Headworx

I've been "using" Apple Intelligence for a couple of weeks now, thanks to the iOS update on the iPhone 15 Pro. Actually "using" is an exaggeration. It simply started showing up AI-abbreviated notifications. Notifications that turned out to be completely useless. Phone notifications have clearly got out of control. Every app wants to send them. They beep and flash and bubble on everything, including phones, desktops and watches. And are super tedious to manage. I remember Android handling them a bit better than iOS, but still far from perfect. It seems to be a good idea to task an AI LLM model to "do something" about the notifications. Figure out the context, figure out the incoming stream of notifications and aggregate / postpone / mute - whatever is needed to make them usable. But clearly the bar is too high for the current state of the art AI systems. This simple cases demonstrates how far from reality the AI hype is. Afterall handling notifications...

Measured by the raw number of steps, my 2024 was definitely below expectations. The February decline was due to the New Zealand trip where the terrain (mostly West Coast) was making it difficult to cover more than 10 kilometers per day (as typically parts of that were hanging with hands on tree branches or crawling below fallen tree logs or crossing rivers). Not complaining, just explaining :) Then out of nowhere I had a knee injury that kept me sitting on a sofa for a couple of weeks. Things started looking good in Autumn, but then I foolishly twisted my left ankle and as it almost healed, I repeated something similar to the right foot. I'm almost ready to restart now, but the result (raw steps) is 1000km less than in 2023. When healthy you rarely think how lucky you are. Only when things go wrong the other perspective opens and you suddenly start appreciating being able to just walk :) Also shows how almost impossible it is to maintain an uninterrupted streak. Still, since start...

It took me a while. It all started quite some time ago when I came across this vide on DIY Whole Home Power Monitoring with ESPHome & Home Assistant . Things have changed (mostly improved) but the basics still apply. The video is a great start to Home Assistant and ESPHome learning curve. When I started I knew almost nothing about this stuff. Knowing this would be a difficult project (well maybe not THAT difficult, but such when you can make many mistakes on the way and even do not recognize them until very late), I took quite systematic approach.  Started with Home Assistant Yellow . It is a great option for a Home Assistant box, as it has Zigbee / Thread radio bulti in and can be powered via PoE. Also has plenty of storage. Setting up Home Assistant is a breeze, as there is a dedicated image available to be installed via the Raspberry Pi imager. The next step was ordering the CircuitSetup boards (the main board and 3 add-on boards for 24 channels in total). I also ordered (v...

On December 17, 2024, we crossed the 1 million mark of manufactured devices with Silvair technology inside. It is a nice milestone. Of course. But somehow this was not what has recently been generating the enthusiasm among our employees and investors. It is the velocity with which we crossed that mark. A million units definitely means a lot. It means the product is wanted. It means there is a product - market fit. It means the quality is good (otherwise the support claims would have killed us). It means the supporting infrastructure can scale. And on and on. On the other hand 1 million is both big and small. We are still small. I was even contemplating if 1 million units was worth a public celebration. But again, it is about the velocity. While it took us 5 years to get to the first million (the first meaningful shipments were in 2019), it may take less that 2 years for the next million and then less than a year for the 3rd. People say 90% of lighting controls in 2030 will be wireless...

Radio was invented in 19th century. Everyone knows the principle. Radio waves are an electromagnetic field. Then there is the antenna. Radio waves induce a small current in the antenna. The current is then amplified and processed to deliver the encoded information. Antennas have always been inherent to radios. In fact you can attach a piece of wire to an earpiece from an old telephone handset and that is sufficient to receive AM-modulated signal if you are close to the transmitter (this was the first "radio" I built as a young boy). There is a totally new approach to receiving radio frequency (RF) signals. The approach based on quantum physics and special behaviors of single atoms. Called Rydberg Atomic Quantum Receivers (RAQRs) the technology has really mind blowing prospects. RAQRs involve Rydberg atoms (atoms in highly excited states, achieved with lasers). The excited electrons appear to be sensitive to RF signals. Rydberg atoms can absorb energy of RF signals to transit ...

Often in many discussions people bring up new technologies that "radically" simplify end products. Common examples are electric vehicles (EVs) - Tesla and others, rocket engines (SpaceX). Also in my own domain - the Bluetooth NLC wireless lighting control, as opposed to wired (or even other wireless) systems that are based on central control boxes (DALI, KNX, and many similar). Indeed there is radical product simplification. It is much easier to compose an EV out of components: a battery integrated with a battery management system (BMS), an integrated motor / drive train, then chassis / suspension, body covers and you're done. It is also way, way easier to commission a Bluetooth NLC lighting system, as essentially all that is needed is a wireless node in every luminaire. No extra wires (other than line power), no control boxes (the nodes talk to each other and collectively agree on what to do). In the Bluetooth NLC case the end product simplicity (which is highly desired...

Managing energy consumption in battery-powered electronic gadgets is one of the most difficult engineering tasks. And no one has dine it 100% right. Low power consumption is only achieved through managing the device activity. A device may really be designed to and perform consuming manageable amount of energy, until once in a while it runs away and dies. A 2018 MacBook Pro runs for 8 hours under macOS and only 90 minutes under Windows. The reason? The accelerated graphic card (the ATI Radeon GPU) is tightly managed by macOS (by switching it off and using the integrated low-performance / low-power Intel GPU). Wen booting Windows, the Apple BIOS disables the Intel GPU so Windows has nothing to switch back to and consequently draws batteries at full speed. My Garmin Delta watch has a habit of draining its battery to death in the night when it repeatedly attempts to connect to the iPhone to sync data. I have a habit of leaving the watch on a kitchen table and taking the phone with me to t...