Karl Uppiano

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Saturday, August 27, 2005

Weather Station Update
I added extreme fault-tolerance to the WxService to compensate for the intrinsic unreliability of the 1-Wire MicroLan. It had been running quite nicely on my laptop, although I had to lift the third wire ground from the battery charger to make it work reliably. When I moved WxService to a desktop server machine (to allow my laptop to go mobile again after about a year of being tied to the 1-Wire network), I was unable to get any decent data through the 1-Wire network using the new machine.
 
My real goal is to figure out what is causing the electrical problems on the net and clean them up, but that could take a very long time, and as I said, 1-Wire networks are intrinsically unreliable and very touchy. It would be nice if you could install the software on a marginal network, and it would "just work". So I decided to beef up the software instead. I now detect any CRC errors in the data an initiate a re-try of the operation -- up to 100 times per sample -- and I also toss out range errors in the data. Of course, on a "clean" network, the operation should be successful on the first try. The result is now a weather server that can tolerate very unreliable communication, and still record high-quality data.
8:32 pm pdt


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Welcome!
This site is dedicated to my interest in engineering. I use it as a place to just put stuff "out there" for anyone who might be interested, as well as a job search tool. This page contains my engineering web log (to your left). Anything that seems timeless enough, or too involved for a log entry may get it's own page as a full-blown article. And, of course, my resume is here for anyone who might be considering hiring me to do something. Email me.

About Me
I have worked as a broadcast engineer, electronics designer (analog and digital) and software developer. I especially enjoy audio engineering, although I've been writing software for the last several years, since that's where the opportunities are in the Pacific Northwest (this is Microsoft country after all). I'm currently working as a Senior Staff Engineer -- Resume at another large independent software vendor in Washington State.

Futurama Web Site
(not my best side)

I majored in mathematics and physics in college. Other interests include music appreciation (baroque, classical and early romantic, ragtime, and 60's and 70's rock & roll), high fidelity audio electronics, meteorology and of course, computing hardware and software. I tend to think a lot like this guy.