Projects

Continuing from the last project (7-segment display device driver), I wanted to expand the project to use hardware interrupts. So, this project was aimed towards implementing a software approach to serial communication that is able to handle both transmission and receival (TX/RX).

Beginning my journey into embedded systems, I wanted to know how to make device drivers for Linux. I started with the Linux Device Drivers 3rd edition (available on LWN.net). Although the book is a little outdated, I highly recommend reading it as it has useful information about the concepts of the kernel, and various kernel level APIs & subsystems that are still used today.

Like receiving updates for your mobile application or upgrading your favorite text editor to the latest version, embedded devices may also need to update their firmware from time to time. The reason could be to receive a new feature, patch a vulnerability within the current firmware, and more. However, unlike the more powerful devices such as your ordinary desktops with multiple CPU cores and gigabytes of memory, microcontrollers commonly used in embedded systems are quite limited, oftentimes single-core with few kilobytes of memory. So, in order to receive updates in a timely manner, it needs to be efficient with the constrained resources while performing as expected.

One of my favorite classic game is Sudoku. Sudoku is a 9-by-9 square grid game where the player has to fill in each cell from 1 to 9 in a way that there isn’t a duplicate in the row, column, and the 3-by-3 box. For the past following weeks, I’ve been addicted to Sudoku. The rules are very simple, but it is often times quite challenging and it’s a great way to feel like a genius with minimum effort.

More than an year ago, I started my military service here at South Korea. My duty is to assist with the social welfare services provided to the people that live in the administrative jurisdiction of the station that I’m assigned to. Out of many tasks, one of the most difficult task is delivering the monthly town news. Every 25th, my coworkers and I divide 6000 papers into 24 groups to drop them at 24 locations.

Few days ago, I needed a second monitor. I decided to use the LG TV that has been in the house since the day my family moved in. However, the remote was missing and the touch button was broken. After giving it some thought, I decided to make a remote control myself. I think it would have been simpler if I just fixed the buttons, but we make dumb choices 🤷.

Recently, I started learning about cross-platform applications such as Electron, Ionic and what caught my attention was PWA. Also known as Progressive Web Application, like all other cross-platform applications, the app can be distributed to various platforms through a single source. However, I would say the main difference to Electron or Ionic would be that it is a “web” application so the platforms would be various web browsers such as Firefox, Chrome, etc.

Background

Intro This post is about a chatbot project that I worked on during my first internship.

Arduino is a simple and easy-to-use development board which is perfect for hobbyists like me. As a small project using the Arduino Uno, I wanted to make a small device that can read temperature, humidity, and light intensity so that I can get a more accurate result than the weather report or a particular area.

University Discourse is a web application that my team and I made for CS 307: Software Engineering. In simple words, University Discourse is RateMyProfessor but for courses and it it more focused on socializing. It is very similar to Reddit and its subreddit pages for schools where students often post questions about specific courses and share thoughts on it. However, Reddit isn’t really a platform specialized for such discussions so that is where University Discourse comes in. On our app, students can ask questions related to the course of interest, get feedback on their schedule, leave ratings on courses, and also share documents (that are allowed to share) to help each other.