Headworx

Last week, with 184 visa-free countries, Polish passport has moved up to #5 rank globally. Interestingly there are 3 other post-communist European eastern block countries at #5. Actually positions 3-8 are all occupied by European countries. #1 is Singapore an #2 Japan and Korea. This is just one illustration of the transformation the former Soviet-block countries have gone through. But also Europe as such, despite much criticism about bureaucracy, poor state-driven economy, lack of entrepreneurial spirit and general over-regulation, to quote Fareed Zakaria, Europe has done something very extraordinary, even as it has declined in terms of raw power. Europe has shown that past a certain level of economic wealth, what matters is not just sheer economic wealth. What matters is quality of life, what matters is certain level of equality, and things like that Europeans have. For most of history, general quality of life was closely correlated with wealth. The richer you were, the better. A...

July was not travel-heavy. A week in Trondheim, Norway (a great place to be in Summer) and then the rest of the month at home / Krakow. Ah if you don't count a weekend trip to Spa, Belgium for the F1 GP race. But it was busy preparing for the intense 2nd half of the year. It starts just now, with the Korea Build in Seoul this week followed by the IES26 in Denver, CO, so another RTW trip. And three presentations to deliver over the next two weeks - the keynote in Seoul, the Bluetooth NLC roadmap in Denver and a joint webinar with US DoE / PNNL / IES on lighting systems integrations. Three different venues and events, three different topics, so plenty of preparatory work on my end. Add to that the Embedded World America (that is in September) and my days were busy compiling PowerPoint slides. I like doing that, but always the tedious part were illustrations. Text-only slides are boring. Visuals help. But when doing them on my own the results were not that great. And working with a gr...

Sustainability discussions have become mainstream now. And the theme is very broad, touching essentially every aspect of our lives. Cars have however always occupied the center stage, especially now as electric vehicles (EVs) take over traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) based - mostly in China and Europe. Feeling a bit guilty here - as an owner of a 20+ years old Subaru Forester, I did some math (seeking some absolution). I don't drive much with this car though, maybe a bit over 5000km per year, so the initial feeling was that my contribution to the global carbon footprint would not be super high. For comparison I took the additional footprint of flying intercontinental in business class vs economy (more floor space, heavier seat etc., and all those bottles of champagne on board) and the global reduction impact of the lighting control software my company makes. So here is my math: The car: 5000km is about 600 liters of fuel. Burning 1 liter produces roughly 2.3kg of CO2. ...

I feel I am more fortunate than an average person to find issues and bugs in IT systems. Basically whatever I touch, there are problems. Some fairly benign like the United Airlines app losing all my flights (the flights could be accessed through a desktop browser via booking codes stored in email confirmations). And some looking more serious. On the lost flights the comment I got from one of my colleagues was "what do you expect - it is AI vibe coding". Fair enough. Release cycles spinning faster (that is what everybody wants: faster, faster, faster, right?). AI tools enabling this spin acceleration, but then the automated CI / test systems not coping with the changes. Code review also done by AI. And the result is the code spinning (pun intended) out of control of protein / carbon - based engineers. Apps get released, more features faster, KPIs improved. Users find bugs, but have no one to report them to, other than AI-based automated support systems. The bugs get eventually...

As a follow up to the last week's story about car dashboards - an addendum from my rental experience. It was a 2-day trip to Germany. My company has a rental agreement with SIXT, with some preferential rebates and integrated invoicing, so I went there without thinking too much. I liked SIXT in the past for their quite seamless "skip the line" online check-in (scan the driver's license and an ID, get a code to open a lockbox with the car keys). And it went OK like that this time too. But there were several things that were not OK.  During the booking process I got a number of really silly-looking options. Like "get Bluetooth for 5 EUR/day". And then "get Apple CarPlay" for additional 5 EUR/day. CarPlay requires Bluetooth so technically selecting it should select the Bluetooth option too... "Get parking sensors for 5 EUR/day".... the list was long. SIXT are you serious? There is no way to enable / disable these options remotely (or maybe th...

