamachika, president of the Tax Foundation of Hawaii. And in one case at a time, we are learning about how tax works in this state. This is very important. We understand this. Welcome, Tom. Thank you, Jay. Thank you for having me back. So, last time we talked about the Kahiawa Wind Farm Assessment, which is very interesting. And let me think, that's pending, huh? It is. That's pending in the what? State Supreme Court. That's correct. And not yet resolved. Sometimes it takes a while. And that's going to have an effect on energy because the question is whether wind turbines are included in real property for real property tax assessments could have an effect all over the state on wind. And who knows what else? But there's another one, also emanating out of Maui. Maui is pretty active in the tax appeal court, I think. So far. And this one is called the Appeal of Ocean Resort Villas. And that's been kicking around for a while, but that's also of significant importance. Can you state the case, Tom? Yeah. A few years ago, effective 2006, the county of Maui enacted a separate real property tax classification for time shares. So there used to be ocean res—hotel and resort would apply to hotels and time shares and BNBs and anything with transient accommodations. But they did a separate classification effective in 2006. The ordinance happened in 2004, setting up time share as a separate class and one that was taxed much higher. Why? The reasoning of the county at the time was, well, now at the time you realize they were getting a piece of the transient accommodations tax. They were getting about 10%. So they looked at hotel rooms and they looked at time shares. And because of the way they were getting the tax calculated, they were getting a lot less money from time shares than they were from other kinds of hotel or other kinds of transient accommodations. And that troubled them because, A, it's still kind of a hotel operation, but B, time shares are not as attractive to the development of the state, tourist industry, housing, the hotel industry as regular hotel rooms because they come and go. I mean, there's a bias against time shares, right? Yeah, there is. It seems to be. Yeah. I'm not sure what the bias is from, but it's just kind of a different way to hold the realty. And one thing that you need to realize is that time shares are realty. Yeah, they're real there. It's a recognized form of, I don't want to say security, but a recognized form of real property interest. Yeah, you get a deed. And there were a lot of time share plans. There were a lot of misadventures at the beginning. It was during our time practicing. There were misadventures where scammers were involved and scam deals were there and people lost it. Yeah, I think that may have created a lot of the bias. Yeah, probably. Yeah. And so over time, though, it got to be accepted. Over time, we have people who are responsible property owners coming here on a regular basis, and it keeps them coming. I have a friend who goes out to, what's that, out there, the Disney area there every year. He has a unit, or a part of a unit there, and he has a wonderful time with his family. He could probably afford, he could probably afford to buy a condo out there and make that his vacation home, but it works better for him as time share. So really, when you shake it and bake it, time share, you know, it's part of the firmament now, where it is, not only in Hawaii, but elsewhere, destination resorts. That's right. So in this particular case, the time shares have a time share association. So Ocean Resort Villas is a time share association, so you get a bunch of people who own units in this building. And then you have ORV North, Ocean Resort Villas North, which is another building in the same general vicinity. And they said, well, you know, this time share classification doesn't make us happy, so they suit to invalidate it. So they found that classification. Yeah, so they marched down to Second Circuit Court, which is our general court in Maui, and they said, you know, court, please, you know, strike this down. OK. And of course, that made the county unhappy. And so, but then what they did. Can I ask you, though, on what basis did they seek to set aside that classification? Well, primarily, they also, you know, launched constitutional arguments, but the primary one, and the one that the Second Circuit judge eventually bought, was that there's, you know, the classification ordinance says that, you know, you break down these properties into these various classes and enlist all the classes upon consideration of highest and best use. So and they said, well, a time share, as you defined it, has nothing to do with use. So that's interesting. So this is this is inconsistent. And the people who challenged the residential aid ordinance here in Honolulu, the classification, we're saying the same thing. They're saying, you know, real property classification is supposed to be based on use and, you know, Res A is based on valuation. So it's not based on use and should be thrown out. So that's it's kind of a variation of the same. Where does this come from? The notion that that the difference in classifications has to be based on a difference in use. Where does that come from? It comes from the wording of the ordinance. Again, it starts off by saying the argument they made is that the ordinance itself is intrinsically inconsistent, that it doesn't follow its own rules. Is that what it is? Something like that. Yeah. I mean, they made the argument that it conflicted with the rest of the ordinance and and therefore, you know, it was it was it was wrong. OK. OK. Now, so. But then the more interesting thing is when when when the county government kind of got got to, you know, look at it, then they then they kind of look back at the property and they said, well, it's very interesting because here the suit was found in 2013 and she is isn't it a shame because because in 2006, seven and eight, we didn't tax the property, you know, the the the property for enough. And what I mean by that is they had