Pages on Colin O'Flynn

ECED3403 - Computer Architecture

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

For active students, the class primarily uses Brightspace at https://dal.brightspace.com.

Material for my ECED3403 Computer Architecture class is available on the ECED3403 GitHub. This includes slides, assignments, etc. THIS MATERIAL MAY NOT BE ACCURATE FOR THE CURRENT ACADEMIC YEAR

What the course covers

ECED3403 answers one question from a few directions: how does a program actually run on a machine? It starts with C source code and follows it down through the compiler, the instruction set, interrupts, memory and caches, to the pipeline inside the CPU core, and it finishes with how you measure performance and power.

Small Scale Electronics: Making it Small (The Book!)

Sat, 10 May 2025 23:11:22 +0000

What is this about? This is a book, that is being released with No Starch Press sometime in 2025/2026. This book chronicles many lessons learned in building NewAE Technology Inc, from how to deal with inventory and accounting systems to how you setup small-scale production in a spare room.

Achieve your most mediocre electronics production and sales dreams.

(Planned) Chapters:

Setting Up a Hardware Business
Costs, Pricing, and Accounting
Protecting Your Idea
Patents
Electronics Prototyping and Through-Hole Soldering
Surface-Mount Soldering and Equipment
Repair Techniques and Equipment
Static Control
Protective Equipment, Cleaning, and Storage
Production Soldering
PCB Design for Small-Scale Production
Contract Assembly Manufactures
Testing and Inspection
The JTAG For Testing Industry Standard
Enclosures
Milling Enclosures
Connectors and Cabling
Contacts and Crimping
Product Packaging
Barcoding and Tracking
Compliance
Product Security
Marketing
Fulfillment and Shipping

My Making Story

All Blog Posts

Sun, 08 Dec 2024 17:25:44 +0000

ECED4406 - Computer Security

Thu, 07 Sep 2023 11:54:24 +0000

For active students, the class primarily uses Brightspace at https://dal.brightspace.com.

Material for my ECED4406 class is available on the ECED4406 GitHub. This includes slides, labs, etc. THIS MATERIAL MAY NOT BE ACCURATE FOR THE CURRENT ACADEMIC YEAR

Lectures from the 2020 edition are on YouTube. The 2020 edition was online-only, so some labs and other items changed in 2022 and later editions of the course.

What the course covers

ECED4406 is about the security of embedded systems: IoT devices, cars, and the small computers inside everything else. It covers both sides:

Programmable Logic in Practice

Mon, 28 Dec 2020 11:40:06 +0000

I wrote for Circuit Cellar in a column titled “Programmable Logic in Practice” from 2013-2015. This column detailed various work around FPGAs. The column later became my “Embedded System Essentials” column, which primarily dealt with security issues in embedded systems.

The previous domain (programmablelogicinpractice.com) now redirects here. Unfortunately not all posts were transitioned. You can find copies of some of my articles if you check the Circuit Cellar tag.

Embedded Security

Fri, 02 Jan 2015 02:02:38 +0000

Background

How secure are embedded systems? Answering this question has resulted in me returning to school for my PhD, so it’s a long-winded answer! Briefly though through a series of very well-known (i.e. published for 15+ years) attacks, it’s possible to break even perfect crypto implementations. This also led me to the creation of the ChipWhisperer, my open-source hardware+software for research in this area.

Presentations

I’ve presented at a number of conferences on worked related to this, including the following: DEF CON 2015 REcon 2015 HCSS 2015 CCECE 2015 (Academic paper presentation) AtlSecCon 2015 HTCIA 2014 REcon 2014 COSADE 2014 (Academic paper presentation) AtlSecCon 2014 Blackhat USA 2013 Blackhat Abu Dhabi 2012

Wireless Networking

Tue, 30 Dec 2014 01:01:32 +0000

I spent some time doing wireless networking via the low-power wireless division at Atmel (basically just IEEE 802.15.4). Some various links to other tools/work of interest:

I developed the 15dot4-tools sniffer, which interfaces directly to Wireshark.
Helped develop uIPv6, the original IPv6 Stack for Contiki.
Developed my own IPv6 stack called FIP . As at the time I was working on switching gears I never took it much further unfortunately.
Worked with the development of a radio module called RadioBlocks.
Contributed to some of the early Zigbee-IP standard development.

Embedded Security

Tue, 30 Dec 2014 01:01:19 +0000

todo

About Me

Tue, 30 Dec 2014 00:59:59 +0000

Who Am I?

I’ve been heavily involved in embedded security for many years, having started the ChipWhisperer project as part of my PhD research. ChipWhisperer took second place in the first Hackaday Prize in 2014, and grew into the startup I co-founded, NewAE Technology Inc. In 2022 NewAE was acquired by lowRISC, the open-source silicon organization behind OpenTitan. I remain involved in NewAE in a part-time/advisory role.

