Huge leaps forward in the thesis project!

Today has been a pretty fantastic day at work. I both had time to aid the others with some C programming (seriously, what can be so hard about a pointer and realizing when to use sprintf vs. memcpy or strncpy?) and, probably as I am beginning to realize how urgent things are becoming, I pushed myself and managed to make huge leaps forward in the project!

The picture above represent one of those leaps – it is a screenshot of our web interface being developed. The peak you see in the graph is the level of relative humidity over time as I put my hand around a moisture sensor connected to a wireless zigbee node. The layman might not realize how cool this is, but it represent a major step toward completing my thesis project, in which the primary goal is to build wireless sensor networks and to present their data through a web page. That is exactly what I have managed today – sure enough with a bit of manual fiddling helping the bits along and keeping things together with duct tape so to say, but nevertheless, "Nu är det nedförsbacke!" ("It's downhill from here on!", as uttered by Goofy after Mickey's and Donald's neckbraking ride along the mountain in their caravan on Disney's christmas...). Also I managed to hack together a control program in our microcontroller, complete with a circular string buffer to keep readings if the node lose connection with the rest of the network!

When I first saw the idea for my thesis project I never thought it could be done, or that I could do it, in just 20 weeks. Indeed it has been, with quite some effort and with the helping hands by five other people in the company and I can't tell you how happy I am about it! My project might also very well compete to be one of the most advanced and things closest to market done with Zigbee so far, at least definitely in Sweden. Keep your eyes open for my two pages in NyTeknik :-) [Note: This has not happened yet, it just might though].

What made today particularly hectic was that Jakob decided today was the day to book my presentations. If I am to be employed during October I need to have my inhouse presentation in September. They don't demand for me to have the essay ready though, and Chalmers want the essay ready but can settle for October with the presentation. So now it's set, inhouse the 29th of September 3 PM and at Chalmers the 19th of October. Anyone interested is of course welcome on both occasions, though the latter date is when I will be celebrating and everything, so you might want to wait until then.

Still not done with the whitepaper I am to do for CoolSecurity, of course I have to be true to myself and write for the blog rather than finish that [Note: Ok, it's done now, just ask me to read it if you're interested].

On another note, dude, the PT Cruisers are so perverted in the design, I've wanted to own one ever since high school!

Soundtrack of today: Jerusalem - Prophet