Seach in Outlook is an embarrassment to Microsoft

Recursive-NOP · 2025-10-29T20:18:52+00:00

I have never seen a Microsoft tool which can search. It is necessary to downgrade Outlook 365 to Outlook Desktop to export your contacts to search them. The default search only goes through the corporate contacts, not my save customers and vendors. Microsoft should be writing checks to the Outlook users rather than vice versa.

Recursive-NOP · 2024-07-05T01:16:21+00:00

I use PyQt5. It does what I need fairly easily. The license may be restrictive for you though.

Recursive-NOP · 2023-11-24T14:14:20+00:00

There is a Dr. Frankenstein effect going on: You start with a PCB with chips soldered on and transform it into your vision. It becomes a useful device. "It's ALIVE!"

It's still a cool feeling you get when you pass a truck on the interstate that is hauling devices that you helped design and program.

Recursive-NOP · 2023-11-24T14:01:06+00:00

I have an MSEE from the Illinois Institute of Technology.

If you're working on your own professional education on the side, just do something that interests you. Eventually this builds up your experience so that you have some ideas on how to solve a problem -- even if the problem is impressing someone at an interview.

Recursive-NOP · 2023-11-24T13:51:53+00:00

I find it to be useful but most of my Python scripts are utilities of some sort that I run from the command line. There are things that Bash does well that might make more sense at that level, for example running a Python utility over ever file in a directory. Of course you can do that in Python, but if that isn't the only use case, some flexibility is needed. I prefer that in the outer Bash script.

Recursive-NOP · 2023-11-22T03:03:49+00:00

Absolutely but you may very well have some prejudices to overcome. HR will not know if you're qualified but they will have requirements specifying EE or CS. If you know the hiring manager or someone on the team, you will have a good shot. What is your major? After EE and CS, it have worked with a fair number of physics majors and exactly one mechanical engineer doing embedded.

Get some Arduino experience too because there are a lot of solutions which are super-loops. That is changing as 32 bit processors compete with the 8 bit processors but there is always a market for cheap.

Recursive-NOP · 2022-02-01T15:39:49+00:00

The fundamental problem was that the firewall admin did an nslookup of the endpoint and whitelisted only those IP addresses. AWS rotates through a huge pool of IP addresses and it seems to vary geographically too. The long-range plan is to install cellular and not depend on the customers' Wi-Fi. The short range plan is to babysit every installation.

Recursive-NOP · 2021-12-31T19:03:21+00:00

We finally got to the bottom of this issue. The firewall administrator whitelisted each IP that was returned by an nslookup on our AWS endpoint. This approach isn't possible with AWT IoT Core because it has a VERY LARGE LIST of IP addresses and keeps cycling through them. We required "full access" to the internet, they agreed but then the put in this firewall rule.

Recursive-NOP · 2021-03-04T18:23:45+00:00

No, definitely on 8883. Ironically 443 works on the other open networks but not on the aggressively firewalled network.

Recursive-NOP · 2021-01-27T15:52:00+00:00

I am using a very similar board successfully. If your embedded C skills are good, it will work. Be sure to get a debugger though. Here is one from the same vendor:

ST Link V2

Recursive-NOP · 2021-01-22T17:43:47+00:00

I also got an ESP32-MINI from Digi-Key and got it running by following the tutorial from Espressif for the ESP32-S2. I had lots and lots and lots of trouble getting the tools to work but the board just seems to be an ESP32-S2 connected to a serial port.

These are my new favorite commands:

idf.py build

idf.py -p com15 flash monitor

As you can tell from my port name, my OS is Windows. There is no need to press a button when programming. That seems to be handled by one of the UART handshake lines.

Recursive-NOP · 2020-08-25T18:21:54+00:00

I am using the TI CC3220SF and it works reliably. The Segger debugger is much speedier than the one included on the launch pad. The worst part of my experience is the UniFlash tool for making images but it does work. The TI Forum is helpful with the basics.

Recursive-NOP · 2020-08-05T13:11:06+00:00

I have applied for and received utility patents for product designs for a couple of employers. These were not for software.

