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EEVblog #818 - Embedded Electronics With Jack Ganssle
Posted by
EEVblog
on 17 Nov, 2015 11:35
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#1 Reply
Posted by
tec5c
on 17 Nov, 2015 11:41
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Where are his 900 blog videos? His YT channel only has 16 videos on it...
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#2 Reply
Posted by
EEVblog
on 17 Nov, 2015 11:46
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Where are his 900 blog videos?
I said text blog posts.
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#3 Reply
Posted by
tec5c
on 17 Nov, 2015 11:53
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Where are his 900 blog videos?
I said text blog posts.
I had to rewatch that bit. You said "..you think I've done a lot of
videos..how many blog
posts have you done?"
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#4 Reply
Posted by
EEVblog
on 17 Nov, 2015 13:20
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#5 Reply
Posted by
g.lewarne
on 17 Nov, 2015 14:51
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Thoroughly interesting and enjoyable, thankyou Dave and Jack
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#6 Reply
Posted by
German_EE
on 17 Nov, 2015 15:14
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That was fun, thank you gentlemen.
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We had Jack give a lecture where I work.
I was kind of amused by the frankness of the talk when it came to discussion regarding management. These were the people signing his paycheck, yet a lot of the lecture focused negatively on management or espoused ideas that management would find particularly unpalatable.
I'm not in management so it was nice to have Jack advocate for us lowly engineers. (We got our fair share of tough love, too.) It was a very good lecture but I'm left wondering how often Jack gets invited back to the same company.
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#8 Reply
Posted by
langwadt
on 17 Nov, 2015 17:38
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I believe even on the big aircraft carriers they still have some guy go out on deck with a sextant every day and report to
the captain just so they know how to do it if it was ever needed
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We had Jack give a lecture where I work.
I was kind of amused by the frankness of the talk when it came to discussion regarding management. These were the people signing his paycheck, yet a lot of the lecture focused negatively on management or espoused ideas that management would find particularly unpalatable.
I'm not in management so it was nice to have Jack advocate for us lowly engineers. (We got our fair share of tough love, too.) It was a very good lecture but I'm left wondering how often Jack gets invited back to the same company.
Yes, we had Jack here as well. It's an excellent lecture and presentation.
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#10 Reply
Posted by
ECEdesign
on 17 Nov, 2015 18:41
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Excellent interview Dave! I really enjoyed it, as a student there is a lot to learn and I am eager to learn as much as I can and start building stuff. I think its really cool where EE, Chemistry and Physics come together such as in new transistor design or data storage solutions.
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#11 Reply
Posted by
jonwil
on 17 Nov, 2015 22:58
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In regards to the security of cars, I think that putting a cellular connection into a car is a VERY stupid idea and whoever came up with it is an idiot.
Now we have the EU pushing a mandate for cellular connections to enable OnStar type emergency assist technology where a car will automatically notify emergency services in a serious accident (e.g. airbag deployment might trigger it).
What is needed is to go the other way. Don't have data connections (mobile, WiFi or otherwise) in cars. Any wireless interfaces that do need to exist (such as for Bluetooth stuff for phones or for tyre pressure monitoring) should be locked down tight and have no access to the vehicle systems.
The root problem though is that cars are just too complex and have too much computer control. In the olden days it used to be that there was a physical link between the brake pedal and the brakes on the car and that was it. You press the pedal, fluid flows through the brake lines and presses the brake pads and the car slows down or stops. Same with the throttle being a direct link from the accelerator pedal to the engine and its systems. Now we have ABS, traction control, stability control, anti-lock brakes, adaptive cruise control and all these other "drive by wire" technologies where the computers have the ability to control all the cars systems (quite a few cars can even have the steering actuated by the computer these days).
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#12 Reply
Posted by
djacobow
on 18 Nov, 2015 04:53
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Thanks for that, gentlemen. I really enjoyed that interview.
As a mid-career EE (let's call it 20 years in for round numbers), I find both of your opinions on the career prospects for EEs very interesting. I came from semiconductor and processor design world, and frankly, that's not a growth area anymore. I'm newer to the board and system level world, and am not certain whether this is a great space for the next 20. Don't get me wrong -- we can do awesome stuff, and as a hobbyist it's super-exciting, but as a career, it's not clear to me at all. Highly integrated SoCs do so much for you, and when you need to go off-chip, you can usually use a reasonably painless serial interface of some kind to communicate with the next whiz-bang do-it-all part. For the majority of designs that don't involve lots of analog or mega speed, putting a modest board together isn't that big a deal.
That's good and it's bad. A lot of the complexity has moved into SW, and that's fine, but I still love the HW.
