Lacking Professionalism

Ordered some new screens!

2012-01-26T23:32:00.000-05:00

So I think I've been stagnated on a lot of my projects because I'm bummed out I can't get one of my graphical LCDS to work.

First, I purchased a Graphical OLED display, this one from Newhaven Displays
Its supposedly has a rise and fall time of around 10us. Which means I can do some very high frame-rates with it (even if I do things at 100fps, that's 3 orders of magnitude longer than the minimum switching time).

I'm really hoping I'll have an easy time interfacing this with my USB kit. then we can make some interesting patterns on it, and eventually work on a couple of projects that I think would be neat. Namely some embedded gaming solutions. Im psyched to get them when they come.

Next, I thought I need some simple yet powerful enough LCD's for debugging and showing off basic information.
I picked up a couple 2x16 character LCDs. Three namely; I want to use one in a "kill-a-watt" style power metering device. Another for generic debugging. Finally one for Home circuit breaker and a DIY signal generator generic power supply.

Hopefully they show up soon.

On Applying for Jobs

2012-01-23T00:21:00.001-05:00

For the last couple of weeks I've been basically unemployed. Beyond the odd-job for a friends/family company I've had the luck of being on the job hunt.
I have to say, so far this has not only been the most unrewarding thing I've done this year; it's also a task that seems like a burden to do.

I don't think I had the mentality that many university graduates get that there will be people jumping from all over to give them work. It seems like its just a necessary evil if anyone ever wants to get a job; at least if you don't know someone. Which is where I fit in.

The last 3 or 4 Jobs I've had were all on referral. I didn't give anyone a resume, I barely had anything that can be called an "interview," and since maybe 2008 I haven't actually had to "Job hunt." Now, coming back to this process has been very frustrating. I feel like from the beginning the job application process is gamed from both sides. Which is why the entire framework for an application I think needs to be reconsidered and reworked. Especially with the new tools that both employers and job-seekers have at hand.

Below I'll flesh out a couple of my grips with this process and what I think can be done about them...

In a perfect world, you have a best friend that works at company XYZ that has an opening for your position. You mention to your friend "Hey, I'd love to work for XYZ..." they then mention it to a supervisor and have you brought in for an interview. Now you are happily employed.

Now why can't everyone just find a friend that works at a company and get them in? Well, you might be specialized or just not have that many friends; or you are all unemployed waiting for one of you to get in somewhere. In any case. This is the beginning problem from which the current application process stems from.

From the employers perspective: "How can I advertise this job opening?". "How can I filter the 10 000 applications down to a few I can interview?", and "How do I get the best person?".

How do they advertise the job? They post it somewhere. Be it internally to the company, in a newspaper, on their website or on a generic job website. This gets their needs posted somewhere that potential job seekers can find the position.

Now you: the job seeker, have found that posting and say: "That sounds great! Let me apply!". What do you apply with? Well today's absolute minimum required is usually a tailored resume. Then a level above that is a custom resume and a nice cover letter. If its your first time there might also be transcripts and references involved. Further on you might have a work portfolio that you also apply with.

Job applications from my (read: unsuccessful) understanding of them are a lot like trying to an online dating profile. You want to give out enough information they know a little about you, but you want to also leave enough out that on the first date you are still new and interesting. So for applications unless its specifically stated resume only. Usually one puts forward resume and a cover letter stating that more is available on the employers request.

1) Too Formalized.

Which brings me to the first gripe I have with this process...its far too structured to get anything meaningful out of it. (The next little bit isn't researched, so don't hold me to it if its wrong but tell me so I can fix it). Way back when, say 40 years or so ago. You'd walk in to the company you want and physically hand them a resume. You met the HR people and one of the people you might be working with. They saw your face and you are golden.
Some time went by and more people were doing this. So many so that when the time came to actually select people, the hiring team forgot who was who. "Was that Johnny that came in, he was the accountant? No, that was Jenny. John was the other guy for an Engineering position." So what happened after that was people would bring in letters attached to their resumes telling the team who they were, and why they thought they were a good fit. That worked well and still does today to some extent. Then this little thing called the internet came along. It allowed people to apply for positions in places they may never have heard of before. And because the norm was to give the employer your resume and CV already, people added on things like online portfolios, websites, and other things to help differentiate them from the other applicants.

Now, were left with me sending some documents online with some links and hoping to hear from them about an interview. Seems a little odd. I suppose that before I go into what needs to change we need to establish what the pieces of an application are supposed to be for (as far as I know..)

Resume - This is the critical list of skills and traits that you possess that make you right for the job. It also shows qualifications from previous work experience. This allows the hiring team to assess how qualified you are and to some extent your personality.
Cover letter - This is for listing the skills you have specific to the position you are applying for. Supposed to make it easier for companies to find people, as well as showing off some of the other soft skills (You can use a word processor and spell check, etc.).
Transcript - Rarely used now, but its meant to assess your ability for critical thinking or something. It's a really bad metric in my opinion.

With those things they are supposed to figure out if you are a good fit for the company. Are you? I don't think that gives a full enough picture. I was told in school personality holds 50% at an interview along with your qualifications. If that's actually the case then why isn't it reflected in the application?

Something needs to be put in place that can give the employer a list of your vital stats (a baseball card of you) in qualifications and your soft skills before they interview you. My solution right now would be to say hand over some of a dating sites questionnaires and merge them with a job profile site (i.e. LinkedIn). That gives the employer everything they ought to need to qualify/disqualify someone on the spot. I suppose people could game the quizzes too, but then if they get an interview they have to prove themselves there also. Not a perfect solution, but if everyone was 100% honest we would all have nice things. ...

