Embedded - 31: If You See a Dongle Run Away

Episode Date: December 19, 2013

Producer Christopher (@stoneymonster) joins Elecia to look through their mailbag and talk about gift ideas. Podcasts we like: The Amp Hour 99% Invisible  Radiolab 5x5 network’s Back to Work Accidental tech Splendid Table (food) Some listener suggestions on where to get small run boards made: http://www.cadsoftusa.com http://www.seeedstudio.com/service/index.php?r=site/pcbService http://www.pcbcart.com/ http://oshpark.com/ Gift ideas (specifics): Dropcam and Dropcam Pro Nest thermostat and smoke alarm  Online automatic backup services: Crashplan and Backblaze Books: Thinking Fast and Slow, Quiet, and Kraken The BUS Pirate serial bus logger and injector Sennheiser HD 280 Pro headphones for noisy offices Gift ideas (stores): Shapeways 3D Printing on demand Think Geek Find a kit or component for someone: Sparkfun, Adafruit, or Maker Shed

Welcome to Making Embedded Systems, the show for people who love gadgets. I'm Alicia White, back with Christopher White to go through our mailbag and wish lists. Hello, Christopher. Welcome back to the show. Happy holidays, everyone. Yes, that's right. It is almost Christmas here. And we will be talking a bit about the gifts we want and the gifts we're buying for other people and just random gadgets. And you, you did tell me that I didn't need to thank you as each part of the close of the show. Still, you do all the production.

And for the days when we get into giggle fests, sometimes that means more editing than others. Thank you. Sure, but you know that most of the production is outsourced, right? To the dogs? Yeah. Yeah, I kind of felt the snout of the beagle. All right.

So let's get on to the show. I don't know what that means, but it's the title. Great. Yeah, that is how we choose the title. Usually it's when I say something embarrassing and he writes it down. That becomes the title. But for those of you listening, I have to say thank you to you as well. We've gotten a lot of encouragement and a lot of moral support from the listeners.

I really can't say how surprised and happy I am. I shouldn't be surprised, but it is so nice. The podcast is not our full-time job. According to our accountant, the money we spend on gear is an advertisement for our embedded software consulting company, Logical Elegance. However, we're booked. Please don't ask us to work on your amazing products until, say, February, March? Specify a year. No, I think that's the same to say, not a year no i think that's the same to say not a year and that doesn't mean we're going on hiatus although we'll probably take one of the next few weeks off due to the holidays i really enjoy doing the podcast

it lets me talk to lots of interesting people about things they're enthusiastic about still encouragement never goes amiss so those of you who have written in to say good job thank you uh let's see rick jones and rosenda and andre from the great white north which that was a great note thank you and we had a whole show with uh stuff from jim gf we talked to him about the imposter syndrome you and i yeah. Yeah, which I thought was a good show. But we took his simple how do I know what to get better at question and wandered around the little path there. Wandered.

He sent another message about Laura's show and wanted to mention she had two short stories that he particularly liked, Rush Hour and Exit Strategy. So go look up those by Laura LeMay. Thank you, Jim. He also went on to say, and I'm quoting here, when you and Laura were talking about how science fiction inspires people, engineers, to create what they read about. I remembered I saw a movie several years ago, How William Shatner Changed the World. It's a really great comedy documentary about how science fiction can inspire engineers. But Mr. Shatner shows how it was Star Trek that did the inspiring. I grew up watching Star Trek

and found this very entertaining. Among many others, it shows Martin Cooper, who worked at Motorola's in the 70s and 80s, how he was inspired by the communicator to bring cell phones to market and how they came up with the first flip phone way back then. I think I just read about that. I read something where they were talking about how the original flip phone flipped the other way. That was on 99% Invisible. Yes, that's right. They flipped it down.

It was not called the StarTAC originally. It was something else TAC. And it flipped down and they took it I don't remember who they were talking to but they took it somewhere else and somebody said well the problem is you're flipping it the wrong way look at how Star Trek did it

and they turned it around and they called it the Star Tech and it became a wild success we were trained to think communication devices should work like Star Trek and they were doing it wrong yes science fiction makes me want to find a nice science fiction author

to go that whole route with again. How science fiction and engineering are maybe not two sides of the same coin, but both coins of some sort. What interests me about watching science fiction, especially science fiction of, say, the last 20 years ago or so. Like, I'm watching way too much old Star Trek lately, or I guess it's not old Star Trek.

Deep Space Nine is on our Netflix list. And it amazes me living in the future as we do now, how much they got weirdly wrong. Just like communications. I mean, they don't have any concept of... Even in... That show was on in, what, 1998? They still don't have any concept of what the internet would be like

200 years from now. The way they've got it, it's still completely wrong for just 10 years from when they wrote it. It's changed the world. They don't look stuff up easily. It's hard to find people to talk to them. Sometimes there's people out of communications

for a long period of time, which I guess a lot of these things that we actually have invented and have take whole storylines and plot lines out of possibility because, oh, you just go talk to that person, problem solved. Well, I would think they would outsource a lot of their needs to the holodeck. Well, yeah.

The holosuites. I mean, you would never have to do anything manual again. You'd just have the holograms do it. That's the problem with making utopias is they're actually quite boring. Well, let's go on to another listener email. Dan Ellis asked about other geeky podcasts. If you haven't heard the Amp Hour, go check them out. It's Chris Gamble and Dave, whose last name I don't remember,

but Chris and Dave, both double E's, talking about the week's news and their projects. About every other week, they have a guest. Jerry Ellsworth has been on a few times. The last time was, I think, the end of December with her, and it was all about how Kickstarter worked for her. It was a great show. Most of their shows are really fun.

I've been listening to mostly how they talk about hardware. And for those of you who came over because Making Embedded Systems was mentioned on their show, welcome including chris i i get the idea you do listen i don't listen to a whole lot of other podcasts uh 99 invisible we listen to sometimes that's about engineering design architecture ostensibly it was about architecture when it originally started but but some but just like ours was about embedded systems exactly yeah i think they go even further afield and they do more of the storytelling method where you get one person to talk and a couple people not interrupt but have different layers it's more a long form journalism kind of radio lab edited narrative.

And then I listen to radio lab a lot and they do science. So if you're looking for a great podcast about how to explain the color vision of a cephalopod, that would be the show to go to because it was such a cool explanation. Everything they do is really neat explanations. And then you listen to more podcasts than I do. I do sort of, not that many more. I have some that I go back to occasionally

when I'm in a podcast mood, which is comes and goes. There's one I listen to called the Accidental Tech Podcast, which is weekly, and it's three guys who basically talk about the week's tech news, things that they find interesting or infuriating. Things like Tesla's blowing up. No, just stuff in computer tech news so what apple's up to what google's up to and they're kind of apple focused some of them but uh they still uh venture further afield into other things so uh that's kind of entertaining uh that's

a very popular one uh and there's quit your job. No, I haven't listened to that one. I know of that one. That's called Quit. That's on the same network. It's on the same network, yeah. And I think basically it talks about workplace insanity and not putting up with it. Do they rant about open offices and stuff like that? I haven't really listened to that one that much.

