<wolfspraul>
it's a nice analysis company, maybe 50 people or so, and they have all equipment right there
<wolfspraul>
you would like the place :-)
<wolfspraul>
they do analysis (mostly ic, of course they can do pcb too) for many customers (see their website)
<lekernel>
"The Best R&D Partner"... this says a lot about what kind of R&D is carried out in Asia :)
<wpwrak_>
.cn = copy nation :)
<wolfspraul>
not true
<wolfspraul>
this is a good company
<wolfspraul>
and it's Taiwan, not China
<wolfspraul>
but they have offices in China of course, the Chinese government gives huge subsidies to this type of analysis/reversing company
<wpwrak_>
wolfspraul: now they'll arrest your for sedition
<wolfspraul>
anyway they do ANALYSIS
<wolfspraul>
you think way too narrow if you think that's all just copying
<lekernel>
oh, I never said they're not a good company... they must be good at their analysis job :)
<wolfspraul>
they are used to analyze the failures of particular ics
<wolfspraul>
of course they are also used for competitive analysis
<wolfspraul>
like "what are the others doing"
<wolfspraul>
they are used for quality control
<wolfspraul>
they are used for ip litigation, i.e. to proove that another chip has my technology inside
<wolfspraul>
anyway they are just analyzing, they are agnostic as to what their customers do with the data they create
<wolfspraul>
it's a good company, really
<wolfspraul>
if we ever move into ic land, I'm sure we will have some jobs for them.
<wolfspraul>
they are small, focused, run by an amazing founder, reasonably priced, etc.
<wolfspraul>
really cool people
<wpwrak_>
(when going into chips) i wouldn't be surprised if that service came as part of the package from the chip manufacturer
<wpwrak_>
agreed on the relevance of the other cases, though
<kristianpaul>
wow just sandpaper?
<kristianpaul>
s/?/!
<wolfspraul>
kristianpaul: yes. it's amazing how often simple technology works :-)
<viric>
<kristianpaul>
it is
<zrafa>
wolfspraul: nice ! :) (about steve job)
<wolfspraul>
kyak: you there? building config.full_system I get an error about not finding libgfortran.so.*
<wolfspraul>
have you seen something like this before?
<lekernel>
btw, can the nanonote run Windows CE?
<wolfspraul>
no idea
<lekernel>
he, apparently yes
<kristianpaul>
lekernel: yes
<kristianpaul>
but i never tried of course :p
<lekernel>
well, if you have GNU patches to merge upstream, putting windows CE forward could be a nice way to motivate the FSF maintainers imo :)
<lekernel>
microsoft hatred is the only thing that moves them
<kristianpaul>
hehe
<wolfspraul>
for now it seems when I remove octave, plplot and libgfortran, things work again
<kyak>
wolfspraul: this might have something to do with fortran support, recently added by David - i think he should know better, because i didn't build gfortran
<wolfspraul>
yes I am preparing an email to the list, I think that's the easiest way to reach him
<wolfspraul>
probably easy to fix...
<wolfspraul>
kyak: did the iconv/gettext situation improve? is there anything that bugs you?
<wolfspraul>
let me look at our troublemaker tickets :-)
<kyak>
the situation hasn't improved, i.e. there is no solution to switch between full and stub iconv/gettext; but it doesn't really bug me, because we have these overriden
<wolfspraul>
ok but I think a more general solution will be introduced at some point
<wolfspraul>
I keep an eye on it. the tickets are also still there...
<kyak>
yes, like mirko said
<kyak>
so let's hope it will be introduced in next weeks
<wolfspraul>
ok I see mplayer has not yet made it into config.full_system?
<kyak>
yes, it's not there.. i'm still wondering if it's realy clean :)
<wolfspraul>
why did you disable mencoder?
<kyak>
good question.. at first i thought "let's see how mplayer would build, leave mencoder apart" and than i thought "who needs mencoder on Ben?"
<wolfspraul>
ah ok
<wolfspraul>
that's natural :-)
<wolfspraul>
for some reason over the years I ran into many systems/distros that for some unexplicable (to me) reason left out mencoder
<kyak>
it's just usually packaged separately :)
<kyak>
the case in mandriva
<B_Lizzard>
Hey, how do I produce a NAND-ready kernel image from a uImage used for MicroSD installations?
<B_Lizzard>
I wonder if that made any sense.