2) No Feedback from Employers.

If you haven't seen these on almost every posting in the last little while, you are either under a rock, or happily employed.

[Image Thanks for the application but only people selected for interviews will be contacted. ]

And its something that as someone who has been off the hunt for a while bothers me. If I just made a new resume, great cover letter for you, got my transcripts in order, polished up a website. And I hear nothing back from you. I'm at an absolute loss. Was it me? Is there someone wrong with my resume/cover letter? Were there so many applications that you just tossed a bunch out randomly? Were there applicants much more qualified than I? A friend of mine said "just apply to places, the worst they can say is no." I had to reply with: "No, the worst thing a company can say is nothing. You can't tell if you weren't selected on purpose, or if they forgot you, or even if you were considered. They leave you completely in the dark on it.

This is one part that needs some reworking. I've thought for a while now that because all of these company's make you go through their careers section of their website. They should have an automatic reply stating that:

They have received you application
They are in the process of reviewing X job and you will hear from them in Y days/weeks regarding an interview if selected.
If not selected, you will be held on file for future applications that may fit similar criteria.

Would that be too much to ask? I know it gets there and will -probably- be read. I have a solid timeline on how long I should hold my breath. Then if future positions open up I'll be in the pile for those too. Great! You know I have at least some interest in working for your company. Consider me again in future opportunities.

Final Remarks:
That's where I stand right now, although companies don't have to go out of their way for you. I think it would make a world of difference to job seekers if they gave you a little more than absolutely nothing in return. I also think that there should be a better way to filter people while looking. Maybe also holding more interviews. The amount of boot licking that has to be done just to get your foot in the door (Maybe I'm doing too much of it?) seems absurd. I think having a mixed job/personality/dating site would make the most sense. If LinkedIn had a personality testing section where it grades your on some already defined standard (there has to be one) then the company gets a good head start on whether you will work in their company well or not.

[Did I miss something? Comment or send me an email so I can fix it!]

I never Learn...

2012-01-15T23:48:00.000-05:00

I've been playing around with this LED Cube Project for a little while now. After burning myself Friday for hastily making the cub itself. It's come full cycle and bit me again.

This time I put some LEDs in backwards.

So if you are building a project. Take the time to look over the simple things. Sure you just Soldered 25 Led's together. Simple stuff. Check to make sure they are in the right orientation. Because chances are after doing it 150 times you'll screw something up. It saves time in the long run finding a fault early on than debugging and rebuilding sections of the previous step. It's also made this proof of concept look a little junkier than what I wanted.

Ouch!

2012-01-13T19:59:00.001-05:00

Took a little over 3 weeks, but I've finally christened this soldering iron with flesh. (which soldering iron? Why my new Hakko FX-888!)

Soldering today I managed to graze the tip with my index finger. Leaving a nice blister right now. Thats smarts!

The PSA of this blog would be to double check where your hands are with respect to the tools you are using. Burns hurt more than cuts. I really want to keep on soldiering through the LED Cube right now, but damn I don't want to get too close to that iron anymore.

Back to the grind.

2012-01-09T18:51:00.001-05:00

Well, its back to the grind now. Everyone here is done with their holidays.

I wrote up a cycling and running spreadsheet that will hopefully keep me on track for all the biking running and swimming I want to do this year.

I'm unsure where everyone else logs their runs. But I really like the statistical analysis mine give me. I have standard graphs like Distance vs. Time and a Histogram of activities that I've done. But additionally because I have a goal in mind (<25min 5k run, <55min 1.5kswim, ??min 20k bike) I can add in normalized/extrapolated times for those goals. Which makes graphing my progress on the same metric very, very easy. Something any website I've found so far very incapable of doing.

Here's a google doc's Link to what I wrote up, its not quite the same as the Excel Version but it does it justice still.

If there's someone who knows of a service that can make the same/similar performance charts, please let me know. I would've thought there would be some more that existed.

All the boards are Soldered!

2012-01-06T00:03:00.001-05:00

[Originally Posted December 30, 2011]

That's right! Everything is put together now. I've also added in the unfortunately left-out pull up resistors on the Character LCD as well as the Development board. Additionally, I straight up removed the option to power the Development board with a regulator (after I broke it with -12V ...oops). IT doesn't make sense to have when most projects involve USB communication anyways.

For an Interesting Comparison I pulled out an Arduino and placed it alongside my board. Both pretty similar. Basically, the same my component selection changes (and mine is a whole lot simpler).

The Development Board and all my Shields.

Motor Control Shield Close-Up

That's great! Now with every project that I'm working on is either in the firmware phase or the Board phase. Either way it means more time on my computer...

USB Devboard Milestone!

2012-01-06T00:02:00.001-05:00

[Originally Posted: December 30 2011]

I got a soldering iron for Christmas. Which has been awesome. I finished up all of the soldering that I wanted to do from early December. I put some current limiting resistors in the joy pad I made.

I then finally found a demo Microchip did with the PIC18F4550 which i think is a roundabout way of finding the project I originally based my development board on. Cool!

The demo dealt with playing around with the Generic USB-HID drivers that come with windows. You remember this pane:

Image Credit: devshed.com

Well that's what this demo program that I found works with. We're making a joystick!

With a good deal more tweaking I got the ADC's working (properly, at that) and was outputting proper XY coordinates to the screen! Next thing I knew I did something that I am looking forward to doing in the future more properly. I was racing in a video game, driving with my own board that I put together with some hacked together firmware!