Cars peaked around 2005. This is the model year of my Subaru Forester STI (SG9). The best and coolest car ever made. 350 hp,  1500 kg (3300 lbs), frameless side windows, ultimate performance (including offroad), driver-focused interior, sub-5s 0-100km/h acceleration, unbelievable handling. The dashboard is driver-focused too with clean instruments panel featuring central tachometer and all distractors moved away. The other controls are just three well know knobs for ventilation (fan direction, fan speed, temperature). Then I have a 2-din aftermarket radio unit with capacitive touch and wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay . It also has tons of other functions including a CD/DVD player but I don't use them. Android Auto / Apple CarPlay is all that is needed these days. OK maybe an FM receiver for some old schoolers. As I travel a lot, I drive many rental cars too. The problem they all indicate is the car industry got drunk with semi/automated driver assistance subsystems and comp...

Evolution and its time scale are fascinating. It is however hard to imagine the universe and put it the into perspective. We are too busy with everyday duties. But once in a while when I have enough time to just stop, do nothing, and let my thoughts wonder and imagine... some things fall into place. I've been reading The Anthropic Cosmological Principle by John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler. It's been slow as I don't have it in an electronic form (nor as an audio book) and I don't bring it on my frequent trips. But maybe slow is good in this case as the book is very thought provoking. And it helps put things into perspective. The key take away so far has been the 10 billion years period. This is what it seems to take for the universe to create life. From simple atoms to birth of stars to death of stars and supernovae (they are necessary in the process as some heavy elements can only be created through supernova explosions). Then through seeding newly born planets with ...

I've had a number of very interesting (private) discussions following the last week's post on The Wall Of Money . One important take away has been to also mention the shadow banking system as the key contributor to the wall of money. If traditional central bank money printing is the visible high tide, the shadow banking system is the massive underwater current that amplifies that tide. It plays an enormous, often hidden role in inflating and sustaining asset valuations. A fund can take $100 million in Treasury bonds, pledge them in and borrow $95 million in cash, and immediately use that cash to buy equities. The lender who took those Treasury bonds as collateral can turn around and use those same bonds to back a different loan for someone else. Rehypothecation - rinse and repeat. This generates an immense amount of purchasing power that flows directly into financial markets. But it is a liquidity mirage. [Traditional Central Bank] → Creates Visible Money Supply [Shadow Banking...

I'm in the middle of a yet another round-the-world trip. Started two weeks ago in Europe for the Milan Bluetooth Member Summit , followed by the ultra dense in meeting Guangzhou International Lighting Exhibition in China. Next week I'll have a number of customer meetings in the USA. Luckily there is a short weekend pause in between, which I decided to spend in the "TikTok city" of Chongqing. It is a 6-hour high speed rail ride from the coast (the CR400 "Fuxing" at 350 km/h ), which I spent almost entirely glued to the window, with my brain working in the background to aggregate and generalize the inrush of information of the past 14 days. One of the puzzles I was trying to solve was the explosive SpaceX IPO, which, on the surface, has never made any sense to me. Everything I know about SpaceX, plus what I read in the S-1 filling, is a pure fiction (with the exception to the Falcon rockets that represent the solid part of the business). That is on the surface...

No, I cannot tell the details. Development of Bluetooth ®  specifications is governed by the confidentiality rules. So the only way to learn more is to be a Bluetooth SIG member and join the Working Groups. As I write this, the June Members' Summit in Milan, Italy is getting to the end. The week has been really packed. And as I have been excited about the progress on many fronts since I joined the SIG in 2012 (and then started to lead the Mesh Working Group in 2015), the excitement this week has reached all time highs. These things are complex and may seem to move slowly for casual observers "when will Bluetooth finally do X,Y,Z?", I've been super happy with the progress. To be honest, the progress is the one thing, but entirely more important is the spectrum of opportunities and the roadmap ahead. For the last couple of years, in parallel to development of Mesh / NLC - specific features (like the HVAC Integration Profile) , we have been doing a lot of ground work on ...