taxed it into the cost approach, which is typically what you use when you value a a condo building that's being constructed the original cost of the unit to the buyer. Right. And then they said they should have been been taxing them at fair market value. So so the so the county attorneys came up with this idea of, oh, well, what we did was we tax the master parcels. We didn't tax the individual units. So we are going to tax the individual units now. Isn't that double tax on the same real property? No, because they they they gave the intervals credit for the tax that was paid by the master parcel. OK. OK. And and they and they did under this statutory scheme that says if there is omitted property, you know, property that is omitted from the assessment rules, that can be added at any time. OK. And and in the Cahiava case, the assessments did, in fact, go back a few years, the the wind power companies challenged that. And they said, no, I mean, the Intermediate Court of Appeals said, no, it was omitted property because previous to them building their windmills, it was state land. No tax was paid on because the state doesn't pay property tax. And then once they leased from from the state, then it became subject to real property tax. But the, you know, the kind didn't get around to assessing it for a couple of years. But, you know, that's how the ordinance works. So it may it may look on the surface like it's retroactive tax, but it really. Well, it is retroactive. OK. But but it's OK because the the ordinance provides for it. Uh huh. OK. OK. So so that theory is what the county of Maui used to basically nail these guys. They're the people who had the temerity, you know, to go sue them because because of this these specious arguments about real property tax classification. This sounds like payback. That's what the judge found. Retributive, a retributive assessment. That's exactly what it is. Oh my goodness. Because because so so let me just kind of give you this in the further details. So so they basically came up with these assessments and they kind of like plopped them all on the association. They said, all right, fine. $10 million. We'll fix your wagon. $10 million, please. And you have to pay in 30 days. That's downright mean. And if you don't pay, we foreclose. We foreclose your unit. Which they which they have the power to do. Which they have the power to do. OK.   Yeah, let's bring it out for a while and even another wrinkle to the story was this. People in other parts of Maui were concerned when they heard about these retractive assessments and they basically went and asked the county, well, what's going to happen to us? And the county said nothing. And this was in writing. And the county said, basically, you know, we have a beef with these guys because they suit us, claiming all these specious things, and they haven't paid their fair share in prior years. Don't mind us. We're just doing retribution on a few guys that have offended us. It's personal. It was very personal. That's exactly what it was. Not only mean, it's illegal. Think of the market on fairness all over it. Well, in writing. That plus, they've denied the association civil rights. Ah, interesting. Yeah. OK, because, and you may remember this from law school, there is this federal statute dating back to the 1870s. 1983. Yes, 42 U.S.C. 1983. And what that basically says is that if you, acting under color of state law, deny somebody their federal constitutional rights, then you can get sued for damages, attorneys' fees, you know.   OK. Because you're not supposed to be denying people federally protected constitutional rights. Yeah. This is really, really getting interesting. And it's a perfect time, Tom, for us to take a break. Because it's a cliffhanger. What's going to happen with all these arguments of this gross unfairness? And already we are talking about civil rights and section 1983, which is powerful stuff. When we come back from this break, you're going to find out from Tom Yamachika, president of the Hawaii Tax Foundation. Hey, loha. My name is Andrew Lanning. I'm the host of Security Matters Hawaii, airing every Wednesday here on Think Tech Hawaii, live from the studios. I'll bring you guests. I'll bring you information about the things in security that matter to keeping you safe, your co-workers safe, your family safe, to keep our community safe. We want to teach you about those things in our industry that, you know, may be a little outside of your experience. So please join me because security matters. Aloha. Aloha. My name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea. Law Across the Sea is on Think Tech Hawaii every other Monday at 11 a.m. Please join me where my guests talk about law topics and ideas and music in Hawaii, Anna, all across the sea from Hawaii and back again. Aloha. I can hardly wait to get back with Tom Yamachika, president of the Hawaii Tax Foundation. Okay. And we're talking about the tax appeal of the ocean resort villas. And we're talking about it kind of in a context that's against the Kahiava Wind Farm tax appeal we talked about last time. They should be seen together. They will kind of work with each other because, as Tom mentioned to me during the break, that the Corporation Council of the County of Maui was the same person for both of these tax appeals. And I said to him just going out, I said, no kawai. And the Wild West in Maui, if you thought the Wild West was west of here, it's actually east of here. Anyway, okay. So here we are with all these arguments formed up and the possibility of a, you know, a dreaded civil rights claim under 1983. What happens? Well, so all of this goes before the judge. And the judge is not happy. I shouldn't have been there. The judge is not happy. And what he basically rules was, you know, number one, that, I mean, and at this point, you know, I think the county of Maui kind of felt the tide kind of turning against him. So it's a little squeamish then. Yeah. So he started arguing that the court didn't have jurisdiction. Oh, well, which is, which is very interesting