I'm very excited about this. It means that I won't have to go too deep into the USB descriptors anymore (although I will still). It also means that the project I had in mind (Take real car-controls and make a driver-sim out of it) is not only feasible, but partially done in firmware and hardware now.

PCB's Soldered, ready for testing.

2012-01-06T00:01:00.002-05:00

[Originally Posted: December 21st 2011]

So right now I'm sort of doing 5 projects at the same time. Which while fun; it is way more time consuming than I had anticipated.

A week ago I got the boards in. And a few days ago I assembled the boards at school (Yup, I knew they would forget to remove my key-access).

Anyway, I wanted to post some of the results of what I put together.

First project that I really want to wrap us is the Character LCD Project. It's all pretty simple circuitry to put together. If you're wondering I just hand-solder all of the surface mount components. That's why I pick things usually no smaller than 0805 in size, or closer than 0.04" apart. I can do smaller parts (I've done many 0603's before) but I just get a headache staring at something that small for so long.

Character LCD Board Being Assembled

I think if there was a re-design for this board (there won't be by me) I'd get a smaller trim pot. I liked how it was to access this pot from the back when its installed in a case...but it has no holding force, so a good vibration will kick my contrast out of whack.

Finished Character LCD Board

I really got into soldering and forgot to take pictures of the progress. Suddenly it was a couple hours later and I had finished 2 more PCBs. Something I wish I had on me when I did this was a better continuity tester, because I can't work with the graphical LCD board yet because I missed a programming pin. Oops.

Graphical, Current Sense and Character boards all together. Note: Never solder the board to the screen until you are done. That was a TERRIBLE idea.

Second last board of the night before I went off to play some TF2 was the mother-development board. Way more personalized than an arduino with nearly zero code support. It was easier to solder than the others because there was no surface mount parts save 2 resistors. Lots of problems with this board that I'll talk about somewhere else. But the gist of them is that this board is not nearly robust enough to be touted as a development board. There definitely will be a Version 2 of this guy. (Edit: a second revision is already made. I need to go over it a few more times to make sure I didn't miss anything this time).

PIC18F4550 Development Board Note: Regulator was too tall (oops) and Next Time get a socket for the PIC. If/when you break it, it will be handy.

The joy pad board was the easiest thing to solder. I used the biggest tip and just heated the hell out of the pads. I know its not best practice but over half of the pins are connected to either a V+ or GND plane. which makes having a smaller tip pretty useless.

My Joypad/Pushbutton Board mounted on top of the Development board. Notice my distinct lack of symmetry. That's not important though. The Pots I ordered physically would not fit between the Port layout on the development board (Maybe a possible re-design for V2?)

Next up is the firmware. ...Why did I think all the hard work was done already? Firmware is definitely one of my weaker links. Going through and adding in all the features I need will be a pretty good exercise in ~~futility~~ patience.

PCB Order Arrived!

2012-01-05T23:58:00.002-05:00

[Originally Posted December 15, 2011]

So after anxiously waiting a couple of weeks. Batch PCB came through and for whatever reason gave me not one, but 2 of each board that I ordered! I ordered 7 boards and have 14 PCB's laying on my desk. Fantastic!

So, we have all the boards I mentioned in the previous post here. From left to right: 4550 DevBoard, Joypad Shield, Graphical LCD Board, Stepper Motor Board, Current-Sense Board, Screw-terminal Breakout Board, and the Character LCD Boards.

I didn't have a tape measure handy to give a proper measure of scale here (wooden desk doesnt lend itself well to that either). So I placed a Hot Wheels (70' AAR 'Cuda) Behind a couple of the board to help give some sense of scale.

Character LCD PCB (~2x2")

Above is the PCB I'm going to use to interface with the character LCD I have. The breadboard version worked well so Hopefully this version will work just as well in a smaller package.

Now, the image below here is the current sense ones, which are interesting for 2 reasons. Firstly, the sensor itself is rated for 100Amps (One-Hundred!). So the planes that I put around the top and bottom layers of the pads are actually connected. Doing some crude trace-width calculations it looks like the traces should be able to handle 15-20amps without an issue. If I do some solder bridging (which I probably will) that number will go way up.

The other thing that's interesting to note for future projects is that the current sensor has slotted leads! This would've been a problem because the leads are ~1cm wide and no PCB fab house will run a drill that big. Plus that would leave me with a massively large hole where my little slot should be. Solution? Lots of drill holes the thickness that I needed (0.8mm). I think 8 drills in all. But this was great because we see that batch PCB still plated everything properly. So the slots that they say they *Don't* support they really do, with some manipulation. So if you're looking for some slotted holes it can be done (Also the new Eagle V6 looks like it can help you a lot more than it did for me with these boards).

Current Sense and Negative Voltage Reference PCB's

I'm heading out tomorrow and hopefully I'll get time to solder some of these guys together. I don't have parts for all of them but if I can even just get the 2 LCD ones soldered together I'll be pretty happy.

Regardless I have a lot of free time soon and hopefully even more projects like this coming through!

PCB's are enroute!

2012-01-05T23:56:00.007-05:00

[Original Post Date: December 13, 2011]

I just got an email from Batch PCB saying that my panel's worth of boards is making its way to Canada! This is good news. I put in one massive order to save on shipping.

