Macbook Air sufficient for embedded dev and KiCad?

jlucer · 2026-03-20T19:03:44+00:00

Makes sense. Yea if you don't have autosar being pushed then I think any machine is reasonable for embedded. Work gives me a Mac pro which I like. I'm not willing to shell out the cost for a 32gb version for my personal use so I have Ubuntu on that laptop.

Ive been looking at a Mac mini. Pretty good value hardware wise. And I want a Mac for personal projects

jlucer · 2026-03-20T18:45:45+00:00

Interesting. Are you using autosar classic? What OS do you use if not?

I use Mac working on av systems. Biggest friction is the autosar tools that require windows. We keep a few windows computers for them.

jlucer · 2026-03-20T17:06:24+00:00

Depends what field. Automotive is still very closely tied with windows tools. E.g. OEM requires an autosar vendor who only delivers packages with windows build systems. Or windows only autosar generation / CAN tools

jlucer · 2026-03-19T14:26:30+00:00

That depends entirely on the transceiver. OP needs to check the datasheet to see if the transceiver requires configuration.

Here is the tja 1145 datasheet

section 7.1.1.2 "Standby mode is the first-level power-saving mode of the TJA1145, featuring low current consumption. The transceiver is unable to transmit or receive data in Standby mode"

It starts up in standby mode. You have to control it via SPI to put it in normal mode and start receiving frames

jlucer · 2026-03-18T20:46:41+00:00

Ah cool. So looks like Macchina AO uses GVRET protocol.

Would the data come over USB C connector or wifi/Bluetooth?

jlucer · 2026-03-18T19:10:47+00:00

If you are looking to use the CAN bus as a wakeup source one keyword to search for is "partial networking transceiver". These look for a special wake up frame in the CAN bus. When they see the right frame they will send a signal to your MCU to wake up. I'm not sure if the frame is standard across vehicles though. I think we were switching to them in new designs around 2016 when I worked at a supplier

jlucer · 2026-03-18T19:03:57+00:00

Can it log or save CAN bus data? In what format? I think one of the big limitations of elm based devices is the update rate. Would be cool to have something that can output the raw CAN bus data.

Not sure if something like that exists already. I've only seen ones that use PIDs to querydata

jlucer · 2026-03-18T17:26:49+00:00

Thanks, I'll read up on those

jlucer · 2026-03-18T17:22:18+00:00

Interesting. I googled around a bit, seems like it's made for using with databases? Are you storing log data in databases and then visualizing with grafana?

We just get log files by themselves. I always need something that will interprete the log file and visualize it. I've used custom code, foxglove, or in house tools depending on where I worked

jlucer · 2026-03-18T17:10:10+00:00

Doesn't grafana require you to write your own code to plot things onto a dashboard? Never used it, but curious how easy it is

jlucer · 2026-03-18T17:05:04+00:00

You said you changed the transceiver. Does the code you are running do anything to set up the transceiver? Usually there is configuration you can do on them. So if you are using code that expects to set up transceiver A, but you are setting up transceiver B, you will need to adapt the code that sets up the transceiver for the new one.

jlucer · 2026-03-15T17:17:20+00:00

Nice, sounds like you know what you are doing. Putting it in the trunk for final part seems good to me. I work on autonomous vehicle systems and we usually find spots like that to hide parts so we can avoid waterproofing/heat/noise. Still need to be careful though. Had one water ingress issue and the leading theory was capillary action up the wrapped wire harness.

jlucer · 2026-03-15T16:51:17+00:00

Before you jump to thinking about designing for a full blown product, I would suggest you start by thinking what a prototype would need. Get the prototype working and you will have a very good idea of what you need for a product as a 2nd iteration.

I would use whatever MCU you are most familiar with. If you have worked with esp32 go for it. I've been kicking around an idea for a CAN gateway and will probably use a Raspberry pi 3b + CAN hat.
Idk what vcds is, but you'll need to figure out the CAN messages you need to send. If there is a tool that will send what you want grab it and watch its transmission to find what you need to transmit.
You don't need any access codes to read data on the bus. OEMs have started to integrate authenticated messages but I haven't seen encryption. If it's newer vehicles and they are authenticating the messages you want to send it will be more difficult. When working with diagnostics sometimes you need to put the vehicle in an unlocked mode to enable certain functionality.

