TL;DR: Prius and Prius Prime have a flaw where the rear doors may get water-leak (possibly from a car wash?) and randomly open even while driving. Toyota has issued a large scale recall as well as a stop-selling order to all dealerships.

That basically covers all 5th Gen Prius and Prius Prime vehicles. So until this door issue is fixed, no one is buying that vehicle.

I've preferred Pixel phones for the last few years but I've heard that Pixel 6/7 had 5G connection problems (Pixel 8 apparently has a better modem, but I think I'd rather stick to a Qualcomm design for now).

So onto looking for my next phone.

I haven't considered a Samsung smartphone in years because I hated their TouchWiz stuff. But apparently they got rid of that like 8 years ago and have had multiple versions of updates. Can anyone comment on how good "One UI" is compared to stock Android? How much bloatware does it feel like? And what kind of customizations did Samsung do to the UI exactly?

I'm also looking at Asus Zenfone 11, but I figure the "mainstream" choice today is Samsung, so I'll also have to seriously consider Samsung phones.

I didn't realize Baltimore was so important for the car market of the Midwest and East Coast. Apparently 800,000+ cars are delivered per year through the Port of Baltimore, but with the bridge collapse today it sounds like shipments could cause some car market issues for a swath of the country.

https://youtu.be/Dgd3A0dmw9E?si=OVDP874FlPrpaTRt&t=1007

ASL is well on its way with some of the best professional Starcraft players duking it out. Just a few days ago (yes, still an active pro-scene!!), this excellent Starcraft game happened.

I don't want to spoil it too much. The above timestamp should take you to the start of the match. Its a bit over 25-minutes long from that point (the 4-hours is for the entire pool / all the matches, not just this Mini vs Barracks match).

All the top-level micro you'd expect from 300+ APM players like Mini and Barracks, with some excellent strategic play ultimately leading to the most raw slugfest of an ending that could possibly happen in Starcraft.

cross-posted from: https://dubvee.org/post/861635

Not OC: Just found this on my old hard drive while grabbing some other stuff.

I feel like people buying cars today (be it used or new) would benefit from market research like this. The overall feeling of the used car market is down in all categories over the past year.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/12746233

I haven't heard of this list before. ACEEE claims to consider the caustic effects of mining and total environmental impact of EVs, thus giving a way to consider lifetime emissions and lifetime pollution.

We all know that Tesla vehicles have over 1000lbs of batteries in them: batteries that were mined through dirty means, and hundreds of extra pounds that reduce the efficiency of the vehicle. Adding up the total environmental impacts overall are difficult, and I've always been looking for a methodology that took these issues into account.

ACEEE did come up with a 2024 list of the "greenest" cars, as well as a top-10 list of "Greener, non-EV cars". The non-EV list is for anyone who is unable to use electricity (ex: living in an apartment without access to a charger), who still wants the greenest solution for themselves.

Lightweight EVs like the Nissan Leaf and Mini Cooper SE are near the top of the list. Surprisingly, Prius Prime 2024 (a PHEV) tops the list as #1 greenest car according to the ACEEE's methodology.

---

I'll have to read more about the methodology here, but I'm glad to see a total lifetime envrionmental effects list like this. I'll have to review their methodology before I fully trust it, but the surface-level discussions look great.

A pretty good overview of the benefits of PHEV, one of the fastest growing categories of cars in the USA today.

The tl;dr: Cheaper than EVs, takes gasoline for long-trips, are effectively electric for typical distances (~20mi to ~40mi depending on model).

However, I'd like to add that PHEVs are incredibly varied. Everyone can agree that a Prius Prime is efficient and environmental, but PHEVs like the Jeep Wrangler 4xe is incredibly inefficient. Furthermore, Jeep buyers have a reputation of not even charging the batteries!!

All in all, it seems like a good article so I feel like its worth sharing.

This meme gave me a laugh. Deserves a BestOf flag :-)

Hey everyone, as you all have noticed, I've slowed down on posting topics here.

My main problem is that my main search tool (search-lemmy.com) has seemingly disappeared, so I don't really know how to search Lemmy for good posts.

