Recently, we have been experiencing a bit of appliance stupidity in our house.
Replacement parts for our refrigerator seem to be a major profit center for GE and our microwave was clearly designed by jackasses.
Read on for many too many details.
From the press release, this device contains features such as “a 28-in-1 media card reader, front IO, USB and fire wire connections, dual NTSC and HDTV tuners (with CableCARD shipping soon), 8 channel HD audio”, etc.etc.etc…
Sounds neat enough. Especially with the six terabytes of potential storage. Put some decent multimedia control software on it and… well.. not bad!
Except who the hell designed it? Clearly not someone who actually thought through how to use it!
Anything that sticks out at all from any of those “front IO” ports is going to obscure the screen! Can you imagine trying to download photos or video with your video camera balanced somewhere — because, most likely, this behemoth will be inside a big old media center cabinet — while trying to deal with a touchy/feely UI with cables constantly flopping on the screen?
And, of course, you’ll probably want to plug in a keyboard and/or mouse to be abel to properly annotate and edit whatever media you capture into said unit. That’ll be convenient.
I wonder if it is even smart enough to know not to open the DVD drawer when the screen is in the retracted position (assuming, of course, the screen retracts).
Before dealing with switches and debouncing switches, I wanted to add a second LED to the circuit.
Trivial:
#include <avr/io.h>
#include <util/delay.h>
int main(void) {
DDRB = 255U; // Make all PB* -- PORT B -- pins output
PORTB = 0x0; // turn all PB* -- PORT B -- pins off.
while (1) {
PORTB = 0x1; // B0 on, B1 off
_delay_ms(200);
PORTB |= 0x2; // B0 and B1 on
_delay_ms(100);
PORTB = 0x2; // B0 off, B1 on
_delay_ms(200);
PORTB = 0X0; // All off
_delay_ms(2500); // 2.5 seconds off
}
}
Each on/off port is represented by a single bit. So, each of the pins in PORTA, PORTB, PORTC, or PORTD — assuming they are in straight digital input/output mode and whatever AVR chip you are targeting has enough pins to have 4 port sets — will be controlled by a single bit in one of four bytes.
Clearly, some macros to toggle bits are in order. Now, it turns out that macros to toggle bits are a big source of contention amongst the AVR development community. They hide too much magic, or so they say, and, if you are going to be programming embedded systems, you ought to be comfortable with C level bit twiddling, damnit.
The EMSL Target Board is built around the ATmega 168 micro-controller (same controller as the Arduino — which, frankly, I couldn’t care less about other than as a source of knowledge…).
It is an extremely easy to use and surprisingly powerful micro-controller. If it weren’t so convenient, I wouldn’t be writing this.
Seriously. If you have any interest in screwing around with micro-controllers, there is little excuse not to dive in now. It is cheap, easy, and powerful.
Beyond the EMSL Target Board, you’ll also need a Lady Ada USBTinyISP programmer that has been appropriately patched (when assembled).
First, grab and install AVR Mac Pack from the fine folks at Objective Development (same source of LaunchBar and Little Snitch — both awesome products in their own right).
AVR Mac Pack has everything needed to talk to the AVR, a compiler that can target the AVR, and support for Xcode based development.
Ben picked up a ton of SIP machine pin sockets from Halted recently.
I grabbed about 200 from him and populated my EMSL Atmega target board with enough to provide for both on-board prototyping and to easily break out to a bread, board when needed.
Each point accepts a 24 gauge (or so) wire quite nicely. Makes for easy prototyping while not obscuring the documentation silkscreen on the board.
Next up?
I have all the parts needed to replace an entire flipper circuit in any modern Williams/Bally pinball machine.
Thus, I should have enough parts to drive a solenoid or flash-lamp from the AVR micro-controller.
First, though, I’ll flash some LEDs in response to button presses, though. All one voltage and relatively little chance of blowing up chips, bulbs, or shocking myself.
