Other What Makes Your Life, Meh?

I was waiting for something from Royal Mail that requires a signature. Nobody was home yesterday, so it was put up for redelivery today. With my wife being home, I gave her very specific instructions. We have a parcel box, and 9 times out of 10 it’s fine for items to be delivered there, but I was very clear: it needs to be signed for, so please answer the door.

Then I get these messages:

“I think it’s been delivered, I’ll check in a minute.”
“It’s not interesting, babe, but go ahead if you want to open it.”
“No, I mean I’ll go check the parcel box for it.”
“Did they not ring the doorbell?”
“Well yeah, but I thought it would go in the box so I left it because I was eating.”
“No… this is literally the conversation we had where I said you’d need to answer the door to sign for it else it would be taken away again."
“Oh.”

To make matters worse, I set it to go to the post office for collection now, thinking it might be there tomorrow. Nope — it’ll be there Monday!!

So instead of staying home (like I planned) on Monday, I’ve got to go and collect the ****er myself rather than have it delivered on the one day I actually happen to be home.

Annoyingly, if this situation were the other way around, all hell would break loose.

 

Moved here from “awesome” because it fits better.

Man, this thing is a flippin’ nightmare…

The driver Waveshare provided for this IMU is absolute horseplop… I managed to cobble together some sense out of their half-baked mess, but still really struggled to get everything I want working reliably in the way it should be able to work…

So I had a look at the example code for one of Waveshare’s newer ESP32-S3 devices that implements this IMU. They’re not even providing their own driver for that device, they just use SensorLib. But SensorLib is C++ intended for use in the Arduino ecosystem, and I’m using C with the PicoSDK…

I know even less about C++ than I do about C, and the Arduino IDE suuuuuuucks…



Ok, fine. I can see that you can program my dev board with the Arduino IDE, and I can also see that you can orchestrate an “Arduino” project & environment using an extension for VSCode called PlatformIO. I can also see that someone is integrating support for the RP2350 in PlatformIO, instead of just RP2040. It means re-starting, but I should have plenty of examples to go on.

Wind forward to today and I’ve got the device initialising, including the LCD, and I’ve got it spitting accelerometer values out over serial. I’ll want LVGL graphics as well, but that can wait until later - the point is to get the motion features working with a driver that’s actually implemented properly.

Now… time for some data capture and analysis.

Excellent. I have some threshold parameters for the various motion engines the IMU supports.

The IMU has three “engines” for “motion detection”: any motion, movement over a threshold; no motion, device is idle; and significant motion, any motion events sustained over a (configurable) period of time. And they all fire interrupts to the RP2350. The “significant motion” engine needs “no motion” to be enabled because it uses that signal to determine that the motion has stopped and the “sigmotion” interrupt flag should be cleared. The problem with that is that “no motion” fires interrupts constantly when the device is at rest. I could just implement an algorithm that ignores those interrupts unless I absolutely need to handle them, but it’s a lot of extra unnecessary processing.

So. Let’s test my motion parameters. Oh… I’m getting motion events I don’t want, I’m seeing “significant motion” events and I only want “any motion”.

The “enable motion detection” function in SensorLib does not allow you to enable or disable individual motion engines, it’s all three or nothing. I know how to enable/disable those engines on a physical level, you set or clear specific bits in a specific register. But SensorLib doesn’t expose functions to modify registers, they’re “private” to that library.

FFS…



This is a solvable problem. I can submit a pull request to SensorLib which adds functions to enable the various different motion engines instead of just “turn ‘em all on”.

But it’s yet more flipping roadblocks and obstacles in just getting this damn thing to support what the data sheet says it supports…

I haven’t even tested the “tap/double tap” detection feature yet, let alone get LVGL working…

 

Hit a pot hole this afternoon, which given the fact this is one of those days I set off at 3AM for the working week, was a fitting end to the day. However, not in the ruining thread (yet) because...

For a start, the tyre didn't go straight to dead - admittedly within 30 seconds it had gone, but luckily I knew there was a convenient small layby to pull into. To me, that implied everything else was okay. Also, having just had my service a fortnight ago, I had Volvo cover. And I have a spare wheel! Although I've not yet changed a wheel before. Anyway, I called up Volvo and while waiting for help to arrive, decided to get the kit out and potentially change my first wheel ever...