Oh, sorry. The other one on that network, I think you're thinking of is Back to Work. Oh, maybe that's it. Which is supposed to be about work and work habits and, you know, techniques for managing your time well. And mostly it's about comic books and... Yes, an engineering podcast about how to manage your time well ocd a lot about comic books yeah it uh it's a it's a really great show because it's very entertaining uh and they stick on topic maybe 10-15 minutes out of every episode um but those 10 or 15 minutes are usually very

helpful and great and the rest of it surrounds it as very entertaining. But it's one of those... It's like the candy coating to the mental goodness. It's one of those shows, like a lot of shows now, that's been on for a few years and has 100 plus episodes. So there's a lot of inside jokes. So they almost need their own wiki page to get you started. Because, I don't know, sometimes you listen to these things and it's like i have no idea what these people are talking about well this show is going to be tough for

new listeners because we are going to talk about some of the older shows and mention who's been on anyway those are some major ones i listen to in addition to the ones you've got but yeah the five by five network has a ton of ton of great stuff to listen to but a lot of appley stuff some of it um but they've branched out okay they have some about movies and comics actually about comics not supposed to be about something else about comics do they talk about open offices and sorts of management problems probably um and i've heard about herding cats and the embedded e-cast uh and the Adafruit video blog, but I haven't actually delved into any of those. Video blogs are tough for me. Yeah, I listen mostly in the car on a commute.

In the car or if I'm doing something extremely tedious. Emptying the dishwasher and laundry. I meant like... Coding? Tedious coding, yeah. Oh, I can't code to people actually talking in my head. I can code to music, but only music that I'm not really listening to You haven't converted enough fonts

Yes, that's true And on Twitter somebody complimented my cadence As being like this American life Which I was flattered and amused by But if you ever go listen to the food show APM Splendid Table You will see that I'm lifting from somewhere and it's not this American life.

Yeah, well, I don't think our two topics are likely to cross. Oh, it's just that that's a show I like. Let's see, back to the mailbag. Daniel said he listened to number 10, show number 10, where we talk about C keywords. That must have been with Jen because we giggled about volatile. It's such a funny word. And he reminded me about the excitement surrounding pragma once, where you put it, you know, at the top of a c file you put if i don't know if not def blah

if not def blah underscore h underscore h define underscore blah blah and then at the bottom of the file you have an end if which if you're very polite you then put a comment that was the underscore h define and that's so that if you end up including the same file twice, you don't get all these errors about pound defines being defined twice. But you can replace all that now with pragma once. And it's just pound pragma once. And it should work on most compilers. It's worked on everything I've ever tried it on.

I don't know why I keep doing the other way. I really should switch because this is so much prettier. It's portable for all that porting that we do. Well, I actually do a fair amount of porting. Between compilers? Well, yeah. I remember this summer I was working on a project where we went from a C2000Ti DSP to a Cortex-M3,

which is an ARM base. And that's a miserable port because TI, for the TI DSP, the old processor. It's like 17-bit computer or something. It's a 16-bit processor. And the bytes, you say, I want the smallest size you can give me. It gives you 16 bits. Bytes. You say, I want the smallest size you can give me. It gives you 16 bits. You can't access bytes without special shifting and fiddling yourself.

Compiler won't do it to you. There is no Uint8. That sounds very lazy. A char, a car, car star, whatever you're going to call it. An array of... Why were they so lazy to not make the compiler handle that for you? I don't know why they didn't make the compiler handle it for me. I mean, it could be slow. That's fine. Maybe they wanted you to know it was slow.

But you get an array of unsigned cards. This is going to be slow, so therefore write a bunch of code for yourself. They're all 16 bits. Yeah. And so when you port that, it's just a nightmare. But, yeah. That so when you port that, it's just a nightmare. Yeah, that was the last porting thing I had to do.

And happily, when I took that job, I knew what it would entail more than the client did. I'm kind of embarrassed we forgot about Pragma once. Maybe we should do another show about that. About Pragma once? A whole show?

No, about other language things. Because everyone got a fair number of emails, which actually gives me the courage to go ahead and be technical and specific for future shows. What else? The show where Phil

and I get talking about getting past schematics and into actual hardware, the one that we called soldered together by monkeys, got actually a lot of response. And now, partially because of the amp hour, I know about KiCad. And if I learn any particular schematic capture and layout program, I think it's going to be that one, in part because I can change it. And Chris Gamble has his contextual electronics, which is a class that goes,

video class that goes from idea to actually assembled board all the way through, which is the part I was having trouble with. A listener, K-I-U, wow, I should have asked how to pronounce that. Just apologize in advance, sorry. Yeah, sorry about that.

One of the listeners, very nice, suggested Eagle as a way to go, mentioned some places to get it built. Cadsoft USA, Seed Studio, and PCB Cart. But another listener, Casey, went about a thousand steps further writing this wonderful email. I just found your podcast and just listened to episode 20, the one about PCB manufacturing. I love everything that has to do with PCB design, with the exception of kidding. So if you have a cool open source project that you need to lay out for, I would be willing

to do that for free of charge as long as it's not too complicated. I would love to advertise myself to the rest of the open source community, but I'm unwilling to at the moment due to a full-time job and college. That said, if you get someone asking for help, you are welcome to send them my way. Well, Casey and I have become email buddies and I do have a board I want. It's a little motor board with just a few components and it's got some pass-through parts and Casey offered and I accepted and I have Gerbers in my email box that are going off to a Fab house soon so I'm really excited I mean talk about excellent listener interactions I'm just thrilled I'll probably send that to Osh Park because you know purple. And because all the cool kids are sending their boards there. So I have to try it.

And I suppose since he offered if you hit contact on embedded.fm, I will connect you to Casey. But don't expect extra time to be available. I have more ideas. That's, you know, full-time college and job. So maybe Casey doesn't have even time for my ideas. And the same episode also got a note from George Hahn, who works at Upverter. He dropped me a line saying they have a completely online EDA tool

where you can draw the schematic layout, create parts and everything from the browser. I heard a little bit about that on the Amp Hour, but have been just slammed lately with getting my work done. So I haven't even peeked. It's on my to read real soon list. Let's see. Not one of you mentioned the internationalization show, but I don't care because I learned a

heck of a lot. No, I hope it wasn't boring. No, I don't think it was. It was, you know, an esoteric topic for a heck of a lot. No, I hope it wasn't boring. No, I don't think it was. It was, you know, an esoteric topic for a lot of people. Most people don't end up having to deal with that, which is probably why we haven't had a violent revolution. I didn't mention that Ken Lund's book has a blowfish on on the cover and I thought that that was incredibly on the nose

because blowfishes, they expand and they can hurt. They look cute until they kill you? Well, and that's the fish that if you eat the wrong part, it kills you. Yes. So what's the metaphor here? Well, I feel that way better internationalization. It is a good way for a company to die. If they don't do it right. And if they don't think it through, and if they just eat the wrong part of the fish, you end up spending

just a ton of money and not getting anything back because you've done it wrong. Well, like, like many things that many companies do, they don't have the time to do it right, but they have the time to do it twice. Man, I hate when people tell me that. It makes me crazy. Nobody actually says that. That's a joke. No, actually, I was at a client,

and he said that to me, and he actually meant it. He said, yeah, I never have time to do it right, but I always have time to do it two or three times. I'm like, whoever told you that was kidding, and it's not something you're supposed to live by. Mutual client, is it? No, it isn't.