<larsc>
not to me
<B_Lizzard>
:)
<B_Lizzard>
I think rafa's helping me, in any case
<wpwrak_>
DocScrutinizer: doesn't get much cleaner, does it ? :) the signal seems a bit weak, though. could be a soldering problem.
<DocScrutinizer>
looks *much* better to me, no?
<wpwrak_>
yay !
<DocScrutinizer>
aah, doesn't get... yes, as good as it gets :-)
<wpwrak_>
ah, caught the antenna at a bad angle. taking a new spectrum ...
<DocScrutinizer>
well, mission accomplished :-D
<DocScrutinizer>
congrats
<wpwrak_>
DocScrutinizer: reload. peak is a nice 40 dB above noise. maybe i can get rid of the thingy at +0.5 MHz, too.
<wpwrak_>
(may be leakage from the PLL, though)
<DocScrutinizer>
it's single sideband, that's most likely an artefact
<wpwrak_>
it's at the center frequency
<lekernel>
wpwrak_: what spectrum analyzer do you have?
<wpwrak_>
the large peak is at center -0.5 MHz. the constant wave is center +/- 0.5 MHz
<DocScrutinizer>
o.O
<wpwrak_>
lekernel: none :) it's a USRP2
<DocScrutinizer>
check your USXRY
<wpwrak_>
my what ? :)
<lekernel>
wpwrak_: what's the highest frequency there's a usrp daughterboard for?
<wpwrak_>
lekernel: i think ~5.8 GHz (the board says it goes up to 6.1 GHz)
<lekernel>
mh, ok. a bit too low for my purposes :(
<wpwrak_>
lekernel: if you're looking for spectrum analyzers up to 9.4 GHz, here are some that are quite low-cost in comparison: http://www.spectran.com/
<lekernel>
he, not too bad. thanks for the link!
<lekernel>
usrp would be nicer, as the purpose is to measure the frequency variation induced by a vibrating piezo in a microwave cavity
<lekernel>
with potential corrections so get the frequency modulation waveform that I want at the end
<kyak>
zrafa: heh, you are right, it's doubtful that someone would upload a video to Ben, encode it there and then watch it :) btw, are you aware about other open codecs other than ogg and theora?
<lekernel>
but perhaps I could get away with just a spectrum analyzer or frequency counter... need to check
<lekernel>
basically depends on the linearity of the piezo and absence of mechanical resonances...
<kyak>
i understood "basically" -]
<lekernel>
also I'm working around 9.35GHz, so it's near the limit of those devices :(
<kristianpaul>
ask ettus
<wpwrak_>
lekernel: you could design your own RF frontend. 9.4 GHz ought to be fun :)
<lekernel>
nope. I just want my radar to work. not to involve in those things
<lekernel>
so it's going to be with OTS equipment
<lekernel>
later i'll try to get my hands on a car cruise control system to scavenge the 77GHz radio. _this_ is fun (and would increase the radar resolution a lot) and what I want to spend my time on. not design 9.4GHz frontends
<lekernel>
there I think I'll have to design some equipment from scratch :p
<lekernel>
the DRO running at 19 GHz provides a highly accurate signal to the PLL circuit
<lekernel>
hehehe
<wpwrak_>
you could chain a few plls. start with a 32.768 kHz watch crystal ;-))
<lekernel>
those chips seem to require an interview to order, so i'll probably need to use some reverse engineering as well...
<lekernel>
oh, i'll use pre-mounted boards from actual car cruise control systems
<lekernel>
much easier to find than the chips
<lekernel>
and easier to work with (at this frequency you work with bare dies and micromanipulators)
<lekernel>
it's going to be a nice challenge :)
<lekernel>
but I'm exercising with a cheaper and easier 9.35GHz design first
<wpwrak_>
i'll just wait for your 2012 version that uses neutrinos :)
<kristianpaul>
if you get evil please dont make an ADS :-)
<lekernel>
(crystal) DROs are pretty stable already. the (super cheap) 9.35GHz one I have on my desk atm has a specified < 5MHz frequency drift
<zrafa>
kyak: (codecs) no much.. .. BTW, on beta4 jlime on qi servers I added a theora video player. It is the sample examle with libtheora. I added a bit of crappy code to control it a bit.. if you are interested to put it on openwrt I could give you the details. But if you have a clean mplayer (without patented stuff) then you do not need the theora example I have.. mplayer is 1000 times better.
<wolfspraul>
lekernel: do you know a good blog about diy radars?
