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Real World Embedded Systems. Built a dishwasher that cleans and sets your dinner table. C++, Arduino, Electrical Engineering, and worked with a mechanical engi

Real World Embedded Systems. Built a dishwasher that cleans and sets your dinner table. C++, Arduino, Electrical Engineering, and worked with a mechanical engineer on the design execution. Here is the story, skip to the bottom if you want to see the youtube video- Started this year working on a finance App, this one needed to be perfect. React Native, Laravel PHP mysql. The app is almost finished, and is worthy of a note in its own right. This 6 month project taught me more about programming than the last 9 years. In the process I started automating my Electrical Engineering job in python. Word got out, and I got head hunted by a stranger at work. They were looking for Embedded Systems, I applied, and was denied the position because I didn't have experience. So I needed experience in Embedded Systems, and I've hated doing dishes. This was a problem that could teach me Embedded Systems and grow my Electrical Engineering skills(B.S. was in Chem engineering, M.S. Industrial Engineering). And it did. Since there was nothing to copy from, I would spend 2-3 days researching EVERYTHING there was to know about resistors. Then when I knew which resistor I would need, I'd have to spend 2-3 days on capacitors. Since the HN thread might care about relevant details- Learned everything about stepper motors, ICs, I2Cs, controlling electricity, and voltage. Since I wanted to learn embedded systems, I didn't use delays, instead I used a state system with interrupts. It took ~2 months start to finish. Here is the video of the working prototype- https://youtu.be/Ru_3sNCS-4c?t=457 https://youtu.be/Ru_3sNCS-4c?t=457