This one is generally nothing new. I think I get quite a lot of things done. Am I always motivated? No. Discipline is the other factor and there are - I think - three aspects of it that help: Imagining the results. This itself kicks in the right chemistry (literally) - dopamine - the needed neurotransmitter. Dopamine is sometimes confused with endorphins and incorrectly considered the satisfaction molecule. People thought dopamine shot up because you got something good (like winning a game). But dopamine actually spikes before you get the prize. It is the fuel for motivation: it drives the internal incentive processing. It creates the craving, the focus, and the energy required to go get the thing. Making lists. Richard Branson's favorite: " I have always lived my life by making lists ". I too make lists all the time. To help my aging memory and remember important things in the exploding galaxy of interests and distractions. I don't use paper lists but several electro...

Bikerafting in the Abel Tasman National Park is now on my bucket list. Still very uncertain at this point as I first need to find a company - this activity is not easy alone. But first things first, I've placed it on the bucket list. And started sone preparations. If not Abel Tasman, there are many options elsewhere.  I had a mountain bike some 25 years ago but never went on a multi-day offroad trip. That bike is now barely functional and bikes in general have changed a lot. They are now much more capable to ride (hydraulic disc brakes do make a difference) and comfortable (the modern shifters reduced the complexity - just the rear shifter does it all with 11-12 gear cassettes).  I started building the bike with the help of AI (Gemini) as initially I even did not know what to ask for. It guided me with selection of frame and drive options as well as recommended a great local shop that beautifully put it all together ( Peak Bike in Krakow - highly recommended). And then I've ...

The Wallet app is one of the reasons I use my phone more often. For touch payments: when done by phone they don't require a PIN code: faster and more secure. For other card types: mostly as an organizer to have them all in one place. And then for airline boarding passes: not only for convenience, but more importantly as a backup. Airlines love their branded apps. Some of them are barely usable, just being mostly web views on responsive web pages with (almost) no offline functionality. Some are really good - like the often mentioned United Airlines app. But it turns out even the best ones can fail unexpectedly. Just last week my United app lost all my flights . Fortunately this was just the app. It was a bit scary moment, but of course GMail is the mother of all backups. So I retrieved the booking confirmation code of my upcoming trip, then manually added the flight to the app and was able to check-in. The check-in went fine and I added the boarding passes to the Apple Wallet. That ...

Automating customer support has ben the thing for the last 15 years. Or may be more. And has always been super annoying. But it seems recently the bots - mostly thanks to LLMs an much better backend integrations - have actually been quite good. Not all of them of course, but there are some good examples. Revolut is - at least in my experience - leading the pack. I don't have too many issues with Revolut in general, but when I do, the only way to star resolving them is through the "Help" option in the App. And actually with my most recent issues - all of them have been resolved by the automated bot. It is quite good on the front end - in the chat you can seamlessly add attachments and paste screenshots, which simplifies the process. It interprets images quite well. To the point that in many cases it is not even necessary to explain what the problem is - it gets it. But then it has also very good backend integrations. It can analyze the transaction history etc., and also ma...

Let's take a break from the heavy DALI issues series for a while. I did a lot of travel in the past 2 weeks (and a half). First it was LEDucation - the best lighting trade show in New York, followed by factory visits in China and the Bluetooth Asia event in Shenzhen. Was about to return home but then chasing an important business development I ended up detouring home through Australia. As always tons of lessons and experiences. I love being close to customers, as this really helps get down to Earth and understand their contexts, motivations, and - most importantly - what we should be doing to address them well. Also being a global traveler  has increasingly made me sometimes too confident. Take China - once you travel there once or twice, it becomes really easy to navigate there. And as everything is so overwatched (cameras everywhere!) and therefore safe, your vigilance drops. And this was the case when I ended up in Shenzhen / Shekou ferry terminal. This ferry is BTW super conve...

