Viewing profile — fest

Thanks, seems to fit the theme!

Related to the Moore's work, I also enjoyed Engineering reminescences[0] as a historical account how people figured out ways to make accurate things in metal, more than a hundred y…

When I was doing stepper control on rp2040 I looked into using PIO but the 5 bit counters and 32 instruction limit made it too awkward to use. What worked better for my needs was d…

On this topic I've been wondering why are the air-air heatpumps significantly cheaper than air-water units? As far as I could tell, there's not that much of a difference (different…

I found it interesting that CNC machines aimed at precious metal processing have an optional access control system for swarf/dust collection bins- presumably so that the technician…

Metallurgical microscopes illuminate the sample "from the top side". The actual implementation even goes as far as making sure the illumination happens on the optical axis of the o…

> Might as well use PIO to implement I2C or UART :) PIO actually came in handy for me when interfacing with an x-ray sensor which had 12 or 14 bits long UART data frame- not many m…

I built a couple of glasgow devices and used one extensively- it becomes very useful once the IC in question has an interface you can't practically use with a microcontroller. I us…

Yes, but I always found it strange (though I lack any exposure to "enterprise" networking equipment).

Can you weigh in on the decision to require UniFi controller instead of providing on device configuration interface as well?

I can't really go into details, but FrontRow wasn't the most bizarre thing Ubiquiti was working on, just the one that got reasonably close before being shelved. IIRC Access reader …

This is actually a common problem for test fixtures that involve miniature coaxial connectors (pretty much all of them are rated for few tens of mating cycles): even if the connect…

Why are these reasons wrong? I have a similar attitude in my field (UAVs), where many desperately chase the next whizzbang technology, ignoring the boring, old fashioned stuff (wor…

It would, if I had them in the first place (most of the systems I've seen locally don't- it's typically just a motor and keyfob here).

I use a very crude DIY setup for garage doors and yard gate: bought a spare keyfob on aliexpress, took it apart and connected it to wall power supply and ESP relay board running es…

You can also convert the DICOM images to 3D model and print it. I did it with MRI scan of my head (isolated the brain specifically) and kept it on my desk at work, ready to be hand…

Yes, unfused 10A range would have been my guess, but if device under test doesn't have short-circuit protection, it might as well die during the few tens of milliseconds that the f…

What exactly happened there, and why do you think it wouldn't happen with a more expensive meter?

They are widely used in narrow circles :) Two of (arguably the best) open source RC aircraft flight controllers (ArduPilot and PX4) are using extended Kalman filters in their state…

Hopefully the firmware development won't stall like it was with v4. Rp2040 is a decent choice for relatively slow speed digital bus multi-tool, but the USB1.1 speeds will be somewh…

Having thought about this when I retrofitted a heat pump in my house, I don't see how a buffer helps here. For a buffer to work, it necessarily needs to be hotter than supply tempe…

It's all relative. It has gotten at least an order of magnitude less expensive over the last 10-15 years- 3D printing, low cost PCB manufacturers, availability and cost of automate…

Even if it was all metric, in embedded systems you often have to deal with the same measurements in different units, like angles in radians, degrees, centidegrees, length in mm, m,…

I recently converted a cheap consumer toaster oven and a hot-plate to PID controllers- I wouldn't expect their thermostats to work at all. In both of them, the adjustable bimetalic…

My guess is that they need to be cut using EDM (slow) and need expensive CMM machines to make sure the resulting die shapes match the tolerance. I know you're probably referring to…