Author Archives: pgfeldman

Mike 6.4.2012

  • Relocated to new site desk
  • Connected to server just fine and did the regular backups
  • Submitted Dong’s VR
  • Played around more with the COGNOS data in prep for demo on Friday
  • Back at the mill, rebuilt the entire vis tool suite, did some minimal compatibility testing
  • Burned everything to disk for deployment
  • Investigated an issue with trending data in the visualization after using a GROUP BY statement in the advanced query window.  There’s a problem with our string parsing that screws up there WHERE clause

Dong Shin 06.04.2012

  • tested new PPM and PA on FGMDEV, seems fine.
    • database updates – DBUpdatesSQLs05242012.sql
    • saved old – ProjPortfolioMgr_06042012 and project_portfolio_06042012
  • found ProjectAssistant gets confused with endpoint after AutoLogin changes – fixed

Phil 10.4.12

8:00 – 4:00 FP

  • Cleaning up and packing the project and hardware for move.
  • Got a new GWT in Action. and let Dong and Mike know about it
  • Hmm. There’s a thing called Restlets. Looking into that.
  • Started a throttler for the sound JSON writer.
  • Looks like I start AMPERE on the 11th. Reserved a truck for the 7th-8th. Penske reservation number is 30588476. (06/07/2012 at 8:00 AM, 8685 Washington Blvd, Penske Baltimore, Jessup, MD 20794)

Tom 6.4.2012

Start: 10:00

  • Decided to use standard pin headers for the where the ribbon cable attaches to the board.
  • Started building the nets for the auto routing
  • Talked to Phil about the uncertain future of the project.
  • Added more mounting holes
  • Double checked all measurements.

End: 6:00

Mike 6.1.2012

  • Test server backups
  • Apparently my desk has been given away to someone else so I’m moving to a temporary desk starting Monday, hopefully I can still reach the server.  Moved everything that was on the local drive to the network drive for transfer
  • Sent out the VIS Tool weekly status report
  • Spoke with Jessica R.
    • She wanted to know how to create users and assign roles
    • She will also be rolling my weekly status reports in to the larger group weeklies
    • Also discussed my new desk and got my door access to the office, no more ringing the bell
    • Bill and Jessica both want to bring Phil on to implement the official test plan and offered to find some funding
  • We’re getting ‘Out of Connections’ Mysql errors on the PPM service.  I bounced the server and got rid of them but the problem needs to be solved soon.
  • Talked to Phil about coming on to write the test plan, sent and email to Jim asking how to proceed
  • Collecting statuses from Kristi and Dong to submit to TASC for the month of May
  • Talked to Kristi about getting documentation for PPM deployed at site
  • Sent an email to Dong about the ‘out of connections’ error
  • Going to start work on a java-based AMF client that will stress test the PPM back-end.  I will probably only write 1 method (log in) and hopefully hand it off to Dong.

Mike 5.31.2012

  • Test server backups at site
  • Stopped by the customer office and spoke to Jessica R., Bill D., and Tangela H.
    • Jessica had lots of questions about creating accounts, timelines, and when the reports would be ready
    • Tangie was having difficulty making projects with subprojects and wants to have 1 MIPR span multiple projects…
    • Bill is working on getting the production server going
  • Sent out the connection test and troubleshooting document, it will be emailed out to all users tomorrow
  • More charting stuff

Tom 5.31.2012

Start: 10:00

  • Deleted stray traces and  and cleaned up the postions of
  • Transposed amp circuit to be able to be mounted on the back of the board
  • Phil decided we don’t need the amps after all to control volume
  • Finished and saved the amp circuits just in case before removing them
  • Played with teh auto route tool.  It works great

End: 6:00

Dong Shin 05.31.2012

  • cleaned up PPM project structure – moved scripts to new directories
  • working on PPM to add new fields
    • created VO’s for Funding Type, Organization, and Location
    • updated BudgetCenterData with new fields
    • modified CreateProjectPanel to work.
    • testing