aswanson 8y ago
Impressive. And I say that as an experienced embedded guy.
- robertAngst 8y ago
  Thank you! Means a ton to me as I occasionally feel like a pretender(with my chem engineering degree). I have tried applying to Embedded jobs but I cannot get past HR. Guess I'm sticking with Electrical Engineering for a little longer.
  - giancarlostoro 8y ago
    I would send this video to people who work at Embedded focused companies you're interested in working at, especially team leads, find them on LinkedIn and message them, worse that happens is they ignore you, you lose absolutely nothing as a result though! The best way to get past HR is to go around them and straight to the team lead if and when possible. I wouldn't have my current job as a Software Engineer if I had to go through HR first. I would also definitely put this in your resume.
  - aswanson 8y ago
    Funny, I was an ee major who wants to study more chemistry. At any rate, you obviously have the talent to do embedded software. Id advise bypassing HR whenever possible, as the other poster noted, as well as doing more deep dive self study projects. You'll get there in no time.
ultrasounder 8y ago
THaNks for the nice write-up."In the process I started automating my Electrical Engineering job in python" Care to explain more. I am an EE aswell and could some inspirations and ideas to Automate the boring stuff.
- robertAngst 8y ago
  Thanks for the kind words, and I got a bunch of inspiration from Automate The Boring Stuff as well. I'll run down the list of automation I did, hopefully to give you some ideas. Least complex, to complex. >Kill program, launch program, and press OK. We have a program that crashes often. This quickly kills it(which otherwise requires clicking out of error messages). Then reopens and clicks OK which starts a long boot process. >Copy, paste, delay, down. Repeat. A slow system could not handle mass copy paste. This was a solution. >Open PDF file, sign document. Repeat for all docs in a folder. This was nice because after I checked the document in English, I could sign off in all the languages without having to resign manually. >Showing every permutation of a part based on rules. And presenting it in common english rather than &A78&F48 >Screenshot approver page- This got a bit harder. Using keyboard shortcuts + looking for images to jump through an Application to a final screen. Then Screenshot each approver page. The next bullet is a much better solution >Send email/open IM/or open Work Order. We have an excel file that has 1 approver, and I scrapped that into a sqlite database. With that I could create a sample email with tons of relevant information. Outlook had the email, subject, and body filled in. I would edit before sending. This is otherwise a 5-10 minute process. Doing this on 10 Work Orders per day was extremely time consuming. I made a production version that could select Email, Instant Message, or open Work Order. >Everything about a part- Similar scraping, but using an online table instead of Excel. Put it in sqlite, I automated opening up drawings, automated finding different colors and their part numbers, opening up relevant work orders, etc... Some notes on all of this- Sqlite might have been overkill, but these were 100 column and 5000+ row queries. I knew sql, so I used it. Upgrading to Windows 10 killed my production app. I never got it fixed(I was a General Motors sacrifice + I was busy after the upgrade with my job) These were the ones I'd use daily. I would also write scripts for one-off tasks. Hope that gives you some ideas!
  - 8y ago
eezurr 8y ago
Is this an intelligent joke or a dumb business plan? I kept hearing the words "production" and "prototype", but I see half a dozen holes in a real world implementation. Edit: Since this is being downvoted, here are my thoughts. 1.) Plumbing. Pipes are in the walls. Kitchen tables are (usually) closer to the center of a room. (And who will consider open pipes or tubes across a floor or ceiling?). 1b.) Electrical. Same issue. 2.) Space. You are removing a seat from the table, and replacing it with what I imagine will end up being a solid cube... in the middle of a room? Maybe attached to a wall so the table is permanently fixed in a perpendicular position? 3.) Sound. Pretty sure a few people winced when the leaf blower went off. Who's going to want that sound in their home after every meal? 4.) Smell. Im not sure if you've ever opened a dish washer midcycle, but the soap used has a strong smell. I wouldn't want that smell hanging around in the air. Also, the soap will very slowly coat everything in the room (water evaporates with soap in it, wafts around the room, lands on something and dries). 5.) Your sales skills. I don't believe that you believe in your product, and it came across in your delivery. The crowd seemed to be more curious than interested. 6.) Efficiency. The plates are being washed horizontally. Washing dishes by hand uses more water than a dish washer. I think your machine uses more water than both. In regards to time, you're saving people a 30 second trip to the dishwasher. Plus the electricity needed to run a leaf blower.
- vexangel 8y ago
  Jesus
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - zahreeley 8y ago
    Hey Ram
- DanBC 8y ago
  You strongly misunderstand the purpose of HN and the purpose of parent post. This is not a product being sold. It's a neat fun gadget that was designed purely so parent robertAngst could learn stuff. The gadget is obviously a nonsense device, a Heath Robinson contraption, with no other purpose than to learn stuff while it's being built. You may want to read these comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736880#18738076 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736880#18738076
throwawaymath 8y ago
I implore you to start a company if you're at all interested in working on this further. Seriously, please consider productizing it. I would pay thousands of dollars for a polished version of this in my home, especially if it matched the style and decor of my dining room furniture.
- aerovistae 8y ago
  Same.
- omarforgotpwd 8y ago
  People will make fun of us for this No offense intended for this project personally, this is really cool. But what was that joke about how since most founders are young single males, most tech companies make products nobody really needs that are just designed to replace your Mom?
- robertAngst 8y ago
  Thanks for the encouragement! Making big decisions over the next 1 month as I have 3 major projects. My (already popular) website, this dishwasher, and my finance app. Did mention this thread to my co-engineer, I'm pretty sure he is going to make this a reality. The biggest question regarding the dishwasher is- Do we go luxury and expensive since plumbing is already a multi thousand dollar requirement? Or, should we go commodity, and have users attach to their kitchen sink(portable dishwasher style)? How much would you pay for the dishwasher, table, chairs, electrical and plumbing? (full service) I'll have follow up details in ~1 month if you want to follow on Efficiency Is Everything.
  - bsenftner 8y ago
    Go luxury, your clients will want high quality and integration with other IoT systems, leaning to your company growing as a luxury brand. Go do-it-yourself and you'll be piddling with too many small dollar problems to get ahead.
    - godelski 8y ago
thisisananth 8y ago
This is so inspiring. It is also really amazing that you were able to do it in 2 months. How much time did you spend working on this? All the best!
- robertAngst 8y ago
  At most I'd spend ~2-3 hours a night, and we had build days on weekends. The nice part was that it was nearly entirely on me. Didn't have to wait for other people, aside from some shipping. Prototyping is definitely possible! Wish you the best as well!
- johndubchak 8y ago
  Completely agree about the inspiration part. I can imagine the laughter between the two brothers as they watched early staged prototypes fail and water spewed out...very cool.
wj 8y ago
I'd love to hear about the finance app!
- robertAngst 8y ago
  Thank you for the interest, would love to share the idea. I am considering its about 6 months from launching. I'll start with the story- Back when I was 18 and working at a clothing store, I asked my boss if I could be paid in NASDAQs instead of USD. The answer- No. I don't particularly like government currency, because the government prints more every year. However, the market grows at ~7%/yr. I still dreamed of getting paid in Investment. The App- This app tokenizes an S&P500 index fund. This way you can trade something 'better' than USD with friends. I also have an end goal of being able to spend it on a debit card, similar to my Bitcoin debit card Shift. The programming was intense as it was my first time writing a database that did anything interesting. Wrote in double entry book keeping, friends, users etc.. Previous experience in database was merely submitting insert queries. I have a few serious business considerations before I show it to my audience on my website(Efficiency Is Everything). But either way, I have a fully functional database with a front end for Web, Android, and iOS. Worst case, I can use this app for my next project. If you have any thoughts about this idea, I'd love to hear from you.
  - dominotw 8y ago
    I have certain % of my USD salary get automatically invested in s&p index. Would getting paid in NSDQ be setting it to 100% ? also, Wouldn't the exchange rate of NSDQ constantly be fluctuating.
mandeepj 8y ago
kinda similar to a touchless car wash system. if you are looking for an analogy
jacquesm 8y ago
Props to you. And it works! Reminds me of some of Simone Giertz' work. It's an amazing feeling when your software has a real world effect.