because normally in tax appeals, there was a specialized court called the Tax Appeal Court. Yeah. You appeal from an assessment and the appeal goes to Tax Appeal Court. Yeah. Okay. But this one? That's a statewide court, right? Right. Or is that in the only, and so you find a different Tax Appeal Court in each circuit. Is that right? No, no, it's just one. Just one. And we know this one that meets all the time here in Honolulu. That's right. Is the one in Honolulu meet on other islands? Is that what happens? I don't know. But I do know they hold court here in the First Circuit Court building. Right. And they do service all islands. Right. Okay. Got it. Okay. So there was an issue that was raised as to whether the Second Circuit Court, you know, Judge Cahill, who was assigned this case, had any right to judge the matter in the first place. On the argument that it should have gone to the Tax Appeal Court. Right. And he was just a Circuit Court judge. Right. And he says, I'm taking jurisdiction, man. I'm hearing this now. Well, it's actually the same level of court, right? Circuit Court judge, Tax Appeal Judge, is a Circuit Court judge. Isn't it the same thing? It's not the same. There are a couple of important differences. One being in the Tax Appeal Court, they only have the power to adjust the assessment. They can't award damages. They can't award attorneys fees. Oh, right. It's just for what, a refund of tax you've already paid. Or, you know, what is the amount of the deficiency? Yeah. How much more do you have to pay? OK. So it's limited. It's not the full jurisdiction of the Circuit Court. It's like a slice of jurisdiction. It's like a slice of jurisdiction. OK. So the government was then arguing you were in the wrong court. Right. And, of course, our good Circuit Judge said, well, there are some cases where the Circuit Court actually has taken jurisdiction over tax cases.  And there were cases. And there weren't. Yeah. And, but, you know, it hasn't really been decided yet what the extent of this, what we call equity jurisdiction is. So, and the Judge said, well, screw it.  I'm taking the whole case. Because it's a complex case. There are other issues aside from a straight tax appeal issue. Am I right? Yeah. And so I'm taking it all. Yeah. And I'm going to exercise my full Circuit Court prerogative on this. Right. And, and he says, and I can award damages. I can award a attorney's fees. And I'm going to do that. That's scary for the county of Maui now. Yeah. So, so, so the county says, of course, that's wet and bullets. And then, and he says furthermore, I am going to declare that those retroactive assessments were invalid. Okay. But people paid those assessments, Tom. Yeah. So, they're going to get their money back. Lots of money. And for each time you had to pay a filing fee to get your appeal, you know, docketed, you're going to get that back. And you had to pay a filing fee in tax appeal court. You're going to get that back. And this is a lot of owners. This is not just a handful of people. There's a lot of people here yet. 1100. Thank you. 1100 owners. All right. And he says, when you, when you had to special assess your owners to get this 10 million dollars, which you only gave them 30 days to do, the special assessment was subject to GT. So that's another. I think we get that back too. And you're getting that back too. Um, I kind of judge. And then, and then, uh, you know, the amount of damages hasn't yet been set, but, but, you know, he's setting it up real good. Yeah. Okay. So we know that's what he wants to do.  And the judge says, okay, fine. I'll let you appeal when it comes back to me. Then I'll award the damages and attorneys fees. Smart guy. Yeah. So the damages could be, what could the damages be?  What's, what's possible? You want to get your fees back? You want to get your, uh, you know, the tax back that you wouldn't have had to pay otherwise? About consequential damages, like, uh, interest on a loan I had to make to pay this. That, probably that too. Yeah. Yeah. And, and maybe some punitive damages. I don't know. I don't know. Well, 83, 1983 allows that. Yeah. Even against the government, especially against the government. Especially against the government. The government should not wander off the path this way. Oh no. I mean, with the way we look at it, you know, selectively assessing a taxpayer is bad enough. Right. Retribution doesn't really go. This is not the way things work in these United States. That's right. But, uh, but there are, there are several bases on which to, uh, bases on which to, uh, base a 1983 action. And, and it's too bad because I don't even think, uh, that the separate classification is invalid. I, uh, you know, I think they had the right to, to make the timeshare classification. They had the power to do it because they had complete power that was given to them by we the people to, to administer property taxes at the classifications. Right. And at the time, um, they were getting 10% of the transit accommodations tax. So the transit accommodations tax treatment was relevant. And, you know, we're not talking about a suspect class of taxpayers here.  We're talking about rational basis. Does the government have a rational basis to do this? And I think they did. Okay. So it goes to the Supreme Court from the circuit, would it go to the intermediate court of appeals? Yeah, it's in the intermediate court of appeals. Oh, it's in there now. It's in there now. Has not yet been decided. Right. How, how old is it? I mean, how long has it been there at the ICA? It went there this year. And we're, we're, we're now waiting for Connie Maui to file its opening brief. So of course the briefing schedule has just, you're in the middle of the briefing schedule. Yeah. Well, that's, that's just starting. Just starting. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, because the, the, the Connie of Maui, you know, they were kind of embroiled in a couple other court cases. So they needed an extension to, you know, to, to, to get their opening brief in. Yeah. Okay. And how long does it take to finish the briefing schedule? Two or three months? Something like that. Yeah. And, and there could be oral argument here also in the intermediate court. It's possible. Yep. Okay. How much money is at stake in this case? Um, this is, you want to write this down, because this is really going to be interesting. He's calculating in his mind how many millions of dollars. Go ahead. Well, we've been 30 and 40 million. This is, this could hurt the County of Maui. Oh, uh, one of the, one of the claims that the County of Maui is making is going to be, you know, catastrophic for them, which I believe. Yeah. Don't have to raise property taxes. Well, if, if that amount is allowed, I, I, I have some doubt they can get all of that. Or that the, um, the times just can get all of that back. No problem. Give them 30 days. That's a joke. What's good for the goose is good for the ganda. Yeah. Yeah. But, but, but one, one, one problem, uh, is that there's a real, you know, tough question about whether, uh, the taxes were properly on appeal. Oh, because of the choice of court. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, the, the, the, the, they definitely appealed the retroactive assessments. So I think there are, are, you know, paths to get that back. But when we're talking about like, um, you feel that down to 11, 12, 13, there was no appeal. Uh, at the time. So maybe out of school on that. They may be out of school on that. Now because, because there's law that says even if the, the taxes were collected unconstitutionally, if the, if you don't appeal, you don't get your tax back. Right. You have to follow the rules. You got to follow the rules. Yeah. Now that's a problem for the, for the, uh, the taxpayer.  Or you will file now. Yeah. I will file soon. Um, uh, obviously, uh, I'd like to see what the county has to say before, before I do my piece, but, um, you know, but they're, they, they do not have an extension to like, uh, Christmas Eve. And I may file before that Christmas Eve. Yeah. I mean, some lawyer has to file a brief on Christmas Eve. Well, it's, it's their joys. Okay. They asked for the extension. Yeah. That's perfect. They, they have to move for the extension and they got it. Did they move for the extension to Christmas Eve? That's the date they asked for. Well, it was like around the 24th. Close enough. Yeah. So, uh, you know, where does, where does it play that this is going to be a fiscal problem for Maui County? That this is going to hurt Maui County in the FISC, in the, in its ability to perform its county obligations, its county functions, you know, police, fire, what have you. Um, where does that play in this case? Is that a consideration? Will that be among the arguments made by the county? It's going to make it impossible for us to function. We're going to have to, I don't know, raise taxes or, or, or, or clean pots and pans, whatever you have to do.  That rises above all fiscal considerations, doesn't it? That's right. Because it's a national concern that, that people follow the, you know, respect the constitutional rights of everybody here in this, in this nation, as opposed to what, you know, one, one township or what, or one county or one city could, could think. So given the fact that the, this government involved here, this is the county, um, and the amount of money involved here, which is huge for anyone, is this likely to go when we are the other two, the Supreme Court of the state? We don't know yet. I mean, we've heard that, that the parties are engaged in settlement talks even as we speak. So they may find a way to short-circuit the problem. Yeah, that would, that would, but that would still cost the county amount or something to pay them off. Yeah. I would think so. Yeah. And it won't be small. But going back to my, my point about this, it probably would go to the Supreme Court of the state because the stakes would be high if it weren't settled. Well, yeah. I mean, the question obviously would be, you know, to what extent are other counties, you know, doing the same thing or are other, are there similar laws? It's a statewide issue. Yeah.  Right. This is really not cool. Yeah. This is, this is bad stuff. It's really bad, you know, to do that to anybody. It's not the way things work in this country. But, you know, what, what is your expectation here? What is, oh, one more question about jurisdiction and all that. So it's a federal statute in 1983. Right. Why isn't this in the federal court? Will it be in the federal court? Will it ultimately go into the federal ballot system? No. Why don't we have a federal, a federal statute being interpreted by the federal government? No. Well, because the case was in state court to begin with, the, the feds say, you know, it's, it's fine for state courts to consider 1983 actions and to ward damages, but it's not fine for the state to say, okay, well, you got to go to tax appeal court. They can't award damages. So, so too bad. Yeah. Well, 1983 is really not a claim in the state and the tax appeal court. Right. It's not the right place. Yeah. So, so, so, so, but what I, what I think, you know, should be the right answer is, is that the Second Circuit Court of Maui keeps the case because they got this 1983 claim. It's a very good claim and they've been working with this, this case for five years. So, they may as well take, you know, deal with all of it. Yeah. So, you follow your briefs. The court may have argument in the intermediate court right here down the block. Right. When is this going to get resolved? If, assuming no settlement in the interim. Right. Assuming no settlement. We're looking at maybe a year down the pike. Okay. We want to cover it with you, Tom. And if there's any other cases, we want to cover them too. Because we want to get educated on what's going on with taxes in Hawaii. It's your middle name after all. I guess so. Tom Yamachika. Thank you, Jay. President of the Tax Foundation of Hawaii. Thanks so much. Aloha.