There are a total of 7 boards IIRC coming this way. Including:

Graphical LCD PCB
Character LCD PCB (only been breadboarded at this point)
Custom Pic18F4550 Deveopment Board
Gamepad "Shield" for 4550
Blank Screw Terminal breakout shield for 4550
Kill-a-Watt Current Sense board (we'll see how well this worked) + Voltage regulation
Stepper Motor Shield for 4550 Devboard

There's a total of 4 Projects in all of those boards. The Kill-a-watt and Graphical LCD, the Casemod Character LCD. And the multi-role 4550 Development board.

What that means is I really hope I get a good soldering iron for Christmas..the Mastercraft one here now won't do the trick.

Very exciting! Hopefully I can post some images soon and see what kind of quality we have.

Time for a migration!

2012-01-05T23:55:00.003-05:00

So, I made up a google site's page to showcase a few of the projects I wanted to work on and it made sense there to have a blog. But I have this one still... So, what to do? We'll I'm going to try to embed this one in the other page. This system is much better at keeping track of things, but its a far cry from a website. The website is better for customization, but lacks the blog-specific tooling that I'd like to have for at least one page. So for the next couple of hours I'm going to try to copy over the (like 6) Posts I made to my "blog" on that site. Whether or not this is successful we will only be able to see in a bit.

Update 1: Wireless Emergecy Stop

2011-03-13T18:56:00.000-04:00

Today, we finally did a range test on the 433MHz Emergency Stop board I made.

The minimum range the project is looking for was 50ft, reliably. The good news? We managed that distance no problem. Better news? The range is so far we're not sure how to appropriately measure it.

Indoor's where you expect reception to be worse. We left the transmitter in our lab and walked away with the receiver to a point in the building we could not receive the signal anymore.

This ended up being about 150 feet, through the doors of our lab (which have been known to be pretty impervious to RF), not even close to line of sight, and while transmitting at the lowest voltage possible.

Next up was an outdoor range test, again plugged in to an outlet at one building the transmitter was left to transmit. The receiver was walked behind buildings and a range of about 200ft was managed, although it could probably go further.

Finally, we did a Line of Sight Test, One person on one side of the parking lot, myself on the other side. With line of sight, we've easily managed 450ft. Just 9 times the required distance for the E-stop. Thats with the 3.0V minimum transmit voltage (works up to 5.2V).

Later this week we will test using a different method. Namely find a dead end road and drive straight down it until we can't receive anymore, and try this with the higher transmit power, also.

I'd bet we can get over 1000ft out of these things if we try.

Ill put up pictures of the schematics and a parts list for those interested in this. ~60$ gets a reliable link up to about 1000ft (Data sheet says you can get 3000ft if you know your RF design...I don't). If your looking for simple switching, this beats the price of Xbees.

Open Source Linear Algebra Computational Software

2011-03-04T09:24:00.001-05:00

This is a post for anyone who has done linear algebra and gets 2-3 pages into a question, and realizes they screwed up a step on page one.

It's happened too often to me to be funny anymore. half an hour wasted because that "-2v1_z" really should have been "2v2_z" and then everything would have come together properly.

If its happened to you before, or you want some software to check your work against. I suggest looking into this "Maxima" Project.

What it is, is very comparable to the symbolics library in matlab. However comes with a lot cheaper license (Free) and does the work in literally a 10th of the time. Its a considerably higher performance implementation to what Matlab currently implements.

Really, really crappy screen shot of Maxima.

I know that this totally sounds just like a plug for them. But compared to what I usually use I was impressed with the amount of features that a program like this has. Apparently it has plotting functions too (not nearly as powerful as Matlab in this respect).

One nice feature is the copy as image and copy as LaTeX functionality. Means you can use Maxima to render an equation quickly without the stupid PDF recompiling that LaTex does. Then Quickly and accurately get the right function into Latex without any of the usual hassles. (Particularly useful for equations that have many elements, sums or integrals in them).

If you're taking a Linear Algebra Course, and want to check your work with this. If you're like me and multiplying a bunch of symbolic rotation matrices together, or your in industry or as a hobbyist looking for a free solution to evaluate some problems. I'd strongly suggest this download as being a big step in the right direction if you don't want to shell out 150$ for a Matlab License.

DIY Wireless Emergency Stop

2011-02-13T23:24:00.001-05:00

Part of my responsibilities on a club of mine is to design an emergency stop for a car.

For hobbyists this seems to be a fairly common project that can be undertaken in various ways, depending what is needed from the end product. These solutions range from 20$ to 100$ and offer varying ranges and data-rates.

There are a few potential ways for someone to go about this task. The one that was tried last year was a wireless link setup with 2 Xbee Modules. I'll also take a look into a simple solution and a more robust version depending upon the application.

Option 1: Xbee Module Wireless Serial Connection
Range: Okay (100-150ft indoor)
Bandwidth: Great (10's of kb/s)
Cost: Medium-High (Here, thats 50-100$)
Frequency: 2.4GHz.
With some advanced knowledge of the Xbee module, its possible to make a link to trip a relay remotely for about 60$ (20 each for Xbee's , and another 20 for misc. components )

Simple Schematic attaching a PIC24H to the Xbee

Board Layout for the whole circuit was about 2.5-3sq inches.

One major improvement that could be made to this board is figuring out how the Programmable IO on the Xbee's worked. You could potentially eliminate the Microcontroller altogether, which personally I think would be Ideal.

Option #2: The Walkie Talkie E-stop
Range: Short (50ft indoor)
Bandwidth: Low (none, really)
Cost: Very low (~20$)
Frequency: 27MHz, or 49MHz.