No. And I did try to set him straight, but I don't think I succeeded. That's too far gone. It is. It is. Let's see. And John Burt won James Grinian's test-driven development for Embedded Sea, so you don't have to guess numbers anymore.

We didn't get a ton of participation, but we'll try a few more giveaways before we... To be fair, the hints were fairly pathetic leading up to the original, or to the final. Choose a number between 1 and 99. It's not this one or this one.

I had planned to ask James at the end of the show, was it greater than 100? Or greater than 50? And that would really like help people who listen to the podcast. But then I,

we were tired. Oh man, we were tired. So yeah, you only got a 2% increase if you actually listen to the whole show. His number was 86 because he is a Get Smart fan.

Were there any other shows that I haven't mentioned that you liked, Christopher? Oh, geez. I'm on the spot now. Okay, well, how about this? We'll put you on a different spot. Who do you want to see on the show I have heard A couple people say they want to hear more from Jerry

And truthfully me too So we'll try Sarah Baker An intermittent conference acquaintance Emailed a hello and a good job After she caught the show She seems to think that because she only plays with embedded systems at home instead of work, she won't get dragooned to be on the show.

And that's silly. I've been wanting to do a show about newbie learning Arduino and what problems they have. Yeah, that sounds good. It's hard for me sometimes to remember what are the first 10 errors you have so that I can help future people have those get past those errors well it's hard because they are different every time to me every time I start something new it seems like I make a whole whole new set of errors that can't really be generalized away to a don't do this guide. Oh, no.

But the Arduino, the getting into goofing off at home with hardware probably could be, if not summarized in a few points, some of the big ones could be. Eh, you know. Soak your soldering socks, live with it, it's fine. Solder balls are your friend. Hot glue is even more of a friend.

Oh, and you got me a microscope for my birthday. Thank you for that. So Philip Frieden, consultant at Fliptronics, did offer to let me try his along with some soldering and debug tools. And I haven't used my microscope much, but I expect to really soon as soon as those boards Casey laid out come back um well what do you want for Christmas you haven't decided a best show you haven't decided who you want to see on the show what do you want for

Christmas I was trying to get desperate here I'm going back to the original questions because I've had time to think about it. Oh, I'm sorry. I did this to James, too. I felt really bad when I listened to the show. Just move on. The plan is to do this, and if you're not ready by the time,

it's too late, and you're going to have to answer another question that you haven't thought about. Yes. Yes, welcome to my master interviewing style. I did like the show where we talked to Jordan about education. I thought that was kind of enlightening about how computers are being used differently in education than even I imagined. With stuff like Minecraft and other simulations like that where the kids aren't necessarily being taught to do

anything they're discovering it on their own and um being you know being set up with projects instead of sitting in the class and learning about electronics from holmes law and above well and i remember when i was in school everybody feared that computers would teach us, would replace flip cards. Flip cards? I know. I couldn't think of the word. Flash cards. Flash cards.

Where computers would only teach you. Did you actually use flash cards? Not really much. I did learn Spanish, actually. But I never did. Spanish, it was helpful. But computers would teach us rote information. Oh, actually. I had the best to use them, but I never did. Spanish, it was helpful. But computers would teach us rote information, and we would lose our creativity

if we sat in front of a computer all day. That's because people thinking those things don't have any idea what computers really do. Well, I think that was 20, we're going to go with 20 here, 20 or more years ago. And we didn't know what computers would do. People who wrote software for computers did.

Yeah, but there was the educational software was still very small and growing. I mean, programs like Lemonade were so cool. That was the mistake, right? It was to take the usual education plan and try to stick it into a computer program instead of, instead of looking at computers as an inherently creative thing. And if you give kids a blank slate and tell them to make things like with logo,

remember logo? Oh yeah. The little turtle. I mean, when I was in school, that was the thing. Everybody, nobody played, you know, Math Blaster or whatever rabbit. It was people loaded up Logo and made shapes and programs and stuff.

And I don't know, the programming was always much more exciting to everybody I saw using computers back in those days. And I think that's, we lost that for a while for kids. And I think that's coming back that for a while for kids and i think that's coming back with with minecraft with minecraft and other things like that where it's kind of an insidious well you think you're playing a game but inside the game is uh a lot of creative potential that maps directly onto the kinds of thinking you have to do for for uh for working with computers and i did check with my favorite sixth and fourth grader and minecraft is totally where it is at i mean they were they tried to get me interested in

it and i have to admit i maybe got a little bored with the zombies but they are just yeah everything's cool i can run my own server i can do this do this and that. It was neat to watch their excitement for it. I liked that show. Yeah, that was a good departure from the usual technical stuff. It was still in the ballpark. And then who else do you want to see on the show? Well, I think in a general case,

I'd like to see, um, you know, I like the shows where we bring in people who are working at the early stages of companies and, uh, are doing interesting projects and want to kind of explore their challenges and, and what they're working on.

Um, we've had a few of those from, uh, explore their challenges and, and what they're working on. Um, we've had a few of those from, uh, the electric imp to the light up folks. Yeah. I want to talk to light up folks again really soon. Um, and Jerry's fits in that one as well. Yeah. And, and, and Jerry. So I think, um, you know, I think that's helpful to people who are maybe on the cusp of starting something on their own or or in the middle of putting something together or any stage or being really glad they

have a full-time job at a fucking 500 company and they're not doing that because it's not always easy i mean jen's gonna be back and i think we're gonna get a year full of of oh my god my life has been no sleep trip to china every three weeks and by the way i haven't going to get a year full of, oh my God, my life has been no sleep, trip to China every three weeks, and by the way, I haven't felt healthy in a year sort of adventure. It doesn't look pleasant from the outside. On the other hand, she has a fair amount of stock in her company and she's hoping it's going to ship before they... Let me tell you about stock.

I know. Stock is monopoly money. I have a fair amount of stock in several companies that are now. Unlikely to. Some of them, the buildings don't even exist anymore. They tore them down. Yeah. Yeah, one of my companies, I'm working for a little bit of stock, and I'm excited for them.

It's a neat product, but, uh, it's monopoly money. I'm not planning on capitalization. I'm not planning. I'm not betting our future, uh, uh, kibble for the dogs on any, any sort of stock. I do have friends that do that. They're like, yeah. And when my stock doubles, I will buy a house. I'm like, yeah, okay, that's great. Good luck with that. Yeah, if you're not working for a company like Apple, Google, there's not much chance of that.

And we had Andres from Atmel on. I'm going to do a couple more of those because the sales guys are usually pretty willing to talk to me. I think Cypress is going to come on soon, which is kind of nice because I haven't used a Cypress processor, I don't think, ever. I wonder why I would switch. I'm going to let him explain to me why.

Maybe bring a dev kit. Actually, he buttered me up with a dev kit before. I walked up to him at a conference and said, yeah, we kind of talked over email, and me up with a dev kit before. I mean, I walked up to him at a conference and said, yeah, we kind of talked over email, and he handed me a dev kit immediately. I'm looking at your stack of unoptimized dev kits here. Well, that is the problem. That may be why we need to do more giveaways.