It's not every day you can see the President of the United States land a big fish. It's not every day he catches one, even on a fishing trip to the Gulf. But that great 80-pound tarpon their landing is enough to make any angler's heart glad in his cup of joy run over. Snared almost at the end of the President's 12-day stay in Southern Waters. It's just what he needed to make his trip a complete success. But how about the one that got away, Mr. President? Oh, only a little one, eh?


Good evening, folks. Welcome to the Adafruit Show and Tell. My name is Melissa, and tonight I'll be hosting. We're going to go ahead and start out with Scott. Hello. How's it going? Good. How are you doing? Good. I'm not used to being first.  Do you want somebody else to go first? No, no, I can't. So I've been working on the Circuit Pirate, which is the kind of RP2040 and Circuit Python-based version of the bus pirate. We've got this prototype here. And what I've got hooked up right now is one of my Stema G0, I call it, boards. So it's a separate microcontroller, but meant to be used within Stema. You can program it over I squared C. And actually what I'm using it for is that the bootloader also allows you to do UART. So you can talk to the chip over UART. You can talk to the bootloader over UART. So if you pull up my window, I'll just briefly show that. Yeah, that's what I had to quickly do. So this is the bus pirate on Adafruit, are on Circuit Python and you can hit M for mode. So I added one wire and I added UART and I'm working on UART. And the nice thing about getting those two done is that now this list is in the same order as the original bus pirate. So the numbers will be the same. So if I hit three, it now walks me through like what speed I want, what configuration I want. And now it's active. And if I can show this, you can toggle power. So capital W would turn the power on and you see the red LED there turned on there. And if I want to write something, I can do this, start the buffer and then 7F. And it says write. And I read and the read's not working right now. So it's not actually returning the right value, but I'm making progress on it. And that'll be cool. And I'm excited to be able to poke at things without writing actual code or anything. Yeah, that's really cool. That's where I'm at on CircuitPython. And that's just running on top of CircuitPython, right? Yeah, so this is what you're seeing here is the serial that is the output of the second serial connection. This window I have here is the original bus pirate. So I use it as a reference for what it looks like to use. And then this is the debug output that I have over the first serial one from CircuitPython. You can see the reboots happening here. And I'm printing out the debug data for the UR values I'm reading. So trying to get that all sorted out. Cool. Well, thank you. Thanks, Mosa. Yeah. And next, we're going to go with Jeff here. Hi there. We'll see how this demo goes. But here's what I've been working on. It has a display on the front and on the back. It has about three different boards. So here at the bottom is the Adafruit RP2040 Feather with DVI. And here is the 2040 Feather with the USB host. And in the middle is an SD card reader. And so the USB is going to just a standard keyboard. And rather than use the display here, I'm going to just switch over on my camera to a capture card. And we'll see how that works. So bear with me as I get that going. There we go. So this is an emulated version of CPM that is running on the RP2040 microcontroller. It's called Run CPM. And this Marceloff person is the one who originally created that. And so just for fun, I'm going to show you what developing software was like back in the day. I've already created this assembly file beforehand. And it's very short. There's some introductory lines. And then we load one register, the D register with the message. We load the C register with the number nine. We call into the operating system. And so to assemble that, and here the AAX is where the command line switches work. So it's going to read boo.asm. And it's going to write a listing to the screen of our program. And it created a hex file. And so that is the whole program. And now we can load and run it in the debugger. I guess it's hard to see the bottom of the screen. This is the debugger. So we're going to let's see. We're going to set our input file name to boo.hacks. No, that's wrong. We're going to load it initially into our boo.hacks. And we will list our instructions at 100. So there's the assembled version of our program. And then when we go to address 100, it prints Hello World. So this is compiling and running a program on emulated CPM within an RP2040 microcontroller. And this is going to be the subject of an upcoming guide. It's a great way to use the DVI output, the USB input, and kind of create a whole self-contained computer. You just need a keyboard. You don't need your laptop. You don't need a desktop computer. It is a 1980s computer. So I just think that's a lot of fun. And that's what we're doing. That was really cool. Thank you. All right. And here I am. I'm still a human. Well, thanks for showing us that. Yeah, thank you, Melissa. See you around. Okay. And next, we're going to go with Ann. Hello. So the project's on. Yeah, okay. Am I here? