My Business Card Runs Linux • Hacker News Board

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#391

Post by truth_be_told » Wed, Dec 25, 2019, 9:58 PM UTC

seabird wrote: post #382

truth_be_told wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Don't bother with Arduino I wouldn't say that. Yes the Arduino "libraries" abstract away a lot of the complexities and hinder true understanding. However for a beginner it is a perfect platform simply because of the huge community i.e. tutorials, code and projects. Once they gain confidence from using this, they can move on to "traditional embedded development" by learning to program the underlying AVR directly i.e.…

My take is driven by me finding the Arduino platform too easy. My first exposure to embedded development was Energia, and I was so underwhelmed that I didn't bother with it again until years afterwards, when I downloaded CCS and got to play in the "big leagues". I know multiple people that had that same experience. If you're already writing software, you're not going to be struggling with having to learn programming.…

>why bother with Arduino when you're probably coming in with decent programming skills?

Pure Software programming skills are NOT enough when it comes to embedded programming. You need to know the logical interface to the HW and the EE/Electronics behind the HW itself. This is a huge challenge for people who have only worked with applications software over layers of abstraction. This is where the Arduino shines; hide the overwhelming HW complexities and provide a simple api for software guys to get their job done. This allows them to slowly gain HW knowledge and transition to "traditional embedded programming" as needed. Also, many experienced embedded developers are using the Arduino as a rapid prototyping platform to implement an idea quickly and get clarity on the project before implementation on the actual target using traditional means. Learners can do both on the same Arduino platform.

So here is my recipe for somebody wanting to learn Embedded Development;

1) Get a Arduino Uno, a couple of extra ATmega328Ps, a AVR programmer and a electronic components toolkit.

2) Get a book on Arduino programming and AVR programming. I can recommend "Exploring Arduino" and "Make: AVR Programming". You also need a book on Electronics and "Practical Electronics for Inventors" is a pretty good one.

3) Install the Arduino IDE and go through some blinky tutorials. Do some projects from "Exploring Arduino".

4) Now move on to direct AVR programming. The Arduino IDE has already installed the required toolchains. Setup a Makefile environment using them following instructions in "Make: AVR programming". Do some blinky and other projects from this book. This gives a command-line approach to AVR programming.

5) Next repeat the above using a proper vendor supplied IDE eg. Atmel Studio for AVRs. These IDEs are pretty complex but quite powerful and used extensively in the industry. Go through some tutorials and redo the blinky and other projects using the IDE.

6) Get some test equipment tools to look into the inner workings of the system. I recommend the multi-functional "Analog Discovery 2" which has lots of learning tutorials.

Congratulations; you are now a bare-metal "Embedded Developer"!

To enter the "big boys league", move onto ARM Cortex boards.

Finally you get to "Embedded Linux" and become a "Master Super-Duper Embedded Developer" :-)

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#392

Post by int_19h » Wed, Dec 25, 2019, 10:51 PM UTC

Filligree wrote: post #313

cubano wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just flipped a bank of 16 switches by hand with vacuum tube gates and core memory...punch cards are for sissies!

You had a computer? Back then I wrote C programs on paper, then executed them by hand...

C? All I had was a single book on MS-DOS, so I wrote batch files on paper, then executed them by hand.

(Not even joking, by the way - literally how I got into computers and programming.)

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#393

Post by int_19h » Wed, Dec 25, 2019, 10:56 PM UTC

rumanator wrote: post #388

jokoon wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish raspberrypi could release something similar. Their product are still too powerful for my taste.

Why do you feel that a hardware product being too powerful is a problem?

Because it also means increased power consumption. If you're trying to run something off battery or solar, not using hardware that's more powerful than you actually need can be necessary for the project to be viable.

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#394

Post by sircastor » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 1:27 AM UTC

IgorPartola wrote: post #139

I really appreciate this write up. I didn’t know about JCL and their assembly prices seem very reasonable. I also usually order my parts from Newark but their shipping is kind of silly on small orders ($8 for anything under 2lb). Yesterday I started a small electronics project (Bluetooth connected tachometer for my motorcycle), and want to use ESP32 chips for it. I am the kind of masochist who in the past soldered SM…

You don't really even need to build one. Buy a $20 toaster oven, turn it on, and put your board in. When your solder paste reflows, turn it off. There is a reflow waveform to follow, but for small runs and personal projects is hardly worth the time and money. Check out YouTube four specifics.

