I don’t think we’ll be driving full electric cars in the next 2 years (although I really hope so), simply because of the petrol lobby. At least, not with a decent range (500Km or more). So I think the closest we can get is to drive a plug-in hybrid, something we can charge overnight and run full electric on the commute to work (30 to 60 km), but still use on the long trip with the whole familly to your birthland.

Still, my ideal car is a full electric vehicule, with an optional, LPG-powered, combustion engine-based, range-extending module. This module, essentially a small box (containing the engine, gas tank and alternator) could easily be installed and removed from the car, and left in your garage.

The extension module simply charges the batteries, and keeps the car running for longer. Like this, we could have a 1000+ Km range for the long runs (with quick fill-ups on the gas station) but we wouldn’t spend needless energy transporting the extension module on small trips, when we clearly didn’t need it (wich should be most of the time).

If this car does not appear in 2 years time, I’ll build a prototype myself! After all, I am an Electronics and Telecommunications Engineer, my father is a Mechanical Engineer, and my father-in-law is a very skilled and experienced metal-worker. All I have to do now is to find the time to do it, lure my father to Portugal again, and persuade my father-in-law.

All it takes is a chassis, an electric motor, an electronic motor driver, a battery bank, some mechanical coupling, control electronics, and an on-board computer. And a lot of work.

This would be an amazing project for next year, but I already have 2 projects underway… that really must be finished first.

What happened to the “giant leap for mankind”? When I was a kid, I thought we would be much more advanced in space exploration by now. I checked the Lunar Exploration Timeline… 40 years have gone by, and I see no obvious evolution from that amazing Apollo 11 feat.

I used to dream about space exploration, watching stuff on TV like Space 1999, Il etait une fois l’espace, and Star Trek.

Heck, I thought that, by 2010, we would have one or more space stations orbiting Earth, the Moon, and possibly other planets. I thought that by now, the Moon was already colonized, a center for space study and exploration. Frequent spaceships would go to and from the Moon and the space stations, taking people and resources from place to place. I thought that, by now, energy-autonomous rover robots had already been deployed in the most interesting planets and moons of our solar system. I thought that, by now, we would already have a cheaper way of getting to space (gauss launchers, space elevators, etc).

Was I wrong.

I guess space exploration has no big motivation to drive it. Since it seems we are alone in this solar system, and we still haven’t stupidly stripped Earth of it’s natural resources (although this is not that far off), we don’t actually *need* to go anywhere else.

And, I think, the most important thing: it has no return on investment (or does it?). If no profit can be made from an activity (read real money, not mankind evolution, Universe awareness, etc), nobody will seem to do it.

But I hope to see a great evolution in the comming 10-20 years!

I’m baffled by this great documentary I say on TV last night, “HOME”. You should go see it, when you have some free time, it’s freely available on the internet (or, better yet, purchase it in high definition on Blueray). It talks about our collective home, planet Earth, and what we’ve done to our resources, nature and society in the past 60 years alone. The video footage is beautifull to behold. Although the ideias exposed are not pretty, they are definitely eye-opening.

If you think all this is nonsense, and that you alone cannot change the World, think about this: you are never alone. You have familly, friends, and/or co-workers. If you influence 5 people to think differently, those 5 people will influence 25 more, those will influence 125 more, those will influence 625, those will influence 3125, and so on.

I’m contributing already; my future house will be mostly powered by the sun.

It really is too late to be pessimist!

It’s impressive how some big name software developers still are so complaisant with utterly absurd limitations. This is a screen capture of the installation of a big industrial brand software for configuring their measuring hardware (fluid flow, level, temperature, etc).

“This will change your system permanently. While installing system components your computer may restart without warning.”

Now, there’s something to reassure a computer user. Come on, there has got to be a better way to build software! If that means breaking with Windows rules and traditions, so be it.

In my point of view, this is crippled software that cripples a computer. What it says is: “I’m irreversively modifying your computer system, as I grab hold to it, and scatter parts of my entity throughout my new domain. Oh, and I will shutdown and restart it as my whims dictate. You have no choice in any of this, for you have purchased my hardware, and I command. You obey.” This is beyond weird, it’s creepy.