This is a pretty simple hack. Go to a store that sells kids toys. Buy a pair of toy walkie talkies (you can buy better ones and get a much better result, but this is a lot less expensive). Make sure they have the "morse code" button on them. What will be done is we'll take one walkie talkie and rip the speaker off, this will be the output of the receiver side. The transmitter side can stay stock.

Most/all of these cheap toys are AM based. Meaning that the receiver will see a change in amplitude in its band based on what the transmitter is sending. So what we do to fix all the potential noise we will get on the channel (27 and 49 MHz are popular for most child toys) is we will make a simple band pass filter at 1800 - 2200Hz. Then an envelope detector after the filter will give us an overall indication of the strength of the signal at the frequency. This could be then fed into a comparator which is triggered high when the envelope is large enough. Which can trigger whatever relay circuit you have to stop/start something remotely. With this system if you're clever you can add in multiple frequencies and get different things being triggered with moderate noise suppression.

Biggest drawback of course is the AM is directly correlated to your proximity to the car. You'll have to stay close, but for small simple projects it's price literally can't be beaten.

Which brings me to the last option that I'm trying this year for the club: Industrial AM modules. These are the ones you will find in a key-fob in a car or something similar. Low Data-rate, but massive range and very reliable.

Option #3: Linx Module(s)
Range: Huge! (Up to 1/2mile outdoor)
Bandwidth: Low(1-10kb/s)
Cost: Medium (~70$)
Frequency: 433, 415MHz.

Im trying these out right now and I'll get back to this when I know how well they work. The KH2 module I have right now is apparently slow (~250ms delay from transmit to decoded data) but for my application that's fine. Even speeding along, the car will only go ~1-2m before tripping a stop command.

I'll talk about this once it does or doesnt work. Right now, the only drawback is that you will have to etch/mill/fabricate a board for it to see any real range, and there is some -albeit minimal- RF circuitry to be done. Second drawback right now is that they can be bulky without proper tuning (They: http://www.linxtechnologies.com/ suggest a 4"x4" square for their performance tests)

With that said, hopefully in another week we'll see some progress on the 3rd option and I can tell people which I think the best method for quickly and inexpensively setting up a wireless E-stop/link is.

New year, New work

2011-01-11T00:13:00.000-05:00

Hi!

It's been a little while again. Since last time (November 7 apparently) many things have happened,

I finished a Computer Vision course (more later) and a CUDA course. So know I have some basic ideas how to chop up an image usefully and can make some algorithms parallel.

I'd like to post some code later on some simple image processing functions that might be useful, they're all written in C and they helped during the course so I'd imagine that there are other people out there interested in seeing how they are done, (Basic image filtering, Distance Transform, Hough Transform, Otsu Thresholding, Edge Detection, Morphological Filtering...etc). I'll do separate posts on each one.

As far as CUDA is concerned, it's interesting but challenging to wrap your head around at first. There are only so many things that work on the platform well (some things are ill-suited to parallelization) and to do them well means that you need to become intimately familiar with how the parallelization happens at the hardware level. Knowing which memory to use, finding block and grid sizes that fill the GPU and still run effectively isn't trivial.

I completed Two other interesting projects since November as well. A Cell-Counting project where microscope slides are brought into MATLAB and then with an absurd amount of processing I find the red and white blood cells and label them. Giving a final cell count at the end. (Code coming soon'ish)
The other one is an Electromagnetic Finite-Difference Time Domain method (FDTD) was implemented in CUDA in 2D. Later I found a generic one in 3D and was happy to see it, too wasn't very fast. Looked impressive though.

Not much else really happened.

Looking into January:
-Work Project needs completion. Finally!! I want it to be done with, really.
-Robot Racing Rules are out, can get to work on those.
-SAE stuff needs to be done. Fast. We've fallen behind (again)
-HTI is something I rarely mention, its a group Im in developing a high speed human powered bike. Gotta get to work on that too.

You think I do too much stuff? I've got nothing on some people I know...I don't know how they can do it.

So during this month We'll see multiple posts about image processing functions and some more consistent entries about whats going on here.

Prolems with Critical Software.

2010-11-07T22:54:00.001-05:00

So right now I am a software guy for a fairly major -atleast major to me- project that could become an international product come February. They want this to be deployed in around the US and Canada. Because I don't want to mention what exactly it is I'm making, I won't say anymore than: It's designed to save dozens of lives per year, and the more that are installed the fewer fatalities per year will be seen. This sucker is supposed to save lives. Because its embedded, Its just has to work. No help from me, its not like a school project. Its a full blown Product at the end. It-has-to-work.

This is where I'm getting a little nervous. There is only one software guy -me-. Which means all the behaviour that this thing does, all the implementation, is going to be done by a fresh out of undergrad EE. With no real world programming experience. I know my stuff, and I think I can get it to run. ...but get it to run perfectly for years at a time without ever faulting once? Shit I'm happy when my little projects run minutes at a time without screwing up.

What I'm getting at here is that, in the case of safety critical programming. It should really be done as a team, of at least 2 qualified people. My way of doing things might work, but might not be fail safe-enough.

If you knew the device that might save your life was tied back to some 22yr old punk E.E. who did this himself in his room late nights on weekends. Would you trust it???

Worries me is all.

-DK

After a Hiatus, I'm kind of around again.

2010-11-07T22:36:00.000-05:00

Jugguling between 4 clubs, job, school, and a social life means I spend so much time in front of a computer. Any free time in there I kind of want to be away from it. You understand right?

