Engscope

Well the wait is over in more ways than one. First off, Starcraft II is finally among us. Now I can finally get my ass whooped on battle.net (2.0!).

For those who don’t care about video games, a new tutorial section for the PIC24 has been added. This time we are going to look at the SPI communications protocol.

-J

Sorry guys for the lack of update. I’m currently working on a SPI section for the PIC24 controllers. I’m going on vacation for a bit so I’m trying to finish up a bunch of stuff at work. Might be a while before a new section is published.

In other news, Linux has been working out great (using it as a home server), although I still can’t develop jack on the platform.

-J

кухненски столовеThere is a unseen war going on, that is mostly unnoticed by the majority of the masses. The desktop/laptop consumer market is quite sizable, but the real money is the embedded market. Most reports seem to indicate that the embedded market is about 10 times the size of the consumer computer market. You can wage the Mac OS vs Win7 vs Linux debate all you want, but the debate can’t hold a candle to the massive battle of the embedded OS.

And it’s easy to see why. Think about how many electronic device you have in your house. Compare that with the number of computers. You might own 3 or even 4 computers, but I’ll bet you a nickel that you have at least 10 times that many embedded devices in your house. Your washer/drier, microwave, router, even surge protectors these days have some microcontroller(s) running the device. Not every one of them is running Windows Embedded or Linux Embedded or FreeRTOS, but if you’ve seen the functionality of some appliances these days (internet refrigerator anyone?) there’s bound to be an OS underneath.

I was getting my car serviced today and the smug guy next to me had a macbook pro. I asked him if he liked his macbook pro, and he gave me a slew of one liners about how the os/computer is faster/better/badass than a PC. Not that I’m against macs or anything, but I feel like a lot of people miss the point. There needs to be a bigger awareness of the technology around us. The embedded world is so massive, but it is unfortunate that not many people understand and experience it.

Next time you look at a fancy surge protector, just think about the lonely programmer in India that probably had to write the C code for the device. I promise that you’ll get a new perspective of the world around you.

-J

A new section was added in the PCB Fab Tutorial. Learn about how to prepare for your PCB construction here.

Be careful the acid.

-J

Well I have to admit, I am a Linux noob. I can’t get anything to work. I’ve been trying to install, use and get into the whole Linux scene for the last 3 years, and it is one of the most painful and frustrating experience. And this is coming from a guy who programs microcontrollers and device drivers. Using software should not be this hard!

WTF is with the .conf files. What era are we that Linux still uses this pathetic desktop environment (Xserver is a joke, at least the Linux implementation). The end result is that no one wants to use Linux. Heck I don’t want to use Linux, and I program for a living. This is completely f*cked up.

Anyways, I got a Portwell box a few months ago, and I never knew what to do with it. I think I’ll try to compile my own kernel and attempt to install it on the box – cause you know, it’s so freaking easy to use Linux.

I’m gonna go hit my head on the wall for a few more hours.

-J