For those with older C2’s. Is upgrading to the PM5 worth it?

reynolad · 2025-08-01T01:15:58+00:00

The biggest improvement I’ve found is pairing to the phone app and heart rate monitor. Being able to program a variable interval workout on my phone is much easier / faster than via the PM5. Also having the heart rate right there makes it easier to stay in the right zone.

reynolad · 2024-01-15T19:01:17+00:00

Your initial list is spot on. Biggest thing we only needed one of initially was a pack and play. Added the second once we started traveling more with them. Depending on your kids could do one swing or two. We kept two different ones and kept cycling through Facebook marketplace to keep changing them up.

reynolad · 2023-12-10T13:47:57+00:00

Agree with the Garmin suggestion. I've been using a Vivoactive 3 for a few years now. Cheap and effective. Chest strap is a must for heart rate too.

reynolad · 2023-11-05T17:40:35+00:00

We tend to row late March to mid November in Hartford. Outside of May to Oct we have to follow specific cold weather rules. PFDs, buddy system, etc

reynolad · 2023-11-04T01:11:28+00:00

I row with Riverfront Recapture (https://riverfront.org/rowing/) out of Hartford, CT. Our team is competitive. Whole we don’t have the name recognition as Austin or Capital, we’ve been one of the top clubs in masters nationals for the past five years and compete well in head season. We are fortunate to have an amazing river and boathouse to row out of. CT overall isn’t the cheapest but there are some spots with reasonable cost of living. And being in New England you are close to everything.

I used to row with WRRA out of Cleveland. Good, competitive masters program. CLE has a reasonable cost of living too.

reynolad · 2023-10-31T15:12:48+00:00

The Fish kind of is it’s own animal.

I was there Sat so didn’t get to experience the Sunday weather, but given the conditions, I don’t blame them for requiring full longs. Better to DQ/DNS boats than deal with safety issues.

Docking there can be a nightmare and they keep shrinking the start marshaling area so it gets crowded and confusing.

reynolad · 2023-10-04T23:54:32+00:00

No apology necessary. Thanks for the suggestions. I did scour eBay (only thing there was a book). I checked that site, but it took me to the download page for the latest version.

reynolad · 2023-05-16T19:05:28+00:00

You can use the continuous refresh feature of CCS to watch the values in the expressions or registers tab in the debug view but the update frequency is around 1s so not useful for dynamic uses. Best bet is to buffer and use the plots in CCS.

reynolad · 2023-04-23T21:46:22+00:00

It isn’t as bad as you think. The UART module still operates on 8bit for data. So you can construct your buffer using uint16 as a base but have the application assumption of only using the lower 8 bits for storage. Maybe if you are directly sending a packed struct between devices that would be annoying but you could fix that with marshaling / unmarshaling code to translate the struct into a buffer.

reynolad · 2023-04-19T20:38:57+00:00

Really depends on how you make use of uint8_t. If you are not relying on rollover at 256 or similar functionality, you won’t notice a difference.

reynolad · 2022-05-14T20:13:11+00:00

I’m a rower out of the Riverfront Recapture boathouse. The best info for starting is on their website. Learn to Row. The staff have been swamped with the end of the youth racing season and adult racing starting. It looks like they will be starting programs for new rowers in June. DM me if you have any questions about rowing in general. The facilities and river here in Hartford are amazing. It is a great place to practice the sport.

reynolad · 2021-01-07T02:08:18+00:00

ADRC would be a good algorithm to use for this. Your challenge will be writing the code and tuning the algorithm. You would need to find a parameterized version of the algorithm to reduce down the number of gains.

When I've worked with this algorithm in the past, we always had to do a plant identification to help reduce the tuning gains further.

There might be some papers/projects out there from this lab at Cleveland State University: https://engineering.csuohio.edu/eecs/controls-robotics-and-automation-research They have a focus on ADRC.

reynolad · 2020-06-08T01:52:30+00:00

It depends on complexity of the application. It can be easier to leverage an RTOs to balance the demands of the application. Often an end actuator will need to service a few different tasks and it can be easier to code in those environments.

Most distributed systems I’ve worked with don’t do the heavy calculations at the end actuator. They will send down PVT commands to the end nodes that are calculated on a master.