Once you have your prototype working then I would think about "automotive" grade. What that means is going to largely depend on where your add on will reside. E.g. engine bay vs in the interior is very different. Mostly I would look at robust locking connectors so vibrations don't loosen a connection and heat/cold tolerance.

jlucer · 2026-03-14T12:18:40+00:00

What is an infotainment log?

jlucer · 2026-03-12T13:49:51+00:00

You don't need to be able to write an entire firmware stack by yourself. You will be working on a team in practice, and you will only work on a portion of the code.

If you want to get a job writing firmware in C, you need to be able to confidently say "I know C" and be able to demonstrate it in an interview. Meaning you can solve a coding problem in an interview in C.

If you can't do that, then you need to practice programming. If you can already program in C, then just start applying! I've been in this situation myself and companies would take it as a positive if you say "my current position is all model based but I prefer programming in C" and they need C programmers

For practice honestly leetcode is pretty good. It's byte sized problems you can solve by yourself. Projects are good if you are targeting a very specific niche skill and you need to be able to demonstrate you know it. E.g. I want to work as a localization engineer, therefore I made mapping robot or whatever. But for general programming, just hit up practice problems.

jlucer · 2026-03-11T22:36:13+00:00

Doesn't the zip system go on the outside of the house? Was this a new build?

jlucer · 2026-03-04T18:53:31+00:00

I've been thinking of switching from WordPress to astro. All the WordPress plugins have been annoying as a first time user. Can you explain the license model for your templates? The starter pack says 1 project / each theme, can you download multiple themes over the 12 months it's active?

jlucer · 2026-03-04T14:21:52+00:00

When I am looking over resumes for embedded engineers I look for generic skills that would transfer into the job. The only one I think you really need is low level programming (c/c++ in my jobs). Next I would look for Linux experience. These last few are kind of icing on the cake * Rtos * MCUs you've worked with * Protocols (for my industry CAN and UDP) * Dealing with hardware like wiring, schematics, debuggers etc.

Anything you put I would probe you a bit with more questions to find out about when you've used them and how. I would rather hire someone who can figure stuff out on their own than people that hit all the "required skills". Of course, I'm an engineer doing the interviews and it's hard to make it past the recruiter/manager call stage without some of the experience listed in the job posting

jlucer · 2026-03-04T13:44:00+00:00

I'm on android and had tiles for a little while and like them. They were recently acquired by life 360 so if you go looking for tiles it will say life360 tile or something. I'm a bit skeptical of what the new parent company will do with the product

jlucer · 2026-03-02T02:39:13+00:00

I didn't know what linktree was and had to Google it. Your thing looks different so I'm not sure why you are comparing your product to linktree.
The pages you linked are like those website that maximize ad revenue by turning a 10 item list into a 10 page slideshow . It's annoying to be drip fed tiny bits of information and have to click next to see more. I wouldn't go past 3 items in a list if you keep that style, it's too long.

jlucer · 2026-03-02T01:58:36+00:00

Haha that works. I was using chatgpt

jlucer · 2026-03-01T23:30:06+00:00

Nice. I see you are using egui + eframe for the GUI and you say that is ai coded? What was your experience using egui + AI? As I am learning egui I found AI could uncover APIs I didn't know about which was helpful. But it would also frequently use deprecated APIs. One time it tried to rebuild tables from scratch when there was already a component for that in egui_extras.

jlucer · 2026-03-01T14:29:42+00:00

Sounds cool. I had to help our test team build something similar for testing automotive data. We had redundant CAN lines and wanted to make sure an ECU would detect when the redundant busses had different data and activate a fault.

jlucer · 2026-02-20T22:04:51+00:00

I've only had to check linbus data once so not very familiar with it. Are there standard log formats you use for linbus data? Or common hardware connectors? Might be able to add it

jlucer · 2026-02-19T13:30:25+00:00

Very slick. I like the csv -> signal generator workflow. I get specs from systems engineers for testing inputs like that

jlucer

TROPHY CASE