One year ago today: November 26, 2014, beer is importanter.
Five years ago today: November 26, 2010, early Arduino talk.
Six years ago today: November 26, 2009, playing Dania Beach.
Nine years ago today: November 26, 2006, on Star Wars politics.
Random years ago today: November 26, 1984, that would be in Thailand.
MORNING
Lots of reading today, mostly dry technical substance. Before we launch, have you ever read those FDA guidelines as to how much funny stuff is allowed in food? Like those insect fragments in peanut butter and the caterpillar larvae in grain seeds. Well, these South Americans don’t mess around. They go one better. They give you the whole live, crawling worms. See photo.
Stepper motors require a sequence of off-on electrical pulses in the correct order to cause movement. There are two types, unipolar and bipolar. I chose unipolar because looking over what little code is available, it appears one does not have to reverse the current to make it go forward or backwards. That makes in different than any other electrical motor.
Now, the no-very-smart would say just go to the Arduino site and download the stepper code. That’s brilliant, provided you only ever want your stepper to turn exactly that way. The reason? The sample code uses “libraries”, that detestable feature of C+ code that lets twerps make up their own commands. Worse, it lets them hide the code from the user, so you learn nothing except how to follow directions from an idiot.
Libraries are like the eHow of the programming world. Remember eHow? Build-rocket-ship, fly-to-moon, fly-back. Couldn’t be easier, the Moon and back in three easy steps. The worst Arduinio nerd for this is some jerkoff named Tom Igoe. The guy does not know how to teach and should quit trying. I’m surprised if in real life the guy could wipe his own ass.
The snag again is those hidden “libraries”. You cannot look into them and find the error, or worse, the warped logic of the clowns who write them. The given examples show 5 – 8 lines of code, where my setup—and it is not working yet—so far requires 164 lines. Admittedly, this is a brute force approach, issuing commands for each microprocessor step. But that’s how you learn this material. I know I’m close.
At mid-morning, I’m reduced to basics. After 30 hours of research, the only thing known for sure is that the textbooks and instructions that came with the package are wrong. How do they get away with that? Progress is measured in cups of hot tea or gallons of iced tea. I’ve determined it is cheaper to build a series of lighted “buss” indicators and wire each component set to its own circuit board. Now you know why I don’t believe people at Nova who say they’ve done it unless I see it. None of them ever produced working models.
This is a decision with a grumble, because my work bench has already become cluttered with dozens of hand-built test gear, most of it home made. Like an LED indicator that plugs directly onto the Arduino digital pins to display which ones are really getting power. But the only other reliable way is to haul of test meters and step through every segment of the circuit. Is that clear, everybody? What I mean is instead of just breadboarding a new circuit, I’ll run each set of components through a small circuit board with indicator lights. If you see small blue LEDs around here, that’s usually what you are looking at.
NOON
This kind of work can leave you mentally exhausted, so that is why I chose a relaxing day for this fun. Still, by noon, I required a four-hour nap. Strange, innit, I cannot work hard enough to get really tired, but I can think enough? I’ve now made it a requirement that all club programs must now include two 16x4 minimum displays that would, if it is present, display the program name and the filename on ath IDE monitor.
By late afternoon, I’ve commended on the test lamps. There are other possibilities, but they defy the odds. Like maybe I picked the only transistors out of my bin that don’t work. Or my grounding wire isn’t working whenever I’m not looking. The test lamps, which will take the rest of the day, are the best option. Besides, that gives me a use for all my PCB blanks now growing old in my “used-once” bin.
Here’s another gem they left out of the course material. Over time, you metal tools, such as screwdriver blades and pliers, become self-magnetized. And demagnetizing has to become so frequent you just leave it after a while. At times you can see me working with tolls having six or more pieces of wire or clippings hanging on, I don’t even bother cleaning the blade unless I’m near electricity. I do not know if this is commonplace.
I’m listening to NPR, again to remind myself I’m a pocket of sanity in Florida. They are plugging Xmas movies with themes like “a step-father must compete with a birth father for the affections the children over the holidays”. Yep, that would be something NPR could throw themselves behind. That’s a real topic first on everybody’s mind these days in America. I’m sure.
