Fred's firmware development diary

[Fred]

Oh yeah, and for those that didn't see it, Marcos has his hw design ready for some copper/glass and is accepting orders for the alpha spin 1 version now. Only a few hours to go before ordering, don't miss out!

viewtopic.php?f=38&t=983

Fred.

[Fred]

THIRTY SEVEN of Marcos' Puma boards were ordered this evening!!!! Wow!!! I'm excited to see one in the flesh. This is the start of the end for "Another ECU" :-)

EssEss showed up online earlier and started talking testing, this thread is the result:

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=987

I'm pretty excited about it. There is no testing in the firmware yet and this will mean a robust serial interface that people can be guaranteed to be able to trust (rather than have to trust my word that it's good).

While EssEss was reading through the docs he found some details, and I corrected them.

Fred.

[Fred]

I've made a decision today that has been on its way for a while, here is the thread:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=990

Sorry MegaSquirters, I've only got so much time and it ain't going into deadend commercial product defacto support anymore.

Fred.

[Fred]

Many years ago I used a technique to motivate myself into finishing my truck quickly. And the technique was peer pressure. I posted every night about what I had (or hadn't) done, and was therefore accountable (even if no one read it or cared) in my mind. I've decided (a few seconds ago) to implement the same thing here and now. Each day I will say what I did, and what I plan to do tomorrow. The plan can and will vary from reality, but this provides a bit of self management via on-the-fly organisation.

Day 1 of 2011: I've been doing more comms code and doc fixes, the interface is starting to look pretty solid! I've been thinking about the sched design and decode interface too, and made some notes. Also working with EssEss on the comms thrasher.

Tomorrow's plan: will consist of work on the truck and more comms work and more sched work. I had better get up and get started! :-)

Fred.

[Fred]

I *just* found the properties option for eclipse to mark folders as "derived" and therefore not click through into files within them! I wish I had found it earlier... this might make someone's live easier, so here it is in a post!

[Fred]

Cutecom is available for the mac (in source, cmake, qt4) and running right now on mine, just FYI. If there are better mac serial port gui apps, please post in the comments thread for this thread:

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=58

Fred.

[Fred]

hcs12mem builds on the mac too, ./autogen;./configure;cd src;make

I'll try to use it soon, and cutecom, and do some testing with today's changes before committing them and breaking things :-)

[Fred]

Tonight's dev was brought to you by a macintosh and various open source tools. With hcs12mem and cutecom built and installed and a neat little app called Hex Fiend, I've fixed a few mistakes, a bit of old code, removed old temporary stuff, added a new location id and appropriate backing info, and effectively made the datalog setting packet type redundant. I'll leave it there as a parallel method until I can get hold of dave and confirm that he has no use for it.

And that was Day 2!

Tomorrow's plan: will consist of work on the truck and more comms work (if required/desired) and more sched work.

Shower and bed for me, and another big day tomorrow!

Fred.

[Fred]

Today, Day 3, I got some work done on the truck and caught up with a friend that was over from London for a few days.

Tomorrow I'll do more work on the truck, plus fix any issues Dave or SeanS find, plus work on the scheduler and decoder interface in the evening.

Fred.

[Fred]

And the domains are updated for another year too! Thank you for your assistance in this matter, Isabel, and someone else who knows who they are, too! :-)

Fred.