Related to the Moore's work, I also enjoyed Engineering reminescences[0] as a historical account how people figured out ways to make accurate things in metal, more than a hundred years ago.
When I was doing stepper control on rp2040 I looked into using PIO but the 5 bit counters and 32 instruction limit made it too awkward to use.
What worked better for my needs was dedicating 2nd core for just motion control and bit-banging the step/dir signals- simple to implement and good enough for the modest needs I had (just trapezoidal velocity profile for single axis motion).
On this topic I've been wondering why are the air-air heatpumps significantly cheaper than air-water units?
As far as I could tell, there's not that much of a difference (different heat-exchanger, circulation pump instead of a fan, maybe a three way valve for hot water)- but I have hard time seeing how they contribute to the price difference of several thousand EUR.
There are also quite a few conversion projects (where an air-air unit is converted to air-water), so I'm wondering if it really comes down to just higher demand for air-air?
I found it interesting that CNC machines aimed at precious metal processing have an optional access control system for swarf/dust collection bins- presumably so that the technicians operating the machine don't steal the "waste" material.
Metallurgical microscopes illuminate the sample "from the top side". The actual implementation even goes as far as making sure the illumination happens on the optical axis of the objective (as if the light was emitted from your eyes/camera, reflected from the sample and then seen by your eyes/camera). They are also called reflected light or epi-illumination microscopes.
Biological microscopes, on the other hand illuminate the sample from the back side (which doesn't work for fully opaque objects).
> Might as well use PIO to implement I2C or UART :)
PIO actually came in handy for me when interfacing with an x-ray sensor which had 12 or 14 bits long UART data frame- not many micros have such a flexibility in their UART peripherals.
I built a couple of glasgow devices and used one extensively- it becomes very useful once the IC in question has an interface you can't practically use with a microcontroller.
I used it to capture data from a thermal imaging sensor (extracted from an automotive night vision camera)- a weird ~75MHz data bus[0].
I can't really go into details, but FrontRow wasn't the most bizarre thing Ubiquiti was working on, just the one that got reasonably close before being shelved.
IIRC Access reader isn't the only product the FrontRow R&D cost/stock of parts was tried to be recouped, but at that time I wasn't working there anymore.
This is actually a common problem for test fixtures that involve miniature coaxial connectors (pretty much all of them are rated for few tens of mating cycles): even if the connector on device is used for assembly/repairs and goes through very few mating cycles, the automated test fixture used during manufacture of such a device is expected to last longer.
Most connector vendors have specialized connectors for test fixtures that last much longer (they are also a lot more expensive).
Why are these reasons wrong? I have a similar attitude in my field (UAVs), where many desperately chase the next whizzbang technology, ignoring the boring, old fashioned stuff (workflows, UX, 3rd party addons).
I use a very crude DIY setup for garage doors and yard gate: bought a spare keyfob on aliexpress, took it apart and connected it to wall power supply and ESP relay board running esphome. Works great and will work as long as my garage door and yard gate openers work.
The only drawback is that it's less secure, as it uses RF but I can't be bothered to dig a new cable to gate motor through already paved driveway.
You can also convert the DICOM images to 3D model and print it.
I did it with MRI scan of my head (isolated the brain specifically) and kept it on my desk at work, ready to be handed to whoever came by wanting to pick my brain.
Yes, unfused 10A range would have been my guess, but if device under test doesn't have short-circuit protection, it might as well die during the few tens of milliseconds that the fuse needs to heat up and blow, as well as a user error to be measuring voltage with switch in current measurement position.
Two of (arguably the best) open source RC aircraft flight controllers (ArduPilot and PX4) are using extended Kalman filters in their state estimators (essentially sensor fusion that provides attitude/position estimate):
Hopefully the firmware development won't stall like it was with v4.
Rp2040 is a decent choice for relatively slow speed digital bus multi-tool, but the USB1.1 speeds will be somewhat limiting (IIRC I achieved somewhere around 700-800KB/s of serial data throughput). PIO is also flexible enough for some almost standard-but-nonstandard digital buses (for example, I used it to interface with 12-bit SPI-like interface- not many MCUs support word-widths that are not multiple of 8 for their hardware SPI interfaces).