Getting Ready for ISOBUS Plugfest

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Participants at Plugfest 2013 in Lincoln, NE

On a long and lonesome highway, east of Omaha

Spring Plugfest is next Tuesday-Thursday … 06-08 May. It is moving this year from the east campus at UNL to a downtown hotel; the Plugfest got so big that it needed a different location. Due to the move and resultant availability, Plugfest is also later in the year than in most prior years. Unlike Bob Seger, we do not travel quite as much as a rock band so we generally look forward to travelling to the ISOBUS Plugfests. Since Spring Plugfest is in Lincoln – and has been for several years – we do spend quite a bit of time on highways east (and northeast) of Omaha, and other than Ames and Des Moines they are rather long and lonesome. But a 5-hour drive, or 7-hour drive for our Fargo office, is a rather small price to pay for the benefits provided at the event.

Advantages of Using an Agile Development Process for Embedded Software

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According to Wikipedia, Agile software development is “a group of software development methods based on iterative and incremental development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams.” While there can be some variability among Agile organizations, there are a few important definitions which generally hold true. A Potentially Shippable Increment (PSI) is a 2 month period of time in which the team will commit to delivering a set of features to a customer.

Capturing Requirements as Code with Simulink

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Model based software design simplifies implementation of complex control systemsWhen I was attending classes at Northern Illinois University in pursuit of a Computer Science degree, I enrolled in a class called Software Engineering. The general idea of this class was training in the ability to elicit requirements from someone without a knowledge of how software works or how it should be created. The thinking was that someone with a better understanding of how a system should work would be led into providing the guidelines for the implementation so that the software developer could create their vision. But what if there was a way for that person to directly transfer their ideas into software, leaving the developer free to work with lower levels of implementation and the real nitty-gritty of the development?

Book Report: How the Mighty Fall by Jim Collins

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Photo: © Judex | Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images

I have been a fan of Jim Collins since reading Built to Last while pursing my MBA. Jim Collins and his co-authors have been exploring what makes a great company that can persist over time. I most recently read How the Mighty Fall. In this book Collins discusses how what was viewed as a great company can fall to non-existence, or at a minimum, a shell of their former selves. This book especially was of interest given that I formerly worked at Motorola and Collins discussed some of the key mistakes made while I worked there that led to the fall of Motorola.

Optimizing Code for Development Time

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Another way of optimizing code is to save development time

A while back I made an interesting personal discovery, and I want to share it with everyone in the hopes that it’s as useful to you as it is to me. Hi, my name is Ryan, and I like to develop software in my free time. Mostly, I like developing games.
It all started when I recently looked back over some of the work I did before I went to college. I was actually very impressed with my past work, too impressed. The games I developed before school were really putting my current work to shame. I started to think about why that might be. I figured I was busier now that I have marketable skills and, let’s be honest here, you can never play enough Dwarf Fortress.

2014 Corn and Soybean Planting Season

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A tractor prepares a farm field for planting

The USDA released its 2014 report on prospective planting for the upcoming farming season a little over a week ago. Being a numbers person, I like to dig through these types of reports to see what interesting facts I can find. I will focus on corn and soybeans since I am in Iowa and that is about all we grow around here so those are the crops with which I am most familiar. Plus, those two crops comprise 40% of the total farmed acres in the United States.

Attending EE Live! In San Jose, California

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The EE Live! Conference is on

Upon arrival in San Jose I headed down to baggage claim to retrieve my suitcase that I was forced to check due to just being on a completely full plane. I then headed outside and was struck with what felt like a heat wave after being in the Midwest for one of our coldest winters. Granted it was only around 60°F, but when I left North Dakota it was around 35°F.

Attending EE Live! in San Jose allowed me to attend numerous sessions and learn about many different technologies and ideas…

Day one of the 2014 EELive! Conference

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The EE Live! Conference is on

EELive!, formerly known as DESIGN West, is an annual week-long engineering industry event which includes the embedded systems conference, training sessions, boot camps, postmortems, and a large expo featuring exhibits from vendors across the industry.

It’s April 1 and I’m still cold… So let’s destroy the North Pole!!! Ha Ha Ha!!!!!!

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April 1, 2014. 22ºF (coldºC)

Happy April Fool's Day

Here in Iowa, we’re tired of waiting for spring. This winter was awful, setting records for snowfall and below-zero temperatures. Like Vanilla Ice said “too cold, too cold!” All caused by the Polar Vortex. That’s why at DISTek Integration we are pleased to announce that we are going to destroy the polar vortex by demagnetizing the north pole!

New in Mathworks Simulink 2014A, the Data Dictionary

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The new Simulink Data Dictionary is a key component to MBSD

For software engineers who use Simulink to do Model Based Software Development (MBSD), the ability to manage variables, also known as signals and parameters in Simulink, has always been a challenge. It has been possible but not without shortcomings, especially when dealing with large software systems.

For those not familiar with Simulink, Here is a brief outline of what the past issues have been.

An introduction to ISOBUS Sequence Control – ISO 11783 – Part 14

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Sequence Control as defined in ISO 11783 – part 14 provides the ability for a tractor to record and perform a sequence of actions within either the tractor or its attached implements. The value to the operator is that he can activate a sequence of steps via one button press or action step. Usually, the sequence of steps would occur at the headland of the field. Besides simplifying the actions required of the operator at the headland and allowing the operator to concentrate on positioning the tractor and implement for another pass through the field, sequence control eliminates forgotten steps that can happen near the end of a long day in the field.

Using Google Test to Unit Test C Code

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While the Google Test framework is designed for C++ it can be used to create a framework for C unit testing. Reference the Google Test documentation for more details on the capabilities of Google Test.

The Framework

These framework files are included in any C unit test project.
•A header file to define macros to interface from C++ to C – gtest_c.h
•A header file to provide C interfaces to the Google Test comparison functions – Gtest_helper.h.
•A helper file to interface Google Test comparison function to C – Gtest_helper.cc

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