May 2012
74 posts
1 tag
May 31st
12 notes
4 tags
Adding Modbus Support to Typica - Day 7
Device configuration in Typica 1.3 was pretty simple… for a programmer. In the script fragment for the logging window you would just instantiate the device, use its methods to configure the measurement channels, and hook those channels up to the various widgets that need the data. One of the changes planned for Typica 2.0 was getting rid that configuration system which. It was amazingly flexible...
May 31st
May 31st
2 notes
5 tags
May 31st
2 notes
4 tags
New connect() overload in Qt 5. →
I’ve just noticed that Qt 5 added another overload to the connect() method which is used to establish connections in Qt’s signals and slots mechanism. It lets you connect a signal to a lambda expression (introduced in C++11). It seems this style might be preferable in most cases one might currently be tempted to define a private slot method.
May 30th
2 tags
May 30th
11 notes
4 tags
Adding Modbus Support to Typica - Day 4
Yesterday I wrote a tiny test program that would write a particular string of digits out over a serial port and display the result that comes back. What went out was 0x010403E80001B1BA which is Modbus for Station 1, read out input registers (command 0x04) starting from relative address 0x03E8 (PV in engineering units) 1 value (0x0001). The 0xB1BA is a check digit computed from everything in the...
May 28th
1 note
hackedy: lisp is an abomination. code as data? The code and the data must remain separate. Since the days of assembly, we have tried to keep our code and data clearly divided, but now lisp resurges and tries to unite them? I don’t think so. Once upon a time people wrote self-modifying code (code as data) in machine language because that’s just how you called subroutines. The idea of code...
May 28th
5 notes
5 tags
Adding Modbus Support to Typica - Day 3
No, you didn’t miss the day 2 update. We’re (that doesn’t include me) refinishing the floor at the shop so I left for the day before the transformer I discovered I needed on day 1 was delivered so I could take a nap before returning to help move everything off the floor and put drop cloths over the green coffee and equipment. I brought it home with me when that was done but...
May 28th
1 tag
May 27th
13 notes
May 27th
9 notes
2 tags
So as you may have guessed, I started playing Tales of Graces f today. Watched the opening movie and thought, “I hope the purple haired girl is a major character.” And wouldn’t you know it, she joined my party right away and seems to be sticking around. I’ve switched her (Sophie) to be the player character. Game play feels a lot like Star Ocean 2. Both of these things...
May 26th
1 note
2 tags
Tales of Graces f
Child: Moooom! I want one of those spinning, twirling girls!
Middle-Aged Woman: Oh, don't be silly! ... You'd never take it for walks.
May 25th
1 note
3 tags
Adding Modbus Support to Typica - Day 1
Today I received two devices: a Fuji PXR-4 controller that speaks Modbus and an RS485 to USB adapter (it actually has both a terminal block for RS485 and a DB9 connector for RS232 and will let me use both of those at the same time, presenting two serial ports over 1 USB port). My goals for today were modest. 1) Hook the new controller to a coffee roaster. I brought home my SR1 electric sample...
May 25th
1 note
4 tags
May 25th
4 notes
1 tag
May 24th
1 note
4 tags
Post Preview
Remember a few posts back when I begged for some hardware so I could add Modbus RTU support to Typica? Well, someone came through on that and there’s currently a Fuji PXR device that speaks Modbus on its way and scheduled for delivery tomorrow. Once that support is in, it’s possible that Typica will work with or can be trivially modified to work with a lot of devices, some of which may...
May 24th
1 note
4 tags
May 22nd
15 notes
Lens info seems to have been lost on the cat and butterfly photos. Not sure how that happened. I decided to take a few photos in the garden today. I was using a Sigma 150-500mm F5-6.3 APO DG OS lens on a Sigma SD1 Merrill camera. The cat eyes photo was a picture of the cat that lives with me looking out the door at me while I was doing this, heavily cropped. 267mm F5.6 1/100s. The butterfly...
May 21st
1 tag
May 21st
3 notes
1 tag
May 21st
1 note
1 tag
May 21st
1 note
2 tags
May 21st
2 notes
5 tags
Request for Information - What's In Your Roaster?
Hardware support is a tricky thing with Typica. Since I’m not charging for the program my development budget is approximately $0 so I can’t afford to buy all of the hardware that different people want to use with the software and I’m very uncomfortable with releasing code that I’m unable to test. I need to be selective. There’s only so much hardware that I can make...
May 21st
1 note
3 tags
May 19th
May 19th
1 note
May 19th
158 notes
In which three programming methods are compared →
There are, roughly speaking, three ways to develop large user-facing programs, which we will refer to here as 0) the Unix way, 1) the Emacs way, and 2) the wrong way.
May 19th
3 notes
May 19th
1 note
2 tags
About as close to dialogue as Pleinair gets in any of her games.
May 18th
23 notes
May 18th
2 notes
May 17th
2 notes
May 17th
1 note
May 17th
1 note
May 17th
1 note
2 tags
I Don't Like Accounting Software
I don’t like accounting software. I use QuickBooks and it sucks, but it sucks less than the other programs that I’ve used. Every three years Intuit breaks payroll to force people to buy a newer version of the program (not sure why they don’t just make the program a subscription service, but whatever) and the transition from the old version to the new version is always terrible...
May 17th
3 notes
May 17th
42 notes
3 tags
Developing a Roast Profile on One Roaster for Use...
Those of you who have been posts here know that a Diedrich IR-1 has recently been installed at the shop and that I’ve been working with this lately. There were three potential uses that I had for this machine. First, it could be a sample roaster. While the roaster is rated for a minimum batch size of 300g, during the drum seasoning I found that I could still get consistent measurements from...
May 17th
1 note
4 tags
Qt Signals, Slots, and Script Functions
QtScript exposes Qt’s signals and slots mechanism for QObjects that have been exposed to the host environment. Normally that’s used so that you can set up signal/slot connections. So suppose you have an object (let’s call that input) that reads an XML document as input and sends that data to other views (for example, one called log) over such a connection. Perhaps we have...
May 16th
1 tag
May 16th
3 tags
May 15th
4 tags
May 15th
4 tags
Synthetic Data Series
Yesterday I wrote about the application of linear spline interpolation to calibrating measurements taken on different coffee roasters so that someone can develop a roast profile on one machine and match that profile on a different machine. Today I wrote the code that produces such a data series, tested it (it worked on the first try), and I just need to put a little more work in on that before I...
May 15th
4 tags
May 15th
24 notes
May 15th
5 tags
May 14th
2 notes
4 tags
May 13th
14 notes
1 tag
May 12th
27 notes
2 tags
May 12th
27 notes
Printed this poster design. The first attempt at doing so didn’t turn out very well. The orange was not so orange and more of a gold color while the beverage was somewhat green (the black at least came out perfectly). Tweaked the color management settings for a second attempt and that came out exactly as I wanted it. Now I just need to find a place to keep that where the cat won’t walk...
May 11th