Last weekend I picked up one of the new A10 Fusion chip Retina display 9.7" iPads with Apple Pencil support. I was able to get the Apple academic discount ~ educators and students can purchase this iPad starting at $299 (US) and an Apple Pencil for $89 (US). I also picked up a Logitech Slim Folio Bluetooth keyboard and a Hermit Shell pencil case.
I've been doing a lot of sample problem video and audio recordings this semester for an AC electronics course. The example videos are best described as applied mathematics problem solutions - I write and talk through the problems while recording and post them on the web for students to access. Up until last week these recordings were being made using a 10 year old Tablet PC. The Tablet PC worked but the process was a little clunky - Apple adding Pencil support was my initial justification for the purchase.
Video recording on the new iPad has been a breeze. I'm using the built in recording app on the iPad along with the GoodNotes app - simple and slick. I don't do any editing by choice. My recordings go automatically into Photos on the iPad as mp4's and I just upload them to Google Drive for student access.
I'm also teaching an Engineering Design course this semester. Students in this class are proposing and building some really cool Arduino based projects. They do a lot of writing in this course and are required to electronically submit all work. Up until last week I was using Word on my MacBook to make document review edits and add comments. Once completed I email the edited document files back to the students. A few days ago I started using the iPad and Pencil to make handwritten edits and add comments to the student Word documents. Once saved I also send these documents back to the students. So far so good.
I purchased a first generation iPad years ago and it got very limited use. The new one has been a completely different experience so far.
Could an iPad replace my four year old 15 inch MacBook? Not yet but...... substitution is getting closer.
Sunday, April 29, 2018
New iPad 9.7" with Pencil So Far
Tuesday, April 24, 2018
20 Gbps - In Your Home - In Your Car - In Your Pocket
Fixed wireless is a term used to define wireless services to the home, often used to provide residential broadband service where fixed broadband service (cable, DSL, etc) is not available. It's just a fancy term for cellular data service to a residence.
Currently LTE (download speeds between 5 and 12 Mbps [Megabits per second] and upload speeds between 2 and 5 Mbps, with peak download speeds approaching 50 Mbps) is used by providers offering fixed wireless service. Some nice bandwidth when you have a good connection......
Recently, Verizon announced the launch of next-generation 5G wireless residential broadband services in three to five U.S. markets in 2018. The first commercial launch is now scheduled in Sacramento, CA, in the second half of 2018. 5G will be a significant upgrade to LTE services, supporting a theoretical speed up to 20 Gbps with a latency of ~1 ms, enabling providers like Verizon to offer superior broadband access without running fiber-optic cables to the sides of homes.
The days of fiber to the home (FTTH) products like FiOS are numbered. Full phase 5G rollouts by all major providers should be across the U.S. by 2020. Don't give up on fiber though. Additional backhaul capacity will require lots more fiber. That fiber won't be running directly to homes but will be running to cell towers - both large and small.
5G is coming and going to come quickly. ABI Research, a market-foresight advisory firm providing strategic guidance on the most compelling transformative technologies, forecasts that the global fixed wireless broadband market will grow 30% in 2018 and will generate US$18 billion in service revenue. As 5G fixed wireless broadband access is set to be launched in North America in 2018, it is set to expand and provide consumers with better quality service in the years to come.
What could you do with 20Gbps in your home, your car, your pocket.....??
Saturday, January 27, 2018
Apple Pay – How Printed Store Receipts are Handled
Diane and I had an interesting couple of transactions.
Around the holidays, Diane and I went to one of the big box retail stores and
bought her Mom a couple of boxes of disposable heating pads for a sore
shoulder. I used the Apple Pay app on my watch to pay for the pads. Last week her
Mom let us know she did not need the second box so Diane brought that box back
today with the original receipt.
There was some confusion at the store about
the credit card number on the original receipt because it did not match either
of the two cards Diane and I have. We were concerned the original transaction
may have gone on someone else’s card and, with us returning the heating pads and
getting credit on one of our cards, we may have gotten ourselves in some kind
of trouble.
When Diane got home we looked at our credit
card detail and sure enough – the $77.85 we spent on December 27 was listed. So,
why was the last four unknown (to us) digits wrong on the original receipt? A
little more digging found similar receipts with the same unknown four digit
number for Apple Pay purchases.
