The only one drawback in my view which the printer had was the lack of wireless printing. The limited usb wire mandated that the printer and the laptop be in close proximity and it led to unncessary clobbering in the room near the desk and also added inconvenience of moving the laptop/printer here and there. If the printer would have been wireless it would have had been soo much more easier! And thus began the hunt to resolve this need..
For home use, HP LaserJet M1005 MPF Printer cum Scanner is the best option in terms of value for money. In our case, the printer was gifted to my Dad by my elder brother around 4 years back . The rationale for gifting was based on my Dad preference of reading from hard copies rather than from the screen. And to true that, my father has loved the gift and used it to the fullest. Infact till date, he has iterated n number of times that it is the best gift which my brother has given over the years :P. With that history in picture, this printer has had a very important role in our lives.
The only one drawback in my view which the printer had was the lack of wireless printing. The limited usb wire mandated that the printer and the laptop be in close proximity and it led to unncessary clobbering in the room near the desk and also added inconvenience of moving the laptop/printer here and there. If the printer would have been wireless it would have had been soo much more easier! And thus began the hunt to resolve this need..
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In my undergrad studies, I never worked with designing or working with discrete MOSFET circuits.
When it came to CMOS, it was always simulation based study. As a result, it never gave the physical feel of MOSFETS. In my quest to satiate my anxiety to design with discrete mosfets, a few years ago, I came across following course material from the Worcester Polytechnic, MA : ECE4902 - Analog IC Design - Joh McNeil. What was different in this course was that, it was accompanied with labs, wherein a CMOS op-amp is designed/analysed using discrete components. Well not exactly discrete MOSFETS, but rather using a MOSFET array chip - CD4007, which is also called as hex inverter. It consists of 3 pmos-nmos pairs within a DIP package and thus usable on breadboard. In excitement, I went ahead and ordered a couple of CD4007 IC's, from a little know website "onlinetps". Everyone in my family at home, i.e. my mom-dad and myself use a android phone and share the wifi connection.
Infact when at home, my parents make the most of the internet , kind of their time pass post retirement . Whatsapping and Youtubing are among the two popular apps used. Inevitably everyone in the family is in some common group like Relatives or Friends. And in these groups, all of us get the same video/ multimedia messages, which infact amount to quite some bit. The other aspect,is watching video lectures. Generally I watch them online. And most of the time the whole lecture/video buffers while I might finished watching only 20% of it. Next time when I again continue, again the same scenario happens. Similarly when Mom watches stitching tutorials, she refers to them 2-3 times(maybe on different days) or more on the youtube app and everytime it buffers from start. The final aspect is sharing of data with family members. When I forward some video to the parents via Whatsapp, inspite of all of us being on the same Wifi network, data downloads on their mobiles via the whatsapp server consuming b/w whereas it is not required at all. Underlying Concept : SSH server on linux box used for remote access from windows. Steps: 1. start ssh service on Linux on virtual box: sudo /etc/init.d/ssh start 2. Configure port fowarding on the virtual box router/ network settings to redirect requests on a particular port to your linux box. Example: requests on 5050 or xxxx port on windows would be forwarded to port 22(ssh) on linux client. 3. On windows download "WinScp". It lets you securely copy /transfer files over ssh protocol. Open the client and ssh to 127.0.0.1 on port 5050. We are done! Now you can transfer files from Linux to Windows and also vice-versa :) Hope you find it useful. Lets revisit python first. Well, since a long time I have been stuck in importing modules in python. Everytime I download some library, I cd into that directory and then need to load it. As the paths to these downloads are long in length ,most of the times I copy into the Downloads directory in/home and then work on it.But that too is a bit cumbersome at times.The issues becomes gross when I start working on windows with the same.The paths are soo long. After overcoming the "Aaalas", I googled a bit to see what is a better solution of working on modules located in non-working directory and the Google always comes to my rescue :) [Really, the day I get rich, I will definitely make a generous donation to these guys :)] So here it goes: Now coming to the experimenting time:
Aim: 1/ Explore the expeyes in Windows using Ipython notebook 2/ Generate a sine wave using expeyes , sample it at a particular frequency, generate its dft using numpy fft lib. 3/ Understand the relation between sample number in the DFT spectrum to actual physical frequency it represents. My Expeyes Junior :) A guy in our team , a Mtech from IIT, sent out a mail today that it is his last day in company and he is leaving the company for pursuing Ph.d. Frankly two days ago I and other colleagues had no clue regarding his plan.Well, I thought, maybe his thirst for knowledge is too much to be satisfied in a MNC job. Well, if you are not satisfied, you won't be happy.And if you are satisfied, you won't progress.Also from a recent quora answer , I learned that it is very important to actively pursuing your goals. Enough of this blabbering shit and let me come to the topic now.