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#395

Post by xenospn » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 2:50 AM UTC

lioeters wrote: post #376

xenospn wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to brag but I got a 4.77MHz 8086 XT PC for my 8th birthday :) It had a whopping 256KB of RAM, a monochrome display (later upgraded to a 4 color CGA that blew my mind), and two (yes, TWO) Floppy drives.

> 8086 XT PC for my 8th birthday Wow, I admire the far-sightedness of your parents, to give a child a computer at such a young age (and in those early days of PCs). I was of a similar age when my dad brought home an NEC PC 9801 - with an 8086 CPU (8MHz), 640KB RAM, kanji (~3000 characters) font ROM, even a Japanese word processor. I think it ran MS-DOS 2~3. "In 1987, NEC announced one million PC-98s were shipped." Th…

My parents had no idea, and they couldn't afford it anyway :) My dad asked his cousin, who happened to be working with PCs way, way back and recommended he get a PC instead of a C64 which is what everyone else had. My dad asked his dad and my grandfather forked over what must have been an insane amount back in 1980's Israel.

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#396

Post by Natales » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 4:30 AM UTC

Very cool. Back in 2004 I used to have business card-shaped CD-ROMs that booted Tiny Core Linux. They were always eye catching. In fact, one of those was a factor that landed me a job in a small startup in Palo Alto called VMware...

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#397

Post by lioeters » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 4:36 AM UTC

xenospn wrote: post #395

lioeters wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 8086 XT PC for my 8th birthday Wow, I admire the far-sightedness of your parents, to give a child a computer at such a young age (and in those early days of PCs). I was of a similar age when my dad brought home an NEC PC 9801 - with an 8086 CPU (8MHz), 640KB RAM, kanji (~3000 characters) font ROM, even a Japanese word processor. I think it ran MS-DOS 2~3. "In 1987, NEC announced one million PC-98s were shipped." Th…

My parents had no idea, and they couldn't afford it anyway :) My dad asked his cousin, who happened to be working with PCs way, way back and recommended he get a PC instead of a C64 which is what everyone else had. My dad asked his dad and my grandfather forked over what must have been an insane amount back in 1980's Israel.

Aww, that's so nice that your dad asked around and pulled resources together for you. And I'm sure grandfather knew it was a worthy investment in your future.

My friends around that age all had a wildly popular video game console called Nintendo "Fami-Com". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_System

My parents refused to buy it, and instead let me play with the PC-98, where I learned BASIC, Turbo Pascal, even some 8086 assembly language.

I suppose if I have children, I'd discourage mobile phones/apps and instead give them Raspberry Pi, microcomputers, sensors, devices they can build stuff with.

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#398

Post by thrtythreeforty » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 5:51 AM UTC

andy_ppp wrote: post #176

thrtythreeforty wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha someone on Reddit suggested this. See the thing is, they have my contact info printed on them, so I'm really easy for the police to find after everything is hacked!

I do wonder how easy it would be for someone who has your business card to frame you... Is it possible to overwrite the OS on these with something malicious?

It is absolutely possible to overwrite the operating system. You have full root access when you log in. You can dd right over the flash device /dev/mtd0 with whatever you want.

As to framing me, well... I don't think it's much easier than framing me using some other method. And I think the cross section of people that want to frame me, and people who know how to compile Linux, is hopefully very small.

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#399

Post by klez » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 10:32 AM UTC

golergka wrote: post #375

znpy wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oh kids! i used to crank the wheel by hand on my analytical engine that my hacker friends and me built after there was a leak of babbage's plans! he never knew! you kids and you petabytes of ram! back in my day.... /s (i'm looking forward for these comments to be commented on a certain website i'm not supposed to name)

There's a website where people make fun of HN comments? Is it Twitter?

The prime directive of said website is to never name it on hacker news. But I'm pretty sure you can Google the prime directive itself and figure out where it comes from. As a hint, it starts with "ng".

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#400

Post by klez » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 10:41 AM UTC

jbuzbee wrote: post #290

jbuzbee wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

This time of year is ripe for nostalgia. I recall that it was just about this time in 1993 during Christmas break that I loaded Linux version 0.96(?) onto this 386SX machine. This involved taking a stack of 1.44MB floppies and driving to a place where I had access to the internet. I'd choose SLS packages and copy each to an individual floppy. Then I'd drive home and load them one by one until I had a bootable system.…

Talking about Christmas, we used to go to my aunt's on Christmas day and I remember the time they bought an Amiga for my cousins. We were very young so between games we used to have a good laugh with the program that did text-to-speech (can't remember the name right now), but it only spoke English and we were easily amused by typing phrases in Italian and having them read back as if it was English (so the pronunciation was all messed up).