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. There's just a little bit of a delay at first. I don't know if you have a project on PC. I think your connection is kind of slow and jumping around. Okay. Hopefully this will work. Oh, no, that sounds good. Okay. I've been working some floppy earrings not too long ago. And then Lamar said, how about a bag? I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you. A badge or as a, as the theme. So I transferred the NASA logo onto circuit board and on the back is a simple circuit to, with a couple of LEDs, a switch and a battery. So when I turn it on, these two stars at the top of the badge light up. So it gives a little bit of interactivity and makes a good fashion statement. So there'll be a guide on this shortly, if not tonight. And look forward to another guide. I'll give you a small hint. Something like this, perhaps. So that will be coming after this one. So that's what I've been working on. That's really cool. Thank you. And thanks for stopping by. Thanks. And next we're going to go with John. Hey, hello. So I want to show this sort of conclusion of the computer perfection project. This people have been following along is a 1979 electronic toy that was super not fun to play, but is a really gorgeous object and a really neat interface to build something else with. So what I've been doing, I'm going to go ahead and switch over if you can add this second camera there. You can see a little better, a little close up. Some of the things that I did were to use the original buttons and switches to act as inputs for a Metro M7 that's sort of hidden inside. And that is running Synth.io on Circuit Python, which is a synthesizer library that we've been getting a lot of great updates from Jepler primarily, also Mark Gambler and some other people have been helping out. And I also added a NeoPixel strip inside to give me some interactive lighting. There were originally some LEDs here, but they were going to be really hard to use because the original microcontroller was flipping all of those pins between input and output really rapidly to take care of business. And I didn't want to have to deal with that in Circuit Python. So I cheated and put in a little NeoPixel strip in there. I've run one of our little DIY USB ports out the back so that I can power it as well as still code it or maybe change the code around and use it as a MIDI controller if I wanted to. You could certainly change this to be battery powered if you wanted to, but you can see here it's got a little speaker, so it's going to take care of its own sounds. And I'm also really psyched about these magnetic USB cables we have, it makes it really easy to plug in to something like that there. So you'll see here, this is lit up. Actually, I'll start that again because that's one of the nice little interactions that start up as we get a little... And what this is doing, I'm using this as sort of a drone synthesizer. So I have two octaves of five notes with some pleasing intervals. If I press a note, it'll either play and release when I release or I can have those be held. And sorry, I don't know if this is going to be that loud because the microphone is up there on the monitor. I can lift it up if you can't really hear it. So this will just hold that drone until you switch it off, which is kind of fun. One of the things that's neat to do with that is this low frequency oscillator LFO that can be used to modulate things. And I'm going to modulate how much it's mixing between two types of waveforms. So I can increase that modulation by pressing this button. Oh, wow. I get it going pretty fast there. So that's just shifting between two different waveforms. I think it's a saw and a wavetable that I have in there. I can also entirely change the waveforms out for two different ones. These are much more ominous sci-fi kind of sounds this noise and a saw or a sine wave. And then I can also slow down that LFO with long presses of the button here. And I can let go of that sort of sustained pedal that this button acts as. And the last one I have here acts as an octave button. So when I hold a note right now, which I'm going to lift the speaker off so you can hear a little better, I can also add to that one unison octave below so we can just get some deeper richer tones. So that's the computer perfection. The guide is in moderation. It'll probably be out pretty soon. I think Lemur's got to take a look at it, but it's been through some moderations and editing so far. So if you want to go on eBay, grab one of these things. They run around the $40 price range, at least currently. It's a gorgeous, weird sci-fi artifact that made its way onto a few television shows and movies back when it was originally released. But now it can be your own interactive synthesizer if you want. Cool. So is that running Circuit Python? Yeah, it's Circuit Python. I think the beta, whatever the fairly recent A-beta is. And Synth.io library really takes care of almost everything. All of the mixing of the waveforms, the LFO, the envelope, which is this ability to have a soft release rather than just an abrupt cutoff. All of that stuff is right inside of Synth.io. So we're really excited to start doing some guides that will help people figure out how to use that for their own project. Cool. That's really cool. Thank you for stopping by and showing that. Sure thing. Thanks for letting me show it off. Bye-bye. Bye. And next we're going to go with Liz here. Hello. I also have a Synth.io build. And let me know if you can hear the tones. Can you hear that? I can, yes. You can. OK, cool. So basically, this is a circle of fifths Synth. So when I advance the encoders, it advances the chords like you would on the circle of fifths, which are all notes that are relative to each other. So as a result, you can get some really nice modulation. And the rhythms that it's using is Euclidean, which is a way of equally distributing beats. So for example, if you had a total of eight beats and you had four hits that you wanted to have, it would distribute them equally. But it gets really interesting when you get odd sensations like you have 10 over 10, or seven over 10, six over 10, things like that. And so with this Synth, I'm using the rotary encoders to have a bunch of different modes. So I just saw play with the chords. Euclidean, this you can affect the BPM. This you can affect the beat division. So eight notes, 16th whole quarter. And then for a synth IOS stuff, you can also affect the ADSR filter, the wave form. So saw, noise, square, sine. There's also ring modulation, LFO, volume, and then play, which is where you can affect the chords. So this is a guide I'm working on. And I should hopefully have it up tomorrow or Friday once it goes through moderation. But it was a really fun build. And it is much like a JP's build using Synth I.O. Circuit Python. There's a Feather RP2040 in there with an I2S amp. It's going out a speaker in