16 April, 2008
Team Waikato: Insight from Paul
Jed's note: I forced the team to start coming up with posts. First up is Paul, the hardware engineer of the group, and his tips While working on the hardware/firmware of Gary's e.point, I came across a few problems (Mostly in the early hours of the morning)
- Things generally do not work when they are not plugged in.
- PICs cannot be programmed telepathically.
- 555 timers cannot be programmed at all.
- Making a change in code does not automatically update the PIC's firmware.
- Uploading firmware without first compiling is not useful.
- 230V destroys PICs and most other components.
- 8 bit integers cannot store the value 0xFFFF.
- ACKing ACKs is not a good idea.