Stephan Bökelmann

From Bitstream to Idea: An Inverse Guide to FPGAs

July 8, 2026 fpga ice40 ghdl yosys nextpnr icestick toolchain hardware digital-design

The ghdl-yosys-nextpnr toolchain for an iCE40, walked backward: starting from a blinking LED and tracing every transformation back to the idea that caused it.

Correlation, Causation, and the Overton Window That Only Shrinks

July 6, 2026 philosophy epistemology statistics causality academia free-speech personal

Everyone knows the first half of the aphorism. The second half is where the actual thinking happens, and I think the reflex to stop at the first half is doing something worse than being lazy.

What AI Actually Is

July 3, 2026 machine-learning philosophy ai neural-networks education language

Running a chat model is not AI. The training process is. Everything else follows from that distinction, including where the human niche survives.

From the UAT to the Modern Neural Network

July 3, 2026 information-theory neural-networks uat history education machine-learning

We have the bit. Now the question is what we can compute with it, and whether a machine can learn to compute things nobody explicitly programmed. The answer runs from Hilbert through Turing to a theorem most engineers have never heard of.

From Aristotle to the Bit

July 3, 2026 information-theory shannon philosophy history education

The bit did not fall from the sky in 1948. It is the last step in a chain that starts with a Greek philosopher arguing about sea battles and ends with Claude Shannon measuring surprise.

How Monolatry Shapes My Worldview

June 21, 2026 philosophy religion theology jung history personal monotheism psychology

From polytheism as a map of the inner life, through the slow emergence of the individual voice, to the moment one god is raised above the rest, and what that means for how I actually live.

Post the Wrong Answer. You'll Learn More.

June 19, 2026 epistemology philosophy writing internet popper

Cunningham's Law says the fastest way to get the right answer online is to post the wrong one. I've been doing this accidentally for years, and I think there's something serious underneath the joke.

Zero to One: Python Libraries, Environments, and Working Like You Mean It

June 16, 2026 python uv virtualenv stdlib education tools

You do not have to write everything from scratch. Python has thousands of libraries. But the way you pull them in matters, and most introductions get that part wrong.

WTF are FPGAs: A Beginner's Overview of Field-Programmable Gate Arrays

June 15, 2026 fpga vhdl verilog digital-design hardware electronics yosys nextpnr icestick ice40

FPGAs are not microcontrollers with more pins. They are a fundamentally different category of IC, and understanding what lives inside one changes how you think about digital hardware entirely.

A Hill I Am Willing to Die On: HDL for PCB Netlists

June 8, 2026 hardware PCB HDL SKiDL netlist schematic EDA AI KiCad version-control

Schematics are not where PCB design should start. Netlists should be generated from a structured hardware description language, and that changes everything about how AI fits into the picture.

Physics Doesn't Explain Anything. And That's the Point.

June 4, 2026 physics philosophy education wolfram heisenberg engineering

My high school teacher told me physics explains the world. Years later I think that's completely wrong, and understanding why changes everything about how you approach the subject.

Autonomous Will, Heteronomous Will, and the Work of Becoming Yourself

June 3, 2026 philosophy kant ethics autonomy individuation jung freud religion personal

Kant draws a sharp line between acting from your own reason and acting from external pressure. But where does your reason actually come from? An exploration of autonomy, heteronomy, archetypes, and the slow work of building a self you can stand behind.

Physics, Math, or Engineering? How do you decide

June 1, 2026 physics mathematics engineering career education personal

What is the real difference between physics, mathematics, and engineering — and how do you choose the right degree? A personal account from someone who studied all three.

PDSC4K 2026: Everything, Everywhere, All at Once

May 23, 2026 data-science conferences data-pipelines pdsc community bochum

The Practical Data Science Congress (PDSC4K) in Bochum proved that small, deliberately compact events can deliver more signal than most large conferences — especially when the real topic is the messy reality of getting data from the physical world into models that don't lie to you.

Zero to One: Fun with SWD

May 20, 2026 embedded stm32 openocd swd hardware beginners zero-to-one

You do not need to write a single line of C to talk to a microcontroller. With OpenOCD and a telnet connection you can toggle GPIO pins directly from your terminal — and that is exactly how we build a blinky on an STM32F303K8 Nucleo-32.

Simulating Antiproton Energy Loss in an HV-MAPS Silicon Sensor with Geant4

May 18, 2026 geant4 simulation particle-physics hv-maps silicon-detector antiproton hesr panda fair bethe-bloch

A first-principles walkthrough of using Geant4 to simulate how much energy an antiproton deposits in a thin HV-MAPS silicon sensor — including a hand-worked Bethe-Bloch example, the Landau distribution, and why this matters for detector design before you ever see a beam.

Zero to One: VHDL and a Lattice iCEstick

May 14, 2026 fpga vhdl icestick ice40 hardware digital-design ghdl yosys zero-to-one

A complete walkthrough of writing VHDL, simulating it with GHDL, and flashing a blinking LED onto a Lattice iCEstick — from zero assumptions to a physical result.

Viewing Plots from My Homelab Over SSH X11 Forwarding

May 13, 2026 linux ssh x11 networking homelab bastion wireguard

How to forward X11 through a bastion server to display images and plots from a home machine on a university workstation, without copying files.

How Two Teenagers, a Printer Plug, and a Forum Post Built a Company

May 6, 2026 auto-intern vcds obd ross-tech automotive origin-story diagnostics

Auto-Intern GmbH turns 25. This is the story of how it started: two kids in a bedroom, a GTI, an RS-232 adapter, and the accidental invention of a market.

Are Machines Conscious? A Snapshot

May 5, 2026 consciousness AI philosophy cognition mind

What does consciousness mean — and where on that spectrum do beetles, dogs, humans, and language models sit? No final answers, but an honest attempt to think the question through.

