Meeting Chat
00:35:17 Steve and Lloyd: https://www.linuxfestnorthwest.org/
00:36:07 Charles Ihler: I’m on the fence if that’s an AI video.
00:37:45 Craig Austin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1PlIuC2Oz0
00:42:26 Steve and Lloyd: Punk Rock Flea Market at 420 15th Ave E. Seattle, WA 98112
01:14:58 James Newton: Chas, I would love to see your code for that CAN bus modular system. It would be wonderful if you were willing to share it.
01:17:06 James Newton: On the topic of little UI panels, I have a project that I have pretty much working, but is really a solution in search of a problem. The idea is to (like your modules) move the UI complexity into a local processor, and just send it simple commands. I’m using human readable opcodes over serial, but at least the output could easily be adapted to CAN or whatever.
01:18:22 Charles Ihler: Replying to “Chas, I would love t…”
I am terrible about uploading to my GitHub .. I’l work on uploading my nodes to my GitHub. The robot ‘class’ for the SRS competitions is “Muppet Class”.. you’ll see it here later today: https://github.com/chasihler?tab=repositories
01:18:42 Charles Ihler: Reacted to “On the topic of litt…” with 👍
01:19:01 James Newton: Reacted to “I am terrible abou…” with ❤️
01:19:09 Charles Ihler: I’ll take a look at this project later today, thanks! .. always looking for a better way to do things.
01:20:50 Charles Ihler: Great meeting — I have to watch Lloyd on YouTube unfortunately.. have to run to meet someone for lunch. Have a good weekend guys and gals, see you next month (or sooner for some of you).
Have a good day Chas.
01:22:22 Terry James: Replying to “Great meeting — I ha…”
Thanks for sharing.
01:22:30 James Newton: Reacted to “Great meeting — I…” with 👋
01:28:07 Terry James: Replying to “Great meeting — I ha…”
Yeah I bought a 20 sensor kit off of Amazon for $40 or less.
01:28:29 Steve and Lloyd: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=arduino+sensor+kit&crid=1JFEE1PFX9VPW&sprefix=arduino+sensor+kit%2Caps%2C238&ref=nb_sb_noss_1
Yeah, great prices.
01:29:52 Terry James: Replying to “Great meeting — I ha…”
My kit was for working with Arduino or Raspberry Pi
01:30:49 Terry James: Replying to “Great meeting — I ha…”
Some of these have support video, training, and code.
01:38:22 Terry James: Spooky, ghosty Steve.
01:40:52 Steve’s laptop: Reacted to “Spooky, ghosty Ste…” with 😂
01:45:50 Terry James: What, no Python?
01:49:20 Terry James: Can you define Determinism?
01:51:21 James Newton: Compiled code is checked during compile, so its more likely to work every time no matter what data is sent to it. Interpreted code only “checks” the syntax, but the actual operation depends on the data, which can cause the program to follow different paths, so it’s more likely to expose bugs when run versus when compiled.
01:52:10 Terry James: Thank you.
01:53:01 James Newton: If you write code in e.g. Javascript or Python, it’s critical to develop test suits that follow every possible path to ensure they all actually work.
01:53:04 Terry James: James – did you record a “voice over”? < snicker >
01:53:15 James Newton: Reacted to “James – did you re…” with 😂
01:53:58 Steve’s laptop: Of course.
01:58:16 Doug Bell: How do you know when it will be released? Is that a status returned by the call that you made to reduce the reference count?
02:01:51 Terry James: Are there memory monitoring utilities that help you to see the locations used / freed up? Graphically?
02:02:19 Terry James: Like Zephyr?
02:08:58 Terry James: I am sensing a disturbance in the coding force.
02:09:35 Terry James: As if a million lines of code suddenly cried out and then crashed…..
02:09:42 James Newton: Reacted to “As if a million li…” with 😂
02:12:38 Terry James: When you are allocating portions of code to different cores for load balancing, is that threading?
02:13:20 James Newton: Multi-core or multi-node (like what Charles was showing before) isn’t exactly threading, but it’s very close.
