Fred's firmware development diary

Official FreeEMS vanilla firmware development, the heart and soul of the system!
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Fred
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Re: Fred's firmware development diary

Post by Fred »

There is a certain irony when the leader of an EFI project is stranded 4 times within an hour, all in busy places (motorway, city centre, on-ramp, etc), and all because of the over filled bowl of a dirty ******* carb! Someone buy me a better car or an EFI setup for this POS before it kills me crossing an intersection or rail tracks or something.

Currently stranded in New Market FWIW.
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Re: Fred's firmware development diary

Post by Fred »

Modified carby, and eventually determined that the carby was never at fault. A lack of coolant and a possible headgasket failure were. A bottle of stop leak ought to solve it, I hope.

Could still do with a manifold for the thing though, hint hint, cough, you know who you are, keen as mustard!
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Re: Fred's firmware development diary

Post by Fred »

Important info for those running OLV for their log viewing needs (ie, most of you): viewtopic.php?f=32&t=2371
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Re: Fred's firmware development diary

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Apparently that talk I gave was the second most popular in 2013! http://borys.musielak.eu/5-best-openrea ... ks-of-2013
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Re: Fred's firmware development diary

Post by Fred »

I finally got this dev machine up and running yesterday! And today I spent updating my CV and finally sending it out to my preferred employer. I'll wait a day or 3 and see how that goes, and in the mean time, likely clean up some outstanding branch integration work. In any case, as of yesterday, I'm back in action, except for my number one priority being finding some well-paid work to fund this operation.

As posted in another thread, I have some EFI parts for the hotel in hand and about to be in hand. So that's about to get a control upgrade, big thanks to the two people who sent me some cash for this recently. Dailying that will likely result in some firmware tweaks and so forth. If I get it on ITBs it'll result in some significant Alpha-N usability changes, too. If not, more general stuff will come first, I guess. I want to get everything outstanding cleaned up and squared away. Too much unfinished stuff at the moment, doing more is not a good idea. Need to resolve those things first.

But even before that, job.

Running costs on the car are something like a two-stroke with about 50:1 fuel:oil use ratio. Approximately 100-110nzd per tank of approximately 50 litres which gets me in the 400 to 500km range. Oil is a lot more than I remember, nothing worth using under 30 or 40 bucks for 4 litres. Compounding these inefficiencies is the distance. To get anywhere is at least 10km, and there's not much there, and it's very up and down countryside, too. To get to the centre is about 30 minutes drive, mostly motorway, but still. Just going somewhere, anywhere, and back again, burns a bunch. Might be staying at a friend's place looking after their cats for a week or so soonish, that'll cut most distances down a lot and put me walking distance to some central stuff. Just.

Wine is more expensive too, not unexpected, but the riedels are staying in the box at the moment. As are the whiskey ones, the 55 euro Lagavulin that was 100usd duty free in LA is 170nzd in the only place I can find it. Anyone flying in or out of NZ soon keen to buy/carry some of that for me? :-p

Not much more to say, really.

Fred.
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Re: Fred's firmware development diary

Post by Fred »

So much going on, but so little worth talking about, and all of it low-quality.

In other news, would anyone like to sponsor a BOM for an OnionBoard for me? I need to find out what belongs on the thing first, as I currently don't know, but assuming that I can, it'd be nice to put one (or even two!) together and get some use out of them. It'll be something like this:

6 FETs
2 FET drivers
1 regulator
1 small heatsink
several SMD headers
1 handful of SMD caps/resistors/diodes/etc

And maybe a few other small things. So not big $. Maybe MrOnion can shed some light on the approx cost and a detailed list?

I'd like to use it as a permanent fixture in the hotel for the new EFI setup that I'm hoping to put on it soonish. I have the Jaguar, which will fill the gap, and I could add circuits to the proto board, but I think an OnionBoard would be a nice touch.

Fred.
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Re: Fred's firmware development diary

Post by Fred »

Been busy nearly dying, soliciting donations from photos of delaminated and disintegrating tyres and working on the EFI swap for the hotel, more info here: viewtopic.php?f=55&t=1086&start=20

As part of the EFI swap I'm going to be doing my first attempt at precise injector characterisation. I may fail to achieve ALL of my goals, but I'll learn from that, and come back stronger next time. More here: viewtopic.php?f=41&t=2402

Another part of the EFI swap is a couple of new features for the firmware. Someone took a crack at these before, and did a pretty bad job, but now it's time to do it right. Solid work has begun on those, and more will be done as soon as it's a blocker for more progress. News as it comes to hand.

Finally, and most importantly, Andy has made a huge positive step in relicensing his Jaguar design more appropriately for his own good, the continued good of the users, and the future of the project, I gave him FreeEMSer of the month for this, it's that important IMO. More here: viewtopic.php?f=67&t=2394

Fred.
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Re: Fred's firmware development diary

Post by Fred »

Working on some firmware stuff today bench testing and got screwed by this:

Image

Image

Need to solve it once and for all. It affects my audio experience too :-p Plugging USB into the Puma "fixes" it. But I need a permanent fix.

Good progress here. Can't keep it up much more without some support, though. Internet has ~1week to live at current rates. 100nzd buys ~6 weeks worth. Help me out if:

A) You've not helped me significantly in the past (this rules out some regulars who have done more than their fair share)
B) You want me to keep working on this stuff for you, the users (this is good for everyone)
C) You're financially stable yourself and not on the bones of your arse also (don't hurt yourself to help me)

Other than internet, I'm still the owner of a 3 tyre car. And milk/bread/cereal has to be bought too.

Fred, your broke but faithful leader, who needs some help/love at the moment.
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Re: Fred's firmware development diary

Post by Fred »

Image
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Re: Fred's firmware development diary

Post by Fred »

Many times certain people have accused me of being able to spend more time on the project because I'm not working at the time. Although this does have an impact (positive for project, negative for me), it's not the be all and end all of the situation. For example, right now it's 3am and it'd be a cold day in hell before SK was found at the keyboard at 3am making solid progress. This particular evening has been motivated in a particular way, however the result is the same. I'm often up extremely late working hard on this project in one way or another. 18+ hour days are the norm for me. Sometimes it's firmware, other times it's support apps, other times it's in a support role with testers/other devs, and still other times it's as a mentor to those devs who deserve it, and some who have turned out not to. In all cases, no matter which country and time zone I've been in, and how heavily employed I've been, or not, you've found me attentive and available and working my arse off for the good of all. I just felt the need to nail home this point as some mongrels have repeatedly stated otherwise. Fuck them. Thank you and goodnight.
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