GPS Units = Show road steepness?

On Friday, March 15, 2019 at 9:28:23 AM UTC-4, wrote:

Also Zen's idea that you can make enough of ANY bicycle component
to qualify it for custom fabrication is WAY over the top.

You have absolutely no qualifications to be able to make that comment, so Unless you've had direct conversations with the senior design staff at Garmin you might want to keep your ****ing mouth shut. yeah yeah, we know, you sent them an email and they told you they were using devices from the Mirochip DSP family, right?

I wonder if he knows what it cost to manufacture custom chips that will
be outdated next year because someone gives their's another feature.

A custom ASIC doesn't go obsolete until the manufacturer determines it no longer meets the requirements, ****ferbrains.

Speed averaging for display isn't the world's easiest problem and
they are doing that in a continuous update.

Your stupidity know no bounds. Average speed is calculated by distance over time. That's two numbers that are constantly updated, and a simple math function that constantly updates a third. That number is converted to a display map. This is difficult? Maybe for you.


Since the altitude problem requires two inputs minimum to an ADC
there is no possibility of making a custom chip.

wow....no, calculating altitude doesn't require two DC inputs. A barometeric pressure sensor has one analog output, ****ferbrains. Even calculation through GPS is done by a serial data transfer from the GPS receiver to the microcomputer, unless of course you can give us a link to a GPS receiver that has an integrated shift register designed to mate with a data bus (yeah that would make all kinds of sense for a device that processes data rates as slow as GPS....derp)

And he doesn't seem to know what a gate array is or what it does.

It's pretty clear, I know way more about it than you do. I've written VHDL for FPGAs, and not just once. I've been on a team that developed segmentation and reassembly chipsets for sychronous optical networks. The combinatorial logic device that was part of the chipset was a 240 pin Altera chip.

On Fri, 15 Mar 2019 10:26:13 +0100, Rolf Mantel
wrote:

Am 15.03.2019 um 03:27 schrieb John B. Slocomb:
Hey! Somebody got an employee of the month award, complete with $10
Starbucks gift card for saving that $0.05.
A chap I worked with had worked for Ford Motorcar Co. and had gotten a
cash award for showing how they could install 2 fewer sheet metal
screws in the firewall of a Ford motorcar.

The cost of those 2 screws is not their material value but the time of
the worker who has to screw them in.

Or a combination of the two :-)

But the point was that the elimination of the screws reduced costs
sufficiently that the company saw fit to made a cash award for the
suggestion.

--
Cheers,
John B.

On Fri, 15 Mar 2019 06:25:23 -0700 (PDT), Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On Friday, March 15, 2019 at 5:26:16 AM UTC-4, Rolf Mantel wrote:
Am 15.03.2019 um 03:27 schrieb John B. Slocomb:
Hey! Somebody got an employee of the month award, complete with $10
Starbucks gift card for saving that $0.05.
A chap I worked with had worked for Ford Motorcar Co. and had gotten a
cash award for showing how they could install 2 fewer sheet metal
screws in the firewall of a Ford motorcar.

The cost of those 2 screws is not their material value but the time of
the worker who has to screw them in.

And/or the slight slowdown of production time required
to put them in.

- Frank Krygowski

A guy I worked with on the FB-111 test program got an award for
installing two mounting bolts from the other direction as with the
bolt heads out it took for ever to remove and replace the object while
with the nut end out it took only minutes.

As an aside, that airplane was a whole bundle of horrors as far as
maintenance went.

--
Cheers,
John B.

On Fri, 15 Mar 2019 08:55:36 -0500, AMuzi wrote:

On 3/14/2019 9:27 PM, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Fri, 15 Mar 2019 01:58:37 +0000 (UTC), Ralph Barone
wrote:

Radey Shouman wrote:
Zen Cycle writes:

I find this aggravating. I know this probably isn't a legit RTC, but
the clock in my car loses a minute per month (no, I'm not
exaggerating), yet I have a ten year old MP3 player I use when working
out that I've never had to rest the clock (I paid $40 for it in
2009). My car is a 2010 element, and it's had this problem since it
was new. I understand from reviewing several internet forums that this
is sort of a known issue, and the dealer said all hondas from that
period that _don't_ have factory navigation systems have this
problem. I understand that saving a few pennies per car means a lot on
the overall cost of the product, but really?

Somebody saved $0.05 on parts. Not always a win.


Hey! Somebody got an employee of the month award, complete with $10
Starbucks gift card for saving that $0.05.

A chap I worked with had worked for Ford Motorcar Co. and had gotten a
cash award for showing how they could install 2 fewer sheet metal
screws in the firewall of a Ford motorcar.