Does anybody want an, uh, what is this now? Get your hands off my dev kits. I might want that one. It says demonstration something something. Renaissance, demonstration, something, something. Yeah, yeah. So gifts. Gifts.

You had a list. I do. Mostly I took your wish list from Amazon and put it into the show notes. That's okay with you, right? I have no idea why i agree to do these shows uh proceed all right so christopher wants a drop cam for christmas what is a drop cam drop cam is a wireless camera that you can put around your house or outside and

it uh goes on your wi-fi network but it also has cloud functionality which i like saying cloud because i love pointless buzzwords so cloud proactive synergy proactive synergy cloud uh synchronization um anyway it has dvr functionality and for some monthly fee that i can't remember what it is it'll store all all week's worth or month's worth or something's worth of video, so you can go back and review it if something happens. Burglars and whatnot. Right, and it's got motion sensing, I believe, and it goes to your iPhone or your whatever, mobile device, and wherever you are, you can check up on that.

Didn't we get a webcam with a really long thing and Wi-Fi? your iPhone or your whatever, mobile device. And wherever you are, you can check up on that. Didn't we get a webcam with a really long thing and Wi-Fi? A really long thing? A really long cable for power and a plastic box that could be outside. We didn't do the plastic box thing. Well, we got the plastic box. We didn't actually do it. This is much better. But we were going to spy on the dogs.

It's got Zoom. It's got two-way talk. They were going to lay it, but we were going to spy on the dogs. It's got Zoom. It's got two-way talk. Area all day, and we were going to look at them from our office. I think that was your plan. You were on board with it. That was because it involved gadgets. Anyway, Dropcam. I think they're $150.

Let me look real quick here. $200 for the pro version and $150 for the non-pro version. The non-pro version does not have the DVR service as far as I can tell. Okay. And you got a new camera for the car, which I was boggled. This is one of those, our gadgets are getting gadgets. Well, you know, all those people in Russia are constantly seeing amazing things happen out the front of their car

and posting them on YouTube. And I just didn't want to be left out. The rock rolling down? That was a cool one. Yeah, we need to put a link to that. So you're watching this guy drive and then suddenly there's a giant rock in front of him. I don't think rock is the right word. It was a significant portion

of the mountain. Small piece of the mountain. Small planet. Rolled down the mountain. Small piece of the mountain. A small planet. A small planet. Rolled down the hill. And it lands. You have to watch it. We'll put the link in. But it lands next to him, and then it slowly rocks as if it's going to crush the car,

and then it goes back over. Yeah, that was one of those. Another universe butted right there, because the other universe killed that guy and smashed him. Bringing it back to the topic at hand. The real reason I got it is for accidents. I got cut off a couple of times very violently

and didn't really want to have a situation where I didn't have photographic evidence that somebody had done something. It's a video camera and it's got GPS in it as well. It a video camera and it's got uh gps in it it's got gps so it keeps track of where you you know where you are so when you get the video off it'll actually on a map show you the route through the you know where that video was taken plus your

speed and everything and heading and and what is that called that one one is a Blackview, I think. Blackview 500, I want to say. That was like 350 bucks. It was pretty expensive. Let's see. DR 500. See, I only know about the ones that are pretty cheap because those are the ones you ask for gifts. The ones that are really expensive,

you just buy and install. I'm a horrible person. You're a horrible person who likes gadgets, which is nice because I would only work on the processors and I wouldn't actually see all this stuff. Yeah, that one looks like it's on Amazon for $2.89 currently. We wanted to get that for your dad, but I think that was a little expensive.

We got him some other widget, car widget. Where did we get him? If I tell him, if I say it now, he might listen to the podcast. You really think he's listening to the podcast? He'll listen to this one. That's true. Sometimes he spies on our Twitter feeds. That's right.

It's hilarious. He isn't a follower because he doesn't have a Twitter account. I'll make a note that we'll revisit this one on a later show and see if he likes it. Well, I don't know anything about it. I mean, I know what it is, but I don't know if it's any good or not. It was like a Fitbit for the car. You're just giving it away.

I'm totally giving it away because I want to talk about it. Because I know I want to talk about Fitbit. It's called Automatic. And it plugs into the OBD port, the diagnostic port on any car. Which is where they usually, you don't usually use it as a consumer. That's what the Autotex is. Yeah. you don't usually use it as a consumer. That's what the auto taxis are. Yeah, and it has Bluetooth and connects to your phone and does a whole bunch of things.

One is it keeps track of your driving habits, so like your gas mileage and your braking, and it has an accelerometer so it knows how you're driving. And it gives you a report and says, well, you know, you got this kind of gas mileage this month. If you drove this way, you know, you could improve it by 10% or something like that. You know, brake less hard or don't jackrabbit off the stoplight and stuff like that. But in addition to that, it'll tell you where your car is parked.

How does it know? I think it has a GPS in it. No, wait. No, it was $100. I don't think it has a GPS in it. No, wait. No, it was $100. I don't think it has a GPS as well. I mean, you could easily put a GPS on a $100 device, but it had enough other widgets that a GPS would make it super cool.

I mean, his car has a GPS. He's got a nav. Yeah, this does something else. I think it may just mark it like it knows when you've parked. Oh, and then your phone would be able to take you back. Yeah. The other thing it does, real quick, it has crash alerts. So if there's an accident, it'll call local authorities if your cell phone is working and send text messages to whoever you say.

And since it's plugged into the diagnostic port it reads all out all the diagnostic data so it'll tell you if your check engine light comes on it'll say why and oh and it will let you clear your check and it will say shut up yeah yeah my my method is to a bit of electrical tape that's not your method that's clinton clack's method you're stealing it i'm stealing that there's so much we steal from NPR. The black tape method is what you use for all of the electronics in the living room. Yes.

I hate blinking lights. Well, it's not the blinking lights anymore. It's that everyone decided that the really bright blue LEDs are the things to use for everything. Blue LEDs are expensive. We'll have to put them everywhere. But they put them on devices

that are designed to be used in dark rooms. Yes. Like movie things. Anyway, so that's that thing. It's $100. And they have it at the Apple Store and Amazon and from the Automatic website, automatic.com. And that, I said it's like a Fitbit for your car, which I don't know. Well, a Fitbit is like a pedometer tracker,

a Wi-Fi-enabled pedometer sort of thing. It's very cool. It's kind of like the Jawbone Up. It's kind of like the Nike Fuel Band. Those are all in the same family. Full disclosure, I work for them. And I have worked for Fitbit, so I'm having trouble figuring out what to say.

The things I know, the things I don't know. It's a wearable fitness device. We're going to go with that. Yeah. Moving on. And we did talk to Ivo from Jawbone, so it's not like we're only fit, but never mind. We'll just cut that section out. No, you won't.

I hear my producer doesn't really like making edits. It's kind of a pain in the neck. That's because your producer is lousy at losing logic after probably six years of projects using it hey we just sold logic at the guard at the that was logic eight oh i see yes what are we on x which depending on how you look at it is either two versions or 24 versions after? I don't know.