I am currently an assistant professor at Dalhousie University, teaching computer engineering topics including cybersecurity, which means I also completed a PhD on the topic of embedded security, in 2017.

Electronics Projects

Tue, 30 Dec 2014 00:32:33 +0000

This page holds some various electronics projects I’ve done. Over time more of these have transitioned to being just a blog post or on youtube, or being commercial projects (which aren’t posted here). So this list gets a little lean in later years! Currently you have to see details on the old website at https://colinoflynn.com/oldsite, as I haven’t uploaded details here! See the blog tag feature (try the ‘making’ tag for example) to see some of the blog projects. ChipWhisperer - 2013-2015 This is a revolutionary low-cost tool for side channel analysis research. It is now sold through NewAE Technology Inc, but remains a completely open-source tool! OpenADC - June 2012 OpenADC is a high-speed (>105 MSPS, ~200 MHz analog BW) RF front-end for FPGA boards. It has a preamplifier for gain ranges from -11dB to 65dB which can be controlled from the FPGA. Variable VREF on the ADC & optional transformer-coupling for maximum analog BW. Full source, python & MATLAB interfaces round off the project. SDRRF - 2011 Platform for experimenting with Software Defined Radio or communications algorithsm. FPGA+DDR2+ADC+DAC+USB. Dime Compass - June 2011 Digital Compass, based on HMC5883L. Tiny 1 inch square, with option to pop-out mountable compass smaller than a dime. GPS Locked Frequency Standard - Dec 2007 10 MHz GPS Locked Frequency Standard. No expensive parts - uses a innovative ovenized crystal design instead of purchasing one. Snapper - May 2008 Camera flash controller based on low-cost Atmel Butterfly. Allows capture of high-speed events sync’d to various events (sound, switch, water). IMU - 2006 Small inertial measurement unit, built with an AVR, a 3-axis accelerometer, and 3 single-axis gyros. Eagle in a Rack - May 2004 Video tracker which runs in real-time to track objects in live video. Uses a single FPGA running at the video pixel rate, no high-speed logic needed. Drivesafe - October 2003 Proof of concept for a vehicle saftey device to detect erratic driving. Senses movement with accelerometers. STANN Robot - May 2003 Robotic platform for development of neural networks. Includes backplane which boards can be plugged into, ultrasonic rangfinder, colour detection camera. Fain Failure Detector - June 2003 Fan failure detector. Uses cheap NTC sensor as flow sensor by heating it up and detecting temperature loss due to airflow over it. Hovercraft - May 2002 Hovercraft which uses a neural network to control it’s movement. Allows autonomous operation with a single ultrasonic rangefinder.

ECED3901 - Design Methods II

Mon, 29 Dec 2014 23:05:51 +0000

I taught ECED3901 twice, in Summer 2015 and Winter 2025.

Winter 2025 Edition

The course contents for this were hosted on Brightspace, so there is less information on this page. Some links to useful content are still included. Many open-source parts of the course can be seen at https://github.com/colinoflynn/roboheist-challenge/tree/main The course final is seen on roboheist.com

Summer 2015 Edition

Summer 2015, I’m teaching the ECED3901 Design Methods II class at Dalhousie University. This course takes students through the design of a robot to achieve some objective, see for example the press release of the 2014 course.

ECED2200 - Intro to Digital Circuits

Mon, 29 Dec 2014 23:04:51 +0000

ECED2200 is a basic introduction to digital electronics course, which I taught as a summer course a few times at Dalhousie. This page holds the resulting lectures and labs I created for this course, which are used during some of the regular course as well.

Copyright & Old Versions

All material for this course has been Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported Licensed. This means you can freely use it in both commercial and non-commercial venues, provided you respect the above license.

Teaching

Mon, 29 Dec 2014 23:04:23 +0000

This page primarily covers academic courses I’ve taught at Dalhousie. Currently you can see more details of each of those courses on the following sub-page:

Publications

Mon, 29 Dec 2014 23:03:44 +0000

This page has my academic papers, books, patents and Circuit Cellar columns. My CC columns are marked Trade magazine — they aren’t peer reviewed. My Google Scholar page has citation counts and PDFs for the academic work, though it doesn’t know about the columns or the talks, so this page tries to capture everything.

160 publications & talks · 2002–2026 — filter by kind

2026

Easy Reverse Engineering with LLMs: A Useful Helper, Not a Magic Wand

Research

Mon, 29 Dec 2014 23:02:39 +0000

Embedded Security

My most recent research is involved in embedded security, specifically side-channel analysis and glitching attacks. You can see some of my publications listed from the Publications page.

I’m mostly know for starting the ChipWhisperer project, which I’ve talked about since 2013 when I gate a talk on low-cost power analysis techniques. ChipWhisperer has been widely used in the research (both academic & industrial) community - you can see a few hundred Google Scholar hits for example which is a good way to find papers using it. I’ve been involved in a few specific research results as well, they are listed on the presentations page but a few more prominent ones: