In a previous blog entry, I provided a book report on The Fred Factor by Mark Sanborn. I discussed how people can make a positive difference in how they go about their lives, turning something ordinary into the extraordinary. I also shared Sanborn’s acronym FRED to explain how to develop “Freds”.
Roughly three years ago I inherited a small farm. Having grown up on this land I always remembered the people we rented it to rotating corn to beans year after year, but this year the farmer did something I was unfamiliar with. He planted corn around the wetland area and soybeans in the dryer areas.
Commenting code is one topic, that until recently, I hadn’t known was such a widely debated issue in the programming world. It was something taught to me from day one in Computer Science at the University of Northern Iowa. Recently, my workplace posted a simple question on an open-discussion white board. “Should we comment our code?” The plethora of anonymous comments was certainly enough to pique my interest. According to the discussion, hardly anyone could agree on this question.
It certainly can be scary looking at a long bug list with a short deadline, but identifying and fixing software bugs can be manageable with a few strategies.
A second set of eyes.
Sometimes a very simple software error can be staring at us, but we miss it because we have been staring back so long. An example I faced was a section of code appeared to be setting a value used elsewhere in the code, but that value was never changing. When I finally had someone look at that code for me, the first question was “Isn’t that a pointer?”
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| photo: arduino.cc | photo: ni.com |
The Arduino and chipKIT microcontrollers are popular for students and hobbyists alike. They provide various interfaces that can be used to interface with a myriad of devices and sensors. These interfaces include, but are not limited to, digital I/O, analog input, I2C and SPI communication, and PWM. Microcontrollers have been used for many varying projects from basic data logging to home/environment automation and robotics.
The Fall ISOBUS Plugfest has wrapped up here in Senlis, France. This Plugfest set a new record for attendees and participants. The final tally was over 250 attendees, 40 different test stations, 137 participants, 82 implements, and over 2300 test slots. It was quite a busy event, so kudos to the organizing committee for working through all those logistics. The slots were shortened to 20 minutes each which is probably a bit too short, but there is ongoing conversation to increase that again … possibly using some “creative” means. And with so many people attending, the building facilities are also an important consideration which seems to have worked out quite well.
Recently my team was given the opportunity to completely redo a particularly messy and troublesome piece of legacy C code, and as a team we decided to give MBSD a try. We had tried a few simple models before, all of which turned out to be more complicated than had we written the C code ourselves. But this time we were determined to do it right: we allocated plenty of time, received one-on-one training from the local MBSD guru, and reviewed the original requirements to ensure they met the needs of the system. Finally after exhausting all of the time, continually pestering the guru with questions and modifying the requirements several times, we succeeded in having a model based software design that actually worked the first time we tested it on the vehicle. It was a valuable experience overall and helped illustrate the drawbacks and benefits of MBSD over the typical C development.
This year’s theme focused on “Engineering Leadership – Changing, Guiding, Influencing”. I had the opportunity to sit in on several technical sessions that included some of the top panelists from across the country. The list included Deere & Company, Case New Holland, Caterpillar, Inc., Eaton and a variety of university professors.
One of the common topics I came across was how to address the increasingly complex and volatile landscape of vehicle products and control systems. How today’s engineers, across all organizations, need to develop strong adaptive thinking abilities and problem solving skills for their customers.
For one specific set of students, a brand new school supply will be getting added to the mix. Students in the Ag Engineering program at Iowa State will be getting the opportunity to experiment with ISOBUS using DISTek’s recently released VIRTEC software libraries. There will be a couple different usage scenarios for VIRTEC at ISU. The first scenario will be for graduate research projects. The graduate students and the school work with a wide range of Ag equipment manufacturers developing cutting edge technologies, and connecting these technologies to ISOBUS is very beneficial. The second scenario will be for classroom lab exercises. These students will get a chance to do some real hands-on ISOBUS application development in a lab setting rather than simply learning about it in lectures and readings.
Recently I was provided the opportunity to work with someone who utilized Simulink to create plant models for our customer. My experience and knowledge about Simulink and modeling was non-existent. I have heard of Simulink and seen some models, but for the most part, I am Simulink illiterate. This made my initial conversations with my co-worker an endless session of learning. It was all new to me. Add into the equation that his goal was to create a plant model; I was even more overwhelmed – seemed like I was drinking from a fire hose.
If you have lots of data or find yourself doing repetitive tasks with small sets of data, then you might want to consider NI DIAdem software to navigate, view, analyze, and report your data.
If you managed to slog your way into the 2014 farm Progress Show this year you were in for a treat. Although Mother Nature decided to test our resolve and tenacity, she picked on the wrong group. Farmers aren’t scared of a little mud and dirt.