--
Cheers,
John B.



In my 1965 all the dash controls are diecast zinc. On a 1966
they're chromoplastic. I always imagined that somebody
retired on that change.

That was probably either the design department's innovation or perhaps
engineering :-)

--
Cheers,
John B.

Radey Shouman wrote:
John B. Slocomb writes:

On Fri, 15 Mar 2019 01:58:37 +0000 (UTC), Ralph Barone
wrote:

Radey Shouman wrote:
Zen Cycle writes:

I find this aggravating. I know this probably isn't a legit RTC, but
the clock in my car loses a minute per month (no, I'm not
exaggerating), yet I have a ten year old MP3 player I use when working
out that I've never had to rest the clock (I paid $40 for it in
2009). My car is a 2010 element, and it's had this problem since it
was new. I understand from reviewing several internet forums that this
is sort of a known issue, and the dealer said all hondas from that
period that _don't_ have factory navigation systems have this
problem. I understand that saving a few pennies per car means a lot on
the overall cost of the product, but really?

Somebody saved $0.05 on parts. Not always a win.


Hey! Somebody got an employee of the month award, complete with $10
Starbucks gift card for saving that $0.05.

A chap I worked with had worked for Ford Motorcar Co. and had gotten a
cash award for showing how they could install 2 fewer sheet metal
screws in the firewall of a Ford motorcar.

Years ago, while an undergrad, I worked summers at a US govt
installation that shall remain nameless. They had an employee
suggestion program, which offered cash prizes.

This was during the second 1970s oil price shock, and saving energy was
big. One of my cow-orkers submitted a suggestion to remove all the
olive drab paint from the windows of the building where he worked, so
God's free sunlight could reduce the need for electricity. He got a
cash prize.

Several months later, our hero submitted a suggestion noting that
classified material was handled in the building, and someone without the
appropriate clearance might look in through the windows. He got a cash
prize.


Except for all the money wasted, there's a certain beauty to that story.
That guy played the system like a fine violin.

On 16/3/19 12:28 am, wrote:
On Thursday, March 14, 2019 at 9:01:22 PM UTC-7, James wrote:
On 15/3/19 1:47 pm, Mike A Schwab wrote:


Well, actually the reed switch is effectively a relay. Takes
1/100 of a second to close in the gap between the sides of the
magnet. Computer could be sampling much more often. And a faster
speed doesn't give the reed switch enough time to close.


Why does it need to be "sampling"?

The switch may be connected to a digital input that generates an
interrupt upon a rising (or falling) edge, for example. The ISR
could then read and reset a timer/counter since the last rising
edge was detected. A counter can keep track of distance
travelled.


At 60 m/s (in excess of 200km/h), with a nominal 2m circumference,
the wheel spins 30 revs per second. A 100 uS timer period would
capture the speed of 1 rev with better than 1% accuracy at this
speed.

So long as it could count to 100,000 (not impossible for a 4 bit
computer to handle roll over), it could also measure speed at
1km/h.

The screen could be updated with the latest distance or filtered
speed every second or when it has changed.

-- JS

James - If, as Frank says, they are using a 4 bit uP, that counter is
a whole lot easier said than done. As I pointed out the counter has
to be at least 20 bits and more likely 24. Small, cheap uP are that
way for a reason - they have very little support circuitry. Dealing
with large numbers is not their strong point.

I've written code for this sort of thing in the past.

--
JS

Ralph Barone writes:

Radey Shouman wrote:
John B. Slocomb writes:

On Fri, 15 Mar 2019 01:58:37 +0000 (UTC), Ralph Barone
wrote:

Radey Shouman wrote:
Zen Cycle writes:

I find this aggravating. I know this probably isn't a legit RTC, but
the clock in my car loses a minute per month (no, I'm not
exaggerating), yet I have a ten year old MP3 player I use when working
out that I've never had to rest the clock (I paid $40 for it in
2009). My car is a 2010 element, and it's had this problem since it
was new. I understand from reviewing several internet forums that this
is sort of a known issue, and the dealer said all hondas from that
period that _don't_ have factory navigation systems have this
problem. I understand that saving a few pennies per car means a lot on
the overall cost of the product, but really?

Somebody saved $0.05 on parts. Not always a win.


Hey! Somebody got an employee of the month award, complete with $10
Starbucks gift card for saving that $0.05.

A chap I worked with had worked for Ford Motorcar Co. and had gotten a
cash award for showing how they could install 2 fewer sheet metal
screws in the firewall of a Ford motorcar.