I’m also a software developer. My software is built with user friendliness in mind, be it in installation, use, or removal.

* Install: just copy a file or folder wherever you want.
* Use: just run the executable file. The application is as intuitive as possible.
* Uninstall: just delete the original file or folder. No traces are left on your system.

As simple as that, and I use this method in all my apps. This works for the user and for the developer, because deploys are simple, *very* quick, and can be done by just about everyone.

Now that I think of it, this method is similar to what the majority of Mac applications use (even though they usually leave some (innocuous) preferences files behind).

Afinal sempre temos um animal de estimação! Desculpa Pisco!

O Pisco é um canário, lindo como nenhum, e muito reguila! Adora cantar e tomar banho; está numa gaiola modesta (é mais pequena do que eu gostaria, situação que vai mudar brevemente), mas defende-a como um falcão!

Grande Pisco!

O título deste post evoca uma música de um programa que eu adorava quando era miúdo: a Arca de Noé. Era um programa infantil, centrado nos animais, e que era absolutamente maravilhoso. A música era espectacular, punha miúdos e graúdos a cantar, e a letra era muito gira: 

Vamos fazer amigos entre os animais,
que amigos destes não são demais na vida
e vêm aqui mostrar
que têm uma família, como eu e tu
E esta mora numa outra casa
que se chama (digam!)
Arca de Noé!
vamos lá ver como é
Arca de Noé!

A música, que se encontra aqui no youtube, era tocada e cantada pelo Carlos Alberto Moniz, e o programa apresentado pelo Fialho Gouveia. Apesar de ter uma Mãe que adora animais, e de sempre os ter por casa, acho que este programa foi muito importante para eu aprender sobre até onde vai a diversidade e maravilha do Mundo Animal. Fez-me sentir pequenino, mas mais “gente”. Talvez venha daí a minha tendência para antropomorfizar quase tudo o que me aparece à frente!

Seja como for, é muito importante que nós consigamos partilhar este Mundo com os animais. Fala-se muito de casos de animais que atacam pessoas, mas quase nunca se fala de como esses animais eram tratados e o porquê de eles terem certos tipos de comportamentos. São enjaulados, acorrentados… enfim. Qualquer um de nós já viu concerteza do que são capazes animais tão populares como o cão, o gato, o papagaio ou o golfinho. Todos nós devíamos perceber que tal como eles aprendem essas “façanhas”, também eles brincam, têm fome, têm sede, gostam, estão tristes e estão contentes. Como eu e tu. E precisam de espaço e oportunidade para o fazer.

Vamos lá então a deixar de ser egoístas e egocentristas. Vamos lá deixar de fazer mal aos animais, mesmo que inadvertidamente. Em vez de deixar andar, vamos lá começar a ter atenção aos nossos animais e aos das outras pessoas. Vamos ganhar cinco minutos e dar uma voltinha pelo site http://libertem-me.org que é pequenino, mas que passa a importante mensagem de que temos de libertar os animais acorrentados. É tão comum ver animais presos… que até arrepia. Quem quer ter um animal deve ter espaço para ele correr e brincar, deve ter capacidade financeira para alimentar a criatura como deve ser, e deve ter tempo para brincar com ela. Socializar com o animal é muito importante, quer para eles quer para nós.

Actualmente, eu não tenho animais de estimação, porque não tenho condições de espaço e tempo para os ter e estimar. Se eu não os puder estimar, nunca serão meus animais de estimação (viram a lógica?!). Assim que tiver condições, vou concerteza adoptar pelo menos um animal, porque acho importante para mim e para os meus filhos.

Fala um homem que já foi salvo por uma cadela quando era criança, uma pastora alemã chamada Lara, que me puxou do mar quando este já me estava a engolir. Obrigado Lara, sabes que nunca te vou esquecer.

Although people are starting to take a better look at home automation (or domotics), there is still this idea that domotic are expensive, dispensable and a luxury. A mere toy, one that is quickly forgotten and seldomly used. And from what I’ve seen, they seem to be right.

Today, I’m starting to build my house. Being an electronics and telecommunications engineer it’s only natural that I’d like my home to have some kind of automation. I’ve asked around a bit, and from the proposals I saw, most people don’t get it. You should be building domotics from the users’ point of view, not from an engineer’s point of vue. It’s what’s really useful that should be implemented.