All right. All right. Yes, logic. Wow, I love logic as long as I never have to touch it. Let's see. On the trendy gadgets, can you make all the noise and open the door

and go out and push the smoke alarm? You really want me to do that? Oh, yeah. You think it's going to pick that up? I think so. Okay. So, Nest, which makes the... Oh, I have a better idea.

Hang on. Okay. Keep going. Nest makes the thermostats. I mean, how could you make thermostats sexy? But they have done a reasonably good job of making thermostats pretty neat. It's not as super fantastic as I had hoped, but it is pretty darn cool. And the fact that I can control it from my iPhone is great.

Honeywell has a couple of those out. So Nest now has a new product. And Christopher has brought it into the smoke alarm and carbon monoxide alarm. Yes, it's called the Nest Protect, and it's Wi-Fi enabled, so you can check the status, and it can send you notifications, and it also has a mesh network through ZigBee. So if you have multiple, they can notify you. So if there's a fire in one other location,

all of them will go off, and they will tell you. So if there's a fire in one other location, all of them will go off and they will tell you what location. And so if we have a fire in the garage, the one in our bedroom will go off and say, there's a fire in the garage. Except that they don't actually have garage. Garage is one that they limit. But they would say there was a fire in the kitchen. But one of the nice things is it's mostly voice feedback,

so it's not a lot of beeping. And if the batteries are going low, it'll say, hey beeping and if the batteries if the batteries are going low it'll say hey you know i think the batteries are getting low before it gets to the beeping at 4 a.m stage um so anyway you can press the button and ready in the hallway press to test yeah i'm not gonna press to test because it does beep kind of annoyingly but at least it tells you to stand away from the yeah so i've been pretty happy with that and i've already got to um experience the uh actual alarm going off because dish towels don't belong the day after i installed them i lit a fire in the kitchen so thank you for for you know doing your part to make sure they work

uh they were kind of a pain in the neck to install. The first one was easy. Yeah, they have the, you know, it's all these network things, the provisioning, getting them connected to your network when they don't have a display or input method is always a little bit of a trick. And they did it through the usual method that some of these things do where it sets up its own Wi-Fi network.

You connect to it with your phone and you go through their app's setup procedure, which was fine for the first one. The second one, they tried to make it easier by having it snarf some information from the one you actually installed, but that whole process was broken. I think they just issued an update for the app, which fixes that. Well, I'm doing a whole conference presentation at the end of March at the Embedded Systems Conference.

On provisioning, kind of? On how the Internet of Things isn't really ready for consumers because... Got to fix this problem somehow. You have one set of consumers who essentially don't know their Wi-Fi passwords for the most part. They have these long, complicated ones that are installed by someone else. And then you have another set who want good privacy and ease of use and security. Just battle it

out so that nobody gets anything good. I mean, the whole it creates a wireless access point. It's fine if you're an engineer and you know how to switch Wi-Fi's on your computer. Well, to be fair, they tell you how to do it. I mean... Yeah, and on your phone it's a-Fi's on your computer. Well, to be fair, they tell you how to do it. I mean, yeah.

And on your phone, it's a little easier than on your computer, I think. Yeah. It depends on the computer. With the Fitbit Wi-Fi scale, it's easier on your phone than it is on your computer. Yeah. Could you make it stop blinking or turn it over so I can't see it? I don't know why it's doing that. Yeah, so the little

nasty smoke guy decided. It just stopped. I think it decided it wanted to say... Because it says goodnight to us too, because when you turn off the lights, it does a couple of little loops around the hallway. And Nesta is an interesting company. They're taking what are traditionally very boring and infuriating products

and just making really good versions of them. Really good and really expensive. These aren't super out of line compared to other combined smoke. I think it's 129, which is maybe 2x, but for all it does. But it also will send us a text or a message of some sort, text message sort of thing to our phone. An app notification from the app if there's an issue.

Yeah, so we could be out of the house and it could say, don't come home because the carbon monoxide is too high or whatever. Or just call the police, you know, just call the police. The other thing it'll do is if you have, if you have a nest thermostat, it'll actually shut off your furnace if there's a carbon monoxide alarm. Because that's usually where carbon monoxide comes from. Yeah. So interesting stuff. You know, they are expensive compared to, you know, the usual stuff. But I don't know. I'm willing to pay a little bit of money to not be awakened at 2 a.m. by all of my smoke alarms, which is what always happens when the batteries die.

You and I found out why that happened. You were the one who told me why, right? I probably was, but I can't remember now. So the reason your smoke alarm goes off in the middle of the night right is because that's when your battery gets cold yeah and that's when your battery gets low already low it gets lower and then it beeps and so it's going to go off when your house is coldest is the second battery and a little uh resistive heater wrapped around the first battery to keep it warm.

It's funny. I was thinking a little itty-bitty macrocontroller that could detect the first low battery and then wait 12 hours. Why are you coming up with the practical solution? You're right. We should put heaters inside of our fire alarms. Nothing could possibly go wrong with that plan. Well, if there's a fire, they'll know.

I have created fire. It is the best place to put something that might let in fire. It's combustible. So do you think we could still get those for Christmas? It looks like it. 120 bucks, it's kind of tempting Uh, so do you think we could still get those for Christmas? It looked like it. Yeah. Okay. It looked like it. 120 bucks. It's kind of tempting if I already know somebody has a Nest thermostat.

Verify that. Um, let's see. What else? Uh, 129 on Amazon. You got some of the hue lighting recently. That's the, who makes that? Phillips. Phillips. that's the who makes that phillips phillips phillips has finally finally implemented my dream

of having lights that can be easily controlled by the internet which means that the next plan is we'll make christmas lights out of these and we'll leave them up all year long because there's no way i'm taking them down which is why we don't ever put them up and it will change colors based on the day so if if it's like february 1st your house starts to turn pink until the 14th when it's fully red and then you know earth day comes and fourth of july and purple and orange for halloween and every day it's a different color in your house and your neighbors don't hate you that you haven't taken down your lights i want those do you think think he will finally do it? If they do, they'll be $700.

That's true. That is true. They are expensive. They're really expensive. But they've got strip lighting. Strip lighting. They have bulbs. These are all, I think they're all Zigbee as well.

And they go to a base station. It's Wi-Fi connected. And then you can control their colors and their intensity. So they've got bulbs. They've got floodlight kind of things, and they've got, I think, two-meter strips of ambient LEDs, which have a whole bunch, 100 or more bright LEDs on them, and you can change their color, which is neat for home theater rooms and stuff.

Yeah. Nightlights. Those need to come down in price. And I think they will once they get more mass produced. I hope so. I really hope so because they are just a bit too much for the non-gadget centric house. Which since our house is gadget centric, that's not a problem. And then the Belkin light switches they're a bunch of internet enabled yeah i don't know anything about i don't know how good those are um they get okay radiance um i think i've used them at work a couple of times to like turn things off

that should be off overnight well i used to you know um we used to have power strips and things that were power that had individual ports addressable we used to use power strips and things that were power that had individual ports addressable we used to use in labs and stuff which is great for turning off machines remotely so you don't have to either go into work to reboot something physically or and so they could be used for that which i just was thinking that'd be great for some home automation stuff like if you've got a little server or something and you're away from your house and you want to actually reboot it. But I don't know what else you'd do with that except lights.