<lekernel>
blog, no
<wolfspraul>
I think futureproject.org is basically just a syndication of danreetz.com and mattikariluoma.com, and dan seems to be the one blogging the most interesting stuff
<wolfspraul>
so I'll include danreetz.com in the planet, see how it goes. Also I will email him to notify him of the syndication, in case he doesn't like it...
<wolfspraul>
wpwrak: congrats for the signal quality!
<wolfspraul>
I understand your idea about reusing the clock was kia, but oh well
<wolfspraul>
I think it will also make the board more robust, even if the Ben clock would have been good, other devices may have different clock characteristics.
<wolfspraul>
it's just too much to reuse a digital SD clock in an RF application, I guess...
<kyak>
zrafa: thanks, will keep it in mind about theora player
<wpwrak>
thanks ! yes, apparently the clock is a bit too sensitive
<wolfspraul>
kyak: which feeds.conf are you using now?
<wolfspraul>
oh, I just see there is a feeds.conf committed in data/qi_lb60/conf now
<wolfspraul>
with qipackages first, but no revision on the openwrt packages feed. alright the, I'll try that one...
<kyak>
wolfspraul: yep, that one...
<wolfspraul>
kyak: I just got a compile error in fetchmail 6.3.19, oh well
<wolfspraul>
md5c.c
<wpwrak>
wolfspraul: for version 2.0, we can do the board with 4 layers and microvias. then i could route all the traces underneath the crystal :)
<kristianpaul>
any one can recommend a commad line tool for generating html index of a directory?
<Jay7>
for i in *; do echo "<li>$i</li>" >> index.html; done :)
<kristianpaul>
lol :-) thanks !
<kristianpaul>
hehe
<kristianpaul>
i need read man bash more often
<Jay7>
yeah, it's useful sometimes :)
<wpwrak>
wolfspraul: btw, what kind of text do you want on the board ?
<wolfspraul>
hard to say.
<wolfspraul>
I think in general the cc-by or cc-by-sa logo is nice
<wpwrak>
pheew ... do you have that for kicad ? :)
<wolfspraul>
then I like to credit creators, so don't hesitate to put (c) Werner Almesberger on it :-) (although your name is long :-))
<wolfspraul>
for kicad, not sure
<wolfspraul>
we can do it later
<wolfspraul>
without logo, you can just put cc-by-sa on it as text
<wpwrak>
i can put "cc-by-sa". in principle, there's a lot of room for text on the silk screen
<wolfspraul>
yeah just put the text there then, and it's fine
<wpwrak>
just because i don't have a silk screen at the moment, it all is on the copper layers
<wpwrak>
pick and place likes component outlines on the silk screen, don't they ?
<wolfspraul>
don't know
<wpwrak>
what other information to put ? the project name, QI-HW ? [IEEE] 802.15.4 ? or WPAN ? both ? version/date code for sure. i think i'll scrap the "8:10 CARD". it's kinda obvious when you look at it anyway.
<wolfspraul>
hmm
<wolfspraul>
date code is good, yes
<wolfspraul>
cc-by-sa, we had that
<wolfspraul>
802.15.4 - sure why not?
<wolfspraul>
you can put a url there, for example the short qi-hw.com
<wpwrak>
ah, cool. that's handy, yes.
<wpwrak>
grrr. bloody zone construction algorithm crashes pcbnew every time i try to redo the digital zone. @#*%$!
<wpwrak>
that would be in fact one item that's probably fixed in a more recent version. at least i'd very much hope so :)
<wpwrak>
let's see if my electricity is good again ...
<wolfspraul>
wpwrak: btw it turns out the new jtag-serial boards we made only work in full-speed, not high-speed
<wolfspraul>
the ones yanjun luo made worked in high-speed too (after a fix)
<wolfspraul>
so we took on a few risks too many, something got wrong either in my schematics cleanup, or in boom, or manual sourcing, or production, or ...
<wolfspraul>
we'll track it down
<wolfspraul>
the good news is that full-speed is good enough right now for everybody to just use them, so it's only an annoying bug, but no drama
<wpwrak>
great that it's not a big issue. production tolerances and other such small things can be evil indeed.
<wpwrak>
we'll also have to figure out a way to production-test the wpan boards. hopefully some BER/PER measurements will enough. (thus not require a spectrum analyzer or usrp)
<wpwrak>
anyway, gotta run for now
<wolfspraul>
cya
<wpwrak>
adamw_: when making a low-cost board, do you normally put a silkscreen on both sides of a pcb ? or just the front ?
<adamw_>
wpwrak, no regarding the cost on silkscreen on both sides. They are quite the same on two layers manufacturing.