The Game of Life and the Limits of Prediction

May 4, 2026 cellular-automata wolfram entropy philosophy complexity conway

A colleague called it 'useless math but super fun.' I objected. Conway's Game of Life connects self-replicating machines, Wolfram's computational irreducibility, and the unsettling possibility that entropy is not just disorder — it is the universe refusing to be calculated.

Zero to One: A Personal Journal Bot with Telegram and Gemini

May 3, 2026 telegram gemini docker journaling llm python latex obsidian zero-to-one

I spent a day building a Dockerized Telegram bot that turns voice messages and scattered thoughts into a structured journal, Obsidian topic notes, and a compiled LaTeX memoir — and what I learned about LLM APIs along the way.

Enclosureless Cases: When the PCB Is the Enclosure

April 29, 2026 hardware PCB PCBA enclosure gebrauchsmuster sensor 1-wire BME open-hardware manufacturing

Enclosureless Cases: a patented approach to PCB housing where three stacked PCBs form a sealed, EMC-shielded enclosure using a perimeter solder joint — no injection moulding, no tooling, no separate supply chain.

A Database Is Not an API

April 24, 2026 databases architecture FastAPI Keycloak nerd_force1

Why we never expose a database directly — how to layer FastAPI, Keycloak, and PostgreSQL for clean access control, testable endpoints, and a stable client interface.

The Recursion Problem in Relational Algebra

April 24, 2026 databases teaching THGA relational-algebra

Relational algebra cannot express recursive queries — here is why transitive closure is outside the algebra's scope, and what SQL's WITH RECURSIVE actually means.

Zero to One: Why a Filesystem Is Not a Database

April 23, 2026 databases teaching THGA SQL zero-to-one

Why relational databases exist — a teaching practicum that makes students feel the pain of querying 120 CSV files with shell tools before showing them SQL. Imperative vs. declarative, made concrete.

If We Can Measure It, You Can Improve It

April 20, 2026 manifesto monitoring automation auto-intern philosophy

Why we build monitoring systems — the case for industrial automation as human liberation, retrofit over greenfield, and why the sensor is the critical missing link between AI and the physical world.

Travelling to China with a Peli Case Full of Electronics

April 9, 2026 china travel hardware EMC logistics

Practical guide for engineers flying to China with professional electronics — ATA Carnet process, Frankfurt customs, Guangzhou departure, apps to install, and a full pre-trip checklist.

EMC in Dongguan: 2.5 Years of Work, 4 Days in a Test Chamber

April 1, 2026 hardware EMC China monitoring PoE project

CE, FCC, and CCC certification in Dongguan — four days at NTC test lab with a PoE-based reflow oven monitoring system after 2.5 years of development. What we tested, what we found, and what the anodized housing almost cost us.

Ten Years of Conferences: What They're Actually For

March 15, 2026 conferences community emBO++ Open-Skunkforce OSF cpp KiCad reflection

Ten years of attending and organising technical conferences — what they're actually for, why the hallway track beats the programme, and how emBO++ grew from four people to 250. Lessons from Meeting C++, KiCon, GSI, and ISO C++.

Dual Uplink for 15 People: Starlink, Heimdall, and Linux Routing

February 27, 2026 networking Linux Starlink failover infrastructure Debian sysadmin

How to set up dual uplink failover for an office network using Linux routing, Starlink, and metric-based default routes — with a Python dashboard to monitor both links in real time.

Ten Years of PowerSense: Blood, Sweat, and Ferrite Cores

January 15, 2026 auto-intern hardware monitoring rail PoE engineering

How we built a non-contact PoE power monitor for DB Netz railway switching stations — ten years of E-field sensing, embedded ferrite cores, EMC certification, and the hardware lessons that shaped everything since.

PCB Design Starts With a README

December 10, 2025 hardware PCB KiCad PlantUML block-diagram workflow documentation version-control LLM

Before opening KiCad, create a README and let an LLM generate a PlantUML block diagram. Why writing design intent first prevents costly PCB mistakes — with a worked STM32F7 example.

Biofilms in Rivers: EIS at the Clark Fork

November 28, 2025 EIS MSU Montana biofilm sensor water-quality skAInet hardware field-deployment

How a governor's reception in Montana led to a year of instrument development with Montana State University — building a portable EIS datalogger for biofilm detection and deploying it in the Clark Fork River.

KiCon Asia 2025: Speaking on Wire Bonding in Shenzhen

November 15, 2025 KiCad wire-bonding hardware conference Shenzhen particle-physics KiCon

Talk at KiCon Asia 2025 in Shenzhen on wire bonding CLICpix and MuPix detector chips — two years of hands-on bonding with a Delvotec, condensed into 25 minutes. Slides and video included.

OmnAIScope: A USB Oscilloscope for Automotive Diagnostics

August 28, 2025 hardware automotive oscilloscope RP2040 KiCad aw4null open-access

OmnAIScope is an open-access USB oscilloscope for automotive diagnostics, built on RP2040 with multi-channel USB synchronisation — no hardware trigger needed. How it works, the server architecture, and where to get it.

Getting Started: From Tape-Out to TypeScript

August 14, 2025 meta engineering intro

Stephan Bökelmann writes about monitoring systems, embedded engineering, ASIC development, and university-level programming — from silicon to frontend. First post: what this blog covers and why.

KiCon Europe 2024: Bochum Goes International

September 20, 2024 KiCad conference Bochum hardware open-source KiCon Open-Skunkforce

KiCon Europe 2024 in Bochum — 150 engineers and designers, KiCad lead developers Wayne Stambaugh and Seth Hilbrand on stage, talks on open hardware, PCB design, and KiCad development. Full recap and YouTube playlist.