HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

normaldotcom

11 karma · joined October 6, 2014

Contact: ezonca@sealandaire.com
submissionscomments
normaldotcom··on Show HN: A high-altitude low-power flight computer for high-altitude balloons
Awesome to see HAB on hacker news! Was following some of your development years ago when I developed a small APRS tracker, have been meaning to revisit that project someday. Also developed a WSPR version that I haven't published any info on, but had a great trans-atlantic flight with that one. Keep up the great work!

http://protofusion.org/wordpress/2015/10/featherhab-2-gram-h...

http://protofusion.org/wordpress/2016/02/featherhab-source-c...

normaldotcom··on A Taco Truck on Every Corner, or Not?
Started reading the article... and realized that it was about my favorite BBQ spot in my own hometown! Hope that they can find a way to continue operation.
normaldotcom··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2018)
SeaLandAire Technologies | Electrical Engineer | Jackson, MI | Full time | ONSITE

We're a small R&D company in Michigan that specializes in fast-turn prototyping and development of small autonomous systems (~6-foot autonomous boats, small UAVs, etc) and sensing systems.

We're looking for both an EE to join our autonomous boat team and an EE to work across other various projects. These positions involves PCB design (Eagle/Altium), C firmware development (ARM/STM32), and some Python scripting. We're looking for motivated engineers who will get to work with a small close-knit team in a rapid development setting.

More info and apply: https://sealandairetechnologies.recruitee.com/o/electrical-e...

normaldotcom··on Tiny quad-core system-on-module for makers and hardware startups
Some background--emlid, the company that is producing this module, relied on Intel Edison modules for the compute power behind their RTK GPS products. The Edison modules were recently EOL'ed.

I would guess that this module is primarily being developed as a replacement for the Edison emlid's RTK products, and they are pitching it as a separate product as well to recoup some of the development costs.

normaldotcom··on Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it awesome? Please include URL
I used to mess around with ZynAddSubFX quite a bit... glad to see that there's still some development going on!
normaldotcom··on Western Digital agrees to buy SanDisk for about $19B
Another consolidation this year: Dialog is buying Atmel, although Atmel is fairly small compared to the other big players in the microcontroller market.
normaldotcom··on All Your Modem Are Belong to Us
Definitely! I have a couple issues I need to fix on the hardware so the board runs without mods, but I plan on posting all of the hardware/firmware very soon once I get that wrapped up.
normaldotcom··on All Your Modem Are Belong to Us
I've been working on a balloon controller as well, although mine is incredibly bare-bones [1]. It only reports position, altitude, and temperature; but since it's so minimal it only weighs around 2 grams.

For your use case, you might want to consider a small external microcontroller that handles TNC functionality, this /might/ be smaller and more lightweight than a USB sound card.

Your payload controller software looks pretty awesome--nearly makes me want to launch a balloon with a full Linux single-board computer!

[1] http://protofusion.org/wordpress/2015/10/featherhab-2-gram-h...

normaldotcom··on New Chromecast 2015
There's also an awesome command-line chromecast client which can play local and remote media. It works quite well in my experience. https://github.com/xat/castnow
normaldotcom··on YC Backs Portable Coffee Stand Called Wheelys (YC S15) to Take on Starbucks
I highly doubt growing coffee on a small scale will work for this application. Coffee trees typically take 2-3 years before they produce first fuit, and they mature into very large bushes/trees. A young coffee bush might make a good decoration, but will produce few if any coffee cherries.
normaldotcom··on Tarsnap GUI for the desktop
Thanks, I'll update it shortly.
normaldotcom··on Tarsnap GUI for the desktop
Just packaged it up for Arch Linux (user repository): http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/tarsnap-gui-git/