When we talk about home automation, most people think about automating lighting. Ok, so you can centrally (often through a kind of touch control on the wall) turn on/off every light in your house, or even dim them. What’s the *real* benefit in that? That’s something nice to have, but not amazing.

For me, a domotics system should be useful every day! By order of priority, it must:
* Protect me and my familly, and my belongings (by implementing a security system)
* Save money (by automatic energy saving)
* Save time (by doing things quicker, augmenting confort)

To comply with these requirements, these are some of the things the system should have, also by order of priority:

* A user-friendly, intuitive, distributed supervison and control system, based on touch screens with animated graphics.
* A data archiving system for energy and event analysis.
* A sofisticated alarm system. Several zones, several modes, motion detection, video recording.
* Automated window shutters.
* Automated entrance doors and gates.
* Climate control (temperature and forced ventilation).
* Energy monitoring (electric and thermic).
* Garden, Orchard, Horticulture and Greenhouse (hydroponics) irrigation and monitoring.
* House-wide speakers (for warnings and info).
* Daily-usage-appliances monitoring, to inform when long work cycles end (laundry, bread maker, oven, etc).
* Lighting control.

The order clearly shows it, lighting control really is the least important thing in my book. Unsurprisingly, the alarm system is the single most important thing in a smart home, and most people end up spending lots of money on (independent) security systems alone. So my ideia is to integrate all these into a very useful home automation system.

If you think about it, many pieces can be reused within the system. For example, the alarm’s motion sensors can be used to open doors and/or turn some lights on; the alarm lights and speakers can be used to warn about many other events; the alarm system can control the window shutters when securing the house; the climate control can also use the window shutters for efficiency, making the most of the Winter sun.

A system like this would be a natural part of my life, not a gimmick that quickly gets forgotten after the initial impact. But all this needs to be affordable, and most systems aren’t. 20000 Euro (that’s twenty thousand) for a system is NOT realistical these days. Things also need to be kept simple and standard. Proprietary buses and hardware is definitely not the way to go in my opinion (you simply get locked in). And finally, things need to be very dependable, and quickly amendable should a fault occur.

I’ll keep on searching for the perfect system. Meanwhile, I have my own ideias of how the basic system should be done… and some very advanced stuff too.

Stay tuned!

Last week my 11-year-old Rover 200 iS just lost it’s indicators. The hazards also didn’t work.

This weekend I found some free time to look at the problem. The indicators did not light up when the stalk was moved. No green arrows on the dashboard. The hazards switch lit up the triangle on the dashboard, but it did not blink (and the indicators also did not light up). I could also not hear the distinct relay “click-click” sound when the indicators worked. I checked all fuses first, but everything was fine.

Then I realized there was an initial “click” sound coming from the relay on the fuses’ board, when the stalk was moved or the hazards’ switch pressed. I suspected the relay might be having problems, and took it out.

It was very easy to open, and inside I found a small copper tab broken. I think I found the culprit!

Unsurprisingly, my local supplier of auto parts did not have the Rover (actually, a Lucas) relay in stock, but could provide me with an electrically equivalent. I brought it home, but alas, it did not fit the slot on the board. Although unable to fit the new relay, I was able to test it (and use it temporarily) by creating a home-made adapter with a few copper tabs and a couple of “crocodile” leads. It worked, proving the relay was the only bad piece of this puzzle.

A few days later I finally got hold of an original Rover/Lucas relay, and now everything is working as it was for the past 11 years.

At first, instead of fiddling with it, I thought of leaving the car for service at a garage near my work place, but I’m a little eery of having people messing with my car. Firstly, I have to leave the car there, and only God knows what happens after I leave. Secondly, the problem might even be simple and cheap, but they decide to charge me 4 hours work and some replacement parts that weren’t. I have nothing to hold on to, and pay.

In fact, once I left the car in for service, but went on shopping with my wife in a nearby shopping center. After I came back to fetch the car, they charged me 5 hours work. This happened less than 4 hours after I left the car there. If I just left the car for a whole day, there was no way I could know, and payed happily.