Anyway I thought I should put an update here about whats all going on.

One club I am on is a small group of Engineers who are designing a Recumbent Bike for competition in September 2011. This bike is built for speed and should be going to Battle Mountain in Nevada.

I was recruited for some electronic vision, telemetry, and power considerations. They want some cameras on the car to view outside (helping with the slipstream the car can have). Should be awesome! If I can get over my claustrophobia I might be able to try and drive the thing.

For the RobotRacing Team, we've moved on significantly from our winnings in July. >my< vehicle design was changed literally 2 days before competition. Not cool but I pulled something out. It didn't look terrible. Now I'm helping with vision systems as well as Safety, and a slew of other things. We don't know about the competition so its a little speculative on our part right now.

For the Formula SAE team at school I've been bumped up to Electrical Team Captain. Which is good I guess? we don't really know how things are going right now, find out tomorrow. Making a wheel, shifter, main controller, lights and safety stuff for it too.

Finally a Non-engineering team I'm on. Trying to teach kids about the technical side of their everyday lives. A program called Lets Talk Science. We'll see what I can do with them. I feel like I should atleast give back a bit of the knowledge I have now. It's valuable, and could really steer kids into cool new positions in the future. I havent done anything for them...yet.

After that I have a job working on a secret project for a major Canadian ...train company. Can ya' guess? I'm only being a little cautious with name dropping because last time I bad mouthed Hydro One they left some comments for me to read. (Y'all still hiring??). Anyway I'm the code guy for the team apparently. ...I wish I was more hardware but I have a deal with them that they are switching up my program to a Ma.Sc. if I stick with it. Can't say no to that! ....right?

There's been a lot that's gone on since may. No reason to update it now beyond bringing myself up to speed here.

Yeah! I want to start posting useful CUDA code and some image processing stuff here when I get a chance. Appears that some people will find it useful someday. Soon.

With that said, I'm signing off.

Onwards

2010-05-03T23:20:00.000-04:00

Well, there's not been many updates here on the progress of the project. Basically, its done. It went well'ish.

We were invited to many things to demonstrate it.
-CH news, Cable 14 in Hamilton, CTV, and the Discovery Channel

Of those, we only didn't do CTV because our robot decided to lose its mind and short out in an impossibly impossible situation. Go figure?

Everything was done pretty well. lots of things could have been improved. If we had a better outlook on what our final project was going to be, then we would have made physical changes that made it better, much much better. Things like lower moment of interia, make it ligher, stronger, more powerful motors, just stuff we ignored because we wanted to just get it to work.

We will soon get a mark for this project, I'm hoping we get a 12, we did do a lot of work and I think it was earned, at least for some of us.

This weekend it will be demo'ed again for some highschool kids, showing what you can do with Electrical and computer engineering. Should be fun!

What I want to focus on, from now on in this blog is the other things im working on, namely electronics on a race car and an autonomous robot of another sort.

I'm working on a pneumatic shifter for one of them. And on a myriad of other things for the robot car. Shall be fun.

Pre-Demo 2 Progress Report

2010-03-10T22:29:00.001-05:00

As of today:

What is working now (100% Complete):
-Speed Control
-IR sensors
-Wheel Encoders

What is working that needs some polishing (>60% complete):
-Wireless Communication
-Mapping
-Link Matlab to COM

What needs work (<60% complete)
- Maze Navigation/Discovery
-Realtime Telemetry
-Revise Mainboard

What needs to be started: (0% complete)
- Maze Solving
- Returning instructions to Micro-controller to "drive"
-Poster Board
-Final Report

Extras:
-RC Car mode (40% done)
-Make car more compact (0% done)
-Body Kit (0% done)

Hopefully in the next 3 weeks all of this can be completed satisfactorily. Something that worry's me is this "good enough" attitude we have. We can do so much better. But getting other people into this thing is proving a little bit harder then I would think.

Update: February Progress

2010-02-24T01:39:00.001-05:00

We've ordered a Bluetooth Module. It arrived late January. We're still debating whether or not to use this -untested- module. Or go with something more comfortable, like Xbee's.

With regards to sensors. Wheel encoders work on Interrupts now, (Thanks Me). Late into the reading week I stayed late in the lab and got the IR sensors working properly. This is very good because this means seperately, every peripheral being connected to the pic works.

Figure 1: Output of Sensor and Digital Logic output from sensor
Figure 2: Number of Interrupts Vs. Sensor Decay time. (Each edge is a interrupt)

That's one big phase of the project done.

I also cleaned up the robot. Trimmed some wires and heat-shrank connections. The Electrical tape was so tacky. I'll post a picture of that on friday. One important thing to note is that all the code that is done, is not only done by me, but was done very halfhazardly. It could be done a lot more efficiently.

This brings me to a personal gripe. Why is no one else doing work?? Dan is doing good. But the other 2, I mean I dont think they realize the amount of work that we are putting in here. Luc, he is responsible for the computer side stuff. So, mapping and maze-related things. Right now he is working on the maze mapping. Not bad right? Wrong. He has been working on it for 2 months. Out of curiosity, I thought I'd take a stab at doing it. Within 3 hours. I had a working mapping program that is better than his currently is. ...ticks me off.

Then the other one, Grant. He is responsible for getting the robot to stay on the line. Worst attendance record ever. I think 4 meetings this year so far for him? 4 / 10+ ?

