2018-08-15
Initially I was planning on this being a multi-part bitch session. How I don’t like things A,B, and C in WordPress, how this and how that would be better the following way, and so forth. But then I realized that I am tired of hearing myself complain. So here is the summary of my experience: I think that it is just about magical that: some one like me can have a private server connected to Read more…
Over the last couple of weeks I have been migrating from Google Sites to my “very own” server. Below are a few impressions of the process. Part 1 — The first steps Part 2 — The steps following the first steps
2018-08-14
Rope-a-dope I use (used to use) Google Sites. I did so for no particular reason other than I already had access to it. It filled a need. A worry would come up sometimes: “What will I do if I need to migrate to a different” platform. It was hand-waved away. Why would I ever need to switch from Google Sites; Google Sites is a solid a-ok product. One day I went to shovel some of Read more…
2018-08-06
Instead of doing real work I was messing around with Dia to see what kind of perdy additions to the documentation I could create. Well here is the glory that took me almost an hour to produce. To be fair I haven’t used Dia in close to a decade and my new mouse pad realllly sucks. Lets unpack that image in the most logical way – starting from the bottom left and then meandering around. Read more…
2018-08-04
Been working on the software side of things. The goal was to put together a logger for all of the sensor data. For that I had to make logic core expose all of its various values. Not a super huge deal, but had to remember the code base from 6 months ago. Document your code, kids. Below are a couple of screen shots of the qtHMI_SHIM which is my playground and reference implementation for all Read more…
2018-07-28
Low level fault or fault low level NOTE: I feel cheated by this “new Google Sites”. When they rope-a-doped me into converting the site they failed to mention that a) this is a one way journey and b) that this stupid “new Google Sites” lacks basic formatting features like subscript and superscript. I now know how Nancy Kerrigan felt. Seriously, my only extra formatting option is “strike through”. All of the V8, I8, etc below Read more…
2018-07-21
It’s alive! So it’s been a while. Basically when revision D of the PCB came in is when I tore my lab apart for a remodel. Well good news for everyone especially Neal (the dog) – the remodel is done and I’m back to pretending I know what I’m doing with a soldering iron. The major changes between revisions C and D of the board were the following. More details on each item to follow. Read more…
2018-01-02
The Year-end Retrospective It’s been about a year since I started on this project and while the end is in sight, I still do not have a functioning replacement for thermostat I could have bought for $300. That sounds like terribly slow progress to obtain a replacement for a mass-market tchotchke. And in all fairness it is. But wait, there is more. In addition to being terribly slow, it’s also an exceptionally expensive. The only Read more…
2017-12-30
Note: I was wrong in the last post. It’s the dsPIC that has a broken UART, not the PIC24. For the last month I have been doing the very unsexy work of grinding out bugs in the code. As I hinted at before my software stack had issues under load. I chose to test the full stack (hardware and software) by subjecting it to a completely unrealistic load. The logic behind it is that the Read more…
2017-11-18
I have been working on finishing up the software related to the board. The only feature that I had left on my wish-list was implementing the calibration stuff. The goal was to have the calibration offset be stored in EEPROM and for it to be adjustable via the text/cli interface and via the binary protocol. The process was going to touch the graphical interface piece, the middle-ware that sits between the interface and the board, Read more…