So lets just see the efforts we did / need to do to achieve my long lived goal of a simple wireless link.(I know its re-inventing the wheel, but anyways I want to do it ) Let us define the wireless link : a) A transmitter b) A receiver c) Carrier frequency d) Type of modulation The purpose of this wireless link is simply act a a one-way wireless switch. It should be built be readily available components and be simple to make . Let us focus what experience we have in each of these. a) Transmitter - Circuit which is able to generate a carrier frequency and able to modulate it in accordance with the message we want to send. We just want to transmit on/off .At the bare minimum what can we have? Just the carrier ? Carrier present is ON, not present is OFF. Well, what is a carrier? Some sort of high frequency waveform. Does it need to be a sine wave? Yes. Square wave will sputter all over the spectrum. Anyways if we have a oscillator and antenna it should suffice. And we have already built a couple of fm transmitters. From our experience, we have some experience making the coil.And from the net we had also some experience making a frequency detector which works well as a cap and inductance measurement system provided we have some precise reference cap. This helps us in knowing that indeed our oscillator is functional and at the right frequency. Also we had built a simple rf power meter(which is just a rectifying diode pumping into a cap across which is a led.)This one also helped in kowing that the oscillator was functional. The problem is that, I did not consolidate the efforts into pcb - breadboard to pcb is must so that I can use it later too. b) Receiver- We don't have much experience here. The only simple one which I had ever built was the one available on swagatam majumdars webpage. It was pretty stupid. Just an non-inverting opamp configuration with an antenna and output connected to an led. If any mobile was in vicinity and a call was placed, the led would blink. I did get most parts for the sommerset single transistor radio.but never actually built it. So there is some efforts required to be put in this area. c)Carrier frequency- We tried only the FM transmitters i.e 89-108MHz . Seen some easy AM tramitters working in few 1000khz range just by toggling a pin on the microcontroller. I have recently read that there are many regulations regarding the freq band actually available for free use. One such band of interest is lower ISM band.In this for freq <30MHz, the radio wave can be reflected off the ionosphere and infact via multiple reflections from ocean and ionosphere, it might be possible to communicate with someone across the world.This is called DX-ing. d)Type of modulation- We we have done just freq that.Infact it was a VCO and the v was dependent of the output from condenser mike.I think it worked this way. *PS- we have used ready made rf tx-rx for robotics projects,which were 433MHz , PSK and ASK based. This year I took up a new experience , a mentoring one. I might be youngest among the mentor team but I have really enjoyed it this far. Well , it so happened that , one day in pantry that , I encountered Mr.Som (MD) and he just questioned whether I was participating as a mentor for Anveshan. At first I said, I haven't thought about it and that I felt I might be a bit young to mentor.He immediately added that they infact are planning to take young mentors in their team - called "junior mentor" and asked me to apply.He further added that it would be a great experience to understand designing at a system level - a discourse from usual chip level design I am involved in. He also emphasized that when he generally meets customers, they are always interested in system solutions as a whole.To speak out - he meant - "Only systems sell".