All is not lost, however. I might be pulling this group along. But I'm pulling harder than other groups combined. With that said. As of this post. This is what is left to get our silver level project status:

To do:
1) Combine all peripherals into one mega-project.
2) Get the navigation Pic-side and working
3) Get Mapping done

Only 1 thing there is something I should help with, 1 thing I'm already done. And the last one is pretty simple. Once this is done, we have lots more cool things to add to it. Things this includes are:

1) Wireless Link
2) Remote-Control
3) Route-Planning
4) Body-Kit
5) Line of best fit game thing
6) Advanced Telemetry
...etc.

Of the 4 line following groups, I think were in pretty good shape right now. We also plan on redoing our main-board so that it is professionally fabricated, and will be optimized for our purposes (Removing a V.Reg, adding traces where things were just tied together....and so on).

That's all the update is for now. We'll update again on Friday after our interesting meeting.

--
DK

40MHz Reached!

2010-01-14T23:54:00.001-05:00

I know, it sounds like nothing. But this blasted thing could only apparently pump out 231kHz before. So this is a HundredFold improvement! Yes, 100 because it Oscillates at 40Mhz, so Operations occur at 20MHz. So…. 20 Million is > 200 Thousand.

Anyways, theres a lot more work to be done. This was a major hurdle. Sitting down and getting that to work. Whats left for my part of this project you ask? Well….

I have to Get the Wheel Encoders Doing their thing. Once that happen I have to get PWM working to the motors with 1 timer. Then Im officially done all the stuff I said I would do, after that it becomes the rest of the teams job to get things to work together. I won’t be sitting back, but I’m not exactly going to be the hardest worker of them all.

Someday this thing will be done. It will be a great day!

Update: Project ALF

2009-12-15T21:43:00.000-05:00

Alright, well the demo came and past. Late in the night both Dan and I got the robot's main board debugged. Its great when you realize that a voltage regulator is in backwards. Then decide its too much work to fix it and just rip it out and call it a night... But that's what we did. The H-bridge really doesn't need to be regulated because it can handle voltages from 4-55V ... or WAY more then some voltage spike is going to be able to produce.

I thought for an end of term wrap up it would be nice to see what is done. Below is the "finished" robot, that has secured us a pass in the course if we do nothing else.

The Pimpmobile, complete with low profile yellow rims.

LED...Check
Clear Plastic...Check
Sweet Black tape...Check

I've done more than my fair share thus far. The Robot is my design, the PCB I designed, the Pic is all my code. The only thing that the others have done was solder it together (I did help though), and have some "Research" done. ...Pisses me off. What we have done at this point is a robotic car, that runs on batteries and can be programmed with pre-programmed routines (I put in Straight, Left, Right, ZigZag, attempted circle).

What needs to be done at this point is:
-Get the thing running at 40Mhz (Its at like 2 or 4 right now)
-Get the PWM working on both motors (Stops jerky motion)
-Get IR Leds running
-Get Wheel Encoder Data

The above stuff shouldn't be too hard, most of the legwork is done already, just needs to be hacked together better.

From January on we need to:
-Capture that Wheel Data and interpret it nicely. (Wirelessly)
-Need to get the Pic thinking on its own, not just "do what I say" mode
-Wireless communication
-Most importantly: This SOB needs a Friggin Body on it!! I'm going to make up a sweet bodykit for it.

All of this will be of course done in our super high tech lab:

That window just reminds us how much time we spend inside.

...aka my old basement.

Thats it for the update, it works thus far! That makes me happy. But were not done yet.

Crunch Time.

2009-11-27T22:32:00.000-05:00

Well, we have one week today.

One week to get this robot together, and running. Shiiiite!! So far what has happened is we had to redesign the board twice, because the datasheet VDD doesnt match the board VDD we are using. So the uC wouldnt run because it didnt have the power to do so.

We also removed ALL of my pretty motor control =(... Basically my "original" solution to speed and direction control is not only the oldest method. It happens to be the absolute WORST one concievable. So a new strategy has be planned for that. PWM... a lot more uC intensive but, its the most efficient and made our boardsize from by a factor of like 33%.

So.. what do we have to show for right now? One Slow-ass robot (Measured in at its "fast" setting at 0.6Mph ....yeah. 1km/h Not at all speedy, I have to look into this because, its "robot" fast. Not Fast at all. I want one that's at least capable of walking speed. Its not too hard to get there either, it will just require some interesting implementation and batteries. (Might Borrow Some RC car ones)

We have a pretty schematic, a half retarded robot, and 1 week to fix EVERYTHING, with only 2/4 people competent and one of those already doing everything.

This is my board, 100% designed and built by myself... with input from other people of course

This was another one of those "Man good thing I caught this error before I made the board" That chip there is supposed to run between 3.0 and 3.6V max ... yet ran best at 5V. ...I Know why now, but I didn't expect that to happen. Thats for sure

To finish up, our group is in DEEP. I mean, I have one week to not only finish assemble and test my circuit board to make sure it works, but I need to program, debug and test my code to run on the damn thing!
Compare this to the list that the rest of the group is going to have done by then:
-Fuckall.

...This makes me angry and sad. I know next term I'm going slow and everyone else can work their collective asses off.

Some bumps along the road

2009-11-21T20:53:00.000-05:00

Well, we are getting somewhere on this project. As you can see, we assembled the body of the robot (really complicated eh? 1 sheet of polycarbonate and a few motors glued on...)

Oohhh look how technical it looks! 2 screws a battery pack and some wheels....