the back, just over USB. And then all these guys are all I squared C. So the ANO rotary encoders use the C software. And then the alphanumeric displays are I squared C. And the matrix is also I squared C. Yeah, it's a really good use of those encoders on there. Thanks. Yeah, it was a fun challenge to figure out how you have this component that you really want to use. So then how do you make a build around it? Yeah. Well, thank you. No problem. Have a good one. You too. And now we're going to go to some of the community members. So I am going to start with Cy here. Hi. Hi. You ready for me? Yeah. Yeah, awesome. So I have two designs based on the Stemma I squared C breakouts. I made a couple of mistakes, and I hope people learn from my mistakes. The first one is the Zmod 4410 breakout that I made. It uses an indoor air quality sensor from Renaissance. For some reason, my camera is simply not able to focus on the sensor. I was so happy that I started this board and I got it working. And when I went to start using the libraries to get it working, I found out that the license is not necessarily open source. What that means is that Renaissance is giving the library to me personally to be used in my projects, but I cannot necessarily release the source code. It was rather disappointing to build a board to find out that I cannot necessarily share my work, but the board is still working. And the other thing that I found out is that Oshpark does these transparency screen service called the Oshpark After Dark. So a couple of weeks ago, I think Lady Aida showed the BMI-323 IMU in their new product introduction segment. So I designed the board around it, and I had it made. It's just that the board looks cool, but you cannot necessarily read any text if you have copper, like, a ground for on both layers. And because the silk screen is white, I plan to remove the copper from the top layer and see if I can get it working, to have readable text. But I plan to solder this board and come back and share if I'm able to get the IMU working with, say, an ARTB2040 color or something like that. Oh, cool. Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you. And next, we're going to go with Mark Gambler here. Hi. Hello. So I also have a synth project, which I will bring up just one second. So a couple of weeks ago, I was trying to play wave files generated from the MIDI controller. But then I was thinking, well, one, I was writing on a memory very rapidly. And also, well, we've got a synth. What can we do? Now, all this synth stuff is brand new to me. So I started looking online for tutorials on making drum sounds with a synth with Sizer. And now we have all the features in Circuit Python, thanks to Jeff, to be able to generate drum sounds totally organically through the synth. Takes up no extra memory, basically. And it works great. Almost all the techniques they talked about in various videos I was watching are possible with the LFOs. This is now running a draft PR, adding in Biquad filters, which can be per note. So the kick drum has a much lower filter versus the hi-hat is a high pass filter. And now it's also completely controllable. So I don't know if this will go. Actually, the hi-hat shows it best. I can increase the frequency of the hi-pass filter to basically it's almost filtered out, all just on demand, the length of the open hi-hat. And this controller itself doesn't have any sounds. So this works really well, is that I can now just use this small little breadboard, not even as compact as it can be to play whatever I want. And then you can just sequence a whole drum beat and then start playing on top of it without any real effort. And it sounds great. I have to give credit to Todd Bot and John as well for pointing me in the correct directions on some of the synth stuff. But this is it for anyone that wants to try it. I literally knew nothing about this about a month ago. Oh, wow. Outside of how to play the piano. And yeah, this has been a great way to get in and learn all the little details. And the fact that now I'm watching tutorials for software that cost hundreds of dollars, and we can replicate it and circuit Python. So big shout out to John for that. Well, thank you for showing that. Excellent. And next, we're going to go with 2231 Puppy. Hello. So I've been working. Hi, I've been working a lot recently on a few different versions of the e-fidget, which is my haptic feedback fidget spinner that uses vibration motors to produce this sensation of it moving without actually moving. So version, sorry. I was working on version 3.1 for maybe a few days. And then I kind of realized that it's going to be pretty complicated. It's more complicated than the previous design because it adds a USB serial converter. So I kind of decided to put that on an indefinite pause and instead go hop on the reducing everything bandwagon. So I'm going to share my screen real quick. That should be it. Hi. Can you see this? Yeah. OK. So I've got over here, can you see this layout in my cursor? Yeah. OK. So over here, I've got the layout of the PCB. And I've really simplified things quite a bit there. It used to be the second revision. And I think the first revision too were both four layer boards. And the third revision, I dropped that, made it smaller. This is simpler than the third revision. Here's the schematic. It's very few components. Oh, OK. And instead of using vibration motors, this is actually going to use a relay, which if you've ever worked with a regular relay before, not a solid state one, it kind of makes a clicking sound and also kind of you can feel it. So if I render it real quick, you can see this is the relay I've chosen. And the idea is you'll press the button, which will supply power to this microcontroller. And the microcontroller will just pulse the relay on and off every few seconds. So you can just have that in your pocket and just fidget with it. And it'll just kind of provide a nice tactile sensation that can possibly distract from anxiety or whatever. I mean, not a medical device, obviously. But yeah, then it's