Being inspired by him, I immediately went ahead and sent out the mail to the organizing mentor committee.In the process, I got selected as junior mentor.There are a total of 10 mentor teams and I was put into mentor team 10 with 2 of the ADI Engineer bigges - one from ISDG and one from MEMS. Over the last few weeks, we as a team have had great experience evaluating the 10 out of the 250+ proposals alloted to us. I feel lucky to have Mr.S.G and Mr.S.K as my team mates. They are cool guys with years of experience and made evaluations so much interesting , putting in so many different views in the process. Its really fun to be on other side of the table, acting as a pure critic.Well, when the prize money is inn lakhs, we better make sure that deserving ones get the opportunity. Just to brief about what Anveshan is- its a system design competition in which students have to use atleast 2 ADI components. Anveshan means Innovation, something which is laid utmost importance and value in our company.The intention of Anveshan is two fold.-Enabling the selected students with necessary funds to enable them to achieve their project alongwith the guidance of industry professionals and also in a way let the students explore the vast catalogue of High End Signal Processing solutions ADI has to offer and popularize it among the Indian students community. There are 3 phases of competition: 1/ Inital Screening -> Here students send their ideas alongwith block level representation of the system , in which they chose probable chips from our portfolio which suits their need. 2/ Design Phase -> Here the students are given out some cash(I forgot the exact amount but I remember it was more than sufficient), to buy components and start off with designing the prototype. They will be guided by their college mentor as well as one of the Anveshan mentor teams, to help them in design and technical help.They have a period of 5 months to get ready with the prototype.Within the process, it is planned to have 1-2 student meets in person to review the progress. 3/ Show Time -> Well on ITD(India Technology Day - ADI), students get a chance to show off their prototypes at corporate level.They will get a chance to interact with other industry professionals.And infact , on this day, CTO's,VP's of various divisions from various ADI sites world over are generally invited as it is a exhibition. On the basis of inputs from the visitors and judges, the winner is chosen and gets the grand prize of around lakh+ , to take his project to a higher level. Enough said about the competition, I just wanted to share something which we saw in most of the submissions. Well,there is a new trend among the students it seems - Medical applications and Robotics.I will detail the submissions latter once the top 25 announcement is done next week. But there were a few things which we felt were added "just for the sake of it" in many of the submissions.Apart from their solution to main idea, they are unnecessarily complicating it by putting in unnecessary addons .Few of these were: 1/ Trying to use Camera for applications which don't demand them 2/ Trying to make everything wireless, when its going to be handheld most of the time. 3/ Android app or web based access for anything and everything. 4/ Making robots which can do just anything and everything.They are agnostic to the complexity involved in implementation but still its good that they can come up with the exact requirements for such a solution. Anyways, I don't judge them.Its tough to come up with an idea.We as such feel that even though solutions may be already existing, any additional improvement done to it should be appreciated and encouraged.But we had some metrics to judge, one of which we were concerned of was being able to give a demo.Some of medical applications are pretty hard to be a demo product.Some of the robotics one too. But we haven't just let them down with the limitation, we encourage them to come up with mathematical models in this case, which can infact be used by people latter in research too, where inputs might be difficult to get. So, if we feel the idea is good and thought through ,we have been generous in grading. Well, just like a participant, I too am waiting eagerly for the results.The ones forwarded by us are going to be scrutinized by the oldies and the final 25 list will be out next week. All the best to all the participants!! Hope we make Anveshan 2014, a enjoyable learning experience for all of us!!! Link to Anveshan: #Anveshan2014 http://www.analog.com/en/content/anveshan_fellowship_2012/fca.html As usual, self introspecting has helped me in times when I feel lost. And browsing through my website, makes me realign to what I wanted to do. Well, the answer to my restlessness is simple. If I analyse my rewarding times, they have mostly been related to solving some issue which "I" was facing. I had never hoped or made it targeting that it might prove to be useful later by others. All the restlessness too right now which I am feeling are due to the internal want to develop something better and simple , but the deadline and lack of motivation and need seem to be a major fallback here. But anyways, the solution is rather than running away or rather doing it the already done way, just because there is no necessity does not seem a good solution to me. And all this restlessness is not only work related but also day-to-day activities related. And I rather prefer to put openly the latter part over here.The frustration needs to be expelled somewhere, and I feel this is the right place rather than sharing and irrating others. 1. Inability to take out the Honda activita (scooter) from the parking space to main road: Well , we park our vehicle alongwith the landlords at his parking space.As protection, it has this sliding vertical rails kind of door, similiar to the ones found in the older lifts. Not the botton of the railing creates a pretty vertical hump.I show it in the figure below: Above is a side-view image.A bit exaggerated and simplfied :P Considering my physical fitness/built as of now, still the task for getting the scooter to main road is a bit risky. The risk is firstly, to get the scooter off that vertical bump, you need to get it into some momentum.As soon as the scooter's back wheel comes behind, it starts to get a pull from gravitation across the incline and I need to now resist the scooter from falling to the main road by manouvering properly applying the brakes. For me both the parts are equally hard:P For the first part , a simple incline might work.But it should just a small piece of movable incline.If its fixed, it will not be possile to close the sliding vertical rails. For the latter part I don't know what to do :P. 2. The bell knob on my cycle is broken. The bell is kind of new type -non coventional type.having a small metal dome and rubber knob attached to a spring.When the knob is bent and left , it strikes the metal and makes a sound. Niow the issue is that the knob has been lost. 3... I will continue in next post..Its related to the embedded Atmel board I have, which has issues powering up..I will take its picture and post.