aswanson 8y ago

Impressive. And I say that as an experienced embedded guy.

robertAngst 8y ago
Thank you! Means a ton to me as I occasionally feel like a pretender(with my chem engineering degree). I have tried applying to Embedded jobs but I cannot get past HR. Guess I'm sticking with Electrical Engineering for a little longer.
- giancarlostoro 8y ago
  I would send this video to people who work at Embedded focused companies you're interested in working at, especially team leads, find them on LinkedIn and message them, worse that happens is they ignore you, you lose absolutely nothing as a result though! The best way to get past HR is to go around them and straight to the team lead if and when possible. I wouldn't have my current job as a Software Engineer if I had to go through HR first. I would also definitely put this in your resume.
- aswanson 8y ago
  Funny, I was an ee major who wants to study more chemistry. At any rate, you obviously have the talent to do embedded software. Id advise bypassing HR whenever possible, as the other poster noted, as well as doing more deep dive self study projects. You'll get there in no time.

ultrasounder 8y ago

THaNks for the nice write-up."In the process I started automating my Electrical Engineering job in python" Care to explain more. I am an EE aswell and could some inspirations and ideas to Automate the boring stuff.

robertAngst 8y ago
Thanks for the kind words, and I got a bunch of inspiration from Automate The Boring Stuff as well. I'll run down the list of automation I did, hopefully to give you some ideas. Least complex, to complex. >Kill program, launch program, and press OK. We have a program that crashes often. This quickly kills it(which otherwise requires clicking out of error messages). Then reopens and clicks OK which starts a long boot process. >Copy, paste, delay, down. Repeat. A slow system could not handle mass copy paste. This was a solution. >Open PDF file, sign document. Repeat for all docs in a folder. This was nice because after I checked the document in English, I could sign off in all the languages without having to resign manually. >Showing every permutation of a part based on rules. And presenting it in common english rather than &A78&F48 >Screenshot approver page- This got a bit harder. Using keyboard shortcuts + looking for images to jump through an Application to a final screen. Then Screenshot each approver page. The next bullet is a much better solution >Send email/open IM/or open Work Order. We have an excel file that has 1 approver, and I scrapped that into a sqlite database. With that I could create a sample email with tons of relevant information. Outlook had the email, subject, and body filled in. I would edit before sending. This is otherwise a 5-10 minute process. Doing this on 10 Work Orders per day was extremely time consuming. I made a production version that could select Email, Instant Message, or open Work Order. >Everything about a part- Similar scraping, but using an online table instead of Excel. Put it in sqlite, I automated opening up drawings, automated finding different colors and their part numbers, opening up relevant work orders, etc... Some notes on all of this- Sqlite might have been overkill, but these were 100 column and 5000+ row queries. I knew sql, so I used it. Upgrading to Windows 10 killed my production app. I never got it fixed(I was a General Motors sacrifice + I was busy after the upgrade with my job) These were the ones I'd use daily. I would also write scripts for one-off tasks. Hope that gives you some ideas!
- 8y ago