Years ago, while an undergrad, I worked summers at a US govt
installation that shall remain nameless. They had an employee
suggestion program, which offered cash prizes.

This was during the second 1970s oil price shock, and saving energy was
big. One of my cow-orkers submitted a suggestion to remove all the
olive drab paint from the windows of the building where he worked, so
God's free sunlight could reduce the need for electricity. He got a
cash prize.

Several months later, our hero submitted a suggestion noting that
classified material was handled in the building, and someone without the
appropriate clearance might look in through the windows. He got a cash
prize.


Except for all the money wasted, there's a certain beauty to that story.
That guy played the system like a fine violin.

He had his admirers, or I never would have heard it.

Zen Cycle writes:

On Thursday, March 14, 2019 at 8:38:54 PM UTC-4, Radey Shouman wrote:
Zen Cycle writes:

keyboard. IF I had to write those whole 10K+ lines of code from
scratch.....ugh.

I surmised that you enjoyed arguing about it because you continue to
do so.

To be clear, I haven't been arguing with you. For an example of my
argument style, refer to my exchanges with tom. Rather, I enjoy the
conceptual discussions. If you started on code structure, you'd put me
to sleep.

Hard times indeed, when an exchange of insults is sold for the price of
an argument. A proper argument requires, well, arguments: propositions
supported by logic, based on articulated facts. Animation is good, but
rancor and invective are not required, nor seizing offense as though it
were higher ground. I think Monty Python did a bit on that.

I have seen firsthand, in those I love, how a little brain injury can
rob a person of any ability you can name, and some you can't. To walk,
to speak, to remember your childhood, to remember whether you had
breakfast, to plan ahead, to hold one's tongue, all can be lost. Some
say "there but for the grace of God go I". No matter how you say it, it
is well to recognize that there is no natural law that prevents such a
thing from happening to any of us. I try to remember that before I
post.

A "draft" feature in the newsreader helps.

On Friday, March 15, 2019 at 9:42:29 AM UTC-7, David Scheidt wrote:
Theodore Heise wrote:
:On Thu, 14 Mar 2019 06:09:43 -0700 (PDT),
: Zen Cycle wrote:
: On Wednesday, March 13, 2019 at 5:36:37 PM UTC-4, Radey Shouman wrote:

: The thing about an RTC that is likely to make users unhappy is
: having to adjust the clock time.
:
: I find this aggravating. I know this probably isn't a legit
: RTC, but the clock in my car loses a minute per month (no, I'm
: not exaggerating)

:Seems I've read somewhere (or heard) that accuracy of some car
:clocks can be affected if the voltage isn't close enough to the
:expected 12 volts. I can't find much on the web (in a quick
:search) to support that possibility, so it may well be wrong.

Quartz clocks slow down when voltage drops too low. I would expect a
car clock to be voltage regulated enoughto not matter, as automobile
voltages range from 11 to 15 volts, in normal operation. Stability
under temperature variation is a big issue with quartz clocks, I
wonder if that's the short cut they toook. It's one of the reasons
mecanical clocks (with an elctric motor to wind them....) lasted until
the 80s in cars.

--
sig 99

On Friday, March 15, 2019 at 9:42:29 AM UTC-7, David Scheidt wrote:
Theodore Heise wrote:
:On Thu, 14 Mar 2019 06:09:43 -0700 (PDT),
: Zen Cycle wrote:
: On Wednesday, March 13, 2019 at 5:36:37 PM UTC-4, Radey Shouman wrote:

: The thing about an RTC that is likely to make users unhappy is
: having to adjust the clock time.
:
: I find this aggravating. I know this probably isn't a legit
: RTC, but the clock in my car loses a minute per month (no, I'm
: not exaggerating)

:Seems I've read somewhere (or heard) that accuracy of some car
:clocks can be affected if the voltage isn't close enough to the
:expected 12 volts. I can't find much on the web (in a quick
:search) to support that possibility, so it may well be wrong.

Quartz clocks slow down when voltage drops too low. I would expect a
car clock to be voltage regulated enoughto not matter, as automobile
voltages range from 11 to 15 volts, in normal operation. Stability
under temperature variation is a big issue with quartz clocks, I
wonder if that's the short cut they toook. It's one of the reasons
mecanical clocks (with an elctric motor to wind them....) lasted until
the 80s in cars.

--
sig 99

Well after 40 years of being an EE I can honestly say that I've never seen such a thing. On the other hand I don't know how these previous "quartz" clocks were designed and constructed so I would be working from a point of zero understanding of what happened.