Headworx

I used to use the iPad a lot in the past. But over the last year I've found myself using it less often. I think there have been three reasons for this decline and I have been able to get rid of at least two of them. Reason number one (and this one is still there) is the small "phone" form-factor apps have been getting increasingly better. Getting things done with just a phone is not only possible today but often it is the most effective way. App UX designers target the largest audience and these are phone users. I even find it quite convenient to watch (offline) YouTube videos on the phone ( the battery drain bug is still there - so be careful! ). Not movies but blog-type videos, where the audio track is really where the content is. Reason number two was the battery in my iPad was discharging quickly. It is a 3rd party battery. Apple does not replace the battery, replacing the whole device instead. I did not want to go through the iPad erase/restore process ( it is tediou...

The Karlsson Nixie clock (by Peter van der Jagt 1997) is very stylish. One of the first of the kind and definitely setting the trend. Unfortunately it does not hold the time after a power outage. For quite some time I was thinking of adding a time synchronization module. Initially the idea was to use the long wave radio receiving the DCF77 signal. DCF77 is increasingly more problematic as the 77kHz frequency is impacted by the totality of high frequency digital power supplies that generate lots of radio noise. The alternative is of course fully digital, relying on an Internet time source, based on the NTP protocol. Surprisingly (or not) the NTP-based module has proven to be super easy to build these days (...with the help of AI). Actually I wanted to kill two birds with one stone: have the bloody clock display the right time and also test Claude's capabilities as a junior embedded software / electronics coworker. Both goals have been achieved. I found it entertaining, educating, ...

My knee has been getting better and I was told that bicycle would be a much better recovery exercise than trail running. That is kind of obvious - less stress and better joint stabilization. September has also proven to be a great time for a bit of off-road / gravel biking. Not too hot and very nice scenery, especially in mornings or at sunset.  Sunset rides also mean returning after dark. Which means the bike needed a good light. That was planned from the very beginning, especially with some longer off-the-grid trips I had in mind.  When I was a kid, most bikes had attached dynamos, friction- powered by a rotating tire. That system was problematic - the friction was significant and did not work when the tire was wet. Also the additional tire wear was not negligible.  But now we have dynamo hubs. I chose the German SON , as it bears some convincing German engineering - like moisture protection. The hub also removes all issues of the old design: works always (even when wet...

We have clearly got carried away with AI. I'm hearing singularity, AGI, fully automated economy... Yet the truth is the basic IT services and apps just suck. They are often pretty and that seems to be sufficient for most complacent users, yet the quality of their output is really, really bad. A year ago I was complaining about the Flighty app . Pretty but totally inaccurate. Google Calendar is not that much better - it fails on some most critical tasks. Like managing date / time on trans - Pacific flights. These flights are tricky because they cross the date line: going west you lose a day, going east you gain a day. My typical east-bound itineraries are via Los Angeles or San Francisco, where I have other connecting flights. These flights are always part of the same booking and they usually include a 1-3 hours layover. Looking at the departing times of the connecting flights, they often depart on the same day as the long haul Asia -> America flight, but nominally at an earlier ...

Last week I had an overnight layover at the San Francisco airport. Landed in the afternoon and then took the hotel shuttle bus to the nearby hotel. It turned out the bus could not enter the hotel parking area: the automatic barriers were lowered and a number of cars before us was already lined up. We ended up disembarking the bus on the street and walking up to the hotel. The front door did not open. "We have a power outage" - a staff member explained - please use the side door. I did. Then the check-in was by means of writing my name and CC number on a piece of paper and walking up the stairs to the 3rd floor. I still could open my room with the keycard (battery-operated?) but inside it was dead silent - no usual ventilation hum. There was no WiFi either.  They fixed the power in the evening, but many systems still did not work. Elevators required a service company next day to get started. WiFi was on but the captive portal did not work until next morning. This whole situati...

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...

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...

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 ...

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 ...