Lemmy's subscribed / all feeds leave much to be desired as well. So I don't think I've been finding as many posts deserving of a topic here from just the #1 votes or whatever.

Still, maybe we can discuss how we plan to find good posts and bring them to discussion here. Does anyone have good research methodologies they'd like to share with the peanut gallery?

• Move 1: 1 point
• Move 2: 1 point
• Move 3: 4 points
• Move 4: 4 points
• Move 5: 1 point
• Move 6: 1 point
• Move 7: 4 points
• Move 8: 1 point
• Move 9: 4 points
• Move 10: 6 points
• Move 11: 7 points
• Move: 12: 8 points
• Move 13: 7 points
• Move 14: 7 points
• Move 15: 7 points
• Move 16: 7 points
• Move 17: 7 points
• Endgame Bonus: 10 + 10 + 7 + 7 + 2 == 36 Endgame Bonus
• Total Score: 113

Note that while this is "optimal" placements, it is not the best sequence in-game. For example, sequence 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 are going backwards. I'm not sure how to rewrite my program to account for the top-down placements per round however. So there's still work to be done.

This was a relatively simple brute-force bot that exhaustively checked all possibilities for the best possible placement. So I'm pretty sure I've go the best placement here. Well, maybe it was more "Dynamic Programming". I worked backwards: I calculated all possible 17-placement endgames (there's only 1.081 million of them, aka 25-choose-17), and then back-calculated all possible moves back to move#1.

Then I calculate from move#1 forward, choosing the best endgame move now that all possible endgames have been searched. Chess-programming fans would know this as a "Tablebase" approach.

EDIT: Searching the ~60 million possible optimal games proved to be difficult, as my computer ran out of RAM at 2GB (ummm... I got a 32GB system here. WTF Windows?). I'm sure there was some compiler flag I messed up on.

But I did a few heuristics and came up with the following board:

This is a 17-placement across 5 rounds with as many placements on the "top" of the board that I could find with my program.

EDIT:

• Optimal 11 Placement: 58 Points
• Optimal 12 Placement: 63 Points
• Optimal 13 Placement: 73 Points
• Optimal 14 Placement: 82 Points
• Optimal 15 Placement: 91 Points
• Optimal 16 Placement: 99 Points
• Optimal 17 Placement: 113 Points
• Optimal 18 Placement: 123 Points
• Optimal 19 Placement: 136 Points
• Optimal 20 Placement: 147 Points
• Optimal 21 Placement: 163 Points
• Optimal 22 Placement: 174 Points
• Optimal 23 Placement: 192 Points
• Optimal 24 Placement: 211 Points
• Optimal 25 Placement: 240 Points

• Beginner Series I: What is a Microcontroller https://lemux.minnix.dev/post/10943
• Beginner Series II: The "Generic" Microcontroller https://lemux.minnix.dev/post/23245
• Beginner Sidenote: Microchip's Signal Chain Design Guide https://lemux.minnix.dev/post/64811
• Beginner Series III: Skills and Complexity Tiers https://lemux.minnix.dev/post/81220

I think I've covered the material needed for a beginner to analyze and choose microcontrollers. However, a beginner may not be comfortable with reading datasheets, or families of datasheets. As such, I'll help beginners through microcontroller families.

This skill where you can download a few spec-sheets, analyze them, and understand them is an absolutely necessary skill. There's hundreds of chips released every year from many manufacturers. And while practice with a specific chip is the only way to true expertise, there's still the "breadth" of knowledge that comes in handy when selecting chips.

In this guide, I'm going to deep dive into AVR EA, the newest 8-bit AVR microcontroller from Microchip. But with commentary to help beginners understand the "big picture", how to evaluate this line and compare/contrast with other lines of chips.

Why so many chips?

Beginners might be flabbergasted to learn that there are 1498 available AVR-chips for sale, despite only ever being made by Atmel/Microchip. Of these, 1298 chips are the 8-bit AVR with mostly the same assembly language since the early 00s.

AVR itself refers to the instruction set (https://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/devicedoc/atmel-0856-avr-instruction-set-manual.pdf), the assembly language / machine code that makes up all of these chips. Development tools (compilers, linkers, IDEs) are built on top of this ISA and therefore cannot change very much in practice.

