When you start the game of being a programmer it is common to point fingers on others when something goes wrong. When you been in the game for some time you end up in the other end always thinking the problem is on your side.
So I have looked into this problem of mine for almost a week now. Harden code and tested, tested, tested. The problems is intermittent so it takes a very long time to debug.
is spotted in the logs. The problem sits in the USB <-> serial adapter.
Well well… Found it eventually. NOT my fault. Possibly somewhat responsible for having bought cheap USB<->serial adapters from China, though. This is when you wish you worked at a bigger company so you could point the finger at someone else…. 🙂 But when it’s just you, you obviously can’t do that. You’re stuck standing there. Gotta fix it yourself.
Swapping the adapter is of course the obvious solution. But it would be even nicer if you could detect this in the driver and account for it. I’ll probably start down that road.
Still searching for the problem with the serial data from the measurement system
No server admin would be happy about something like this. But here, I’m the one who decides, and I like it. Or, if truth be told, maybe I don’t like it that much either, but if I eventually get some kind of clue from this, I might even end up loving it.
For anyone curious, it’s (among other things) the value below that flies by
A anemometer that goes to a counter on a microprocessor ->
a VSCP event is sent over CAN –>
The message is received by a microprocessor and converted into a serial protocol –>
The serial protocol is parsed (what we see here) and converted into a VSCP event. –>
The VSCP event is sent to a server over tcp/ip –>
node-red reads it from the server over tcp/ip –>
Code calculates the wind speed –>
Presents and stores it
The art of making the simple complicated, basically. That’s kind of my job, in a way. You have to imagine that counter is sitting in an industrial environment on the other side of the globe. If you want to try to understand why everything has to be so damn complicated, you just have to stick your head in a bucket and go “hmmmm… and wonder about it all“
Well, 26 years today, counting from when the project was uploaded to Sourceforge as ‘EDA-Simple Service Gateway.‘ Doesn’t mean anything, of course. One more year in the service of the sand art [i.e., in the spirit of Buddhist sand mandalas — impermanent by nature]. Pretty happy with that!
När EU:s nya förpackningsförordning (PPWR) och kraven på utökat producentansvar (EPR) införs, slår reglerna hårt mot fel målgrupp.
I stället för att bara träffa miljöbovar och storföretag tvingas…
This year I created a list beforehand of things to start with when I end the vacation. I also handled the inbox at regular intervals. Last year, the first week after the vacation, I used most of the week to go through +7000 emails and, after that, try to remember where I left off for another couple of days before I went on vacation.
Soon ending the 26th year of VSCP. Many years and the user base is lower than ever. Obviously, I can’t do much about that because I still believe in this project and enjoy going to the office every morning working on it. Buddhist monks are creating sand art and I believe this is a sand art project for me to do. The making of it is enough reward for me. Well, no one believes me when I say it, but I can assure you that it is true.
Later this fall I will turn 70 and have the understanding that I will not be able to continue with this forever. Getting older, you get slower, less creative and eventually die from it all. There is no way to stop age. But I still feel that I have some energy left and will try to finish some of the stuff that is still unfinished. That said, help/contributions are, of course, appreciated.
The following projects will be priorities in the coming twelve months.
VSCP Works — There is a lot to do there still. But in general, this is starting to be a very useful tool now. I will try to do releases more often from now on. Most of all, I will try to continue the documentation work for it.
VSCP Firmware – The new level II firmware replaces the old firmware in most cases. It is perfectly fine also for level I devices. The helper lib has its firmware counterpart now. The link protocol is available. Web-socket, a binary extension to the link protocol (used also for Multicast, UDP etc.) is almost ready. A blinky demo is the new standard getting started demo for VSCP devices. I will do as many as possible on different platforms. I hope others will do Blinky demos too.
vscp daemon – There will be a separate version of the daemon that use the tcp/ip interface and level I/II drivers as in the previous version. So one will use MQTT and one tcp/ip link protocol.
Hardware – A wifi to CAN4VSCP gateway is available. An Ethernet to CAN4VSCP based on ESP32 is here and a STM32 based here. And there are more…
Well there is more of course. Last I looked there was 267 projects in the repository.
Lastly, the thing I miss most of all is the discussions the VSCP community had in the past. It gave a lot of energy to me at least. It is still possible to discuss low and high here.
Time for some vacation here. I will be away from my office for nearly five weeks from now. Hopefully I will survive the lazy time so I can be back in the autumn and continue with this project. I hope so.
The open source ‘Oszi Waveform Analyzer’ from ElmüSoft transfers oscilloscope analog and digital signals over USB or TCP to the computer, displays the waveforms, decodes SPI, I2C, UART, CAN Bus and has more features that you find nowhere else.
The image above shows something I call a CAN4VSCP trunk adapter. Soldering together a few of these for testing today. Handy to have on the lab bench if you have buses with different devices that need to be connected and disconnected. Here most devices can easily be connected to the bus.
Actually, I’m working on some demos for Wiznet. The WIZ-IP20 is a very nice device that can work as a TCP/IP server/client, UDP/multicast server/client and MQTT client and a bit more. You control it with serial commands. Simple as can be, and you can choose any processor you like.
Even better is that it contains the W55RP20 and that you can also load application code into it which completely replaces the serial-to-Ethernet functionality. Now it’s basically possible to create almost anything. My idea is to make a demo with NFC functionality and a slightly simpler demo that essentially just demonstrates some VSCP functionality. I also have two other boards from Wiznet that will be included.
So right now it’s a break from what I’m actually working on. But I’m expecting to be able to finish this after Midsummer so I can continue my other stuff after the summer vacations.