And just at that moment, a couple of chaps in hi vis jackets and a Mini Cooper pulled over, having hit the same pothole. Fortunately for me, one of them was a car mechanic, and proceeded to get his full on proper jack and tool kit out and got to work on my car! Took 15-20 minutes owing to lots of little weird obstacles, but was ready to go. I cancelled the callout and said I'd hang around until they sorted themselves out as I would've felt wrong just fecking off without knowing they made it away too. So, Tyler and Kai, thank you for being absolute goddamn legends who turned up at exactly the right time! Just as I was about to get in after the nice chaps set off, a lady then pulled in behind, having hit the pot hole too. Fortunately for her, she seemed to get away with it - we watched the tyres for a couple of minutes, but they weren't going down.

Also, this Friday, I'm actually getting new front tyres, so aside from lost time, I'm not currently impacted financially. And I'll be driving about 150 miles to Stoke on Wednesday at no more than 50mph. Might have to do that after 7pm so I don't get in the way of rush hour traffic. At least my fuel efficiency should be good!

However, it was a big bump, and I don't know if the wheel has been significantly buckled or not - suppose I'll find out on Friday. Also, I don't know how much the suspension's life has been shortened. So plenty of opportunity for all this to end up ruining things. Time will tell...

EDIT: Today (i.e. the next day) I decided to leave work early to avoid rush hour on that road, and there was a poor lady broken on the side of the road who'd clearly hit the same pot hole.

EDIT EDIT: And this morning I saw that the lady had had to leave her car there overnight, and the pothole has had the sh!ttest patch job I've ever seen.

EDIT EDIT EDIT: Upgrades to ruining thread .

 

Amazon don't seem to want any moneys today.

https://downdetector.co.uk/status/amazon/

 

They let me spend about £100 just fine yesterday…

I do try to spend much less with Amazon these days, but it’s very hard sometimes. Where else can I have all this available and delivered next day: a 100W portable soldering iron, 8x tips for the iron, a USB4 240W 80Gbps Type-C cable, and 5x1L bottles of isopropyl alcohol…

Of course the true price of… being able to do that… is: punishing working conditions for delivery drivers that border on indentured servitude, market & pricing manipulation, poor quality products with faked reviews being tagged with accolades like “best seller” or “recommended”, and vastly reduced competition. And probably a whole host of other things that my “Saturday morning brain” isn’t getting to right now.

 

Had a lovely weekend away.

Why meh? Well, we're now sat waiting for the AA.

 

You need to drink less booze, then you won't need help from AA...

 

Back on the road yay

 

My first ever drive failure, the Netgear ReadyNAS has held up throughout; yank the old drive, put a new one in and it has automatically begun rebuilding the array. I even flawlessly watched a film off the Plex server last night.

 

Well as I say this all got sorted.

AA within the hour and it was just the battery. No jump leads so took it on the chin for a replacement there and then which was fine as we had 100+ miles and various stops to do.

Fun learned thing - AA guys gizmo said the battery in my OH's car was the original.

It's a 10 plate so that battery has been straining its little juice out for over 15 years

Couldn't believe it had struggled on for so long.

Hopefully this now sorts out the odd niggle my OH has since divulged it's been suffering. Occasional awkward starts, passenger side window not going back up and her ensuing panic until it did and so on

Could have changed it sooner for cheaper but hey ho luckily we can afford that sort of surprise necessity.

I think the original battery is going in the AA museum

 

Try our search engine

Does it have ads?

No

AI ****ery?

No

So it just gives me what I searched for?

...you're not gonna believe this... but also no

 

Someone has been eating my spare kilt!

 

Oh horrors! The moth people have been at work. I lost a suit jacket that way a few years ago.
This is your backup kilt though....
Chase the little beggars out of your wardrobe with your sgian dubh

 

Moths? Nah, it'll be them haggis critters.

They go mental if they see a kilt south of the border so they munch on it to take back to their burrows in Scotland for nesting.

 

What tartan is that?

 

'tis the Thomson dress tartan, fortunately my other kilt has much brighter colouring and hasn't been partially devoured.

 

Please throw that away at a tip in Newport...

 

I volunteer to personally hand place it.

 

Washed the car on Thursday. I know, I know, crappy time of the year to do it, but it had been accumulating filth since October, and it really bothered me every time I got in the car.

Gleaming.

The very next day after driving to work:



Meh, I knew that would happen… The roads I take to work are pretty filthy, running alongside a rubbish dump, slag heap, metals recycling furnace, and sewage treatment plant, and it was raining at the time…

This morning when I glance out of my office window:





FFS… One big splat is not so bad, I can easily deal with that, but they’ve peppered my car with turd specks… I’m gonna have to wash the damn thing again… ****ing seagulls, man, FFS…!

 

That's when happen when you store your chippies on the roof.