powered off of a coin battery, which is different from the other two versions because first one was powered off of a 9-volt. Second and third used a zip-tied in LiPo. And this one is going to use a coin battery because it is probably going to use a lot less power because there's no motors. OK, yeah. So that's the new version. And of course, it's all going to be open source hardware. The software is going to be open source, but it's not going to be super easy to program because there's no interface. I'm just going to use a programming clip onto this microcontroller. I'm just going to use a programming clip to attach to that and write the code to it. So if you want to program it, you can. And it will be open source. So yeah. Oh, that's cool. Well, thank you. Sure. Thank you. And next, we're going to go with DJ Devon 3. Hello. OK, so let's just say like 15 years ago, I bought these Mason jars from Amazon that have these LED candles in them. So long ago, it doesn't show up in the purchase history. This is pre-Amazon Purchase History. And they fall apart. So this is basically what it looks like. You've got an on-off switch, a battery compartment, a single LED inside. So what I did was gut it, added an itsy-bitsy. There's an itsy-bitsy board on there. With a Cedar Grove breadboard adapter. And I hacked a, I don't know if I can open that up. So that's basically what it looks like inside. Oh, OK. So the itsy-bitsy is so small, it fits right in there. But I did have to make some hacking concessions to get it out at the back. But it means that the top still works. And the on-off button actually works. Because I've got the enable switch running to that. So when I turn it on, you'll see it blinks because it's connecting to Bluetooth. So I've got the Adafruit Bluetooth Connect app here. And this is kind of the reason it's in this weird format looking thing is because of that. It's just a single LED that kind of slots in to there. And then you get the candle looking thing. OK, cool. And the large battery is just because my small little one ran out, which lasted three days. 500 milliamp hour lasted three days. So that was really cool. And then we go to controller, color picker. And hopefully this will work. Live demo, nope. OK, so I might have to go to control pad and then select four for solid color. Then we go color picker. And we can choose any color picker. This is running PWM code. So I actually do have real brightness controls as well. So I can dim this down as low as I want. And then if we go back to control pad, I have some preset animations. This is Flickr. So that's a pretty nice kind of realistic Flickr. I don't have speed controls for the Flickr set up yet, but those will be for the plus, minus pads. And then I have a pulse program. This is only a single color pulse. So it doesn't choose the color and then pulse the color. But that's a software issue. And then we have this one has to. There we go. And then we got rainbow. So that's all I've been working on. And then when you put it all together, you've got this cute candle in a mason jar kind of thing. And you can portable hang from trees, battery-powered, very nice ambient lighting project. That's all I got. Yeah. Thank you for stopping by. It uses NRF 52 Itzy Bitsy 840 Itzy Bitsy. So it's Bluetooth with the Bluetooth, Adafruit Bluetooth Connect app. That's it. OK, thank you. Thank you. Have a great day. You too. And last we have Dolcey. Hey, hello, everyone. I have a couple of interesting things for you. First off, the completed, ready to go except for the battery. I'm having issues with the battery because the battery booster I need is not available right now. But the app we named Bonebox. It's called a dot boat. It's a craft access terminal, which used to be used by linemen when they were putting together telephone lines. Except this particular one has been heavily modified so that it plays DTMF tones. It will play blue box tones, including the 2600. It will play red box tones. And it will scan for Wi-Fi access points anywhere around where you are. Now, this was not an easy thing to do. I'll show you the pictures. This is what the inside of it looked like. And what I had to do is take the original LCD screen and remove it and replace it with a pie portal. Then I had to desolder the original breadboard and keep the little fiber lines to keep the original keypad working and then work those into a GPIO expander, which you can see better there. You can see the GPIO expander. Oops, it went away. You can see the GPIO expander. And that went into the pie portal. And then I had to program it with the appropriate tones and the beeps and the boops. And now it works wonderfully if blue boxes and red boxes still exist. So it's sort of like a tribute museum piece sort of thing. But all I'm waiting on now is I'm waiting on one or two parts from Adafruit so I can put a battery into the handle. The batteries actually fit into the inside of the handle and from there you can power the whole thing and it will be completely portable. That's number one. Number two is the latest and greatest revision of Rolling Thunder. This is my wheelchair, my power wheelchair. It is complete with Elevator. Delchy, we need to wrap this up because I have an engineer starving here. So I needed you to put on. It has video and it runs on a Raspberry Pi. A Raspberry Pi actually does KISSnet, passive scanning, and it's completely controlled from my cell phone. And this is all ready to go for DEFCON, including the little projector in the back that does a star fuel projection in the back. And that's it. That's all I've got for you. OK, thank you.  So thank you for stopping by. I'm sorry, I can't hear you at all. I'm getting, I hear the guests, but I don't hear you. Oh, OK. I didn't realize my microphone was not working. Yeah, I'm sorry. That's OK. I'll have to chalk that up to a technical problem somewhere up down the line. OK, thank you. And that's all we have for right now. So we have Ask an Engineer that's coming up here as soon as this is done. And I'm going to go ahead and have a good night, everyone.