Alexey Guseynov's blog

At least I've managed to catch sneaky bug in light control firmware. When brightness was set to low bulb periodically flushed. I has been hunting it for last two weeks. Actually, there were several bugs, that's because I'm not used to writing hard realtime applications. For example only yesterday I've understood that main loop shouldn't work as fast as it can, it should work as evenly as it can and it's start must be synchronized with alternation of current in power network. And today I've found out that zero cross detector triggers at different moment of time and additional software averaging is needed. If I was better at electronics I would probably made a better one and I wouldn't need complex zero cross prediction code. A week ago I've understood that instead of synchronizing two timers I can stop using built in arduino functions and use one timer.
But I'm quite glad at overall. Microcontroller programming is fun.
update: Some time after I've found timer interrupts and had to rewrite firmware in proper way.

Recently I've started creating my own lighting control system and I had to read through a lot of papers about dimmers. Unfortunately it occurred that information form advertising text from shop sited does not match information from electronics engineers forums and articles written by specialists. As far as amount of adverts is much greater it is not easy to find out the truth.

I've calculated statistics of road accidents for yesterday. Because of morning snow number of accidents was much higher, than at previous Fridays. On graph you can see number of accidents in Moscow area after moderators have cleaned them. Morning peak is two times bigger than usual. Today situation is normal again. May be roads have been cleaned, may be drivers became more accurate.

It can be said, that road accident module has passed stress test. Car crashes all over the Moscow. I should count them.

Все оказалось не так страшно. Ровно за неделю я смог разобраться со схематикой, купить все нужное оборудование, нужные детали и сделал работающую печатную плату. Правда, как всегда, первый блин комом: я нарисовал дорожки со стороны элементов, а надо было с обратной. Пожтому тиристор и MOC3052 у меня одиноко торчат не с той стороны платы.
Кроме того, я сегодня получил arduino mega 2560 и успел немного поиграться с ней. Пока доволен.

Sunday's evening an idea to control bulbs via computer visited me. It occurs that it is not an extra hard problem. About two days of reading datasheets and forums and main concepts have became clear. Some more time was spent to build prototype... And hour ago a bulb have obeyed me and started to switch on and off by commands from a keyboard.
Now I need a microcontroller so as to control brightness...

It is November today but still no snow. Skiers start having withdrawal pains. I think that these pains are hard or skiers are very severe. There are many things you can find on a beach of a lake but I really didn't expect to find ski track.

Вчера изрядная часть фанатов uriah heep получила неприятный подарочек: люди пришли, а концерт уже час как идет. Нам с Настей относительно повезло, мы приехали на полчаса раньше назначенного времени и большую часть концерта видели.

If something is written on a fence it is necessarily a bad word.

Жил был на белом свете мужик. И была у этого мужика страсть одна: Татьяны Александровны. Долго-ли коротко, родила ему Татьяна Александровна сына. Но мало ему этого было, не унималась страсть. И нашел он тогда другую Татьяну Александровну с другою фамилией и родил от нее второго сына. Так и стали они поживать - мужик ставший отцом одному сыну и матерью другому и Татьяны Александровны: мать одного сына и отец второго.
Основано на реальном содержимом школьной базы данных "Параграф".