eezurr 8y ago

Is this an intelligent joke or a dumb business plan? I kept hearing the words "production" and "prototype", but I see half a dozen holes in a real world implementation. Edit: Since this is being downvoted, here are my thoughts. 1.) Plumbing. Pipes are in the walls. Kitchen tables are (usually) closer to the center of a room. (And who will consider open pipes or tubes across a floor or ceiling?). 1b.) Electrical. Same issue. 2.) Space. You are removing a seat from the table, and replacing it with what I imagine will end up being a solid cube... in the middle of a room? Maybe attached to a wall so the table is permanently fixed in a perpendicular position? 3.) Sound. Pretty sure a few people winced when the leaf blower went off. Who's going to want that sound in their home after every meal? 4.) Smell. Im not sure if you've ever opened a dish washer midcycle, but the soap used has a strong smell. I wouldn't want that smell hanging around in the air. Also, the soap will very slowly coat everything in the room (water evaporates with soap in it, wafts around the room, lands on something and dries). 5.) Your sales skills. I don't believe that you believe in your product, and it came across in your delivery. The crowd seemed to be more curious than interested. 6.) Efficiency. The plates are being washed horizontally. Washing dishes by hand uses more water than a dish washer. I think your machine uses more water than both. In regards to time, you're saving people a 30 second trip to the dishwasher. Plus the electricity needed to run a leaf blower.

vexangel 8y ago
Jesus
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- zahreeley 8y ago
  Hey Ram
DanBC 8y ago
You strongly misunderstand the purpose of HN and the purpose of parent post. This is not a product being sold. It's a neat fun gadget that was designed purely so parent robertAngst could learn stuff. The gadget is obviously a nonsense device, a Heath Robinson contraption, with no other purpose than to learn stuff while it's being built. You may want to read these comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736880#18738076 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736880#18738076

throwawaymath 8y ago

I implore you to start a company if you're at all interested in working on this further. Seriously, please consider productizing it. I would pay thousands of dollars for a polished version of this in my home, especially if it matched the style and decor of my dining room furniture.

aerovistae 8y ago
Same.
omarforgotpwd 8y ago
People will make fun of us for this No offense intended for this project personally, this is really cool. But what was that joke about how since most founders are young single males, most tech companies make products nobody really needs that are just designed to replace your Mom?
robertAngst 8y ago
Thanks for the encouragement! Making big decisions over the next 1 month as I have 3 major projects. My (already popular) website, this dishwasher, and my finance app. Did mention this thread to my co-engineer, I'm pretty sure he is going to make this a reality. The biggest question regarding the dishwasher is- Do we go luxury and expensive since plumbing is already a multi thousand dollar requirement? Or, should we go commodity, and have users attach to their kitchen sink(portable dishwasher style)? How much would you pay for the dishwasher, table, chairs, electrical and plumbing? (full service) I'll have follow up details in ~1 month if you want to follow on Efficiency Is Everything.
- bsenftner 8y ago
  Go luxury, your clients will want high quality and integration with other IoT systems, leaning to your company growing as a luxury brand. Go do-it-yourself and you'll be piddling with too many small dollar problems to get ahead.
  - godelski 8y ago

thisisananth 8y ago

This is so inspiring. It is also really amazing that you were able to do it in 2 months. How much time did you spend working on this? All the best!

robertAngst 8y ago
At most I'd spend ~2-3 hours a night, and we had build days on weekends. The nice part was that it was nearly entirely on me. Didn't have to wait for other people, aside from some shipping. Prototyping is definitely possible! Wish you the best as well!
johndubchak 8y ago
Completely agree about the inspiration part. I can imagine the laughter between the two brothers as they watched early staged prototypes fail and water spewed out...very cool.

wj 8y ago

I'd love to hear about the finance app!

robertAngst 8y ago
Thank you for the interest, would love to share the idea. I am considering its about 6 months from launching. I'll start with the story- Back when I was 18 and working at a clothing store, I asked my boss if I could be paid in NASDAQs instead of USD. The answer- No. I don't particularly like government currency, because the government prints more every year. However, the market grows at ~7%/yr. I still dreamed of getting paid in Investment. The App- This app tokenizes an S&P500 index fund. This way you can trade something 'better' than USD with friends. I also have an end goal of being able to spend it on a debit card, similar to my Bitcoin debit card Shift. The programming was intense as it was my first time writing a database that did anything interesting. Wrote in double entry book keeping, friends, users etc.. Previous experience in database was merely submitting insert queries. I have a few serious business considerations before I show it to my audience on my website(Efficiency Is Everything). But either way, I have a fully functional database with a front end for Web, Android, and iOS. Worst case, I can use this app for my next project. If you have any thoughts about this idea, I'd love to hear from you.
- dominotw 8y ago
  I have certain % of my USD salary get automatically invested in s&p index. Would getting paid in NSDQ be setting it to 100% ? also, Wouldn't the exchange rate of NSDQ constantly be fluctuating.

mandeepj 8y ago

kinda similar to a touchless car wash system. if you are looking for an analogy

jacquesm 8y ago

Props to you. And it works! Reminds me of some of Simone Giertz' work. It's an amazing feeling when your software has a real world effect.