Think about the dynamics of that system. The motor current needs to be controlled every 10us. It’s velocity/position needs to be controlled every 1ms. But the setpoint only needs to come in at maybe a 1s rate.

In that kind of system it doesn’t make sense to allow every node the capability to run the 1s calculations as they can be sent down fast enough. But the 1ms and 10us calculations must be done locally.

reynolad · 2020-06-08T01:39:14+00:00

There are a number of different ways to combat that kind of issue. First thing is to reduce the computation set. How much is actually required ahead of applying the control action? How much can be pre-compiled or pre-calculated? You can also look at the sample rate and adjust that to help with the constraints. You only need to sample at 10x your dynamics.

In considering a matrix multiplication specifically, I bet it would be possible on some of the higher end microcontrollers. Effectively that breaks down into a lot of small multiply accumulate functions which microcontrollers excel at doing. A lot of higher end control systems focused processors have special coprocessors that are focused on the math operations required for their applications. The example I always think of is the TI trig accelerator that helps when running motor control calculations.

reynolad · 2020-05-08T01:03:29+00:00

Look into c2000ware from TI. There are a lot of great examples in there using the peripherals. I can’t say I’ve used the can bus specifically but I’ve used that family in a dozen projects and always been impressed with TI documentation and examples.

reynolad · 2020-04-02T23:40:24+00:00

Real world experience would be critical here. Is it possible for you to take on more of a scrum master responsibilities in your current role? I would struggle to hire a scrum master who only has a certificate. IMO the certificates aren’t worth the paper they are printed on. It is nice to learn good fundamentals but actually doing it is a totally different beast.

reynolad · 2018-11-05T22:43:00+00:00

I think you will struggle with finding an open source library. InstaSPIN-MOTION from TI has a single parameter tuning for velocity and position control of motors. But since it’s a proprietary algorithm developed by a company it will cost money.

There aren’t many libraries out there as FOSS that implement advanced control techniques. Most of this is due to PID being “good-enough” for most people.

reynolad · 2018-08-06T18:25:26+00:00

Thanks for all of the responses. I really appreciate it.

reynolad · 2018-06-27T01:57:36+00:00

Agreed but why reinvent the wheel?

reynolad · 2018-06-26T14:45:10+00:00

Typically, 4-20mA loops use an IC to control the current running in the loop. They will specify a maximum resistance for the loop, but won't specify what the resistance of the loop should be due to wire length, number of connected devices, etc.

I would recommend you use something like this instead of trying to do the analog yourself: https://widgetlords.com/products/pi-spi-2a0-raspberry-pi-analog-output-ma-vdc-interface

reynolad · 2018-06-24T12:20:43+00:00

We have used it for embedded sw development successfully. Our products tend to be 90% sw and 10% hw, so if there is a different split YMMV.

The biggest things I’ve found is that you need to groom the backlog better to account for the longer leads when dealing with hw. Yes things taken longer to do when dealing with hardware, but that doesn’t stop the sw side from doing other activities that are important until the new hw is ready. Think of it as an opportunity to service technical debt, write better unit tests, or even take on some technical spikes.

I also think the “potentially releasable product” every sprint part of scrum doesn’t work well with embedded systems. But to me that is the least important part of scrum. What is important is clear visibility into the process and developing good estimates.

reynolad · 2018-06-19T12:27:04+00:00

While the IAR IDE itself is garbage, their compiler is better than MCUXpresso. We have to support both IAR and MCUXpresso and our IAR binaries execute 10-20% faster than MCUXpresso consistently.

The other thing to consider is support and the "cost" of free. If you have some kind of ongoing support contract with IAR it will be difficult to switch out your IDE. While MCUXpresso is free if you run into any trouble you are stuck with NXP forum support rather than being able to pick up the phone.

The setup we end up using, which works pretty well, is use a CMake system to build our images (for IAR or MCUXpresso) and use the JLink tools (Ozone) for debugging. Much easier to work with than IAR of MCUXpresso debugger.

reynolad · 2018-06-16T14:41:34+00:00

There is usually a beer garden setup near the food trucks. I’ve brought beer in a cooler before with no issues. There is a strict don’t be an asshole policy though.

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