Find My is one of very useful features of the Apple ecosystem. The way it works is devices broadcast Bluetooth beacons that can be picked up by other devices that forward these beacons to the Apple cloud, after attaching location tags to the beacons. Thus, assuming there are random iOS devices close to your items, you can track the items globally. A similar system is available in the Android ecosystem - the Find Hub. Just recently Google has upgraded the feature, allowing phones that are powered off, to be found. iPhones have had this since iPhone 11 (the U1 chip). The idea is simple - continue broadcasting Bluetooth beacons even in the off mode. Bluetooth broadcast use almost no power, so this broadcasting could be almost indefinite. Maybe not literally indefinite, but at least couple of months. The Insta360 Go3s camera I lost when descending from Mt Aorai in October 2025 , has come to life just recently (it has been 5 months now). It disappears for a couple of days and then reappears...

There are several things that give me goosebumps. Or make me think how little we comprehend / understand about the weird world we live in. Physics - the way we have it now - is completely bent. Totally far from being intuitive and understandable. Take the John Wheeler's double-slit experiment . A source of light and a screen with two thin, vertical slits. You shine the light through the slits, the light acts like a wave., interferes with itself, resulting in a ripple-like pattern on the wall. Turn the light down to only a single photon. The photon acts like a particle: hits the wall in one specific spot. But after enough photons arrive, the same interference pattern emerges. The single photon interferes with itself. Now add a detector to the slits, to figure out which slit the photon actually passed through. When you do this, you never get an interference pattern on the far wall. The OBSERVATION (not any interaction with) of the photons affected their behavior. Then there...

It took me several more days to complete the move to the new iPhone. Generally speaking this is a fail of the industry. But on the other hand I understand why certain things are difficult. But still - stepping up just two generations of hardware (from 15 to 17) withing a single ecosystem (Apple) should not be that complicated. Especially as they have not just the operating system but the entire apps ecosystem under control. And people are pushed to pay monthly recurring service fee (iCloud) on the promise to have things taken care of. The Revolut eSIM did not migrate. This was kind of expected (I have no idea if other eSIMs can be migrated, but anticipating that I waited with the migration until returning from my final 2025 international trip). On the other hand Apple itself pushes the developments to get rid of physical SIM cards entirely (iPads do not have SIM slots since 2024). So once Apple gets rid of the physical SIM slot in iPhones, I'm not sure what we are supposed to be d...

I have recently had a chance to play with a new prototype Bluetooth Low Energy Audio device. Or - should I be more specific - a new application (firmware) for an existing audio device that uses Bluetooth Low Energy Audio. Think of it as any type of wireless earbuds or headphones or - increasingly popular - smart glasses with audio microphones and tiny speakers. The feature allowed an unlimited number of people who were in the radio range to talk to each other. Essentially a voice group chat. That does not sound too exciting (definitely less than a space AI data center), but really brings the Bluetooth audio experience to a completely new level. Thing of it as voice chat rooms. Virtual rooms that you can "enter" with your earbuds and then chat with people. In a similar way to a Zoom call, but locally, peer-to-peer, without any supporting infrastructure or Internet connectivity. Great for events but also great for variety of other activities such as hiking or white water raftin...

Email has clearly become cheaper and cheaper to push advertising messages. This has become apparent during the recent days - the US Thanksgiving followed by the Black Friday which now seems to last for two weeks. I had several brands I liked, that I still was subscribed to, but this time most of them went just too far. Some of them were sending me multiple (three or more) promotional emails per day. So I have radicalized myself cutting off somewhere between 80% and 90% of email subscriptions. One reason is (maybe I'm aging) - I really don't need more stuff. I definitely need more peace and less time spent on keeping my inbox tidy. Gmail has recently introduced a helpful feature - [Manage subscriptions]. Shows you the complete list and for 90% of subscriptions it offers a on-click [Unsubscribe]. So if anyone is stull using email, I highly recommend going through the list and cutting down stuff.