With a little investigating, we were able to
figure out what happened. When you use
Apple pay the card number on the receipt reflects your device ID, not
the last 4 digits of your credit card. There is also no name on the receipt –
it will be listed as “Contactless”. This way if you drop a receipt and someone
picks it up there is no way you can be identified. It has no personal
information on it. If you use Apple Pay check it out the next time you buy
something using it.
Not having to take may card out of my wallet, no Personally Identifiable Information (PII) on the receipt...... added privacy and security – good stuff!
Monday, December 4, 2017
Should I Buy Another Chevy?
Likely, at least in part, due to the 1973-74 oil embargo (I
turned 16 in 1973) followed shortly by the second oil crisis in 1979 (the year I graduated from
college) I’ve always had a passion for small economical cars. My first new car purchase in 1980 was a Chevy
Chevette (remember those?) that I babied and coddled – always Mobile 1 synthetic,
washed, waxed…….. until the motor blew up in 1982 on Route 128 in Massachusetts
one morning during rush hour……. I can still picture the motor parts in the rear view mirror...... I had the motor replaced (Chevy was great about that) but I continued to have problems – the car was so poorly designed and built it was literally falling apart. Swearing off American cars for life it
was Japanese autos after that – a couple of Datsun (now Nissan) vehicles, a
Honda and then a couple of Toyota products.
Well, these days nothing lasts forever and I’ve actually been
looking at couple of Chevy electrics – the Volt and the Bolt. I’m especially
impressed with the Bolt, the car General Motors has been using the past few years as its primary
autonomous-driving testbed. Last week GM unveiled the latest version
of the Bolt, with an EPA-rated 238-mile range and a
base price of $37,495.
Looking at older autonomous model Bolts - the lidar units were mounted on roof mounted rods and the car had sensors stuffed into drilled and cut holes in the body. The new autonomous Bolt has sensors hidden in the bumpers and fenders and the lidar unit is hidden in the roof rack. The new model appears to be a huge step up.
Looking at older autonomous model Bolts - the lidar units were mounted on roof mounted rods and the car had sensors stuffed into drilled and cut holes in the body. The new autonomous Bolt has sensors hidden in the bumpers and fenders and the lidar unit is hidden in the roof rack. The new model appears to be a huge step up.
How did GM move so fast? The company acquired San Francisco
startup Cruise Automation last year for $581 million. Cruise Automation was started
by Kyle Vogt and he came along with the acquisition to head up GM’s
automation efforts. Vogt has an interesting background, having cofounded Twitch, a streaming
service used by video gamers to watch others
play video games. Amazon bought
Twitch in 2014 for $1.1 billion and Vogt was on to his next big idea,
originally thinking his new company would develop portable driverless software
that could be attached to almost any vehicle. First experimenting with Audis
and Nissan Leafs, he realized it would be much easier to build the technology
directly into a car’s onboard controls and the Bolt was the only car suitable to
do that.
Cruise Automation headquarters remains in San Francisco and, with GM
backing, Vogt has grown the company from 40 software and mechanical engineers
to over 400. He’s also bought lidar maker Strobe, claiming this will cut spending
on laser gear 99 percent.
GM has big plans for the Bolt, intending to use them as the
backbone of a robo-taxi business it plans to start in 2019.
Monday, September 4, 2017
Automobile USB Phone Charging
It's nice day for a ride to the beach. You grab your stuff jump and in the car. Ooops - last night you forgot to charge your phone and you've only got about 30% but...... No worries, the beach is a 90 minute drive away which should be more than enough time for your phone to charge.
Fast forward - phone GPS running and some tunes along the way. Park the car, grab your phone and...... #$%@* only 25% charged?? It was plugged in for the entire drive?! You checked it when you plugged it in and the phone was properly connected.
You've been Auto USB'd!
What Happened?
If your car has a USB port built in - that port is most likely low power, only delivering around .5 Amps. This is considerably less than your phone charging capacity and because you were using the phone GPS, playing some tunes, etc...... well, you get the idea. And if you were using one of those cheapo cigarette lighter adaptor chargers, it is also probably only delivering only around .5 Amps of charging current. The cheap plug ins can get even worse - if you've got one of them with two USB ports and have a couple of phones plugged in, that .5 Amps total gets split to .25 Amps on each port.
How Much Do You Need?
How much current do you need to get full charging capacity for most phones these days? It depends on the device. Let's use the iPhone as an example - those white chargers that come with the phone are rated at 1 Amp. So, on your drive with GPS running, Bluetooth - and maybe you forgot to switch WiFi off when in the car - your USB adapter .5 Amps of charging current could not keep up with what the phone was drawing, never mind charge it.