Okay, so other things we would get for other people. You mentioned back to your dad giving away, hopefully he's not going to listen to this. Ed, if you're listening to this, I'm sorry. You mentioned CrashPlan. Well, I have a whole list here. Are you done with your list? No, but we'll come back.

What's on your list? What is on your list that you're getting for me for Christmas? I'm not getting any of these things for you for Christmas. Why not? I'm getting other stuff for you for Christmas. Oh, I so hope it's cashmere mints. Are you really going to edit out your swearing? No.

Okay. Well, maybe. Or you're just searching on Amazon. This is a family show. So besides cashmere mittens, I tried to come up with a list of things that... Light up cashmere mittens. Oh, for God's sake. Zigbee enabled Wi-Fi light up cashmere mittens

with resistive heating and smoke alarm. Resistive heating. Yeah. Because what you want on your hands are hot wires connected to high voltage. I haven't been called lately. Sorry, what was on your list? Well, I tried to come up with things that, you know,

people in our line of work might find interesting, not just random gadgets. Oh, so I bet there's Saliologics on there. No, that's on the top of the list. We've already talked about that a lot. Yeah, they're coming on the show next month. But that's a great little USB protocol analyzer for Spy and Ice Quartz C and all kinds of stuff. And I'll just leave it there.

Yeah, because they're coming on the show next month. The other thing is, you know, I hear a lot of people and I see a lot of people on Twitter saying, oh my God, I just lost three days of my life or my entire dissertation or something because somebody stole my laptop or my hard drive crashed. And it's amazing that people still don't back stuff up. In the days of Dropbox and cheap hard drives, people still don't back stuff up. And I think it's because.

Unless the power supply to my hard drive, I admit it. I, I was pretty good at backing up and then unless the power supply to my hard drive, when we rearranged the office and you weren't that good at backing up. Well, I lost the power supply to my hard drive when we rearranged the office. You weren't that good at backing up. Well, I did it like once a month.

Yeah. Which is better than nothing, but that's loss of a month's worth of work. Most of my stuff, it goes into version control, and some of my stuff goes in the Dropbox. So the only thing I would lose would be the folder that I call paperwork. You know what, though?

Git breaks this, because stuff used to go into version control. You'd do a commit right to SVN or something and it would be on a remote repository all the time. With Git you can do commits for months and months and months and months on your own branch and it's on your

computer. Until you push to a remote repository. So backups are important. It's the reason backups are important. It's the reason backups are hard for people is because they have to think about it. And Apple kind of helped with this with Time Machine, but it works, but it's not so great. And a lot of times you find out.

Yeah, and you have to have a Mac. So I like online backups. There's two companies that are very similar. One is CrashPlan and there's Backblaze. I use CrashPlan. You download a client and you get an account. It goes on your computer and you tell it which files you want to backup. You can backup your whole computer or just a directory or just a certain set of files.

It goes through and it sends them up to their servers and it's stored on their servers. You don't have to do anything. It just does this in the background continuously as you change files and stuff. And it doesn't really get in the way. You can configure, for both of them, you can configure how much CPU it's allowed to use and how often it's allowed to do this stuff.

And if you're idle, it'll take up more CPU than if you're currently working. But they're around $5 a month for a single pc which isn't that much it really isn't that much if you've ever had to rebuild your parents pc over the phone because they have downloaded a virus or 150 a month is the ballpark for on crash plan i know it's for unlimited pcs so you can have as many computers you and i share an account right and i have i do this for all my vms for my clients so each one of those is running crash plan those count as many computers as you do. Yeah, because you and I share an account. Right, and I do this for all my VMs for my clients. So each one of those is running CrashPlan.

Those count as separate computers. So the great thing is it's not just for catastrophic stuff. There's been many times I've screwed up a repository, my local copy of some code or something, and realized that two days ago I had something working, but I made a mistake and kept going and had lost that file. And I've just gone to CrashPlan and downloaded it because it's got history too. It's not just the last version. Okay.

So it might not just be yesterday's. It would be the day before's and the day before's. Yeah. Yeah. So those are really, really useful tools, CrashPlan and Backblaze. And for both of them, if you're in a big hurry, you can seed them by sending them a hard drive. Or if you need to get a whole bunch of data at once,

like you have a whole computer that died and you don't want to download it all, you can request a drive, and they'll send you a drive overnight. But for the most part, I mean, you set it up on my computer and it went through like, it only took like three days to back up pretty big amount of data. Yeah. And you know, runs overnight,

leave your computer on. I mean, if you have a decent internet service, it's not that big a deal for, if you don't have reasonable upload, it could be kind of a problem. And your definition of a reasonable upload may be different than Christopher's. I have to tell you, it's really freaking fast.

Compared to the rest of the world, it's not that fast. Compared to all of the places I work, it's really freaking fast. Moving on from backups. You were thinking about getting your dad that for Christmas. Buying him a year plan, yeah. And I was a was a little like oh my god that sounds so nerdy but you said he actually won he was looking for something like this yeah yeah a lot of people are because they they know in the back of their minds that something's wrong well it's it's one of those things that kind of

eats at you like i should i should. I know I should. No, I'll just go have a beer. Sorry. Is that that really? This is why I exercise and have beer at the same time. Because it's the whole, I know I should. I'll just go have a beer. Happens a lot.

I'm not even going to comment on that. But yeah, it's taking away somebody's worries which i always think is a nice gift yeah um next things are kind of more fun well the next thing is kind of more fun but well maybe not depends on how you apply them uh noise canceling or reducing headphones for people who work in cube farms and offices and the new paradigm of all startup companies, the open office plan where there's actually no... Did I mention my new company has an open office plan, my new client? No.

Of course, there are only three of us. Yeah. And the room is something like 20 by 20. Yeah, you can't really do it. But we're all... I mean, there are no cubes. That's not as much of a problem as the 100 people in one open space all in your face. So I like the Sennheiser 280 headphones.

They have 32 decibels of noise reduction. They're not active noise reduction. They're just passive. So they're just like they're closed headphones that go over your ears. Uh, they sound really good and they're $89. And sometimes I just stick them on my head and don't even play any music. Yeah. Sometimes they're super comfortable. Um, but, uh, yeah, if you're in, if you're lucky enough to be in one of these new trendy companies with trendy processes and trendy seating layouts, you definitely want something to help you focus.

You have to be a little careful. People used to think I was antisocial. And it wasn't that I was antisocial. It was just that I'm easily distracted by noise. We're engineers. And blinking lights. People think we're antisocial already. And cats.

Before they meet us. And cashmere mittens. What? I was listening to things I'm distracted by. People think we're antisocial already. Before they meet us. And cashmere mittens. What? I was listing things I'm distracted by. You're distracted by cashmere mittens? I'm distracted by them now. What else is on your list? Something called the bus pirate.

Have you heard of the bus pirate? Our matey i know about something that you don't know about is this one of those things that you can inject signals into a bus i mean could i sort of it's available on spark fun well that's a good place to look for gifts and if you're looking for like, my niece is interested in starting gadgetry, there are so many options on SparkFun and Adafruit. But this particular option... Okay, sorry. This is for embedded geeks,

so people who are working on stuff. It sort of goes along with the salio Logic, but it's different. It's kind of a test and troubleshooting device. But what it does is it's a little microcontroller, and it's got a, I think it's got USB on one end. Yeah, USB to your computer. And it presents you with a little terminal. And on the other end, it does...

