How can I help?

[Patrick Mc(avery]

Hi Everyone

I haven't had much spare time for the past year or so and haven't spent
much time with elua. The time I have had has mostly been spent on more
"crack-smoken" ideas that didn't go anywhere.

Despite going around and around in circles I have learned from my
failures and I think I am back on a realistic track.

I would like to help with the project, I am wondering what would be the
best way?

Here are some random snippets of things, perhaps someone could guide me
so that one or more of them could be useful to the project.

I am about 80% through a small script that will help me learn codebases.
It is built on top of etags. Etags(or cousin ctags) are commands that
will locate the site of a declaration. The program I am writing takes
these tags and line number they are declared at and then sorts them by
frequency. I then want to use my script to copy and past the top few
hundred most common tags and the code snippet it was declared in and put
it in a database. This might be handy to learn lua and the elau layer on
top of it, perhaps it will teach me more about the project and help
others learn the C portion.

I have liquidated a lot of the scientific instruments I have here but I
still have quite a few left and some are not worth much.  They are all
built on Motorola 8 and 16 bit CPUs and I don't think I can get elua on
these devices. However I am planning on holding the reset line of the
CPU(thanks to Bogdan for the reset suggestion) and then high-jacking the
peripherals of the instrumentation. This might be a good way to showcase
elua on commercial hardware(other then development boards), I could use
it to control displays, motors, valves, heating elements and such. I
could make videos of this.

Another thing that might be useful is an "end-to-end" tutorial on
setting up and elua based microcontroller lab. I believe I already have
most of the hardware that most people would want to program and test
embedded devices and I could create a tutorial on setting up such a lab
and using elua. Since I last visited the elua site there have been a lot
of improvements and many of these topics have already been covered.
Perhaps such an end-to-end tutorial would just point people to the work
that was already done and fill in the gaps rather then recreating work
that has already been completed.

My mind has been racing for a few years now. I make a killing with my
business for an hour a week or so and then squandering money and time
for many more hours. I truly am a HalfMadDad(my IRC handle) I would
really appreciate guidance so that I don't continue to waste time and
resources.

Thanks
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[BogdanM]

On Wed, Dec 7, 2011 at 7:19 PM, Patrick Mc(avery <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi Everyone

Hi Patrick! Welcome back :)

 

I haven't had much spare time for the past year or so and haven't spent much time with elua. The time I have had has mostly been spent on more "crack-smoken" ideas that didn't go anywhere.

Despite going around and around in circles I have learned from my failures and I think I am back on a realistic track.

I would like to help with the project, I am wondering what would be the best way?

Here are some random snippets of things, perhaps someone could guide me so that one or more of them could be useful to the project.

I am about 80% through a small script that will help me learn codebases. It is built on top of etags. Etags(or cousin ctags) are commands that will locate the site of a declaration. The program I am writing takes these tags and line number they are declared at and then sorts them by frequency. I then want to use my script to copy and past the top few hundred most common tags and the code snippet it was declared in and put it in a database. This might be handy to learn lua and the elau layer on top of it, perhaps it will teach me more about the project and help others learn the C portion.

That would definitely help, but maybe something like this:

http://www.lua.org/source/5.1/

would help even more. I'm not sure yet how and where we'd be able to set something like that, but it might be useful.

 

I have liquidated a lot of the scientific instruments I have here but I still have quite a few left and some are not worth much.  They are all built on Motorola 8 and 16 bit CPUs and I don't think I can get elua on these devices.

This tasks ranges from "impossible to do" to "maybe doable with significant effort". Personally, I wouldn't try it :)

 

However I am planning on holding the reset line of the CPU(thanks to Bogdan for the reset suggestion)

I don't remember making this suggestion, but I'll gladly accept the thanks :)

 

and then high-jacking the peripherals of the instrumentation. This might be a good way to showcase elua on commercial hardware(other then development boards), I could use it to control displays, motors, valves, heating elements and such. I could make videos of this.

Absolutely. If you can document your work, please do so, it's of huge help to the community. 