Well , today I complete 1.5 yrs working at ADI. Thoroughly enjoyed the journey till now.There have been ups and downs.The tough times and the rewarding times.There have been appreciations and there have been criticisms.
I still vividly remember this time of the year 2013.It was a time when I had to make a choice between SilabTech, Tata Motors and Analog Devices. Silabtech- an Analog Design engineer profile, Tata Motors- an embedded system engineer and Analog Devices - an IC design Engineer(Digital). Well, thinking of the comparatively good pay when compared to Silabtech and better than a managerial job at Tata Motors, I went for ADI.There were other circumstantial reasons too as my brother had left for an MS and my Dad had just retired, I felt going for a stable MNC would be better than SilabTech. Well, I remember that orientation week with other new joinees latter in mid-August where I had clearly stated to our then Engineering Karthik S of if it was possible for me to transfer to the Analog Design team at ADI, to which he had told it should be possible on basis of vacancy after 2 years. I also remember telling our project manager S.PK regarding the same of telling him that my interests are of doing and learning analog design.I also remember the meet with the DSP lead A.B and telling him my interests in software defined radio and of pursuing a PhD. Even though people said a yes-yes and boosted my confidence then, I do understand that in a company after investing 2 + yrs in a particular division, they wouldn't see much value in something shifting from digital to analog design.And Infact I now feel like really getting into the groove of the core work of my team.I have enjoying , coding debugging system verilog, verilog digital systems and C and providing post silicon debug help for ATE guys and the app guys.I feel proud and it gives a sense of contribution and achievement.In fact it gives immense joy of seeing your chip after it comes from fab and when it is finally released - BF70X I always have been passionate rather wanting to learn of radio waves- those magical invisible waves which carry information across miles.And infact my interests eventually during my final year engineering culminated towards SDR. I did try to read up some material over the year - even out of curiosity bought a USB TV tuner which could be operated as SDR to receive FM and other spectrums. The way SDR worked- especially how can you process and filter digital data amazed me.And this propelled me to somehow learn about Digital Signal Processing.I did try taking up DSP course on coursera - not once, twice but thrice, out of which it was only the last time that I could actually comprehend something out of the course, though it couldn't continue more than 3 weeks.Infact the most propelling factor for me to understanding this time was finding out time over a long weekend and learning comprehensions based coding via a course coding the matrix- which too couldn't last for more than 3 weeks. I feel really sad that I couldn't stick to it and also the Elektor articles which I was following.It all ended haphazardly due to changing priorities at work.I learnt good deal of things at work though, different coding aspects, design aspects and good discussions with the designer U.K. But all this has really put me in a dillusion - rather into a deep introspection......... I like SDR just for the sake of it..I have no intent /focus behind what will I do or how will it help me if I learn SDR? The work I am currenltly doing has absolutely no relation with it.But I still like it? why?? Its for an hobby.. A time consuming, mentally challenging and costly one.. It won't get me money.. But might give me moments of happiness which I right now have no one to share with.Even during my work, there are so many things which keep popping in my mind. Maybe I could try this- that.. But most of the time, I don't try it out initially and latter on it turns out to be the only way out :P. The main issue has been focus/Priorities. What I want to do ahead? I have no clue whatsoever? But I do know that whatever I do should get me more money or a better life. Money which is definitely more than 10% increment a year and definitely in proportion to the efforts I have put in. The focus at work is different and that what my hobby is. They currently don't have any intersection and both are equally time consuming. The only fear I have is that , it may happen that I even loose interest out of SDR in the coming 6 months. I don't have an aim right now in life, which is the cause of all this restlessness in me. Sometimes I wish I should have too followed the crowd by going for an MS.Because atleast it pays twice as much more here in India and too well abroad. I have this craze to become famous and wealthy and other fantasies. I need to take some deep mental rest, rethink and realign. Things have been good but I personally feel, the way I am moving, I might reach good heights here but it might take 10's of years which can be attained in 5 yrs or so if I get better opportunities and nuturing. I am not sure. I need some my time. Some good guidance. Someone who understands me.. |
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April 2019
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