In episode one of the series I discussed the polarity of the DALI bus. Episode two was about application controllers. And episode three about what DALI-2 really is. This fourth episode of DALI misconceptions is about energy data. DALI drivers can report energy data. This is covered by the Part 252 specification. Most people refer to this as measured energy. DALI is digital, so must be precise. A driver reports the energy consumption so it must measure it, right? Wrong! Firstly, DALI Part 252 only defines the protocol and the data points. it does not say anything about accuracy of the data. This depends on the manufacturer, and some of them specify how accurate the reported values can be and some don't say anything. DALI Part 252 is definitely not a utility-grade data. It can be good for general estimates and definitely having the values available directly from the driver is a nice thing. But just because it is digital, you cannot assume anything about how accurate the values are...

In previous DALI myth busting episodes I covered the DALI bus polarity and DALI application controllers. This time we are going to the heart of it all: what is DALI-2 (and what it is not). This, on one hand, is the easiest one. On the other hand it is very rarely that people really know and understand what the DALI-2 logo means. There are many myths (and unfortunately many being repeated by AI assistants). Like : DALI-2 delivers device power over the DALI bus. Or control devices (see the previous post for details) are only standardized by DALI-2. This is all not accurate. As a matter of fact we could say there is no such thing as DALI-2. At least not a DALI-2 specification. Because a DALI-2 logo on a product means just one thing: the product passed DALI tests and has been certified. Practically this means the DALI organization made the best effort to ensure this product follows the specification and will interoperate nicely with other products that carry DALI-2 logo. DALI-2 does not s...

In the previous myth-busting episode on DALI I covered the polarity aspect of the DALI bus. That is: in theory it is polarity-free (it does not matter which cable goes where as far as the DALI line cables are concerned), and it practice the polarity matters (remember to connect DA+ to DA+ and DA- to DA-). This week I'd like to talk about DALI application controllers. DALI in principle has the concept of "control gear" and "control devices and application controllers". Again, the name (especially the distinction between a "gear" and a "device" is not intuitive. So lets try that: a gear is a driver. A device is a sensor or an application controller. The technical difference is much clearer. Drivers never transmit any data on their own. Only in response to a query command. Devices do the opposite - they send data on their own. So an application controller can send a dimming command to a driver. Or an occupancy sensor can send data whenever it d...

The DALI (Digital Addressable Lighting Interface) standard has had a very uphill battle in the USA. Lots of resistance, mostly quoted to it being problematic and expensive. On the other hand DALI has almost 100% market share in Europe and similarly in Asia and Middle East. DALI Alliance has been trying to change this, addressing the North American market with several campaigns, but they have not been too successful so far. And the reason is, despite DALI being a very good technology, there are many misconceptions, false myths, contradictory statements (even by the DALI people themselves). Here I'll address some key concepts that people often get wrong or are falsely propagated even by those who should know in the first place. DALI is polarity free. I have heard this so many times. Even from the founding fathers of DALI. So yes, in principle it is, but in practice it is not. DALI bus signaling works by shorting the bus. There are two wires and there is small DC (around 18V) current ...

Fast forward 20 years and the old battery drain problem is still with us. Perhaps the consequences are even more annoying, as we rely on battery-powered devices (phones) 24/7. In 2006 it was Windows Vista. Now it is iOS. I rarely use flight entertainment systems, turning to my own screen most of the time during flights. My go-to app is YouTube in offline mode. During regular office days I flag various videos as "watch later" and have the app setting to have them downloaded in the background, so they can be watched offline. This worked for me well for many years. But recently (I think I first noticed this in January this year) my phone started draining the battery very fast in flight. Looking here and there I traced down the problem to the YouTube app. Yes it was draining the battery very fast. So fast that the phone was becoming quite hot, which was unusual for an iPhone. Have tried different solutions, playing with a number of YouTube app settings and nothing has really wor...