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  • SQLGeek

    Muh state lines
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    I keep threatening myself with building a machine dedicated to running INX. It would keep my brain working.

    That's the perfect thing for a Raspberry Pi. Little investment in hardware and you can tinker as much as you like. I bet you'd find some really cool things to do with one.
     

    Brains

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    I love hardware tinkering, and love embedded systems. I end up looking at things around the house and resisting the urge to stick an ESP8266 in it.
     

    benenglish

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    I love hardware tinkering, and love embedded systems.
    Do you know embedded systems well? If you do, may I contact you next year with a firearms-related project I'm working on? I will soon reach the stage where I need a formal meeting with an embedded systems expert who has some basic knowledge of shooting.
     

    karlac

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    I just realized that the people who understand the last page of posts must all be old enough to leave me depressed for the rest of the day. :)

    LOL ...

    That's the perfect thing for a Raspberry Pi. Little investment in hardware and you can tinker as much as you like. I bet you'd find some really cool things to do with one.

    From one who put together his first HeathKit in 1968 - no monitor, cassette player for data storage, and a bank of blinking lights. Learned enough assembly language on a TI by brute force (994A, couldn't afford anything else) to make me feel almost worthy of the likes of the dudes in Tracy Kidder's "Soul of A New Machine" ...

    ... it's like we had the potential of the ages in our hands in those days.

    In short, that little Raspberry Pi looks to this old fart that it brings back the wonder and, most of all, revives the promise of that time in computer history.

    Would love to get into that.

    Also would be nice to have the energy to gain a better understanding of blockchain technology and its applications along the way, and then do something with it, but those days are likely best left to others.
     

    benenglish

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    Also would be nice to have the energy to gain a better understanding of blockchain technology and its applications along the way, and then do something with it, but those days are likely best left to others.
    Maybe not. I mean, it might be worth the effort. Everybody knows that somebody (or a few people) are going to make a giant pile of money off that technology when they get it working well enough and put it in a simple enough package so that it will take off and kill Twitter and a few other social media giants.
     

    Brains

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    Do you know embedded systems well? If you do, may I contact you next year with a firearms-related project I'm working on? I will soon reach the stage where I need a formal meeting with an embedded systems expert who has some basic knowledge of shooting.
    Well enough to make things work, but I'm certainly not an expert on any one platform. I've done work on a good number of microcontrollers (Atmel, PIC, Intel), but in recent years I use more full-featured modern integrated APUs. Lower part count, better power budgets, more features, lots of free libraries, etc. It's a lot easier now than it used to be.
     

    Brains

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    Understood. I've just had trouble with finding anyone with any decent comprehension of both embedded systems and shooting.
    Depending on what it is, I might be able to help. If it's more complex, one of my good friends is a firmware engineer, started at NASA and has since moved into commercial power management/monitoring.
     

    CyberWolf

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    Was planning to wade in with some long post on the main thread topic (decades in the game, but down to about 30% "IT" related lately, and even then will typically make an appearance like "The Doctor" and be out), but will save that for another time...



    It's a lot easier now than it used to be.

    ^This is flat truth, just about anything you want to do in this area nowadays is the image of simplicity compared to years past.

    Understood. I've just had trouble with finding anyone with any decent comprehension of both embedded systems and shooting.

    The real question is what you're trying to do, including what peripheral devices must be connected/controlled.

    Odds are, a Raspberry Pi and/or Arduino - or combinations/multiples thereof, including the right add-on modules (e.g. cameras, IR/nIR imagers, thermal/environmental sensors, servos, etc., ad infinitum), will get you there at a fraction of the effort involved with "traditional"/proprietary embedded systems. More recently, you can even get Windows 10 IOT Core running on a Pi.

    Lots of good info online about differences, what to use vs why, how to integrate (e.g. use the Pi(s) to manage the Arduinos, etc.), and how to actually work with them...Also, if familiar with *nix, working with a Pi is a piece of cake.

    Here's a pic of some Pi's from an old project a few years ago...Note the big one has things like integrated 802.11, Bluetooth, Ethernet, USB, HDMI, high-density touchscreen display, etc...You can see the 900mhz keyboard link and micro-SDR (software defined radio w/ external antenna connection) connected to the USB ports:

    c041d1f98214f381df9aaba5f0f700e0.jpg



    ETA: figured it may be possible that the use case in mind requires actual firmware for a custom chipset/fpga/etc. (some assumptions were made); if so, please disregard the above (may not be relevant)
     
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    DD130

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    ... Spent 4 hrs in an Apple store, nice people who work with a 'locked' OS but can't really do much.
    I beg to differ. OSx is based on and has underlying BSD. You can generally install all the Open Source tools that makes automating things delightfully easy. Now days, Unbuntu does offer a drop-on shell for Windoze... almost makes working with that crappiest of crappy OS's survivable.
     

    DD130

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    Back in the day we called that "Babbage's Disease".

    The constant adding of "features" to software (or hardware for that matter, for which Charles Babbage was famously guilty), just because you could.
    I blame the fanatically religious following of Agile (virtually zero actual design process) software methodology, and massively bloated "frameworks" that add 100's of megabytes of code so some lazy ass developer can accomplish a task with 1 line of code instead of 2-3. :/
     

    Brains

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    One of my most enjoyable things to do is buy cheap Chinese stuff and replace the guts, or take old legacy things that break and bring them back to life.

    Bought a K40 laser engraver, replaced the guts with a NextThing.co "Chip" (now defunct, ARM-based SBC like a Pi) which hosts the web UI and comms with an Arduino based (Ramps 1.4) controller driving the steppers and PWM for the laser power supply. I tweaked some existing open source firmware (Repetier) to have nice clean laser support, and it now works great.

    Bought a fancy ethernet-based sprinkler controller, but the firmware was pretty poor. Got so frustrated with it constantly falling off the network that I replaced it with another Chip, and added support for this module to an existing open source (OpenSprinkler) software package. That works awesome now too, and has a ton of added features (like weather correction).

    At work we have a buzzer in the warehouse to direct workers (break times, lunch, start and end of day, etc.). The buzzer is OLD and was driven by a mechanical time clock using little plastic punched hole tape cartridges. Well the last one of those we had got dropped and exploded on the floor, rendering the buzzer silent. I used a Chip (with they were still around - $9, had onboard WiFi and storage) driving an optoisolated relay board (the common ones you find from China) to run the buzzer.

    Another work project I have my eye on but haven't dug into yet, is we have an automated vibratory packaging machine that hasn't run in decades. Dump 10's of thousands of whatever into the hopper, and it'll accurately scale out the product, then fill and close the packaging box. When this thing stopped working, it was already obsolete and there was nobody who knew how to fix it. New machines are prohibitively expensive, so we've basically replaced the machine with near-retirees that want to work. The problem is with the control board, which is all VERY old discrete electronics. Whenever I get some extra time (that I don't spend posting on TGT) I'm going to either fix the old control board, or replace it with updated modern controls.
     
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    Man...Y'all know your stuff.

    I'd enjoying seeing y'all cooped in a big room with a CNC machine and a 3d printer. Oh...and a pallet of 80% receiver blanks. Barrel blanks too.
     
    Every Day Man
    Tyrant

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