02:14:20 James Newton: The difference is that multi-thread means only one process is running at a time. So if a thread fails to give up or causes a lock, the other threads all stop.
02:16:55 Terry James: Wow, I didn’t know Fortran is still used.
02:17:22 James Newton: I was amazed to find out that The GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) primarily supports C, C++, Objective-C, Objective-C++, Fortran, Ada, D, Go, Modula-2, Rust, and COBOL.
02:17:27 Terry James: What about “R”?
02:17:56 Chris Powell: Not only Fortran, I’ve seen adverts recently for learning COBOL!
02:18:13 Terry James: When you mention certification is by a standards organization?
02:18:29 Bob: Python seems to be the normal interface for AI programming. Underneath it is usually C/C++
02:19:43 Terry James: ? KOTLIN ? Java replacement?
02:20:12 James Newton: Bob’s point there is key on AI, it’s not really a single language, its a language pair.
02:21:37 Terry James: Or vomiting it up?
02:21:53 Steve’s laptop: Yes!
02:22:34 James Newton: In robotics, especially control theory, there seems to be a lot of MATLAB / Simulink being used as well… assuming you consider that a language.
02:23:38 James Newton: That’s a great point on the industry standards and what languages will raise eyebrows. I think that’s more important that a lot of people might think.
02:26:33 Terry James: Mac Silicon
02:27:26 James Newton: Python, C, Java all compile nicely to WebAsm these days.
02:28:58 Doug Bell: You might mention what Lint is.
02:29:46 James Newton: “when you dry your clothes…” ,o) lint is a term for a static code analysis tool (or the act of using one, known as linting) used to flag programmatic errors, bugs, and stylistic errors in source code without running the program
02:30:45 Terry James: LabVIEW has it’s own internal code revision control as I understand it.
02:31:29 Terry James: ALOHA may help with LabVIEW programming management.
02:31:54 James Newton: Versioning is an issue in PCB CAD or CAD in general. It’s not hard to find a system that keeps track of the versions, but one that can merge divergent work is rare.
02:33:19 James Newton: It’s one of the reasons Altium costs so much; because it can do that.
02:34:24 Craig Austin: I would just add: Consider licensing costs. My background is Business Intelligence. My biggest hammer was SAS. With the emergence of R, S-Plus, MATLAB and Python, it became more and more difficult to justify $100K+ in software licensing costs.
02:34:41 James Newton: Reacted to “I would just add: …” with 👍
02:35:20 Terry James: Have you used LabVIEW’s AI? Jenkins?
02:35:42 Terry James: Nigel?
02:36:29 Terry James: Are there downsides with using Python on Arduino?
02:36:41 Terry James: Or should you use Micro Python?
02:37:03 James Newton: To Craig’s point, I think AI is going to tear down a lot of those super expensive systems like SAS, Altium, etc… I’m basing that on the recent creation of the CCC C compiler by AI. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a MASSIVE project and it worked, so… in the future more large systems will fall to AI clones.
02:39:20 James Newton: Onshape, by the way, can merge multiple branches.
02:42:25 Bob: I’ve been threatened with jail over ITAR so many times it is ridiculous
02:44:05 Terry James: OpenNV?
02:50:14 Terry James: Perhaps you need to invest in an Orange Jumper with your name on it.
02:50:19 Terry James: Bob
02:50:47 Terry James: Bob (aka Big Stan)\
02:51:26 James Newton: OpenNV?
02:51:53 Bob: It was idiot non technical people managers telling me I couldn’t do something which was really allowed
02:52:07 Terry James: VS Code – is that the free version or the licensed version?
02:52:12 Terry James: Pro version?
02:54:01 Terry James: Developer Tools & Services | Visual Studio Professional
02:54:04 James Newton: For some experiences with OpenMV Cam, see:
https://github.com/HaddingtonDynamics/Dexter/issues/107
02:56:13 Steve and Lloyd: 03:02:28
Book: Vibe Coding: Building Production-Grade Software With GenAI, Chat, Agents, and Beyond
Craig Austin: Simplified link to book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DQ5SVH4Y/