whats your latest project?

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I'm working on creating a program to read binary data collected with a sonar camera, display the data as an image (one image per frame, x number of frames...scroll through as a movie) as well as display the file attributes, and be able to autonomously select the target within the image and export the target location. I'm using python and Qt... it's been an adventure, since I've never programmed prior to this.

I've just finished one project to control bus disabled access ramps. If you live in the UK and you use the access ramp on a new bus beware, your life could be in my hands

The next project is a bit less scary - controlling automatic gluing machines for packaging. At least I'll get to design the electronics as well as the software on this one.

How did you accomplish this? Embedded system programming with assembly? Interacting directly with hardware is always fun!

The ramp controller uses a pic micro *spit* programmed in C. I don't like pics - they are too noise sensitive and often rather buggy. The glue controller will probably be an Atmel AVR or AVR32 programmed in C++.

In my opinion assembly is best avoided these days. C/C++ is much easier to maintain and if your particular chip goes obsolete it is easy to port to a different micro. It is also a lot easier to keep a library of C/C++ routines that can be reused on different projects.

I do use assembly where speed is really critical. Programming DSPs in assembler is a good way to make your brain melt...

I know nothing of PIC's and AVR's. I am unfortunately only familiar with Arduino.

I love assembly but you do have a good point here.



What's a DSP?

The Arduino uses the Atmel ATMega series chips. The AVR is just the next step up in the product range, still 8 bit. The AVR32 is a 32 bit version with an amazing amount of power for the price.


Assembly does have it's appeal. Optimizing code down to the last byte so it will fit into one or two k bytes of ram can be very satisfying. I remember one project that among other things ran a LCD display. In the end I had to compress the text to get everything in. The decompression algorithm took up space but it was still more memory efficient overall. If I remember correctly I ended up with only 4 bytes of spare rom. These days memory and processing power are so cheap I can't justify the extra development costs of using assembler.

A Digital Signal Processor. Basically they are microcontrollers that are stripped down and optimized for high speed number crunching. They are heavily pipelined so you have to be very careful of the order of the instructions. For instance if you add two numbers together the results may only available 4 clock cycles later. Some instructions execute in 1 clock cycle so you could execute several instructions before your data is ready. It is VERY easy to end up making mistakes and using stale data. Finding bugs like that can keep you occupied for hours.

I am currently working on a solid state guitar amplifier. I have breaboarded the design and now I am wiring it up on to perfboard . The power amp section is done and tonight I will work on the tone control and preamp. It puts out about 15 to 20 watts. The breadboard version sounded really nice. Can't wait to get it done! I still haven't decided what kind enclosure I will put it in.

Was just scrolling and seen this last post. I have a question though; how much do you know about SPDT NPN BJT's? I wanted to make something with an MCU that required one but found the topic a tad fuzzy!

Maybe RazorEddie could help too. He seems to know a whole lot about MCU's.

I always have a hard time getting the BJT'S working. I figure I place a resistor to the base and tone down the volts to .75 to saturate the BJT but cannot figure out how to draw a current across the the iCE if I were trying to control 12v with only 3.5 on output.

MY theory with BJT is pretty hazy. For switching applications I would usually go with a small signal mosfet, much less hassle. On the rare ocassions I have used NPN for switching I usually just copied a circuit that I knew worked. I seem to remember Darlington transistors working well in a stepper motor driver I made years ago.

Mosfets are good in applications that need amplification. I think BJT's are better for using them as switches. More of a pain though!

I'm in the process of designing a POC on a portable electronics device to analyze social signals in realtime. I had planned on eventually using a PIC32, but I just recently happen upon a super-awesome ARM Cortex A9 (the i.MX6 Quad) board. It's so amazing that I'm thinking I might be able to create a partially-functional POC right now.

I had planned on using stereo cams (projective geometry FTW!) to generate PCL data which I would pass through an AI filter (SVM of classified culture-specific social signals), but that would take too long. I figure maybe a Haar cascade on 2D data might be good enough, since it's so much easier to classify.

I don't know ARM programming at all. (I'm really a mathematician with some MSP430 and PIC8 experience.) Do you happen to know much about coding those 3D and 2.5D GPUs? Could I assign each core to a particular cascade to look for results?

I'm using OpenCV for the desktop test (linking it with OpenKinect to simulate the PCL data) but am having trouble getting the Haar classifier to get good results. Do you have experience with other tech that might be helpful?

Thanks!

What about gnome 3 or gnome 2? They rock!

I am working to resolve the Collatz Conjecture. It was introduced around 1950 and no one has been able to resolved it or prove that it is undecidable.

ruveyn

My latest project is a bash script that changes run levels in the inittab file. I wrote it with bsd init style framework in mind. Disregarding sysvinit.

The only way the fix it is if you chroot into your box and return the run levels back to 5 for the desktop environment. I also wrote a server for the script so it can be executed remotely. ALL you have to do is type bootloop and hit enter lol

I am going to make a new post with the full info.

This thread needs more pictures.

I've written a tagged bookmark manager. It's like delicious.com but stores all your data locally in a JSON file for those who don't feel like sharing their bookmarks with the rest of the world or depending on a company to take care of their data. I should probably change the "Search" JLabel to "Filter" because it's updated in real-time.

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This thread needs more posts!

I am currently working on a DXBall clone using C++11 and SDL2. I'm having a lot of fun doing it, and have gotten to a point where it's more than playable. Though I still consider it an alpha. You can check it out on github : https://github.com/olevegard/DXBall

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