<kristianpaul>
what's inside the tubes, electronicss spare parts?
<kristianpaul>
loooks lik SMD ones
<wpwrak_>
kristianpaul: 0603 and 0402 chips, yes. resistors, capacitors, varistors.
<viric>
are you working on electronics alone, or you have some colleagues to share the tools with?
<wpwrak_>
i usually work alone. occasionally, some friends also do a little project, but that's not every often.
<kristianpaul>
ha! he have a whole factory lab in his place :)
<viric>
It's hard to find people with similar enough interests :)
<wpwrak_>
i still need the plastic injector ;-)
<viric>
btw
<viric>
does anybody know here about smartcard-like devices?
<viric>
I wanted to be able to have 'my digital keys in my pocket'
<wpwrak_>
now, let's see if the next tray is ready ... (i need something like 4-5 in total. it's nice to have a mill to do that for you - once it works, it'll work any number of times :)
<kristianpaul>
(plastic injector) well you can mill the mold and melt the plastic
<wpwrak_>
kristianpaul: still need pressure and heat
<kristianpaul>
hmm yes
<kristianpaul>
you're close
<wpwrak_>
kristianpaul: i was thinking of experimenting with plastified wax. i hope this needs a lot less pressure. my goal would be to be able to work with molds made of wood. metal just takes too long to mill.
<viric>
wpwrak_: where do you have the 'office'? If I ever go close to that place, I'd like to come and see :)
<wpwrak_>
viric: in buenos aires, argentina. close to the "once" station.
<viric>
Here the 11 of September is the national day
<kristianpaul>
viric: where are you located?
<viric>
In Girona... close to Barcelona
<viric>
(as you may have heard more about Barcelona than Girona)
<kristianpaul>
as usual
<viric>
I live not that far from tuxbrain, although I never met him still.
<kristianpaul>
wpwrak_: i write english most of the time than spanish i speak
<kristianpaul>
good point:
<kristianpaul>
One more consideration, you alone will be able to do only some work,
<kristianpaul>
10 people will probably do much more than what you could do. This
<kristianpaul>
suggest that the best open-source implementation might not be an
<kristianpaul>
implementation in the fastest language (VHDL) but instead the
<kristianpaul>
implementation in a language (or with the HW) that is more likely to
<kristianpaul>
attract those 10 people.
<viric>
'fastest language'?
<viric>
italian is the fastest :)
<wpwrak_>
vhdl vs. verilog ? :)
<viric>
fastest to write, you mean?
<wpwrak_>
not chinese then :)
<viric>
haha
<viric>
You refer to 'speed' in what process?
<kristianpaul>
wpwrak_: not actually i even dint mention vhdl, i think he meant high level abstraction like python for GUN Radio
<viric>
Btw
<viric>
I've always thought that most of the people making electronic schematics public don't write "the source" for them
<viric>
So, why components here and not there, and why those values and not others.
<wpwrak_>
ah. APL should be pretty quick. even the most complex things rarely need more than one line of code. and it has built-in operators for matrix inversion and such :)
<kristianpaul>
You can write behavior instead, is much more easy i think
<viric>
I think I never found something like an "open source circuit". For me, looking at 'how are what components placed where' is more like a 'binary' than source.
<wpwrak_>
viric: yeah, comments tend to be rare. sometimes, you can find them in the commit log (if there's one) or the ECNs (if there are any)
<viric>
exactly. very rare.
<viric>
So for me all that looks to me like 'free programs without source'
<viric>
Like the old computer times, when magazines brought lists of "POKE"s that ended up in a little videogame.
<viric>
Do you use 'dict' in the nanonote? I've to make it work. I also want links...
<wpwrak_>
naw, free assembler programs without comments ;-)
<viric>
hehe similar, yes
<viric>
Some people used to that can quickly say "an amplifier stage", "an adapter", "a filter", ...
<viric>
as in asm some people sees "a switch() statement", "a loop", "a memory copy", ...
<viric>
wpwrak_: you have to prepare some photo album for us to see :)
<wpwrak_>
viric: a lot of stuff takes quite a bit of explaining if you want to explain it. and it's often fairly basic. e.g., the value of a pull-up.