But many other features and specifications: the number of timers, 8-bit ADC vs 12-bit ADCs, DACs, UARTs, SPI, etc. etc. can and do shift on a regular basis. And ultimately, that's what leads to this chip proliferation. Its almost always possible to find a chip that does exactly what you want it to do, at the lowest price, at the lowest power-usage. So there's a lot of marketing and swapping of features to create a perfect chip for every application.

Microchip's AVR EA Family: (2nd) Newest 2023 era chip family

So lets get started at looking at the AVR EA. (Oh no, while I was writing the AVR EB was released and I'm too lazy to switch now... oh well...).

The webpage is a great starting point (https://www.microchip.com/en-us/products/microcontrollers-and-microprocessors/8-bit-mcus/avr-mcus/avr-ea ), but this only introduces the AVR EA family in general. We still have ... well...

All the other chips within the family. Now the main thing here is 28pin, 32-pin, and 48-pin pinouts... as well as 16kB, 32kB, and 64kB of Flash. Fortunately, the AVR Instruction set, and all the hardware (ex: Timer specifications, RTC, GPIO configurations, etc. etc.) are shared with recent chips (AVR EA shares very similar drivers with the AVR DD, AVR DA, and AVR DB chips released in the last 3 years).

The homepage contains the following line:

The AVR EA family of MCUs is a great option for closed-loop control system designs and secondary monitoring devices for safety reasons.

I agree with Microchip here, but how and why is this the case? What features from AVR EA make it ideal for this? Well, all in due time.

Curiosity Nano / Development Boards

All manufacturers create a "Development Environment" to help speed up experimentation with new chips. AVR EA is no exception, with the ~$25-ish AVR EA Curiosity Nano.

https://www.microchip.com/en-us/development-tool/ev66e56a

There is a USB programmer on board that works with MPLab and the legacy Atmel Studio IDEs, so you can easily develop from scratch (even without buying a special purpose programmer like Atmel ICE or building an AVRDude).

Microchip also releases schematics and PCB designs for these development boards. We can see that the AVR EA Curiosity Nano is a 4-layer board for example. All the relevant docs are in that area.

Chip Programmer

If you leave the prototyping stage and start making custom PCBs, you'll likely find a programmer useful for your later-stage prototypes on your custom boards.

https://www.microchip.com/en-us/development-tool/PG164100

MPLab Snap is the $35 lower-cost programmer from Microchip. I've never used this tool, I'm using a legacy "Atmel-ICE" (which used to be the $35 range, but it looks like MPLab Snap is replacing it). For Atmel-ICE, I've never had a problem just connecting over USB, running the wires to my board header and sending the code through. I'd expect MPLab Snap to be similarly easy.

Programming and Software

Atmel Studio (now Microchip Studio) is my preferred IDE, but it is considered legacy. Microchip Studio still is a free download and still work with AVR EA chips today (just tested with my Version4 of my Battery-tester project).

https://www.microchip.com/en-us/tools-resources/develop/microchip-studio

I've only ever used the free and open-source GCC compiler for AVR.

Microchip has been pushing hard for https://www.microchip.com/en-us/tools-resources/develop/mplab-x-ide , and I'd expect it to replace Microchip-Studio any day now. I do prefer the Visual-Studio based IDE though, but its hard to complain about free tools that work.

Microchip also sells their XC8 compiler, and there's other compilers like Keil or IAR. But professional compilers are $1000+, and likely outside the range of hobbyists / beginners who are just getting started. In either case, the $0 GCC compiler and toolchain exists and works with both the $0 Microchip Studio IDE and $0 MPLab X IDE. There is a free version of XC8 as well that is missing a few features, but should be usable-enough for beginners.

All of these tools provide the C-programming language (and maybe even C++ programming language), as well as linkers (combining .o object files together), the ability to create libraries, and a few libraries to help handle basic problems (Printf, atoi, etc. etc.).

Some people prefer Arduino software, I don't know much about it and have always preferred the low-level C stuff personally.

