My third book is released! Learn what you'll need to know in order to become an embedded engineer.

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My first book gives you all the intro you need on developing 32-bit embedded systems on a hobbyist budget.

Diary Segment: 2007, February 01-14

Entries are shown in chronological order; scroll down to see later material.

Feb 04, 2007

I have decided to start an online chronicle of miscellaneous personal news. This should be a useful destination for people who appear after several years' absence and ask "What are you doing?" Since this is the first entry, necessarily several projects must be brought into context at once. Future updates should be less verbose.

Minor progress is being made on the Scout restoration project. This vehicle requires NYS safety inspection by 2/10. I had intended to get it inspected this weekend, but couldn't get it started. This is partly because of the cold, partly because of a timing problem, and partly because the battery is flat. There's also a problem with the carburetor; the image at left is a close-up of the throttle/choke linkage on the driver's side of the carb. Just visible at the bottom of the picture is the throttle idle set screw. As you can see, the choke pivot is sticking out of the carb body and leaking gasoline (also note that the brass nut that holds the choke cable into the linkage is very loose). Because the choke cam now moves from side to side, the throttle idle screw sometimes misses it when the gas pedal is released, and the engine stalls.

As almost a side issue, the distributor on my truck was rebuilt by the previous owner shortly before I got it; unfortunately, the wrong cap was used; hence the timing problem. If I press on the distributor cap at the right spot, the engine runs perfectly; otherwise, I get rough running and late firing.

The upshot of all this is that I eventually got the truck started on Saturday night, but it was too late to take it out for inspection this weekend.

I have two major lots of Scout parts coming my way. First, through eBay I found a guy in Nebraska who wrecked his '65 Scout, and I've scored the hood, both doors (with glass), front cowl, distributor, carburetor, vacuum wiper motors, fuel pump, and a few other parts. Second, (again through eBay) I found a completely rebuilt 152cid engine in Clinton, PA. I have put down a deposit on this engine and will collect it as soon as I get time to drive 15 hours.

Book news: The final outline for my fourth engineering book is with my editor and in external review. I expect to have results by approximately Feb 12. This book deals with developing hard realtime code on the MSP430 and ARM9, with example projects prepared for the Texas Instruments ez430 stick and ST's STR9 dongle. The toolchain of choice is Rowley's CrossWorks (available targeted for both platforms).

One of the projects that will be included in this book is 520 Tape Logger. This is a control circuit that lays down a telemetry stripe on the audio track of a video recording. The intention is that you would include this device in a mobile robot, attached to a camcorder. The data is stored in a low-speed MFM format. As part of this project, I acquired a Panasonic PalmSight PV-L657D VHS-C camcorder from eBay (for about $25). Although VHS-C is more or less an obsolete format, I selected this technology specifically because the tapes can be played back in a cheap $30 VHS player. Although a more modern format like MiniDV would be more future-proof, these tapes could only be played back in the camcorder itself or a very expensive editing deck.

IBM article news: The POWER™ Architecture zone on developerWorks has had a change of focus; it will now concentrate exclusively on Cell Broadband Engine projects. This was bad news for me, since I was 25% of the way through an 8-article series built around the Xilinx ML403 EDK. This series was truncated into two articles which really just get the reader up and running.

In order to keep my work in line with IBM's new focus, I've ordered a 60GB PlayStation 3. In the remaining six articles of the series, I'll be building the PS3 into an audio-frequency spectrum analyzer and signal generator. Running Linux on the unit, I'll use a Griffin iMic as the audio I/O device. The PPE will be used to implement the user interface and handle I/O; one of the SPEs will run a 512-bin FFT on the input stream. In signal generator mode, two SPEs will generate separate waveforms and a third SPE will mix them in realtime; the PPE will push the result out the audio stream.

My PS3 is scheduled to arrive on Wednesday Feb 7th; stay tuned because I'll be announcing several other IBM-hosted PlayStation 3 projects once the spectrum analyzer/signal generator stuff is done.

Novel news: I am working on a science fiction novel. This book hopefully combines the best of Arthur C. Clarke, C.S. Lewis and Robert Ludlum. It has spacecraft, ancient civilizations, bureaucrats, Indian coal mines, Nazis and everything else that's good in contemporary fiction. It is my present intention to provide the prologue and a brief precis of the remainder to several colleagues some time in early April.

Other news: An interesting problem arose with a project I did last year. The user wants to add a light gate covering 29 inches of free space. The best solution to this problem (in terms of least wiring / best reliability) appears to be a laser diode and photocell aimed at a retroreflector.

Feb 05, 2007

Just another manic Monday. No significant progress on goals.

Feb 06, 2007

Laser diode modules are ordered. Other parts are mostly in hand; detector module will be built over the weekend.