Or how about the intense coverage of the lady in Paris who ran away from the terror attacks, yelling, “I’m alive, I’m alive.” Well, she could hardly have done otherwise, NPR, in that dead people are known not to do that. And, Mr. Trump, now that we know at least one of your advisors does read this blog, the reason that some people call it ISIL is because ISIS is a woman’s name. Also, the “L” stands for “Levant” and that is a more descriptive term.
Tell you something else, Don, air strikes won’t cut it. Neither will going in there to “winkle the bastards out of their foxholes”. You have to seal the area off so that their priorities become food, clothing, and shelter. And make it hermetic, go after the people who are buying their oil. Everything they need to do what they are doing obviously has to be imported or already has been. Without western arms, well, Winston Churchill said it right. As for these groups that are supporting the refugees, let them, but collect their individual names.
If any refugee or their issue ever commits and act of terror, mail those names to the families of the victims and look the other way. The American people don’t trust the corrupt court system. The system prefers the word of the police over the citizen, the courts have perfected plea bargaining to commit legal blackmail, justice depends on the mood of the Judge that day. The people are tired of excuses. What do you expect?
AFTERNOON
A day later we are no closer to making a stepper motor turn even once. On the other hand, I could tell you twenty complicated things that don’t work. What? You’ll pass on that? Wish I could. I refuse to give up until I get a stepper motor working and have slated this entire weekend for the task should that prove necessary. There is a chance I have a bad batch of motors, that too, will be determined. Who’s smarter—me or that stepper motor? And trust me, once I get it working now, I will be the local authority on these puppies. No wonder the other shops always salvage the controller. They can’t fix ‘em otherwise.
On a break, I watched an article some guy wrote about how you could tell what kind of metal you were grinding by the sparks. Iron gives you fireworks, titanium gives you streaks. I could not figure out if the dude was for real.
EVENING
It’s 9:30PM and I think we may be on to something. The unipolar motors being tested all came from the same source, the otherwise reputable Adafruit (say AY-du-froot) company. Plenty of obscure research showed the HandsOnArduino blog has at least one person with a similar problem. I’m not a fan of forum type “help” lines because they attract magnificent idiots. But the symptoms are the same, the motor sits there and sputters. I’m beginning to suspect Adafruit put these motors on sale instead of in the dumpster where they belong.
Later, I am going to reverse-engineer one of these motors, the PF35T-48L4. It is junk until further notice, shame on you Adafruit. There is a partial or intermittent short between the a and b sides of the drive coils, which can be detected by a slight resistance difference when you test for the center tap. The kind of problem you’d get if the motors had gotten wet during shipment. The motor cases are spot-welded so I have to destroy them to get inside. I’ve already cut the molex connectors off to eliminate those over-priced gizmos as any problem.
To confirm further, I programmed an Arduino to test every one of the 720 possible wiring configurations over a three hour period while I was in attendance. No luck.
ADDENDUM
JZ brought up a topic concerning computers. Why do not the few people left who can write good code not make a fortune? You could ask the same of some guy to took a photography class or learned to make jewelry. It doesn’t work that way. When I left university in the 70s, there was a demand for small computers but not a supply. I remember when the Altair came out at $529, it was a kit.
Well, go figure. It was a kit and I did not learn to solder until 2012. And for me in 1978, $529 was an unthinkable sum for anything. The will was there, but not the money. I would have given anything to not have squandered my youth working to pay the rent and bills, but unless you were born there it can be hard to understand. I played music too, but the nearest recording studio was pretty distant.
There was no way, I did not get a home computer until 1982, an Apple ][e. and I found business programs so useful that I tended to buy rather than program. By that late date, all the easy software had been written and what was on the drawing board was led by teams of engineers. Nobody has really come up with all that new since.
No matter what you give as an example, I could point out its ancestors. All of it required money, and that’s how far behind I was left. Please don’t hand me that story of the guy who made it on his own. At least until you define what “making it” is, because a life like that has very little appeal to me. Scientists and reporters don’t like to talk about how often the colleague with a rich daddy gets the Nobel prize compared to the rest of us.
The problem of trying to explain this to a person with resources is that it sounds like excuses. I snap back those who say that are arrogant. I was there and lived through it. Without the proper environment, anything you do is ground to a standstill. Dream of working with computers all you want in 1979, unless you had the money to move to California, you were stuck where you were. So pile that lumber. Nothin’s shakin’ but the bacon and the rent has GOT to be paid.