<viric>
those pictures 'vale más que mil palabras'
<viric>
wpwrak_: not that much... this intensity here, this there, ... Ohm law, and that's it
<kristianpaul>
wpwrak_: hey you have free compost for gardening "
<kristianpaul>
s/"/!
<viric>
wpwrak_: in order to adapt values to the components you may own, you have to reverse engineer the whole.
<wpwrak_>
viric: well, lots of values come from the data sheets. so what you really want is those.
<kristianpaul>
wpwrak_: well my 3d printer make a raft so i have some residual plastic and the end too
<wpwrak_>
viric: for pull-ups and the like, you normally just use a ballpark number, e.g., 100 kOhm for an input with good (small) leakage current, 10 kOhm for not so good leakage. anything else would be unusual and probably worth explaining.
<viric>
well
<wpwrak_>
viric: for LEDs, people tend to just use something around 100 Ohm and never bother with doing the math ;-)
<viric>
The source should simply say then "I copied the datasheet"
<wpwrak_>
viric: that's the default assumption :)
<viric>
haha
<viric>
I always do the math
<viric>
there are electronic calculators these days :)
<viric>
I think there are not good means to "add source information" to circuit schematics
<wpwrak_>
what's often much more interesting than a description of how the circuit works is a description of why it was changed in its history. that's where the surprises are :)
<viric>
History has also value, sure
<wpwrak_>
you can put text comments in the schematics. but if you put too much, it gets confusing
<viric>
Text comments are usually of the kind "don't do this"
<viric>
or "do this"
<wpwrak_>
you can also write small documents on specific topics, number them, and put the number in the schematics
<viric>
Sure
<viric>
I don't mean it's impossible to do
<wpwrak_>
e.g., ben-wpan/ecn/ (not a lot there, though)
<viric>
It's also easier to publish binaries than source code, programming. Specially to those not used to do so.
<wpwrak_>
for a lot of things, you have to read the data sheets anyway, so it makes sense not to explain stuff that's written there again
<viric>
we have hypertext since years :)
<wpwrak_>
yeah, click for data sheet would be nice :)
<wpwrak_>
well, we have dsv, that helps :)
<viric>
what is dsv?
<viric>
(if it's the schematic 'diff', I still have not used it :)
<wpwrak_>
no, that would be schhist
<viric>
so dsv?
<wpwrak_>
dsv is a very primitive system to download and display data sheets
<wpwrak_>
e.g., in ben-wpan, you do  make dsv  and then it downloads all the data sheets i used
<viric>
ah, great thing.
<viric>
Comparing, it's far better than not having that
<wpwrak_>
after that, you can  dsv antenna  or  dsv txrx  or  dsv at86rf230  (the latter is equivalent to "txrx") and so on
<wpwrak_>
this "solves" the issue that you can't legally redistribute most data sheets
<viric>
clear
<wpwrak_>
some companies may still frown upon you distributing "deep links", but that's a lot less likely to draw hostile attention than anything else
<viric>
sure
<viric>
how are the wpan tests going
<viric>
?
<viric>
do you take notes of the progress anywhere else than the repository?
<wpwrak_>
(notes) well, i have some local notes. and of course occasionally pictures
<viric>
and you publish them specially through irc?
<wpwrak_>
;-)
<viric>
:)
<viric>
the signal strength is in SNR?
<wpwrak_>
if they are of more than a passing interest, i post them in a mail or reference them in the repository
<viric>
ok
<wpwrak_>
uh, i'm not even sure what unit that signal strength would be. it's just something that looks more or less "right"
<viric>
where do you get that number from?
<wpwrak_>
the objective is to find the best antenna, so as long as they all use the same algorithm, the actual numbers don't matter so much
<viric>
ok
<viric>
and the testing conditions are a reasonable distance?
<wpwrak_>
well ... i emit a test signal, receive the wave, strip the initial samples (they're often distorted), do an fft, then drop all the values below a certain threshold, sum the ones within a certain interval, and hope for the best :-)
<wpwrak_>
about 3 m between antennas
<wpwrak_>
378 cm
<viric>
where is the repository for your ben-wpan?