Feb 07, 2007

My 60GB PlayStation 3 arrived today. It mystifies me that most of the stores I visited while searching for this product were offering it at $750 or even more (and some of those were out of stock!), while Circuit City had it available and ready to ship for the MSRP of $599, which became just over $650 after tax.

The specs for this product are extremely misleading. After reading numerous reviews and the official Sony specification pages, I had reached the conclusion that none of my trash-picked TV sets would work with this product. The video output is described as "component video" (in addition to the useless copy-protected digital port, of course). When I hear that phrase, I think of YCbCr. Apparently some of the newfangled TV sets also have an analog RGB input (kind of like SCART's analog channels on three RCA plugs; I assume sync is on green); this is also called "component". What a total mess.

The upshot of all this is that I was expecting to have to buy some kind of converter, since I'll probably never own a TV set that has any of these exotic input formats or HDTV support. (I don't watch any TV at all; it irritates me terribly to be exposed to this type of couch culture. And when I'm in a store that sells TV sets, from more than a few feet away I simply cannot tell the difference between HDTV, EDTV and SDTV). It turns out, however, that the output using the cable supplied with the PS3 is regular NTSC and stereo audio on three RCA plugs. The good news here is that I can run the PS3 on a regular old-fashioned TV. The annoying news is that I don't have a TV set in my lab, so I have to drag the machine downstairs to use it. Since I have several spare LCD monitors in my lab, I'm going to buy an NTSC-to-VGA converter box, which will solve this irritation.

In other news, I am almost free of my 2002 Ford Focus. This car has been an object lesson in just how little control Ford exercises over its dealers. The entire experience of leasing, then buying out the vehicle has convinced me that I will NEVER buy a new car from Ford ever again. Ford Corporate has set the entire system up to be a "you can't get there from here" experience - you can ONLY go through a dealer, Ford will not assert any sort of control over the dealers, the dealers refuse to handle lease buyouts of vehicles where they didn't handle the original lease paperwork. Once you ply a dealer with cash ($500 extra - NOT part of the signed lease agreement executed by Ford Credit) and get them to handle the paperwork, they screw up the transaction and they are completely unaccountable to anyone. It has taken me MORE THAN TWO YEARS to get a title for this vehicle after buying out the lease. I'm taking the dealership (Platinum Ford in Queens, New York) to small claims court to recover my last three months' insurance costs, since I was forced to keep this vehicle under my name until the title was issued. Dozens of phone calls and faxes to Ford Credit and Platinum Ford; hours of my time wasted. The dealership was totally ineffectual and Ford customer service is completely incapable of/uninterested in fixing problems of this sort. Ford has defrauded me of $500 in undisclosed lease termination charges (effectively, that's what they are; you need to bribe a dealer to get a lease buyout accomplished).

My wife is financing her new [Chevrolet] car in a straight buyout. Simple and uncomplicated. Pay, receive goods, drive away. End of story.

Feb 08, 2007

Yellow Dog Linux is quietly installing on the PlayStation 3 as I write this. Thus far, the process has been almost completely painless. Note that if you're using a normal NTSC TV set, like me, you cannot use the graphical installer. (This presumably means that X will also not function correctly when the system reboots). That's about the only annoyance I have encountered so far; since the hardware is canned, and known to work, I don't really expect any surprises.

Great news if you're contemplating the purchase of a PS3: you won't need a personal heater at your desk. The PS3's fan outlet is on the right-hand side of the unit as you see it in this picture. It's pumping out more hot air than the little heater I sometimes use to keep my toes warm. I hope I can finish this article series before the weather heats up. Once the articles are over, this piece of hardware is going into a box somewhere! Although it's a very useful low-cost evaluation platform for the Cell BE, the PS3 is just not powerful enough as a Linux computer for me to want to keep it in active use. By the way, the heatsink/fan heat exit for my Dell laptop seen in this photo is on the left-hand side of the machine, so the two computers are fighting right now; the PS3 is winning the thermal emission wars by a long way. It's rather strange, since the GPU must be virtually idling; Linux isn't allowed to use it.

(Forty minutes or so later, once the OS has finished installing)... As guessed, X will not work by default out-of-box on an NTSC TV. That's okay, since I don't plan to use anything more exotic than the 640x480 framebuffer for my IBM articles. Everything else that I care about seems to be working just fine. I did eventually get X working, but strangely enough there was no xorg.conf preinstalled on my system. Very weird.

Final edits on Xilinx #2 (conclusion) were sent to IBM today.

Feb 09, 2007

No significant progress on publicly documentable goals.

Feb 10, 2007

The Scout started on the first key turn this morning, despite it being below freezing and the car not having been turned over for a week. I'm so proud of my baby. I dropped it off at the gas station for inspection at about 7am this morning, since the sticker expires today.