It's probably secretly got TTL serial on one end. And then it goes to USB just to fit into your computer. It's a terminal. I don't care. All right, sorry. FTDI will rule the world by the time they're done. On the other end, it's got one wire, I squared C, SPI, JTAG, asynchronous serial, MIDI, PC keyboard,

something... Can? Because I kind of need can. Not yet. Something called HD44780 LCD, two wire and three wire libraries with bitwise pin control. A-Rank? Anyway, so what this does is it allows you to connect to all those devices and you can

communicate with them through the terminal on your PC. So you can script stuff. If you want to control a spy device or an I2C device without a whole microcontroller or you don't have a board yet, but you have something you need to talk to, you plug this guy in and you talk to it over serial with scripts or something like that or macros, and it can generate a bunch of i squared c traffic or spy traffic or one wire traffic and you can talk to your device and you can also read from the device so it's like a little protocol analyzer i wonder if james

grunning needs one i mean this is kind of test driven development with actual hardware yeah um so it's really really cool and it's 20 29 is that going to be my stocking i think it's not going to fit with the cashmere mittens so you're gonna have to design um so yeah really really cool looking device i haven't actually played with it but it seems really interesting the reviews seem pretty good. It can do some other generic measurement stuff, 1 Hz to 40 MHz frequency measurement. It's got a PWM modulator.

So just kind of a really cool little protocol device that could really help with bringing systems up. And you could even build a simple prototype system without a microcontroller if you wanted that had some sensors and things and just plug it into a computer i was less interested in that more interested in sometimes there are spy devices like accelerometers you want to plug in you don't want to use a real accelerometer because that's what the world is doing and and if you bump the table, you might mess up your test. But with this, it sounds like I could inject a signal that is a known signal and I could run it through my processor.

I don't know. Probably. Probably. Wait, you said, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I think so. If you can script a series of commands, that would be awesome. Yeah, playback. I mean, that would be interesting, playback of fakey spy device traffic or stuff.

So that was what I had. Wow, you chose actual useful stuff. I was going to suggest people go to ThinkGeek because there's always something there that's amusing. Well, there's always a Raspberry Pi. No, you know, I have been talking to Marjorie over at, who's been working on an article for Adafruit, and I was talking about wanting a Raspberry Pi, and she said, well, why a Raspberry Pi

instead of the BeagleBones? I guess the BeagleBone Black has pretty much all the same features as a Raspberry Pi. It runs Linux. It's got all the neat stuff that goes with it. But it's $10 more expensive. Yeah, it's a lot, lot faster. I'm kidding, kidding.

And the raspberries are supposed to be better for video, but the BeagleBones for everything else. BeagleBone Black. Okay. So that was kind of on my wish list of things I wanted to play with this year. be better for video but the beagle bones for everything else beagle bone black okay um so that was kind of on my wish list of things i wanted to play with this year i hadn't heard about that 45 dollars 3d graphics to sell around i mean it sounds very similar it is really similar um but it's it's similar to the second generation more expensive expensive Raspberry Pi. So it's a little cheaper than those. Okay. And then Adafruit and SparkFun.

We mentioned those if ThinkGeek doesn't have what you want. Shapeways. You introduced me to Shapeways and I was amazed and amused. Yeah. For those of you who don't have your own 3D printer, which includes us, gadgets. Well, even if you do, you don't have one as good as they do. Oh, they can print metal. Yeah.

That's amazing. So it's kind of like Etsy for 3D printers. People have put up their designs and the materials they've tested it in, and you can buy instances, printed instances of the designs they've put up yeah and it's a interesting collection i mean everything from tolkien to kerbal space program well and jewelry and ornaments and lots of and mathematically based jewelry that's really pretty and but also just plain and they have lots of they have gadgets they have you know iphone cases they have uh when

you got some Oculus Rift. Yeah, I got a... Well, I got a... It's kind of a hack for the Oculus Rift that just the eye distance... The pupillary distance. It just... So... So there's neat...

I mean, there's useful stuff as well as pretty stuff. Here's a prosthetic hand. On Shapeways? Yeah. Well, it's not really prosthetic. A robotic hand that is fully printable uh they had i think they had a couple of of like not guns but laser fake guns like like futuristic looking guns but they didn't shoot anything i don't even want to get into 3d

printing in actual guns wait they have drones great, now we've lost Christopher into the shapeways. Oh my god. 3D printed accessories to customize your remote control drone. Oh, this is great. And I have lost him. Let's see. Other things I've been looking at and buying for people include books

because I always buy books for people because I love books. We mentioned Thinking Fast and slow last week the cognitive theories book uh and it it's on sale right now at amazon for like three bucks three bucks and quiet the big the big book that got a bunch of press because it's about introverts and how they're important which was kind of nice for those of us who are, is also only $3. And Kraken, which was my favorite book of the year because it was about cephalopod intelligence.

And really, how much cooler does it get than cephalopod intelligence? That one's not on sale, but I bought it for my brother anyway, who I hope doesn't listen to the show. Well, maybe we shouldn't air this one until after Christmas. And then I was thinking about getting Make Magazine or Craft Magazine a bunch of back issues for other family members who shall remain nameless now

that I've gotten paranoid. What, you think we planned these things ahead of time? The show? Yeah. I know you planned these things ahead of time? The show? Yeah. I know you planned the show ahead of time. I've seen your notes. Yeah, yeah, my notes. My poor, poor notes.

My poor notes say that now is the time for Christopher's IAR rant. I've already heard this. Can I leave the room for this? What is the deal with embedded software tools? Okay. No, I'm not heard this. Can I leave the room for this? What is the deal with embedded software tools? Okay. No, no, I'm not done yet. Who makes the embedded software tools? The chip processors.

What are they good at? Making chips. And so they do what they can, the bare minimum to make the processor. You know, it was only about two years ago that I worked on a processor that only had a compiler that worked in Windows 98.

This does not apply. IAR is not a chip manufacturer. Windows 98 was the only way you could compile for this processor. Okay, he's right. IAR is not a chip manufacturer. They work with the manufacturers. IAR, if you don't know who they are,

they are a company that makes a complete software development suite for embedded systems. By this I mean they have an IDE, they have a compiler, they have a debugger, and they have... They don't make the emulator debuggers. All right. They have an IDE, a compiler, and hooks to talk to various emulator debuggers. And they have support for a whole bunch of chips.

Everything from TI chips to all of the ARM families from everybody, ST, NXP, Renaissance. So they have this software, and it's used widely throughout the industry because I believe it is because it has support for so many devices. And so many debuggers. It is extremely expensive. Yes.

We're talking many thousands of dollars per developer seat. Many thousand per developer seat? I believe it is, depending on the options you get. That's true so like porsche or ferrari you can probably get one for a reasonable price as long as you don't want a steering wheel or an engine or an instrument cluster but so they restrict things like you know how much code space you can you can use and stuff like that and so there's multiple options within that. But that's not even my main problem with them.