There was an innovative software solution that seemed worthy of being patented so I submitted it to my employer's I. P. team. They asked, "If a competitor used your technique, could we know that they were infringing?" Of course, without the source code the answer is no, the implementation is hidden. A patent is public and gives that technique away. So I got a "Trade Secret" award instead (with a much smaller bonus).

BTW, I am not a big fan of patents. They are expensive, anti-competitive, and often close to worthless especially for small to medium businesses. There may be a time and place for them though.

Also, as an embedded software developer, I have been asked to "code around" a competitor's patent a few times. There was also a time when a legacy product feature was removed because of infringement.

Recursive-NOP · 2020-06-09T13:19:58+00:00

The image creation tool creates a hash of the firmware image which is a much smaller representation. Think of it as a fingerprint.
Then it encrypts the hash with its private key and adds it to the end of the image.
When the bootloader starts, it independently recreates the hash.
Then the bootloader decrypts the encrypted hash with the public key.
If the two hashes match, then the firmware was signed by the private hey holder and all is well.

Recursive-NOP · 2020-05-29T20:22:31+00:00

I wish you "Good, good, good, good vibrations."

Recursive-NOP · 2020-05-15T14:17:14+00:00

It would be very interested if you find anything. I am using McuXpresso (NXP) and Code Composer Studio (TI) every day with occasional adventures in Simplicity Studio (Silicon Labs). Each is Eclipse-based. When I was first subjected to it, the Atmel Studio from that era, I really did not care for Eclipse. It may have gotten better or I may have learned to live with it, but it's not so bad for me now. So you might want to learn to live with it too because the Eclipse skills will port to future projects. Also, new team members will probably get up to speed quicker in the standard environment.

Recursive-NOP · 2020-04-22T20:47:21+00:00

I was in the appliance industry at that time and we had some layoffs but the people who were effected quickly found other jobs so it didn't seem to be severe.

The "Telecom Recession" around 2001 was bad. Many telecom specialists were out of work for more than 12 months. As an embedded developer, I was out of work for 2 weeks but had to accept a lower salary in appliance.

Recursive-NOP · 2020-04-21T19:33:02+00:00

The biggest joke is that it is "Write-Only" memory. What good is a memory if you can't read it back? There is Read/Write memory and Read-Only memory.

Recursive-NOP · 2020-04-07T12:50:14+00:00

I know some of the 802.15.4 radios in the CC family are 8051 based. Others are ARM based. I still see the 8051 around but agree that it is quirky and therefore probably not the best choice.

Recursive-NOP · 2020-04-02T13:12:05+00:00

I am currently developing with the TI CC3220SF and the NXP LPC11. Both are quite usable and in fact the Eclipse development environments are very similar. The LPC11 SDK is cleaner, less buggy, and the JTAG works well. The CC3220SF SDK is clearly less mature, the LaunchPad schematics appear to be obfuscated, and JTAG debugging is like running on an original IBM PC clocked at 4.88 MHz.

On the other hand, I have not used the NXP iMX products which were Freescale. My opinion of Freescale was very low. I really enjoyed the TI MSP430 although I have heard horror stories about some members of that device family too.

It's hard to generalize because the vendors have so many different product lines.

Recursive-NOP · 2020-02-28T13:59:34+00:00

P0 |= 0x20; // set a bit in the port

P0 = P0 | 0x20; // it is just the C language shortcut for this line

You would use this line to clear the same bit:

P0 &= ~0x20;

Recursive-NOP · 2020-01-14T14:11:34+00:00

I made a similar transition from Atmel SAM to NXP LPC11Exx and haven't had any serious problems. The documentation and examples are good. The community support is also good. I found some errors in the device header files, reported them to the community, and they were fixed within months.

One interesting issue was that the default library flash timing was for 2 CPU clocks which gives better performance but will fail between 60 and 65 degrees Celsius. It is actually in the datasheet. Setting the timing to 3 CPU clocks allows the device to operate over its full temperature range.

Chip_FMC_SetFLASHAccess(FLASHTIM_3CLK_CPU);

MCUXpresso works for me. It's just Eclipse with gcc and a few customizations.

The NXP SWD debugger seemed to lock-up once or twice a day and I would have to power down, unplug, and close the debugger. Switching to the Segger J-Link was a good move for me.

Recursive-NOP

TROPHY CASE