Today is mainly tech review and editorial about the process, you can skip it if you’re not the curious or learning sort. The reason it gets top billing is my study policy, which made study today’s most important event. I will often make a random but complete review of all my books to see if I’ve forgotten anything, then immediately read something advanced to see if it gets any easier to understand. I can report astounding success.
It’s never too late to review recent study, and I went over the Arduino circuitry. I’m beginning to see that the inside of the Arduino is nothing complicated, just a series of registers that control each pin and a memory to hold the program. I’m writing this down as a record of progress. The incentive to produce independent Arduino boards is evident—not even counting the programming, it costs seven times as much to build a digital circuit than analog. That alone restricts me to fairly easy projects (there is no such boundary on the programming).
Again, I hit the Dodo barrier (see note below). It takes a huge extra push to get past it. This time it is with logic gates. Tons of people who will tell you how they work, but nobody will show how they are used. Where are they placed? How are they aligned? Where are some examples of how they work and what happens when they don’t? This curse of over-teaching the details while ignoring the big picture must be a holdover from the arthritic apprenticeship system that should have been abolished the year after the Chinese invented it. But the gates are making sense, gaining substance without form.
I admittedly do not know the nature of these Arduino registers or where to get that information. I could pass the test on how logic gates work, but have no idea how they are used to build anything. I have the same question today as I did when I entered college: If the student is supposed to know how it works before he goes to college, what does he need the college for? That’s an unfair question, but I can say many times I had instructors skip important basics because there were one or two advanced students in the group.
Oddly enough, I’ve been on the receiving end of such criticism, but for the opposite reason. I knuckled down and independently learned what wasn’t being properly taught. Then other students complained. I’m reminded of my first Spanish course. The fat guy in class kept saying they should kick out people like me who “already knew Spanish”. An unintended and indirect compliment from a looser. (Not a typo.)
It may be time for the club to publish a small how-to book. If you have ever studied transistors and found that you are getting conflicting instructions, well, you are right. There are countless BS artists out there pretending to know transistors. Otherwise reputable writers will tell you it is an “amplifier”. Some say it controls current, others say voltage. Some state that it can be used as a linear dimmer. Strictly speaking, all that is false. Plus, many of the sources don’t tell you about things you can do wrong that can wreck your gear or burn out your expensive microcontroller.
The tale is the same—if anyone else has written a good book on the topic, it does not show up on any standard search. I’d say the topic of transistors needs, with photos, a 16 page booklet. But I’m still waiting for a straight answer on how to publish an ebook. It would be part of my planned “explained to death” series, as in “Transistors Explained to Death”.
[Author’s note: Don’t be put off my how I use the term Dodo Barrier in two different ways. They both mean the same, the lack of people and knowledge at the intermediate level. As an example, if you Google “giraffe” you will get millions of replies that all tell you it has a long neck. But you want more, then find that only a few sites have more but they spur you from kindergarten directly to veterinarian level. Nothing in between. The Dodo Barrier.
The second usage is a slur on people who think they can learn the advanced stuff without the basics. They find that all learning is interrelated and they have nothing to interrelate to. The Dodo Barrier.]
In another dipstick move, Vivitar has designed their driver so that it can only be installed if you have a connection to the Internet. I have a related term called a Dodo driver. These are the useless drivers that require an Internet download. While there is something to be said about having the newest and best driver, there is no rule that says drivers should be changed so often as to require constant updating. Vivitar, you just wasted my time today and you know what you can do.
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