Once that works, I’ll wire up higher voltage / current drivers. I figure I ought to be able to both replace the flipper drivers with a much more maintainable system while also adding some automatic diagnostics that will light some LEDs inside the pinball when the flippers need to be rebuilt or maintained.
The folks at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories whipped up an elegant little kit that includes an ATmega168 AVR Micro-controller, 4 or 5 discrete components, and a circuit board.
The Atmel AVR micro-controllers are awesome. They cross three particular barriers to entry that I arbitrarily chose prior to screwing around with micro-controllers.
Specifically:
The code, itself, is pretty straightforward. The header files provide all the #defines needed to deal with all the random I/O based hardware functionality quite straightforward. The chips, themselves, are exceptionally flexible, with the ability to reconfigure what pins do what in software.
The hardest part is remembering which pin maps to what random #define’d symbol.
The Atmel chips are, in fact, the same chips (almost the same exact chip — the proto boards use a slightly less expensive part in that it doesn’t have quite as many I/O ports) used in the Peggy Board (also from EMSL). I picked up the ladyada programmer and grabbed the source from EMSL.
I had simple animation up and running within a couple of hours, most of that time being consumed by dealing with the now fixed USBTiny programmer bug. Not much longer after that and I had a pretty neat line based animation.
Jamie over at Noise Land Arcade else has grabbed the code and made a neat animated pacman sign (video here).
Which brings me to this kit: This credit card sized board is designed quite specifically for prototyping ATmega168 (and several others) based projects. Beyond including a bit of room for adding a couple of 8-pin DIPs (or other random components), the silk screen fully documents the various mnemonics associated with each pin.
First project?
I’m going to build modern style flipper replacement for ’80s and early ’90s Williams/Bally pinball machines. The old school flippers require more maintenance and tend to fail gracelessly, taking out other discrete components upon failure.
This board is total overkill. I really only need an 8 pin Atmel controller per flipper; maybe one chip for both flippers, if I optimize.
But at $9/each for the board, controller and discrete components (including shipping and CA tax) in lots of 10, I might just stick with building it out on the EMSL prototype board.
As with many EMSL projects, everything is open source. The board is single sided and easy to etch, but silk screening on the various documentation bits would be difficult.
With the recent release of the MacBook Air, there have, of course, been a flurry of reviews and, more relevant to this particular blog post, armchair quarterback style conjecturing as the relevance of the Air’s design within the current marketplace.
Not surprisingly, many of the reviews or commentaries mention The Apple Cube, pictured at left (photo courtesy of wikipedia).
At Daring Fireball, Gruber’s article said in a footnote:
Arguably, the main problem with the G4 Cube had nothing to do with its technical specs, price, or aesthetic appeal, but rather that its case was overly prone to cracking and/or unsightly injection mold lines. I.e., the Cube’s fatal flaw was in the design and engineering of its case.
Close, but not quite. Near the end of the cube’s manufacturing lifecycle, Cubes were on closeout and my company picked up 10 or so to use as general purpose workstations. None of them had noticeable cracking or mold lines.
However, the very design of the cube was fatally flawed.
In particular, the cube sacrificed function in the name of form.
To be blunt: Gorgeous to look at, absolute pain in the ass to live with.
The design was such that anything requiring a cable change was inconvenient. You had to physically tilt the machine over, often all the way onto its side, connect/disconnect the cables, and then very carefully re-route all the cables through the little gap in the back.
The top wasn’t much better. The top featured both the slot for the optical drive and the power button. Unless you paid careful attention, it was damned easy to brush the power button when dropping in or removing a disc.
Worse, the top of the machine was a magnet for dirt, hair and cats. Hair would fall across the optical drive slot and then get sucked right into the drive when you inserted a disc.