What's The Solution?
To get a quick charge on your phone with a low current adapter probably the best thing to do is to power the phone off when charging. That may not be an option though.
Some of the auto manufactures are putting higher capacity USB ports in cars but that does not help most of us driving older cars.
If you want to charge your phone and do not want to buy a new car you can purchase a higher current plug in USB charger. Wirecutter has a nice review of some of these chargers here. A little searching on Amazon brings up a bunch of them too - be sure to check the output current per USB port and compare it to what your phone needs. They're a little more expensive than the $2 ones you see in the supermarket checkout line but worth it.
Friday, August 11, 2017
The Future of Wireless is Fiber
 |
| Cactus Cell Tower (Image source: www.extremetech.com) |
In the next few years wireless providers are
planning the broad deployment of 5G wireless services. Here’s some details:
- Current International Telecommunication Union (ITU) specifications for 5G specify a total download capacity of at least 20Gbps and 10Gbps uplink per mobile base station.
- In contrast, the peak data rate for current LTE cells is about 1Gbps.
- Under ideal circumstances, 5G networks will offer users a maximum latency of just 4ms, down from about 20ms on LTE 4G networks.
- The 5G specification also calls for a latency of just 1ms for a stepped up service called ultra-reliable low latency communications (URLLC).
In support of the Internet of Things, 5G must
also support at least 1 million connected devices per square kilometer (0.38
square miles). This may seem like a lot but when every traffic light,
parking space, and vehicle is 5G-enabled, we'll easily start to hit that
kind of connection density and will see 5G towers on places like major highways
every 100 feet or so.
How is connectivity delivered these days to wireless
towers, and how will it be delivered in the future? Fiber!
5G networks will be predominantly fiber-based
due to the combination of tower capacity and distance requirements. We will see
limited microwave antennas used in niche cases when fiber is not an option.
Technicians will need to have a good understanding of fiber characterization
testing and troubleshooting as these super-fast high capacity networks roll
out. In addition, skills in troubleshooting dirty or damaged connectors, tight
fiber bends, faulty fiber splices, Optical Time Domain
Reflectometry (OTDR), attenuation, and chromatic and polarization mode
dispersion will become even more critical.
Fiber to the tower is a critical enabler of 5G wireless services including The Internet of Things.
For more information see Preparing the Transport Network for 5G: The Future Is Fiber and check out the rest of the OP-TEC August 2017 edition and previous monthly newsletters here.
Fiber to the tower is a critical enabler of 5G wireless services including The Internet of Things.
For more information see Preparing the Transport Network for 5G: The Future Is Fiber and check out the rest of the OP-TEC August 2017 edition and previous monthly newsletters here.
Wednesday, August 9, 2017
Wisconsin and Taiwan's Foxconn
There is currently a lot of chatter about the Wisconsin / Taiwan Foxconn deal. Here’s some information on the company:
- Foxconn is a Taiwanese multinational electronics contract manufacturing company headquartered in Tucheng, New Taipei, Taiwan.
- Foxconn currently has 12 factories in nine Chinese cities along with factories in Asia, Brazil, Europe, and Mexico.
- The company is the world's largest contract electronics manufacturer by revenue that, as of 2012, produced approximately 40 percent of all consumer electronics products sold.
- Foxconn is the largest private employer in China and one of the largest employers worldwide.
- Major customers comprise all the biggies including Apple, Microsoft, Intel, Amazon, Google, and Dell.
- In reaction to a spate of worker suicides in which 14 people died in 2010, a report from 20 Chinese universities described Foxconn factories as labor camps and detailed widespread worker abuse and illegal overtime. The company claims these issues have been resolved.
And here’s a quick summary of the deal as it currently
stands based on what I’m reading:
- The complex will be located at a 1,000-acre site in southeastern Wisconsin.
- This will be the first liquid crystal display manufacturing facility in North America and that has environmentalists a little freaked out.
- It will take four years to build and will employ up to 10,000 construction workers over those four years.
- The factory floor area will cover 20 million square feet.
- Up to 13,000 workers could eventually be employed and paid an average of $53,875 a year, plus benefits.
- Will generate estimated $181 million in state and local tax revenue annually, including $60 million in local property taxes.
- Wisconsin will kick in $3 billion in state incentives over 15 years.
- Wisconsin is not projected to break even on the incentive package for at least 25 years (that's 2042).
Sources:
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