The way advertising distorted early computers is also a factor. They drumbeat the impression that the user is only limited by his imagination. That’s horse hockie, without programming skills you become as channelized by software as most of the entire world is today. We’ve all met people who can use tools, but if the tool malfunctions, they have not the foggiest how to do the job. That, folks, is not a creative process and you cannot make it one by wishing so.
I have used a computer every day since 1982, either at work or at home. I’ve rarely owned less than three computers. Right now, I have, let me count, four if I count the way the tablet is becoming a workable gadget. But to say the limits are my imagination is ridiculous. I’ve already spent five years and invested in countless layers of expensive electronics just trying to learn how the interface the computer with the physical world. I can’t even find anybody who can teach me how to reliably connect a router. They are such morons that to this day, I still plug it in until it works, and if the truth were known, so do they.
Do I have any regrets about the computer? I mean, in the sense that I did not jump into the field and kick some ass. Yes. Like the space shuttle, its destiny has been sidetracked for thirty years. By now, computers should be universally cheap and easy and programmable by anyone. You might suspect I’m saying it was social media that caused the setback, you know, by turning the computer into a toy. But actually, it was, and there is no way to put this politely, bleeding hearts that hurt the development. Since early Windows began to dominate the market, more and more resources were poured into “gimp features”.
That is, the focus became on using the computer for things like teaching kids with disabilities instead of focusing resources on kids with real promise. We had this same nonsense going on before computers, but it was an undercurrent, not a game-changer. Liberals do this wherever they can get a foot in the door, and Gates was a Liberal. Help others all you want, but the moment you compel others to help against their will, you are a demon in my books.
I think it was the dumbing down of computers for tards that led directly to things like Android, which are not in any way productivity aids. Instead, it inculcates youngsters from birth that the computer, like the television, is a toy. That is, you don’t need to learn anything about it. With a generation, you get absurd claims that so-and-so is a “genius” (yet nobody would say anyone is a “television guru”, and the person who reads is given the negative tag “bookworm”). I blame IBM for that, with their early advertising, portraying the computer as something even fools and goofs could operate.
To take breaks, my habit is to set down the soldering iron and pick up the bass. By careful positioning of the new tablet, I was able to record a few short clips of my “rhythm bass” style. In a sense, playing bass properly (that’s the trick word) is akin to playing one long lead break through the entire song. I very rarely play repetitious notes. I like the day when this blog allowed videos to be posted directly, the days before Google came along and stripped that away. I have no doubt they did so because in some way they could not keep tabs on everything. Google must control all.
Which reminds me, beginning of the year, time to change all passwords and get a new phone number. Only eleven people have my phone number legitimately, and three of them are doctors. This policy has its merits. On the trip to Bartow, JZ’s phone rang 14 or 15 times, mine, 0.
So I cannot post a video for you of the bass style. Nor will I use youTube because the videos cannot later be removed. If you know the difference between lead guitar and rhythm guitar, that is the same difference when I play bass. If I’m playing my rhythm bass, you can tell almost instantly what song I’m playing, even when it is a tune that does not originally have a novel or distinctive bass line. I got rhythm.
At times, I do get a type of “jet lag” from a day trip, so may be a little off balance today. I woke up in a fog—but note that did not prevent me from doing my job and getting that Arduino code to run on the fifth or so try, all typo error by the way, no logic errors.
So you’ll know, silver hit a London spot price low of $14.05 y’day, which is only 5¢ above my buy signal. Once again, I state that I regard the market manipulation of oil and metals to be a ploy by the big boys to drive the small fry out of business. Small fry like PetroCanada. And to get unsophisticated types to give up hope or panic and sell their physical silver back into a market awash in paper certificates. Something as to give and I hope it is silver.
And it is getting to the point where those who oppose Trump are making laughing stocks of themselves. The reason is they try to argue the points he is making. The problem is the points are valid. Hence, the arguments against them smacks of everything from Liberalism to outright loonie-bin. Listen to me you Liberals, you are not going to get people to ignore the immigration crisis by arguing that the Donald once said "um" instead of "aw". He's opened the ,er, bag of worms and you can't close it like you used to. Your politically correct censor machine is now broken.
Last Laugh
Happy Thanksgiving.
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