(Somewhat later in the day) - It has been quite a complicated Saturday. The Scout needs new points and rotor, which will run about $90 including labor. No problem there (although I think actually it needs a new distributor cap and the clips that hold down the cap). It should run a lot smoother, without the annoying pops. The shop is also giving me (FINALLY!) a quote on fixing the exhaust leak and replacing the muffler.

In other news, I think I bought a 2007 Jeep Compass. The background of this statement is as follows: Today my wife picked up her brand-new Chevrolet Aveo from the dealership (Meyer Chevrolet in Queens, if it makes any difference). Incidentally, she loves the car. It's bitsy and nimble, it's blue and has a sunroof. For the past week, I had been looking at jeep.com pricing an '07 Wrangler in Jeep Green with various options. While we were at the dealer, I happened to see this green Jeep in the used section of the lot, and took it for a test drive. Somehow the situation morphed from "let's run the numbers and see what this car will cost me" to "Thank you for your $2,000 deposit; congratulations, pick up the car on Monday". While this isn't the exact car I wanted, it's pretty close.

The case contra: This isn't a Wrangler. It doesn't have a removable top. It has an automatic transmission. It exhales the evil SUV vibe (which, strangely enough, a Wrangler doesn't). It's not an off-road vehicle; it's a glorified mallmobile for soccer moms. It only has a 4cyl 2.4L engine. It's used.

The case pro: It's about $6,000 cheaper than the car I was looking at. It only has 1200 miles on it, so it's practically brand new. Since it's automatic, my wife can drive it if necessary. It's much more fuel-efficient than the Wrangler (24 vs 17mpg EPA hwy) - that's because of the 4 cyl engine. If necessary, I can satisfy my off-road and top-off hankerings in the Scout. The Compass is cheaper to insure because it has all the electronic safety features, ABS, DRL, ESC, electronic rollover protection, airbags everywhere, etc.

The Jeep is quite strange to drive; it needs a heavy foot on the gas and the continuously variable transmission will take some getting used to.

Now to sell a bunch of miscellaneous junk on eBay to help finance this extravagance. I pick up the Jeep Monday evening.

(Even later in the day) - 2007 Chevrolet Aveo (stock): 0-60mph in 10.5 seconds, according to the reviews. Of considerably more interest is the fact that it goes from 60-0mph in about 2 seconds on dry road, including a swerve onto the rumble strip. People who carry mattresses in a pickup on the highway without tying them down should be shot.

Feb 11, 2007

The retroreflector idea for the laser gate seems like it is almost (but not quite) workable. I'm using a very cheap and nasty retroreflector (it's off a car door safety strip). This reflector isn't silvered at all; it relies on total internal reflection. At a guess, it is only reflecting back 50% of the incident light. At about 18" separation (36" roundtrip), the return beam is spread to about 1.5". I measured this by shining a laser diode through a small hole in a piece of cardboard. I'm going to experiment with a real silvered reflector.

An exceedingly bizarre day today; not very enjoyable (although I did get to meet a 9/11 responder, which was rather nifty). The moral of the story is: choose your friends (and your friends' friends) with great care.

Feb 12, 2007

Today I picked up my new Jeep, so I guess the end result of my comment from the 10th is that I did, in fact, buy it. As with practically everything else in my life, the paperwork was a bit of a nightmare - Geico vs. the dealership quibbling/arguing over the punctuation of my name on the insurance documents. Everything was finally sorted out, and I brought my new baby home. I also took it out to Syosset in the evening, to visit Petco and pick up a dog gate for the cargo area. I've written a review on epinions.com; rather than repeat that content, I'll simply direct you to the review.

Feb 13, 2007

Yesterday, my test alarm panel at home suddenly showed an alarm on the basement door. On investigating, it transpired that Wilbur somehow acquired the wireless contact off that door (despite the fact that it was attached to the door frame at least 6 feet off the ground). He was very proud to have acquired it, and really appreciated the easy-open feature that allowed him to remove and gnaw the lid. (I took the bits away from him, of course).

In other news, a timely little snow shower fell today and provided an opportunity for me to test the Compass's snow performance. The traction control feature certainly works very well; ABS works about as well as I'd expect (i.e. don't expect it to save your bacon). It's so quiet you might not even notice it operating, since there is no light to indicate when it has fired. In a deliberate test, paying close attention to the feel through the brake pedal, it is just possible to observe it.

Driving a modern SUV is a strange experience. On the highway, one feels totally isolated from the external environment. There is so much room to move around that it almost doesn't feel like being in a vehicle. However, if I had to pick one favorite thing about being one of the nouveau-SUV middle class, it's the fact that other SUVs and trucks no longer shine their headlights directly into my eyes.

Feb 14, 2007

Valentine's Day, but unfortunately overshadowed - I have a calculus III exam tomorrow. My gift to my wife was part of the down payment on her new car. Her gift to me is in transit from somewhere.