We have to defend ourselves from this type of “robbery”, so I’m getting a Haynes service book to try and solve the small problems my car will start to develop. After all, it is 11 years old… and I want it to last until I get a brand new PHEV. Wich will hopefully happen in 2 to 3 years time.

I always loved my Rover 200 iS, because I think it is a great, balanced car. It was also very dependable through all these years. I’m glad to see it back on the road again!

Nesta Páscoa, como em todas as outras Páscoas que passámos em Vale de Cambra, fomos abastecer-nos de doçarias à Criju. É sempre uma maravilha para os sentidos…

Este ano trouxemos um sortido de “amêndoas” digno de uma família real! O interior das drageias eram variados: além das típicas amêndoas havia avelâs, noz, noz pecan, banana, o interior dos Maltesers, e chocolate. Os revestimentos eram igualmente emotivos: chocolate preto, branco e de leite, chocolate picante, açúcar, cacau em pó, café e moka. As formas, de redondas às típicas amêndoas, passando por ovos e “clusters”, evidenciavam a panóplia de sabores e texturas que iríamos descobrir.

Além dos doces divinais, a Criju tem também “pacotes de amêndoas” muito originais e criativos, longe de qualquer coisa que se possa encontrar em hipermercados ou centros comerciais. Coloridos, divertidos, sofisticados, fofos, grandes ou pequenos, é fácil encontrar a nossa felicidade na diversidade proposta.

Altamente recomendada, a Criju reflete aquilo que eu gosto de ver no comércio tradicional: propõe produtos diferentes, únicos até, muito difícil ou dispendioso de encontrar no comércio em massa. Além disso é dinâmica, propondo sempre coisas novas. É assim que conquista a sua clientela, e a mantêm. Um exemplo para muita gente.

Quando passarem por Vale de Cambra, não se esqueçam de dar um saltinho à Criju; quando provarem um dos seus deliciosos bolos-rei de frutos secos, vão ficar convencidos…

Last week, while watching Un dîner presque parfait on M6 (a french channel), me and my wife realized it was a pity we couldn’t catch all of the shows during the week. We have a very busy life, and even when we are home when the show airs, we usually cannot just sit down and watch it. So we decided to get a PVR, and on our next visit to Aveiro we purchased a Samsung DVD/HD PVR (for 222€). When I finally found time to install and test the machine (about a week later), we realised just how much noise the fan on the back of the device made… still, that was not the worst of it. The DVD drive made an amazing whirring sound when reading a standard commercial DVD disc (matrix-created, not a recorded one). I could clearly hear it above my floorstanding speakers while watching Asterix contre Cesar. Assuming my unit was normal and had no defects, someone took a couple of awful engineering decisions…

We returned the PVR (thankfully, MediaMarkt is a great store, and gave us our money back). Then I started wondering about building a Media Center arond one of my old Macs and an Elgato EyeTV 250 Plus. But my old Macs are really, really old Macs (no USB 2.0), so using the EyeTV was not an option. Getting a new MacMini would be much more expensive, so I finally decided to postpone the Media Center to next year, when the Digital TV is settled here in Portugal (yes, we still don’t have digital here…).

After thinking a bit, we decided to purchase a PVR anyway, because we will make good use of it for the time being. We’ll hopefully be moving out in a year or so, and I’ll think about our Media Center by then. So, next time we were in Aveiro we searched around a bit and got a Panasonic DMR-EH58 PVR (for 215€).

What a diference! The fan protrudes from the machine’s case, but is essentially silent. In fact, I can actually hear the hard drive spinning up! The DVD drive is not only silent (all I can hear is the laser seek movement), it is actually faster than my Sony DVD player when detecting discs and moving in menus. The remote control is very well designed, the commands are clear and easy to use. The case is very well designed, sleek and stylish.

As for performance, I’m very happy; menus respond immediately to remote buttons (slow-responding and slow-redrawing menus are a personal pet peeve of mine with appliances), power-on is quick, recording quality in XP mode is amazing (I see no difference from direct cable TV), programming the thing to record at a certain date is easy and quick (and complete, like recording every work day, Monday to Friday, or on every weekend), the menus are intuitive (and so is the remote).

All in all a joy to use, and recommended!