Engscope » Programming

First part of the USB custom communications device

jliu83 — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 17:56:46 +0000

From what little feedback I’ve heard, it seems like people are enjoying the USB tutorial for the PIC24. The next goal is to create a device that can talk back and forth with a host. I’ve added a new section that specs out the communications protocol for a custom communications HID device, as well as some example of hypothetical transmissions. The next update will complete the design of the device. Get a load of the write up here.

In other news, I’ve just gotten back from vacation and it was very relaxing. I went to visit a friend in Turkey for a few days and that region of the world is absolutely beautiful. It is not all sand and camels as the traditional stereotype would make you believe.

Meeting Jeri Ellsworth

jliu83 — Tue, 10 May 2011 23:42:54 +0000

I flew down to San Jose for the Embedded Systems Conference and had a great time there. As always there were loads of iPad/iPod giveaways, which I never win, but the real treat was meeting Jeri Ellsworth. In case you don’t know who she is, she created the Commodore 30 in 1, as well as an avid DIY hacker of sorts. You can check out her youtube channel and wiki entry. Her presentation was about her life, and how she overcame many obstacles to become a successful self-taught electrical engineer. I met her after her keynote and had a small chat. It was a pleasure talking to her about her current projects and her new found fame on the internet. I was truly inspired talking to her, and makes me want to go home and work on my DIY projects.

Steve Wozniak was also there, although he is more involved with philanthropy and teaching kids these days. He had a great presentation about Segway Polo and just being a famous nerd. I did want to ask him a question at the keynote, but didn’t get the chance however. I thought it would have been interesting to know if he has had any failures in life, and what he has learned from them. We hear a lot about Steve Wozniak’s successes, but I’m sure he also has some failure stories.

In other news, the results from the Cypress Psoc5 Challenge are in, and well, the Drum Tuner did not win. I did get into the top 12 finalists however. That was kind of a let down last week when I found out about it, but there’s always the next contest.

Anyways, San Jose was a blast. I loved the Shabu Shabu! You just can’t get that around DC.

икони

ESC Silicon Valley and Woz

jliu83 — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 12:39:28 +0000

мека мебелI will be at ESC Silicon Valley this year, to be held in San Jose. Apparently Steve Wozniak of the Apple fame will be there giving the keynote about technology, so this is something that I do not want to miss. I mean think about it. This guy has been at the very beginning, and practically made personal computing himself. Plus he was on Dancing with the Stars (not that I watch that kinda things… Karina Smirnoff is sooooo hot). I think Jeri Ellsworth will also be presenting. She is notable for being a self taught EE person, and the Commodore 64, and just having one cool Youtube channel.

I will also be presenting at the IMAGE 2011 conference. This is a smaller technology conference to be held in Arizona in June. I’ll probably publish a copy of the paper on this website. It will be about EMI testing and PCB design.

-J

Still alive

jliu83 — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 18:25:09 +0000

So the east coast was in a quagmire last week due to the snow storm. I took a little drive the day after the snow storm and there were abandoned vehicles littered all over the interstate highways. As for me, I haven’t updated the website in a while, but I am still alive. I was a bit busy during the holidays, but everything is returning to normal.

I am doing a lot of FPGA based image processing these days. I’ve actually created a board that’s got a DVI decoder and a DVI encoder with an FPGA connecting the two together. This allows you do various image processing algorithms on the FPGA. I’ve recently synthesized an On-Screen Display module and it was a lot of fun to create. If anyone is interested in the board, please let me know. I might post a page on it shortly. Leave a comment if you are interested.

In other news, I really hate power supplies. I have a background in digital designs and power supplies (to me anyway) are the hardest things to understand. I’m trying to created a Buck-Boost Converter with either the LM5118 from National Semiconductor and the LTC3118 from Linear Technologies, and both of them are giving me so much trouble. At least Linear’s Tech support is really good. National’s support seems very lacking to be on the blunt side. If anyone’s got a working Buck-Boost circuit please let me know!

As for Starcraft 2, I’m still wading around in the gold leagues. I think my addition will be cured, once I get bumped to the platinum leagues and then I can focus on writing articles for this website.

I’ve always wanted to do a page on USB, but there’s so much material on creating USB devices out there. It seems like if I wrote a tutorial on PIC24 and USB, it’ll just be another piece of trash on the internet. I’d love to hear people’s opinion on this. Is there a lot of demand on how to create USB devices on the PIC24? So far I’ve created custom joysticks, mice and keyboards, but the item that was the most fun to create was a custom communication devices with a bit of java/C# programming on the host side. I’m wondering if anyone’s interested; if so I might do a little write up on them.

I’ll update the website soon.. I promise. That is unless kayaking season shows up early.

-J

The embedded underworld

jliu83 — Tue, 04 May 2010 14:05:35 +0000

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