4 ms·

when you felt like you had power over the machine and today you’re just part of a mainstream movement This is something thats been scratching around in the my

by cbs 15y ago

when you felt like you had power over the machine and today you’re just part of a mainstream movement This is something thats been scratching around in the my brain for a while and has driven me away from software. To me, software used to represent infinite possibilities, this blob of clay that you could sculpt into anything you wanted it to be. These days software is quick to slap your hand away when you get too close to messing with the fiddly bits. I'm a bit more jaded than this poster, but I don't think the Pi will be able to bring the lost world back to us. Tinkering isn't what it used to be in general. Instead of popping down a product and an accompanying RFC that allows anyone to write other software to interacts with it, creators want you in their playground, doing operation they approve or nowhere near the tech at all. They're not just tight-lipped, I even see encryption to keep the tinkerer out. My brother is a snowmobile gearhead. He used to machine a piece of metal that went somewhere in the engine. I don't really pay attention to that stuff to know the full details, but essentially modifying that piece of metal would tune something in the engine. Whatever that piece of metal controlled has now been replaced by a computer chip. It is an awesome idea, with amazing possibilities. He could set up his machine on the dyno and just sit there adjusting variables to tune and get exactly the performance he wants. Iterations between adjusting and testing is infinitely faster because he doesn't need to go do metalwork. But thats not the way it works. He can't change the values on the chip. It has gotten orders of magnitude less work to modify, but he is physically unable to. He can bring his sled to the Bombardier dealership where there, and only there, can he tune the sled. He can't tweak values to find maximum performance. He can choose from Configuration A, Configuration B and Configuration C. This is where software is taking the world my friends. It is why I don't tinker anymore.

bitwize 15y ago
Sounds like the camshaft in a mechanically-timed ignition system. Those went by the wayside with the advent of fuel injection. There's like a whole modder community around custom fuel-injection controllers with reflashable firmware. Serious performance wonks replace the entire board -- CPU, memory, everything except for the output lines -- to the fuel injector with something they can order online. The new board has like a flash memory chip that lets you sit there with a PC and tweak variables until the engine has the performance characteristics you want. I was approached about the feasibility of writing an Android app so these people can do the tweaks with their smartphones. There's still tinkering going on.
- cbs 15y ago
  It could be that, but I'm out of my depth and operating on old information. He moved down to the snowless south years ago, so he probably missed out on whatever modding came to that world.
- joezydeco 15y ago
  But that's the point cbs made. The learning curve has become a bit too steep with today's modern SoC systems. You can't just wire a transistor to a parallel port and call PRINT LPT(0),128 or whatever the hell the call was. You need to write a program to call a userspace driver, or modify your kernel, or whatever else you need to enable in the platform.c file to enable the port to raise the GPIO to blah blah blah I quit. So now his brother, if he wants to tweak a setting on his ECM, needs to understand how to hack into the module without bricking it. Then he needs the correct tools to create the new engine profile and burn it in. There's probably a hardware dongle or two involved. Does that make sense?
ctdonath 15y ago
I must disagree. A big factor in avoidance of tinkering is the amount of money that goes into a tinkerable machine: once configured, one may not want to risk having to start from scratch because it's one of very few machines that works. BUT... for $25 I can devote an entire computer to one hobby use, screw it up as I see fit, and not worry about whether I'll be able to do bill-paying, read HN, or whatever else. Got a few ideas to kick around? A mere hundred bucks gets four of these little things, and I can keep each devoted to a different project and in varying state of disrepair, and still not worry about whether it will impact more serious tasks. I'm watching my toddlers learn to play with iOS devices, wanting to let them explore yet concerned that they'll scramble or delete stuff (which they have). Better if I could say "this RPi is yours, go nuts" and guide them from playing Angry Birds (or some such attractor) into writing software, with nary a fuss about my beloved iPad. I started out with home computers being unused for "real" purposes, leaving them available for tinkering; now that they're an integral part of our culture, an accidental fork-bomb or rm -rf /. can really cause problems, and there isn't the money yet to shell out several hundred dollars per kid per tinkering inclination ... but with RPi, gimmie two (one in pink, one in camo green) and let 'em at it.

by cbs 15y ago

bitwize 15y ago

Sounds like the camshaft in a mechanically-timed ignition system. Those went by the wayside with the advent of fuel injection. There's like a whole modder community around custom fuel-injection controllers with reflashable firmware. Serious performance wonks replace the entire board -- CPU, memory, everything except for the output lines -- to the fuel injector with something they can order online. The new board has like a flash memory chip that lets you sit there with a PC and tweak variables until the engine has the performance characteristics you want. I was approached about the feasibility of writing an Android app so these people can do the tweaks with their smartphones. There's still tinkering going on.

cbs 15y ago
It could be that, but I'm out of my depth and operating on old information. He moved down to the snowless south years ago, so he probably missed out on whatever modding came to that world.
joezydeco 15y ago
But that's the point cbs made. The learning curve has become a bit too steep with today's modern SoC systems. You can't just wire a transistor to a parallel port and call PRINT LPT(0),128 or whatever the hell the call was. You need to write a program to call a userspace driver, or modify your kernel, or whatever else you need to enable in the platform.c file to enable the port to raise the GPIO to blah blah blah I quit. So now his brother, if he wants to tweak a setting on his ECM, needs to understand how to hack into the module without bricking it. Then he needs the correct tools to create the new engine profile and burn it in. There's probably a hardware dongle or two involved. Does that make sense?

ctdonath 15y ago

I must disagree. A big factor in avoidance of tinkering is the amount of money that goes into a tinkerable machine: once configured, one may not want to risk having to start from scratch because it's one of very few machines that works. BUT... for $25 I can devote an entire computer to one hobby use, screw it up as I see fit, and not worry about whether I'll be able to do bill-paying, read HN, or whatever else. Got a few ideas to kick around? A mere hundred bucks gets four of these little things, and I can keep each devoted to a different project and in varying state of disrepair, and still not worry about whether it will impact more serious tasks. I'm watching my toddlers learn to play with iOS devices, wanting to let them explore yet concerned that they'll scramble or delete stuff (which they have). Better if I could say "this RPi is yours, go nuts" and guide them from playing Angry Birds (or some such attractor) into writing software, with nary a fuss about my beloved iPad. I started out with home computers being unused for "real" purposes, leaving them available for tinkering; now that they're an integral part of our culture, an accidental fork-bomb or rm -rf /. can really cause problems, and there isn't the money yet to shell out several hundred dollars per kid per tinkering inclination ... but with RPi, gimmie two (one in pink, one in camo green) and let 'em at it.