Phil 5.31.12

8:00 – 4:30FP

Tom 5.30.2012

Start: 9:30

  • Changed the location of the grounds for the midi controllers on the new board
  • Finished routing sensor circuit traces
  • Finished adding amp circuits
  • Routed power lines
  • Still haven’t found a hard drive power connector which I could mount to the board but I did find the footprint for one in the schematics
  • Still looking for either a connector for the ribbon cables or a footprint for the ones I have.  I can use the standard pins without a mounting harness but the harness is nice as it cannot be plugged in the wrong way.
  • Changed the wiring of the midi and amps to use the two prong connectors I have been using for wires going to the arduino.  This will make it easier to swap out parts if needed.

End: 6:00

IT WORK (OVERHEAD) — 1:30-3:00: My laptop has been having intermittent problems which seemed to be characteristic of overheating.  I spent some time today opening up and cleaning off the fan as this is a common problem with this model.  Once the fan was cleaned off, I noticed that the laptop idles at a much lower usage level and even with the overclock settings the fan does not spin nearly as fast.  I ran 3dmark06 to benchmark and test stability.  It ran it very well even with the CPU overclocked to 2.75ghz(normal clock is 2.2ghz).  Furthermore, the area below my left hand, where the graphics card resides, does not get hot anymore.  The fan did not even reach max speed during this test.  Hopefully this solved the stability issues I have been experiencing for almost a year.

Asus has very efficient cooling systems in their laptops, but even the best systems will fail if dust sneaks in.  It is always good to clean the fans periodically, as I have seen computers which seemed destine for the junkyard, fully recover after their cooling systems were cleaned.

Mike 5.30.2012

  • Server backups at site
  • Fixed a broken link on the visibility index pages
  • Moved over the map hosting webapp so visibility displays maps correctly
  • Working on the charting package

Phil 5.30.12

7:30 – 4:30, 6:30 – 8:30 FP

  • Put together all my semester info for reimbursement.
  • Working on the tone structure for the fingers.
  • Here’s a nice chord that works:
    • thumbIO.setContactNote(52);
    • indexIO.setContactNote(55);
    • middleIO.setContactNote(60);
    • ringIO.setContactNote(64);
    • pinkyIO.setContactNote(67);
  • Adding some PC-side data throttling so that we don’t overwhelm the Arduino
    • Setting up the sandbox to play with buffer management.
  • Brought over one of the other PhD students to look at the system and see what kind of study/paper can be done with it

Tom 5.29.2012

Start: 9:30

  • Found the footprint for a hard drive power plug and placed it on the board
  • Found the footprint for the D-sub connectors for the hands sensors and speakers
  • Drew the traces for the sensor voltage divider.  It is now much smaller
  • Still trying to figure out how to mount the ribbon cables wiring slot on the board
  • Ribbon cables are easy to attach to the female connector.  All that is needed is to line them up and then squeeze the top part
  • Cleaned up the lab area a bit
  • Phil was able to get the hand working so we tried it out.  It feels really good and I can see a potentially low learning curve once everything is tuned properly.  Tuning includes adjusting sensitivity, add more dynamic range to the volume, figure out a way to isolate each finger to an extent(it might be good if you feel some vibration in the other fingers), and selecting notes and  chords
  • http://www.8notes.com/piano_chord_chart/
  • I tried to find a list of cords in midi numbering format but couldn’t.  We will have to convert them using the chart.

End: 5:30

Mike 5.29.2012

  • Production backups at site
  • Created some Portfolio Manager accounts for users who requested them
  • One of the remote sites that was having difficulty connecting to our server resolved the issue.  It was a proxy on their end.
  • Created a document describing how remote users can test their connection and included a lot of troubleshooting information.  Hopefully we can send it out this week to all potential users
  • Status meeting this afternoon:
    • Apparently what the help desk told me was our production server is not actually a production server and we are still in the test and integration environment.  We need to jump through some more hoops to get to production.
    • May need to bring Phil back for help with the test plan
    • Tangie is working on getting a final user list so we can send out and connection test email to everyone on Friday
    • The next step will be getting some early adopters to start entering data