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My Business Card Runs Linux

thirtythreeforty.net

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Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#231

Post by caseymarquis »

jaclaz wrote: post #10
nilsb wrote: post #3

While it's a fascinating project I'd have some security concerns about plugging someone's USB business card into my computer.

Well, it is appropriate as a business card for an embedded systems engineers, not so much for a system security one! More seriously, I never managed to understand the "obsession" with ROHS (this here is just an example): >I made sure to have a lead-free process—the boards, parts, and solder paste are all RoHS—so that I wouldn't feel bad about giving them to people. I mean, you are creating something that (besides bei…

Industry wide, it's about sanitizing a highly toxic substance from the supply chain. I've met a child whose father worked with lead, and would hug him after coming home. The child ended up with permanent brain damage from ingesting traces of leaded dust on the father's clothing. In this case, it's more likely about keeping lead out of something likely to get crunched up in a parent's wallet and then shown to their child.

Lead causes permanent brain damage in children. There is no detectable amount of lead in the blood of children which is considered safe. While an adult body absorbs roughly 95% of lead into its bones, children's bodies end up storing lead in blood and soft tissue where it causes damage. When untreated, it can take months for lead to exit a child's bloodstream.

I would never consider reducing the lead used in something I've built to be wasted time.

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#232

Post by somehnguy »

ta999999171 wrote: post #171
IshKebab wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lead is restricted because of what happens to it when PCBs are landfilled, not because it is harmful to touch.

Lead is harmful to touch and absorb into your skin, so unless you're counting the PPMs coming off into your skin, you're wrong.

And yet everyone with a hobby that involves soldering in any capacity does it without gloves. Because it doesn't absorb into your skin that way. Otherwise we would all be going insane.

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#233

Post by somehnguy »

nrp wrote: post #28
jaclaz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it is appropriate as a business card for an embedded systems engineers, not so much for a system security one! More seriously, I never managed to understand the "obsession" with ROHS (this here is just an example): >I made sure to have a lead-free process—the boards, parts, and solder paste are all RoHS—so that I wouldn't feel bad about giving them to people. I mean, you are creating something that (besides bei…

It’s actually probably harder these days to build something that isn’t RoHS compliant as a hobbyist than one that is. The vast majority of what you can buy from Digikey and Mouser and whatnot will be compliant, PCB shops will mostly do lead-free HASL (though you’d want ENIG anyway if you’re going to use a stencil), and lead-free solder pastes are more common than leaded ones. Basically you’ll probably have to either…

If you do the soldering yourself it will almost definitely have lead unless you go out of your way to buy lead free solder. Leaded solder is still the standard solder to get as a hobbyist because it is much nicer to work with and the risk from handling it is pretty much 0. Just don't eat it.

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#236

Post by xen2xen1 »

hirundo wrote: post #223
syncsynchalt wrote: post #217

Wellington Ma's business card was a rectangular slice of pink synthetic quartz, laser-engraved with his name, 'The Ma-Mariano Agency,' an address on Beverly Boulevard, and all kinds of numbers and e-mail addresses. It arrived by GlobEx in its own little gray suede envelope while Rydell was still in the hospital. "Looks like you could cut yourself on it," Rydell said. "You could, many no doubt have," said Karen Mendel…

-- William Gibson, Virtual Light

Thought that was familiar.

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#237

Post by Rebelgecko »

nickreese wrote: post #118
XzAeRosho wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mainly work in web-dev, but working in embedded systems is kind of my hobby. It's kind of refreshing working on bare-metal, optimizing up-to single bytes of data, when I'm usually working on layers and layers of abstraction everyday.

Where does a web-dev turn to to get started in this as a hobby?

I'd recommend an ESP32 (or it's slightly less capable little brother the ESP-8266) using the Arduino environment to get started. If you prefer Javascript, you can program it that way using something like NodeMCU or MongooseOS. Once you get comfortable with that, if you want to get a little lower level you can use PlatformIO with the vendor's SDK directly.

I like the ESP boards from Wemos. The US made ones from Sparkfun and Adafruit are also really good. The advantage of the Wemos ones (and the many counterfeits you'll see on sites like Aliexpress) is that they're so cheap you don't even have to feel bad if you fry one.

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#238

Post by tarruda »

jbuzbee wrote: post #211
nabla9 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling this embedded system feels like insult to the spirit of 'running light without overbyte', because it's so comically capable. My first PC had 66/33 MHz 80486 processor and 8 MB ram, 320 MB HDD. You could run AutoCAD, play Doom, Civilization, have dual boot for Linux, Windows 3.11 etc. It could compile Linux from source.

You were living large! My first Linux computer was a 20Mhz 80386SX with a 40MB hard drive partitioned half for Windows 3.0 and half for Linux (SLS) and swap. It had a whopping 4MB of RAM and I also compiled my own kernel making sure to trim down features as much as possible. It was magic seeing X11 come up for the first time just like the big-bucks Sun boxes!

I was a kid when my father first acquired a similar computer.

We ran Windows 3.0 and my father configured a boot entry for running Doom or Ultima 7, which required so much memory that it wasn't possible to run Windows, only DOS.

I remember feeling a bit envious about my neighbor having the more powerful 486, which could run Doom much faster than in our PC

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#239

Post by anchpop »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #207
CreRecombinase wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once read somewhere that the time to compile Linux from source on high-end desktop hardware has remained remarkably stable over the years.

I'm convinced that compiler speed is all a matter of how it was initially designed. Take for example Delphi which can compile millions of lines of code in under a minute or something ridiculous. Then we have D, Go, Rust, and such, they compile rather large codebases that would take C++ a good 30 minutes on high end hardware of today in shorter spans of time (not as familiar with how fast Rust compiles, but I know Go…

Rust doesn't compile very fast unfortunately, but it's being worked on. General wisdom says it's about as fast as Clang but comparing compile speeds across languages in a meaningful way is difficult

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#240

Post by xen2xen1 »

KMnO4 wrote: post #126
cerberusss wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why you were downvoted. I fully get why the blog writer didn't include USB-C with this awesome project. But there's now a growing group of people who simply can't use USB-A anymore with their laptops. Most will have an adapter, but not all.

While this is generally true, I think it’s less true for embedded systems. All of the tools I use at work for embedded systems engineering (JLink, serial adapter, oscilloscope, logic analyzer, nearly all MCU dev boards and FPGAs) are USB-A. I use a MBP and simply could do any work whatsoever without a USB hub. I think it’s fair to assume anyone in the industry can use USB-A.

I would assume someone doing embedded work would not only have to have USB, but serial. Is that incorrect? It seemed like that was even included in your list?
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