Baby Don't Hertz Me

  Since starting grad school I have gained a whole new appreciation for linux. Ubuntu has been my primary OS since 8.04 (Hardy Heron) but I hadn't really looked much at how to really streamline and optimize my workflow until this year. At my university, all Windows computers run an antivirus program that kills performance. It runs ruthlessly and suck up a lot of computer resources. This has only reinforced my choice to use linux as the IT guys will not provide any support and will not install anything on your computer, thus allowing complete freedom. Not all workplaces may allow for this but it does make things much easier if they do. What is SSH? SSH is a cryptographic network protocol that allows for secure network operations over a non-secured network. What this means is that users have the ability to securely login to remote systems on almost any network. Why should I use it? I have known about SSH for years but never used it extensively. It has only been this year...

The arrival of fourth year for many engineering students at my university is either loved or loathed. Senior design is a large project that all engineering students must complete to graduate. The scale of the project is one that will be larger than any previously done for academic purposes. My group and I have a rather lofty project idea. We are going to design and hopefully build a CubeSat. What is a CubeSat? A CubeSat is like almost any other satellite simply much smaller. The size of typical satellites can be anywhere from a dog all the way up to a car or bigger. CubeSat sizes go the opposite direction. The sizes of CubeSat are referred to as 'U'. 1U is a 10x10x10 cm size satellite while a 2U would be simply two 1U stacked making 20x10x10 cm. Our target as of right now is to design a 2U CubeSat. The potential scope of the project is enormous and since time is limited we may not be able to complete and entire CubeSat. This being said, we are going to try our best! It...

As the ranks of embedded system developers swell with the hobbyists and amateurs, the question of simplicity versus precision is coming up more regularly. Should we learn to use Arduino? Should we learn to use ARM? My simple answer would be learn both but as with most technological dilemmas the answer is never that simple. In my education I have been forced to use an ARM based micro-controller. Being tossed into a complex development environment was really great for me as a developer. I have always been enchanted by embedded systems and this experience allowed me to sink my teeth into a design problem. Designing a hardware and software solution in one clean package is satisfying. Before beginning this comparison I would like to say that I am not looking at advanced tools for ARM like NXP's Processor Expert or other tools that simplify the design process. We will be comparing unassisted development of Arduino vs ARM. Simplicity Arduino UNO, one of the more commonly ...

No time to blog (I am in blue). I shall start by apologizing for vanishing from the face of the earth (or at least my blog) for three consecutive weeks. One of my favorite hobbies is judo, an Olympic grappling sport that originates from Japan. I have been competing for many years and was given a spot on the Francophone Games Team. Ironically I am an anglophone attending the Francophone Games. This being said I am bilingual (english and french) so I am at least able to communicate with the locals while I am there. It was my best international result so far which has me excited but I am still sad that I didn't medal. I went 3-2 for bronze and only lost to other Canadians who are going to senior worlds in a few weeks. From a technological perspective the Ivory Coast is an interesting topic. Africa has tended to lag far behind in technology which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The lag has allowed for some rapid jumps to newer technology. At least in the city I was in (Abid...

Multi-layer neural network. Brains are cool. Computers are cool. Over the past several decades people have looked at creating a computer "brain" and boy were the researchers successful. Neural networks, or as I like to call them "computer brains" have come a long way and are something I am very interested in. Being able to add abstract learning to a computer is strange. Being able to "teach" a computer has been done for the past years without a problem but for me to sit down and try to do it is mindbogglingly complex. Sadly I haven't had much free time to write this week and so I will only quickly skim the surface and direct you to a great video to talk about the neural networks that I am going to be studying. I found this guy on YouTube and think his content is great. I am following along through his tutorials. Here is a link to his video and to my playlist that I am slowly building about ECE topics that interest me. You can check the videos ...

A very official name plate. Open source technology is a beautiful thing. Not only does it let me design more effectively it also allows me to purchase components at a cheaper cost. In comes Arduino and every other knock off brand you can think of to claim the micro-controller market. Arduinos are fantastic devices. They are cheap, relatively powerful and easy to use. They remove a lot of the programming overhead that many ARM based micro controllers have.  Side view of Control box. This summer I am doing research with a professor at my university. We are going to be building a UAV for insect tracking. In order to strip down the weight of the system, a grad student has designed antennas both the transmit and receive antennas to increase performance and decrease weight.  One problem is that we are having a tough time measuring antenna performance. We have an anechoic chamber for conducting antenna testing but our positioning system is currently not working pr...

I love gaming. I really loving gaming. Over the past few years I have put in thousands of hours. In just Steam games there has been more than 2000 hours. Be it FPS, MOBA, RTS or even indie games, I love it all. During university I rarely have time to play as much as I would like but still manage to squeeze in time between classes. Lately I have found some stellar games through Humble Bundles and a variety of sales and so I thought I would share some recommendations.  They Bleed Pixels  Last week I picked up the Humble Very Positive Bundle on a whim. The games looked pretty meh despite having great reviews on steam. Nothing from the trailers impressed me that much. Between work and training I managed to play They Bleed Pixels for an hour or two and all I can say is WOW. I have enjoyed the odd pixel art game but this one definitely takes the cake. The game controls are pretty straight forward but the game is very tricky.  You are a girl, you have dream...

Open source is a rather interesting concept in a modern world of pay to play and expensive software. Free Open Source Software (FOSS) serves as an oasis for the digital community to get their hands on high quality software for free. There are no expensive licences or monthly fees, simply software that works (most of the time). When I was around younger I remember my father letting me have the oldest family computer. It was an old Pentium III that would have been running Windows 95. My inherited computer had a major drawback: no operating system was installed on the hard drive. This is what brought on my first exposure to the open source community. My dad had used linux back in the 90s and had suggested we take a look at potentially installing that instead of an old version of windows. After doing some research and talking to a family friend who extensively uses linux, we settled with Ubuntu as our distro of choice. I believe that the first install was Hardy Heron (Ubuntu 8.04)....