Anyways, we are having some extreme difficulty with not only two of the people in our group, but silly things that I've been doing -like not fully reading datasheets- has kinda screwed a few (read: lot) up.

For starters, I promised I could control the speed and direction of 2 DC motors with only 4 pins. Not impossible. A little challenging. I was planning on 2 analog out pins, where we would set a 16-bit number and would have 2^16 (65536) different speeds to choose from. This is a real no-no. Why? because there is no such thing as an analog output on a PIC. Shit.

So what I have to look into now is a way of controlling speed with 2 digital pins (4 possible outputs) and direction with the other 2. So, how am I going to get >4 speeds out of only 2 pins you ask? My answer is: creatively.

This is what I got so far. I'm looking into finding a 1-2 decoder, connected to a pair of 4 bit shift registers, each of which is then also connected to a 4-bit D/A Converter. This will give use 16 levels of resolution for our motors. Seeing as I can't drop below 4V anyways, this should be more then enough variation to make it all work. Problem is that the Shift registers need to be clocked in. And I already need 2 pins for Decoder Select and output Bits.

Whats a Guy to do? Never catches a break.

Not to mention the one guy in our group bickering bout how hard his part is -which I've friggin babied him through.- Damn it! he's somehow written 100+ lines of code for something that isnt terribly difficult. Edge Detection Man, F---in edge detection. Thats all.

So, this mother's got to be completed in 10 days. ....Yup, 10. Built, tested, running. You see a circuit board on that thing anywhere? Nope that has to be made still. I got most of it done, but It got the "No redeeming qualities" check from a friend. (Story of my life =( .... )

Thats enough for now.

Back to work for you!

My Sensors!!

2009-11-04T22:38:00.000-05:00

They arrived today! Lil' suckers.

They look like they will work better then predicted. I mean, they have 8 sensors in a strip 3/8"s apart.

The project is hopefully going to speed up now. Parts ordered. Schematics can start being laid out. Testing can then occur, and before you know it. BAM! its done. ....hopefully.

This guy. 3 inches long. Took 15 days to get from montreal to hamilton. Something that Canada post agrees should take 2 max.

----
Reflections:
Well what else is new here?
I still can't believe its my last year of schooling. I mean, it wont really strike me until the end.

I don't know what I'm going to do. What should I be doing? Get a job right away? Try for more schooling? I think- just like highschool- the saddest thing won't be leaving school. It will be leaving the friends you've made. The difference this time being you will most definitely wont see them again unless you are really close. Which sadly is true for only one or 2 people around here. If I could I would love to stick around another victory lap year and hang out with people as much as I can, however thats a costly thing to do, and not really all that feasible.

Frig, I'd love to have a solid direction in my life right now. Something that says "go this way, its clearly the best"

Thats enough reflection for one entry.
--
DK

Where are my sensors?

2009-11-01T12:36:00.000-05:00

Seriously, 5 business day shipping. Its been over 10 and they are still sitting in Mississauga!

This is totally out of left field but I really like this kind of work. Setting up parts ordering. Getting things that need to be done by a deadline, done by said deadline. Interacting with people. I'm actually thinking that I might like a project manager position in the future. As much as I'd like to sit in a lab and invent something or code something brilliant. I might be more useful in this kind of role.

Well, midterm tomorrow. Can't keep procrastinating. I'll be in deep trouble. Well, I already am.
I don't understand how someone can enjoy this course. The professor is literally just writing out of the book. The book isn't that useful. The Teaching assistants are helpful but hard to understand. Then the course material is about as exciting as standing in a line for a flu shot.

More updates to come.

Project Proposal

2009-10-27T10:48:00.000-04:00

Well, our group just finished our proposal to our 8:30am class.

...all 15 people looked too sleepy to care.

The good thing was that the 2 other groups that we saw run through were all aiming way too high for this thing, promising balanced gyroscopic stuff that will fly. Or something that will run off an FPGA with a camera because infrared sensors are just too simplistic.

None of these guys have really looked into how much such projects are going to cost. Answer: Alot of money.

I mean, even for ours with my thriftiness at its finest. Our project will still be 300$ by the end of it. Thats robot, sensors, IC's, Microcontrollers, and all other misc. materials.

Our presentation went well, except I apparently answered "too many" questions according to my groupmates and made them look kinda bad. Whatever...

Looking into the future we need to get the rest of our parts, otherwise we might be in some hot water come December. Off to the left here is all the parts we have as of now. Wheels, motors, wheel encoders, and the Pic. We totally have enough to start working on some stuff in the lab. This week we will be looking at getting most of the IC stuff so I can start EAGLE and making up our uber PCB

Fun times ahead! More stuff to come.

Hello, World

2009-10-17T12:08:00.000-04:00

Welcome.

I'm trying this serive out and migrating out of an older pretty much obsolete blogging service. This one seems to be superior in terms of customization. With no tackiness.

We'll see how often I can actually write anything here. I guess as far as introductions are concerned. I'm currently a final year electrical engineering student who has an affinity for anything mechanical. Think I chose the wrong major? Yeah probably; but this gives me a head up on any job that needs some sort of mechanical aptitude.

Job wise, I like to get dirty. Coming home not covered in dirt and sweat is not a day at work! That being said; one day I hope to have a shop that I can work out of on the side. Create things.

Hopefully more information to follow! I'm planning on posting how we build this final year design project of ours. Somehow I am now project leader. Which, is good in a way. Everything shall be done to MY standards. Which are apparently higher then 1/2 of the group. and equal to the other half.

Take care.
--
DK