{"id":378,"date":"2009-03-20T12:54:57","date_gmt":"2009-03-20T12:54:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/driverentry.com.br\/en\/2009\/03\/20\/110-cpu\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T12:04:47","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T12:04:47","slug":"110-cpu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/driverentry.com.br\/en\/2009\/03\/20\/110-cpu\/","title":{"rendered":"110% CPU"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I did not want to post something starting with whining about being out of time, that I had to pick up my aunt at the airport and so on, but I can see there is no way around it. I even started writing a few posts to answer readers’ questions, but then they start taking up time when I have to put together an example, make a figure, and so on. In the end, I already have two posts started that were abandoned during their conception for lack of time. I have been getting some e-mails like “Are you still alive out there?”<\/span> from some readers. Things are really complicated for me this year, but I am not going to stop posting. I just need to find a little time to sit down. I have already tried writing posts while having lunch or taking a shower, but it did not work out very well. In fact I managed to write a post while sleeping, but when I woke up, for some reason, the post was not published. Note: “Complain to the blogger people”<\/span>. But anyway, for lack of enough time to write something that helps you develop something, in this post I will just report on what I have been doing. Maybe you will need something similar and want to ask me for some help or reference.<\/p>\n

The Final Year…<\/h3>\n

It may seem hard to believe, but this is my final year of my Computer Engineering degree, and because it is the final year, three aggravating factors show up to compete for my time (as if I had any), namely: Dependencies, the Graduation Project (TG) and the Internship.<\/p>\n

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The Dependencies…<\/h3>\n

For those who do not remember or do not know what dependencies are, they are subjects that you did not manage to pass in the year you studied them, but you still move up a year anyway, except that you will have to study these subjects separately, whether on a Saturday or at a time you have free (it even makes you want to laugh…). Anyway, I reached the sixth year with three subjects to take in my free time. So, part of my Saturday has been and will be dedicated to this activity. To take a dependency, the university needs to group students with the same subject to form a class. Two of the three dependencies have already formed classes, but I still need to pray that the third class forms. That way I will be able to enroll. Otherwise, I will have to come to the university for another year to study the remaining subject. Knock on wood… (knock, knock, knock) it will all work out.<\/p>\n

The Internship…<\/h3>\n

In parallel with this adventure of studying three additional subjects and still having to pass everything, I will have to do the internship. The internship is one of the subjects I need to complete in order to graduate. I will have to complete 192 hours of internship to pass this subject. Fortunately, my course can have the internship with an emphasis either on software or on hardware, since Computer Engineering develops both specialties in the student.<\/p>\n

But Fernando, if I remember well, you work at IBM and your internship could come through without you having to move a single muscle. Someone just has to sign off on your internship and that is it.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Yeah, I think I have serious tendencies toward wanting to get myself tangled up. It is like my friend Heldai told me once: “Oh, Mr. Fernando, you are like me. You cannot see a rope without already wanting to wrap it around your neck”<\/span>. The fact is that I would immensely like to develop my weaker side, and knowing that I have already been playing at making blue screens for a reasonable while, my goal would be to get an internship in hardware. But how would that be possible if I already work at a software company during the week?<\/p>\n

Well, a year ago, I gave a course on developing drivers for Windows at a company that designs hardware. A company like that is not found on just any corner. Commodity<\/a> is a company that develops a piece of hardware that does a USB interface, whose firmware is written in C and runs on a Freescale<\/a> chip, and as if that were not enough, the hardware also does audio compression using an Altera<\/a> chip with an FPGA<\/a>. Anyone who understands electronics knows that this would be an excellent place to do an internship and learn a lot. The problem is that I could not do the internship on Sunday, which is my only available day, since I have classes on Saturdays and work all week. Since I cannot do the internship on Sunday, then I can work on Sunday. Another great advantage of doing Home Office<\/a>. The solution was to offer to do the internship that would be fulfilled only on Mondays. These days would be compensated by working on Sunday. I asked permission from my managers in Brazil and the United States and that was it. Knowing that an intern who shows up once a week hinders more than helps, I eased my entry into the company by requesting an unpaid internship. Since they already knew me, it was easy.<\/p>\n

Even though I do not receive a single cent and still pay for my gas and meals, I am sure I made the right choice. My internship started two weeks ago and I have been in contact with quite interesting things. To speed up the accumulation of hours, I will work at the internship on every day of the week while I am on vacation from IBM. Putting it all together, my internship will end at the beginning of August.<\/p>\n

The Graduation Project…<\/h3>\n

Well, I already did not have Saturdays and now I no longer have Sundays. I just need to find a way to finish off any fragment of free time I can find. For that, the university blessed us with the graduation project. We will have to put together a project that uses the specialties we saw during the computer engineering course. As a personal goal, no matter what the project does, there will have to be a driver. After all, it is the only thing I know how to do properly. I cannot miss this opportunity. Our project has the goal of stabilizing a model helicopter in flight.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

Oh, right, and where does the driver come into the story again?<\/span><\/p>\n

To sum up a lot (but really a lot), we will take readings from a gyroscope<\/a> mounted on a model helicopter<\/a> from a distance using the ZigBee<\/a> protocol. Such readings will be performed by a development kit<\/a> with a microcontroller<\/a> that will interface via USB with a computer. The driver will forward the motion readings to a tool called LabView<\/a>. In response to the perception of the movements, the system will react by sending commands via USB to the board. The same board will interface with the model helicopter’s radio control in order to correct its course.<\/p>\n

In general terms, that is what we will do. I could write a lot about how we are doing this. We started working on the project last year because we already knew it would not be easy at all. I took advantage of one of my trips to the United States to buy the necessary sensors and kits. The important thing is that the project is going well so far, but we are still going to take a beating. I am writing the microcontroller’s firmware<\/a> and obviously the driver that will interface with it, but our main challenge will be to close the control loop and make the model helicopter stay still in the air.<\/p>\n

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Still? Are you not ashamed to say that you are doing all this to make a model helicopter stay still?<\/span><\/p>\n

Our golden dream is to define two distinct points and make the complete route with takeoff, travel and landing, but anyone who is a model-helicopter enthusiast like me knows that making a model helicopter stay still is an excellent first step. Our advisor has already told us that our project is the most challenging of the engineering fields and that if we did only the remote-reading part it would already be a good graduation project.<\/p>\n

I would write much more about the project, but that will be for later. This post is already getting long for yet another Off-Topic<\/span>. My thanks to the municipal government of S\u00c3\u00a3o Paulo for having created the municipal vehicle rotation<\/a>, and consequently, for having brought me to college two hours early. That gave me the opportunity to start this post. It is now 1:45 in the morning and I still have to review and publish this post.<\/p>\n

I will try to write more. Maybe my adventures with the TG or with the internship will bring me interesting topics, short enough to publish here.<\/p>\n

See you around. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I did not want to post something starting with whining about being out of time, that I had to pick up my aunt at the airport and so on, but I can see there is no way around it. I even started writing a few posts to answer readers’ questions, but then they start taking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/driverentry.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/driverentry.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/driverentry.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/driverentry.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/driverentry.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/driverentry.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":380,"href":"https:\/\/driverentry.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions\/380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/driverentry.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/driverentry.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/driverentry.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}