Can we talk about AVR EA yet?

Oh wow, yeah, I guess that's a lot of cruft beginners need to know before they get to the chip. Lets start talking about the chip now!

Digikey has thousands in stock across 66 SKUs. Larger quantities can be ordered directly from Microchip in 5000+ at-a-time quantities (though it can take some weeks for larger quantities to arrive). Both Digikey and Microchip offer the Curiosity Nano development board that I talked about earlier, and that might be a better place to get started than the raw chips.

But anyone thinking ahead to the custom-PCB phase of your project should see the SOIC, SSOP, TQFP, and VQFN packages of various sizes are all available. With some at extended temperature ranges as well.

https://www.microchip.com/en-us/product/avr64ea32

The AVR64EA32 in TQFP was what I used for a most recent project. The 64kB Flash and 32-pin layout shares much in common with AVR DA, DB, DD, and older chips (very similar layout, size, pinout, and pcb-footprint), so I prefer using that over-and-over again in different projects of mine.

HTML Version: https://onlinedocs.microchip.com/oxy/GUID-838DDB25-4D69-4519-815B-A48DBACEED23-en-US-9/index.html

PDF Version: https://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/aemDocuments/documents/MCU08/ProductDocuments/DataSheets/AVR64EA-28-32-48-DataSheet-DS40002443.pdf

Entering the manual, we have 565 pages of documentation. This is pretty small for modern chips, and this is due to the relative simplicity of 8-bit chips. (Many 32-bit chips are closer to 2000+ pages long). There's no need to read every single page of the manual, but instead immediately bring your focus to the following pages.

The first pages are a 5ish page summary of all features. I'm not going through the entire list, but I want to draw attention to:

12-Bit ADCs are available on a lot of chips these days. But Differential and PGA are eyebrow raising. These are relatively rare features that are incredibly useful in the application of current-sensing. This suggests to me that the AVR EA is for reading current and reacting to current-changes (such as the 4-20 mA current loop protocol). This is absolutely the "killer feature" of the chip, and is the reason to pick AVR EA if you have any current-sensing use in your application.

Most chips have a "killer feature" like this somewhere. It could be very high memory (264kB on the RP2040), it could be incredibly accurate ADCs (RX23E-A), or whatever. Knowing and remembering that this AVR EA chip is extremely useful for this niche is something you'll have to keep in mind for all future projects, thinking of what the best chip for your project could be.

Next, you'll want to look at the port multiplexing.

Only some features are available on some pins. AVR chips are more flexible than most thanks to the Event-system (some outputs can go onto the event system and be routed arbitrarily), but outputs are often tied to just a limited number of pins. If you're making a PCB layout, you'll have to keep these pin-multiplex issues in mind.

From there, skip all the features and just read the Electrical Characteristics. Keep in mind your voltage-levels, the capabilities of pins, and any features of the hardware you're interested in.

Don't forget Application Notes

Going back to the AVR EA landing webpage leads to the documents section. Check it out.

If you're not experienced enough to see the "killer feature" of a particular chip, look at the App Notes. They likely suggest situations that the chip is good at. They're trying to sell you this chip after all, but these App Notes (despite being marketing / sales purposes) are still good technical information that will teach beginners how to think about projects.

In particular, https://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/aemDocuments/documents/MCU08/ApplicationNotes/ApplicationNotes/AN4811-CurrMeasurem-BattMon-DS00004811.pdf

AN4811 is an AppNote covering how a 12-bit Differential ADC with 16x PGA (on the older ATtiny1627 chip, but still applicable to today's AVR EA) can be used as a battery monitoring / Coulomb counting application.

Honestly, I'd say that these Application Notes are the #1 source of information for beginners and intermediate engineers who need some hand-holding to learn how to use these chips (or chip features).

Thats it, I guess?

Well, I don't want to hold up everyone with an even longer article. But I think I've covered the crux of how to read a real world Microcontroller datasheet. There's hundreds of other pages in the datasheet and not enough time to cover it all, but I think I was able to at least cover the basics.

Would anyone be interested if I gave a rundown of my AVR EA Battery Tester project some time later?