 

Another thing that might be useful is an "end-to-end" tutorial on setting up and elua based microcontroller lab. I believe I already have most of the hardware that most people would want to program and test embedded devices and I could create a tutorial on setting up such a lab and using elua. Since I last visited the elua site there have been a lot of improvements and many of these topics have already been covered. Perhaps such an end-to-end tutorial would just point people to the work that was already done and fill in the gaps rather then recreating work that has already been completed.

This sort of stuff is perfect for us. One of the areas where eLua is lacking at this point is user friendlniess. Such of in-depth, easy to follow tutorials are always helpful and add great value to the project. So I encourage you to do this from all my heart. 

 

My mind has been racing for a few years now. I make a killing with my business for an hour a week or so and then squandering money and time for many more hours. I truly am a HalfMadDad(my IRC handle) I would really appreciate guidance so that I don't continue to waste time and resources.

Lately I've been having even less time than "usual" to work on eLua and I don't know how this will evolve in the future, so at this point I simply can't give you specifics about how the project will evolve, because I don't know them. These are some generic points:

- once again, you can't go wrong with tutorials. Regardless of the project's directions, they will always be helpful. So, if you like doing this kind of stuff and want to do it for eLua, this is a perfect match. 

- another area is applications written in eLua itself; again, these are valuable no matter how the project will evolve. 

- something we seriously lack is testing in general and automated testing in particular. An automated testing framework would be something quite new (and extremely helpful) for eLua. If you want to get your hands on something like this, we can help.

 

Everybody, please feel free to share your ideas here. Patrick wants to help us, let's make him regret his decision :)

Best,

Bogdan

Thanks
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[Patrick Mc(avery]

Hi Bogdan, Hi List

[snip]

That would definitely help, but maybe something like this:

http://www.lua.org/source/5.1/

Thanks for the link, this greatly simplifies what I want to do. If I just list the tags by their frequency of occurrence and transform them into links to this portion of the site, i will be able to follow along with the source code, most common parts first.

[snip]

 

However I am planning on holding the reset line of the CPU(thanks to Bogdan for the reset suggestion)

I don't remember making this suggestion, but I'll gladly accept the thanks :)

You did! September 10 2010 at 09:11 A.M :)

 

and then high-jacking the peripherals of the instrumentation. This might be a good way to showcase elua on commercial hardware(other then development boards), I could use it to control displays, motors, valves, heating elements and such. I could make videos of this.

Absolutely. If you can document your work, please do so, it's of huge help to the community.

[snip ]
Great, I think this will help me to learn more about the circuits I work with too, a win-win for everyone

This sort of stuff is perfect for us. One of the areas where eLua is lacking at this point is user friendlniess. Such of in-depth, easy to follow tutorials are always helpful and add great value to the project. So I encourage you to do this from all my heart. 

 

[ snip]

I chatted with James last night on IRC and he was supportive of this too. This should be my first focus.

One concern is that I hate my own writings, I regret 50% of what I write. I am thinking about doing some screencasts instead(although I am not against written tutorials if someone sanity checks them for me), hope this is alright.

I could break them up in to short 2 or 3 minute videos. If someone found an error or an omission I could redo them without much pain. I could then link them together into longer videos. If people can coach me, I will learn a lot about embedded design by doing them, again win-win.

Lately I've been having even less time than "usual" to work on eLua

[snip]
You've done a lot already!!
[snip]

- another area is applications written in eLua itself; again, these are valuable no matter how the project will evolve. ]

Yes it would be nice to have more project examples, in time I would like to help out here too. I think Arduino is a great project and there are lots of examples and documentation but I think elua has more potential to bring me up to speed with professional level embedded design. I would like to master gcc and professional tools like jtag/swd and such. Closed source toolchains look even worse. Elua will help me but won't sink it's teeth in :)

- something we seriously lack is testing in general and automated testing in particular. An automated testing framework would be something quite new (and extremely helpful) for eLua. If you want to get your hands on something like this, we can help.

I would like to but I will need some time to bring my skills up.

 

Everybody, please feel free to share your ideas here. Patrick wants to help us, let's make him regret his decision :)

:)

I will put together a list of possible tutorials in the next couple of days

Thanks again !

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