No, no, that's not his main problem. My main problem with them is that they're using copy protection that is absolutely inscrutable and impossible to deal with. And not very good if you actually want to hack it. Not that I would know, of course. No copy protection is good. This is what infuriates me. They have two modes. They have the dongle mode, copy protection is good. This is what infuriates me.

They have two modes. They have the dongle mode, which as soon as you see a company that has dongles, you should run away, as far as I'm concerned, because that means they're insane. They're just insane, and somebody has convinced them that their software is being pirated left and right, and the only way to solve it is with putting another computer into your computer to monitor your usage of the software. So that's problem one. The other option is they have licensed servers or node-locked licenses. And I'm willing to bet that most people get node-locked licenses. This means that it's locked to a particular computer. Fine. You buy it, and you get a license like a lot of software, and it only runs on your computer. The problem happens when you need to transfer that license to a different computer, or you have a problem with that computer that requires any piece of hardware to be fixed. And this happens a lot when you're in a normal development environment, and you're not just

somebody out with their computer, and they've got a new copy of Office. And so what happens is you have to go through this draconian procedure that even at its best takes probably three to four hours and may require you to hand edit the registry in Windows, which, as you know, is a very safe thing to do. And at the end of it, you may have transferred the license to a new computer. Or you may not have. But as a developer who works on an hourly basis, this kind of thing is really, really painful

because I can't in good conscience charge the client for this kind of work. And it's costing me a lot of money. Plus, the client has spent a tremendous amount of money with these folks to buy this license, and they're being treated like criminals. And so it just drives me absolutely up the wall that the people who are... It would have taken me less time to edit their hex. Probably would have taken less time to put that thing in a debugger if they hadn't managed to

figure out a way to disable debugging and go through and find where it asks for the license and return good. I mean, I edit Hex at least on an annual basis. It used to be on a monthly basis. But I don't do it a lot anymore because I don't usually have to. And I've always edited Hex primarily for my processors. But this program, it would have been easier for me to use the skills I have as a normal developer than to follow their draconian process that involved switching the hard drive out of my computer like three or five times. I lost count.

And I had to, I ended up having to transfer it to your computer and then back to my computer. That was the thing. And it didn't even fail properly. They had somehow managed to get a signature off the drive. Normally when you do this NodeLock thing, you go look at the MAC address, you might look at some ID in a chip. Most of the processors have IDs now. Yeah, this computer is the one I'm associated with.

So you tie it to something that's not likely to be changed. But to tie it to the hard drive, which is one of the most common things to be changed, and then... And I was lucky my hard drive hadn't actually failed. They say in their instructions, and I'm going to wrap this up because nobody wants to hear this, but they say in their instructions, well, to do this, you need to transfer the license to a temporary computer and then transfer it back to the computer that you finally want it to be on. Well, in order to have it on a temporary computer, you have to have IAR installed on a temporary computer.

If you have IAR installed on that temporary computer, you likely already have a different license installed. You can't have two licenses installed, so you can't actually do this without uninstalling the license that was previously on that computer. Which then you have to transfer to another computer. And at the very, very bottom, there's a turtle with an IAR license that has been expired since 1312. So here is my message for everyone.

Use GCC. Certainly with our consulting business, I recommended IAR to clients recently and I won't be doing that again. They could have gone a different route. Beyond that, their product is pretty bad. Yeah, well, a lot of embedded ones are. It's better than it used to be. I know that it pains you to hear that. Code Composers from TI is not

better either. I mean, it's annoying as all get out, but they're annoying in different ways. It always amazes me that I can get so much better code editing and IDE kind of functionality from free programs or $20 programs than I can from these $5,000 programs. And it seems to me that they're just trying to, I don't know what they're trying to do.

Whatever it is that isn't good. You know, if you can't make a good editor or an IDE as part of your code development suite, buy one or integrate somebody else's or take some free software project and put it under a thing and focus on your compiler and focus on your debugger because nobody needs your dumb IDE that doesn't work. Yeah.

Yeah, I really wish that the process for vendors would start talking to people. I mean, I don't love Microsoft Studio, but at least I can refactor it. I used to hate it, but having used IR, it's great. I like Qt Creator. It's very nice. It's free.

It has great code completion and indexing features. And, you know, it's kept up to date because it's an open source project. Some of those things are just really well suited for open source because people are motivated to have their tools work really well. And for something like a big commercial project like iar there's nothing an outside person can do to improve that yeah and iar rant and iar rant um yeah and thus the chances that iar ever sponsors this podcast yeah i'm not really looking for sponsorship too much. Unless you want to sponsor the podcast, in which case,

what's that contact link? Well, I think we're out of time. What? There's so much more to rant about. There's so many more gifts to look for. I mean, really. What are we getting your brother? Some musical thing.

I was amazed. We were in the store today and something has happened. At the Apple store. I was just going We were in the store today and something has happened. At the Apple store. I was just going to say the store to not. The store. As though it's the only store. No. The opposite.

I was trying to anonymize it so it wouldn't sound like an Apple geek. But they have this wall of these. Okay, we were either at the Apple store or Fry's. Never at Fry's. Exactly. You take that back. Okay, so we were at some store that has a fruit logo. Carry on. They have this wall of gadgets now that hook into your, I guess I'll say iPhone instead of mobile device now, but just random stuff.

And it's amazing. They have little tiny blood pressure monitors and pulse oximeters and garage door openers. And what else did they have? Well, they had all of those fitness devices. All the fitness devices. Just tons of stuff. It seems like everything that could possibly be electrified, people are sticking a tiny radio on and connecting it to phones.

And this is just exploding. Well, that's always been the hard part of many invented devices is how do I create a good user interface? How do I create something that looks good with 45 total pixels? And you can't. And so now you stick a Bluetooth low energy chip on there and you get a whole iPhone for

a display. It's awesome. But it's not just that. There's other stuff. I mean. And soon they'll be working together. There's logging that you get out of it. There's Intel.

It can go off to the internet with this data easily. I didn't say the cloud. I said the internet. Because the cloud is annoying. Proactive synergistic cloud. Yes. All right. Go ahead. internet because the cloud is annoying proactive synergistic cloud yes all right go ahead

i it's just i it was it was just an observation that this this whole field seems to be going nuts there's just this year a bunch of stuff has come out and i think it's going to be really interesting i think apple's going to end up having another they're going to bud stores because right now it's it's this little bookshelf that's kind of in the back of their store. But we're getting more gadgets for our gadgets. And it's going to have to be... Gadgets for our gadgets. They're going to have a whole other store of Apple...

I don't think so. I think they'll just keep tearing them down and building the 400,000 square foot ones that they keep putting in like Palo Alto. My goodness, that Palo Alto Mall one, it was like six stores all chained together. It was kind of creepy, actually. And with that, my guest has been Christopher White.

You hear his name pretty often on the show because he is the producer, because he's multi-talented like that. Thank you for joining me. Yes, it was fun to come and rant anytime and listeners thank you for listening links will be in the show notes and send an email via the contact link on embedded.fm maybe tell me what gadget you got for christmas that you like best and one last thought on gifts if all fails, get your friend's flashlights and put

a J.R.R. Tolkien quote in the card. May it be a light to you in dark places when all other lights go out. I'm sure your family won't think you're a nerd or anything.