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From: Walter Banks on 14 Sep 2006 13:48 A Japanese friend of mine was visiting my home a few years ago and pointed out that he had written the software in the microwave oven in our kitchen. Then pointed out it was the first time that he had heard the North American "meeeep" in a production unit. For what its worth there was about 60K of code in that particular microwave oven. Before someone says it should have been written in assembler, I should point out that most of the code was country specific user interfaces, user safety and indirect measurements of the oven contents so food would not have their molecules changed on the outside and raw on the inside. Low power microwave ovens can get away with simple timers. w.. Joerg wrote: > Yes! And it produces a nice sounding "bing" instead of an ugly "meeeep" > from some stressed out piezo.
From: Walter Banks on 14 Sep 2006 13:52 Battery management, the ultimate disposable product. I once bought a mouse whose packaging had a flashing light. I took it apart it had a small processor probably powerful enough to build a mouse with. w.. Joerg wrote: > Hello Walter, > > > The Microchip PIC based flashing LED inviting customers to tear off > > a discount coupon is written in C > > > > You mean the things that just constantly flash in the stores contain a > uC? Ouch! > > -- > Regards, Joerg > > http://www.analogconsultants.com
From: Joerg on 14 Sep 2006 14:04 Hello Walter, > A Japanese friend of mine was visiting my home a few years ago and pointed out that he had written the software in the microwave oven in our kitchen. Then pointed out it was the first time that he had heard the North American "meeeep" in a production > unit. > > For what its worth there was about 60K of code in that particular microwave oven. Before someone says it should have been written in assembler, I should point out that most of the code was country specific user interfaces, user safety and indirect > measurements of the oven contents so food would not have their molecules changed on the outside and raw on the inside. > > Low power microwave ovens can get away with simple timers. > I still miss our first one with a mechanical "bing" timer. It was high power and the way to thaw things was to set it to a few minutes, hit start and occasionally the door button which interrupted it. Then start again. New ovens work quite well except that they haven't figured out how to make the clock survive a few seconds of outage. No rocket science but... Other stuff like the answering machine is another story. You cannot reset the message light unless you let it trundle all the way back. Very annoying, a classic case of a design that has not been properly validated by the user. In medical electronics we could not afford to forego that crucial test phase. -- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com
From: steve on 14 Sep 2006 14:45 Joerg wrote: > Hello Steve, > True. And I must confess that the microwave clock is the one I most > frequenctly look at. Because life centers around the kitchen here just > like in the good old days. > too many power outages (few seconds) where I live to depend on line powered clocks, the first feature I look for in any appliance is the ability to completely disable the digital clock, it's not a common feature, I usually read through the manual at the store
From: Joerg on 14 Sep 2006 15:33
Hello Steve, > Joerg wrote: > >>Hello Steve, > > >>True. And I must confess that the microwave clock is the one I most >>frequenctly look at. Because life centers around the kitchen here just >>like in the good old days. >> > > too many power outages (few seconds) where I live to depend on line > powered clocks, the first feature I look for in any appliance is the > ability to completely disable the digital clock, it's not a common > feature, I usually read through the manual at the store > Sometimes they can be buffered by an electrolytic. If the display runs off a separate circuit that can yield tens of seconds (while carefully avoiding latch-up events, of course). Not running the clock means an annoying 12:00 blinky-blink on many appliances. For old fax machines the disabling of stupid features such as beeping all the time was easy. Open the top, snip, done :-) -- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com |