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#13 Reply
Posted by
orion242
on 18 Nov, 2015 05:18
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Fantastic video, thanks!
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#14 Reply
Posted by
Dinsdale
on 18 Nov, 2015 07:24
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16:21 (or nearby): What a couple of stoners!
Fantastic interview / performance / production.
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#15 Reply
Posted by
SL4P
on 18 Nov, 2015 09:20
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I loved his reference to 'ethics in engineering'...
A very important concept.
Engineering in its many hats has provided society with an incredible variety of opportunities over the last 60-odd years.
For the most part, the commercial exploitation of these opportunities has been relentlessly unethical for any number of reasons. VW and other recent cases are just the ones that were caught, and received media attention.
Without getting buried in semantics and bureaucracy, which can be as bad as morality management... we as a group must begin spending time examining the use of technology for technology's sake - over a real contribution to process vs a real contribution to shareholder value.
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#16 Reply
Posted by
German_EE
on 18 Nov, 2015 10:17
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Ethics are important. After I got my degree I was approached by two companies, both of whom offered me a reasonably large salary if I would go and work for them. One manufactured missiles and the other built nuclear submarines and both of them received a polite 'no thanks'. I ended up using my Electrical Engineering degree elsewhere (and for less pay) but I got to sleep at nights.
Yes, I KNOW that some of you do defense work but we each get to make the personal decision and I'm happy with the one I made.
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#17 Reply
Posted by
rs20
on 18 Nov, 2015 12:20
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I found the API-around-quantum-computing concept interesting -- I'm not so sure that's a viable approach (the two of you perhaps approaching the same conclusion later in the video too). I mean, a firmware engineer hearing early rumours about FPGAs and with no concept of logic gates might have thought the same thing ("I don't need to understand gates, an API will abstract that away for me"), but oh how wrong they'd be!
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#18 Reply
Posted by
ECEdesign
on 18 Nov, 2015 17:02
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As a mid-career EE (let's call it 20 years in for round numbers), I find both of your opinions on the career prospects for EEs very interesting. I came from semiconductor and processor design world, and frankly, that's not a growth area anymore. I'm newer to the board and system level world, and am not certain whether this is a great space for the next 20. Don't get me wrong -- we can do awesome stuff, and as a hobbyist it's super-exciting, but as a career, it's not clear to me at all. Highly integrated SoCs do so much for you, and when you need to go off-chip, you can usually use a reasonably painless serial interface of some kind to communicate with the next whiz-bang do-it-all part. For the majority of designs that don't involve lots of analog or mega speed, putting a modest board together isn't that big a deal.
That's good and it's bad. A lot of the complexity has moved into SW, and that's fine, but I still love the HW.
So do you think that hardware EEs are a becoming less needed? I have wondered this with things like software defined radio replacing the need for as much hardware. Programming is ok but hardware seems much more interesting for me.
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#19 Reply
Posted by
rsjsouza
on 18 Nov, 2015 17:05
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Excellent episode. Much appreciated, Dave and Jack!
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#20 Reply
Posted by
Aodhan145
on 18 Nov, 2015 17:29
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This is one of your best blogs.
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#21 Reply
Posted by
rx8pilot
on 18 Nov, 2015 17:40
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I actually stopped all work to watch this one. Great content. Great human perspective on engineering. It is really great to see and hear from those that have 'been there, done that' but from a different perceptive and different reasons from another person that has 'been there, done that'.
Thank you for making this one happen, fingers crossed we will be treated with more in the future. One of my most memorable life moments was sitting in the front seat of a DC-3 at an air show talking with a 90+ year old pilot about his experiences in aviation - from before you needed a pilots license to retiring as a 747 captain. The rapid changes, the culture, the technology. This video was like that.
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#22 Reply
Posted by
Fungus
on 18 Nov, 2015 17:57
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Thumbs up for this one
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#23 Reply
Posted by
Jeroen3
on 18 Nov, 2015 18:48
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Nice video. I'm happy to know I'm in the right field of engineering, according to Jack Gannsle at leat.
I followed an Embedded System Design bachelors basically learning both the hardware and the software domain. And indeed, most embedded software at my company was made by Electrical Engineers, you know, those who design flawless analog frontends and high power output stages. Yet, the software is a bit left behind.
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Discussion about embedded electronics was very interesting. Big thanks for Jack Ganssle for showing up during his holidays.
I found sound quality to be borderline annoying and painful to listen - sound levels were very different for Jack and Dave, I found myself constantly adjusting volume. Maybe try different microphones for each person or use more aggressive software sound equalisation next time.