Alice Averlong🏳️⚧️I'm not gonna do a full teardown yet, but you'll never guess what microcontroller is at the heart of this digital tape measure.
Rotary encoders are always beautiful.
The sacred geometry of electronics!
The sacred geometry of electronics!
rainwarrior@foone Is this a gray code, except for the innermost?
@foone Or, no... Gray codes normally have their last row go like that eh? Interesting.
Tom Forsyth@rainwarrior @foone I believe the innermost row - combined with the next one - is a direction encoder. So you can tell which direction the thing is spinning by comparing the phases of the two.
@TomF @foone What I realized is that a quadrature direction encoder is also the upper 2 bits of a Gray code, so it's actually the same thing.
I don't have a great intuitive reason for why it "looks" like the pattern breaks in the last row, but thinking about every column needing 1 bit to flip: the "extra" flip in the top row fills in the gap where everything else has gone to 0 to fill out the sequence of 2^6 values.
Just an old goat@rainwarrior @foone No no you're right - both the last two levels have 6 set bits and 6 clear bits - the final inner ring is NOT part of the gray code - because if it was, you can't tell direction from it.
@rainwarrior @foone Hmmm... or maybe you're right that IS part of the Gray code.
@TomF @foone One way to prove it, is that if you look at one complete wedge in 1/6 of the wheel, then cut it in half by taking only the half where the inner ring is black, the pattern will be self-similar, and you can repeat this until you reach the last 2 rows.
The top row is always "half" the pattern it would be if there were another row on top, which ends up giving its pulses the same width as the second last row.
recursive 🏳️🌈@foone she gray on my code until I change state.
Cleo of Topless Topics@foone if i thought i'd actually use it, i wanna laser cutter so badly just to make intricate stuff like this.
a holosprite 
@foone hell yeah, been considering a greycode tattoo for years
Mike Hanley@foone electronic mandala
Profoundly Nerdy@foone That makes me think of this thing... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
Finnley Dolfin@foone My favorite rotary encoder is the one which makes the awesome beats inside the Wurlitzer Sideman drum machine
jimmygolitely@foone until you need to troubleshoot the device they're giving inputs to.
Then they can be a real headache.
the Stripey Goodness@foone that's both beautiful and weird! Six-bit resolution but also not an absolute position encoder?
Kit Bashir
Andrew@foone the holy greycode!
The Flying Bun@foone that datasheet is shockingly good for being used in such a cheap product.
scottishchee@foone where can i redeem the rewards card ... mines full :D
@scottishchee at intel, presumably.
Kukka Häst@scottishchee @foone as soon as the card is full, you’re going to find out that foone has already stumbled upon another one. for free!
@scottishchee @foone *) it is only free as in you are not required to pay for it. INTEL® is not responsible for any damages, including but not limited to, feelings of despair, rage or flipped tables, caused by the exhausting number of more or less unexpected opportunities of finding 8051 microprocessors in everyday life.
Claire has left the building@foone i feel no regrets at never doing 8051 development
Jörg Henne@foone 8051 SOCs seem to be immensely popular in China. Pimped some firmware for a DMX LED light controller once.
Floober@foone bingo card when
SpeakerToManagers@foone
OMG look at all the goodies on that chip! I used to program 8048s and 8051s when I worked at Intel in the 70s and 80s. They were kind of fun.
OMG look at all the goodies on that chip! I used to program 8048s and 8051s when I worked at Intel in the 70s and 80s. They were kind of fun.
Monty Hayter 🇨🇦@foone I was looking at my dad’s 8051 dev kit just the other day. Fond memories of poking around on it with him many years ago…
Nick 🦇🕸️🖤🖖@foone this is what I get for only catching up on Mastodon at night, was totally gonna guess 8051!
SuperIlu@foone ABOV and BEYON? 🤣