<wpwrak>
any preference ?
<adamw_>
just put them on both side you think they should be at there for more clearly and visualable.
<adamw_>
no,, but if you want, I can ask them.
<wpwrak>
let's see if i can fit everything on one side ...
<adamw_>
but from my points. you don't need to take into such considerations since it's a consideration. :-)
<kristianpaul>
just shirnk names :-)
<adamw_>
yeah..if you could.
<wpwrak>
kristianpaul: they're already near the low end of my process :)
<kristianpaul>
oh
<wpwrak>
7 mil line width, character cell nominally 40 x 40 mil (whatever kicad does with this .. the letter aren't square)
<kristianpaul>
adamw_: what for is the small spring that came in the probe bag?
<kristianpaul>
Hi there btw :-)
<wpwrak>
kristianpaul: when you remove the probe's clip-on cap, you see the needle-shaped tip and behind it a wide metal ring
<wpwrak>
kristianpaul: you can slide the spring on the metal ring such that the straight part of the spring is in parallel to the probe tip
<adamw_>
kristianpaul, hmm...just wpwrak wrote to you. :)
<kristianpaul>
ah so is spare part?
<wpwrak>
kristianpaul: then you can touch ground with the spring and the signal with the tip. the advantage over using the crocodile clip for ground is that you have a MUCH smaller loop between signal and ground
<kristianpaul>
i need a picture..
<wpwrak>
kristianpaul: it's not a spare. it's a different mode of operation
<kristianpaul>
ah
<wpwrak>
kristianpaul: mode 1: clip probe to the signal, crocodile to ground
<wpwrak>
kristianpaul: mode 2: crocodile to ground, but you remove the cap and touch the signal with the "needle"
<wpwrak>
kristianpaul: mode 3: touch signal with "needle" and touch ground with the spring
<wpwrak>
mode 3 is the most difficult to use but gives you the best signal fidelity
<wpwrak>
kristianpaul: by the way, have you noticed the ethernet port of the scope ?
<kristianpaul>
yes yes
<kristianpaul>
i got a sofware for that, i just dint tried yet..
<wpwrak>
i think there's a little web server running in it. so it's quite easy to use.
<wpwrak>
there's more sophisticated software as well, yes
<kristianpaul>
if that allow me driver scope from computer will nice, the SCALE pot is tricky
<kristianpaul>
it like plays between min and max just touching it :-)
<kristianpaul>
s/pot/ajust pot
<wpwrak>
ah yes, i heard that
<kristianpaul>
i'll check webserver. let see
<wpwrak>
i'm not sure if it has dhcp. you may have to set the ip address via the scope's setup. (don't remember what it's called)
<kristianpaul>
np
<kristianpaul>
wpwrak: scope httpd, nice :-)
<kristianpaul>
i had to use static ip dunno, why dhcp dint worked..
<wpwrak>
roh: tuxbrain once floated the idea of putting a "nose" under large ben extension boards. the nose would go into the lanyard hole and add a bit of mechanical stability.
<wpwrak>
roh: with atusd having grown so much, i'm beginning to consider this idea again ...
<wpwrak>
roh: the lanyard hole has a depth of about 3.3 mm. we need ~1 mm clearance to push-to-insert/release the board. this would leave about 2-2.3 mm for the nose. not a lot, but perhaps better than nothing.
<wpwrak>
roh: the lanyard hole is about 3.4 mm wide. so one could make such a nose by cutting a 1.6 mm PCB and gluing two pieces together. i like easy prototyping :)
<wpwrak>
roh: the atusd pcb would probably need a dent to help with positioning the nose. a hole would be better but may eat too much into the ground plane
<wpwrak>
silk on one side is enough. and i managed to shave 1.4 mm off the board's length :)
<wpwrak>
so, if all testing goes well, this will be more or less the final circuit and layout. i may still shave off some of the ground plane left of the antenna and perhaps make that dent for the nose.
<kristianpaul>
git pull
<wpwrak>
i realize that i should create a setup that lets me determine the directional characteristics of the antenna. at least close to the receiver, it changes quite a bit even for small movements.
<kristianpaul>
40ppm do you measured that?
<roh>
wpwrak: heh. if you send me boards i can make you some acryllic lasercut holder to rotate it without having metal parts or so near it
<kristianpaul>
is a small (in components) design even with Xtal, i like :-)
<kristianpaul>
he, wonder if i can attach it to my sky atenna .. and see how long it goes :-)