And, yes, cats. My friend had a cube at his home. The cats would love to sit on top of the nice, warm, flat cube. Which would both fill it with cat hair and turn it off… then on… then off… then on… then off for as long as the cuts stuck around. He finally had to put one of those pigeon guard kind of strip of nail things on top of the cube to keep the cats from corrupting his filesystem! (People seem to think I actually take the cat thing as a serious criticism or design flaw. Please. It was funny, that is almost all. Certainly, if the cube had been marketed like the iMac, it would have been a consideration — not a big one, but a consideration none the less.)
The cube was certainly a gorgeous piece of engineering. As a piece of art, it deserved all the awards it received.
However, as a computing device, it really sucked.
Update (responding to comments) on the full post…
As I have written before, I picked up an HD DVD player as it was the cheapest way to vie the BBC’s The Planet Earth (HD DVD) in full 1080p HD.
At that time, it was still unclear which of the new formats would win. No longer. HD DVD is dead.
Good riddance.
I had also configured netflix to send HD DVDs when available.
Even though Netflix isn’t going to dump HD DVD for another few months, I turned that preference off last night.
Why?
Because 5 of the 6 HD DVDs we received from Netflix locked up during playback due to relatively minor damage to the disk. The 6th skipped a couple of times.
The format is fragile. Horribly fragile. Old school DVDs with more damage play back just fine, including on my HD DVD player. And the user experience sucks; slow to load, mandatory “web updates”, and “unskippable” ads abound.
From what I have read, Blu-Ray discs are slightly tougher and generally have the same user experience. Still, I couldn’t care less.
As long as Apple makes good on the promise to continue building out the library of content in the movie rental store, the Apple TV 2.0 find / rent / watch user experience is orders of magnitude more pleasant than dealing with physical media.
About a year ago, we picked up a 46″ Sony Bravia LCD TV (KDL46XBR2). Generally, a gorgeous monitor that has loads of inputs and, thus, has become the all-signal-switchbox for the various game consoles, media players, and computers that may be hooked up at any one time.
Great picture and generally easy to use. Amusing, too, that the manual came with a GPL license notice with a hyperlink to download source. Turns out that the UI is implemented via Linux (and, yes, Sony has a whole “source distribution center“).
However, it is not without its flaws and some of them are just so embarassingly stupid in terms of the concious Industrial Design choices made.
Click on through for the gory details.
Hershey’s — the chocolate company — appears to be in a world of hurt. Sales are down. And as I learned from Steve Dekorte, Hershey just dumped their board of directors, to be replaced by a new board “focused on restoring sales” (well, duh! what BoD wouldn’t be focused on increasing or, in the case of a beleaguered company, restoring sales?!?!?!).
Possibly, but not probably, coincidental, it seems that Hershey’s is a participant in and major funder of the Chocolate Manufacturers Association.
Now, the CMA lobbied — in conjunction with the Grocery Manufacturers Association — to have the FDA change the definition of “chocolate” from “containing 100% cocoa butter” to allowing the cocoa butter to be substituted with “hydrogenated or chemically-modified vegetable fats”.
Kirk Saville, a Hershey’s spokesman, said:
There are high-quality oils available which are equal to or better than cocoa butter in taste, nutrition, texture and function, and are preferred by consumers.
That reads: “Cocoa Butter Expensive. Corn oil cheap. Cheap is good. Customer won’t notice difference.”
I’m not a huge choco-holic, but even I must call Bullshit on this one. I have had what falls into the marketing category of “chocolate flavored” or “chocolaty” or “artificial chocolate essences added”. yuckYuckYuckYUCK! Lightly flavored sand, in the case of drink mixes and many “chocolate like” bars. Choco-like oily skid marks, in the case of the various “flavorings.
Now, I honestly have no idea if the FDA has changed the definition of “chocolate”. But I am not surprised that a company clearly focused on minimizing manufacturing costs with no regards to quality — even through lobbying to change the very definition of “chocolate” — is spiraling the bowl.
(Thank you to Garret Albright for providing links to the latest info regarding FDA’s potential redefinition of Chocolate.)
