Ottawa in bloom

In March, I posted photos of what Ottawa looked like after a major blizzard. It's now early May and the flowers are blooming like mad, so it's time to show you what Ottawa looks like sans snow.

Let's start by walking out QNX's front door. As you can see, some of the tulips in the front garden are in full bloom:



A closer look:



When you walk across the street from QNX, you quickly reach a section of the Trans Canada trail, which, when completed, will stretch 18,000 kilometers. Just off the trail, I came across several bushes in full flower:



Here's another photo of these bushes, which I took back in 2006.



Huge numbers of migratory birds have returned to Ottawa in the last month, including robins, kingbirds, ducks, herons, red-winged blackbirds, and, one of my favorites, waxwings. Here's a waxwing that flew close to QNX headquarters, back in April:

If you'd like to share some of your Spring photos, just leave a comment and provide a link — I'd be delighted to see them.

The iPod of film cameras

Recently, companies like Intel and Harman have been using QNX technology to demonstrate the slick graphics capabilities of their new products. Take, for example, this 3D navigation system, which runs on the Intel Atom and which uses QNX’s implementation of the OpenGL ES 3D API:



All of these graphics demos got me thinking, naturally enough, about user-interface design. And that got me thinking, surprisingly enough, about the Olympus Infinity Stylus Epic.

Have you ever used an Epic? It’s a low-priced, well-built, waterproof 35mm camera with a talent for rocket photography. And here's the best part: It’s much smaller than its name.

From a usability perspective, the Epic embodied the “less is more” philosophy years before the iPod Classic made its debut on a drawing board. Like the iPod Classic, it has a simple user interface (you just push the damn button) and it can fit into your smallest pocket — or rocket. And like the iPod, it performs its job extremely well.

For evidence, consider the photo below, shot with my trusty Epic. If the plane looks unfamiliar, it’s an Avro Arrow, a 1950s-era Canadian interceptor capable of Mach 2. If you’re familiar with the Arrow, you’ll have already guessed that the plane in the photo isn’t real, but a large-scale model — the last real Arrow was scrapped in 1959. (BTW, the young fellow adding drama to the shot is my son.)


Replica of Avro Arrow, Barry’s Bay, Ontario.
Supporting pedestal removed in PhotoShop.

To return to my point, combining the right amount of functionality with an intuitive user interface is nirvana for device developers. Apple found the sweet spot, and so did Olympus. Achieving this combination is tough, though. It takes daring and a solid feel for what your customers will buy, along with right HMI technology.

What about you? Do you have a favorite device that strikes a perfect balance of functionality, usability, and affordability? Have you built one?

Postscript

Olympus sold a huge number of Epics over the years. But recently, it stopped manufacturing the camera, likely because it shoots film. C'est la vie.

An audience of millions

Pin a world map to your wall, put on a blindfold, and throw a dart at the map. Grab a shortwave radio and take a plane to wherever the dart landed. Switch on the radio and start twiddling with the tuner. Chances are, you’ll pick up China Radio International (CRI).

CRI, a state-owned radio network of the People’s Republic of China, embodies the "think big" approach. Every day, its 50+ shortwave transmitters pump out 290 hours of programming worldwide — in 42 languages, no less. Those transmitters target just about every corner of the globe, from Tirana, Albania to Houston, Texas.

Broadcasting all that content takes some serious back-end equipment. This week, NTP Technology A/S, a Danish manufacturer of high-end broadcast products, announced that CRI is expanding its broadcast center with NTP 625 audio routers, controlled by the QNX Neutrino RTOS. Not surprisingly, these routers are equipped for 24/7 operation, with full monitoring capabilities, hot-swapping for all modules, and redundant power supplies.


A view inside the CRI broadcast center. An NTP 625 audio router is in Bay 1, at the upper left.

I did some digging, and it turns out that QNX-based systems control hundreds of other radio and TV stations in the United States, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, Russia, the UK, and other countries in Europe and Asia. Vendors offering QNX-based broadcast automation systems include Aveco, Harris , IBIS Transmission Automation, Thomson Grass Valley, and, of course, NTP Technology.

I now realize that hundreds of millions of people worldwide watch TV broadcasts controlled by QNX. On the one hand, that’s pretty cool. On the other hand, shouldn’t those millions of people get off their bums, walk out the door, and, well, do something?

Six systems for celebrating Earth day

Global warming? I’m still not convinced. Biofuels? Pure marketing hype. Organic foods? Healthy, especially for the companies who make money selling them.

Don't get me wrong. I care deeply about the environment and I believe that we should do more — a lot more — to make it better. But, sometimes, I think people would rather embrace fashionable solutions than do the right thing. Like consume less.

But, hey, enough of my skepticism. It’s Earth day, so let’s celebrate! To get things going, let me tell you about some QNX-based systems that are making the world a little bit greener:

• Building automation system helps Boeing conserve electricity — This system, designed by Tridium, allows a large Boeing plant (over 1 million square feet) to slash power consumption by 20% during peak periods. More.



• Automated sensor system prevents soil pollution — This system monitors the insulating foil in a waste landfill site, ensuring that dangerous substances don’t seep into the surrounding soil. More.



• Traffic control system optimizes traffic flow — This system from Delcan minimizes traffic jams and shortens waits at intersections. Which means less gas is wasted going nowhere. More.



• Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) monitor underwater pollution — Pollution monitoring is just one of the talents of these Russian-designed AUVs. More.



• High-speed simulation system speeds fuel-cell research — Fuel-cell hybrid vehicles (FCHV) hold the promise of cleaner air. This system speeds up the simulation of FCHVs based on proton exchange membranes. More.



• Monitoring system helps factories reduce emissions — This system, designed by Bailey Controls, dates back to the early 1990s. You won’t find much about it on the Web, but if you have old copies of QNXnews lying around, look for Volume 6, Number 2 (1992) and turn page 5.

How about you? Have you or your company designed a system that uses electricity or fuel efficiently? That minimizes pollution? That prevents environmental disasters? I’d love to hear about it!

Well, king me: It's a checkers-playing robot!

QNX-based systems perform eye surgery, control air traffic, monitor nuclear power plants, and keep 9-1-1 systems running 24/7. Heck, they even control touchless car washes. But did you know that QNX can also play a wicked game of checkers? Check out the video here. (Hint: Skip the intro and fast-forward to the 00:40 mark.)

I don't know about you, but any robotics project that can prove its point using beer caps and bubble gum has got my vote!

For the record...

If you really want to have a million people do something, don't ask them to speak Latin. It is enough to ask them to just speak English without using cuss words...”

- Wen-mei Hwu, a senior researcher in parallel programming at the University of Illinois, on resisting the temptation to create new programming languages for multi-core processors.

Random hits...

A QNX-based system for genome analysis; your forest on drugs; explaining cosmetic surgery to children.

Rx for oil-rig blowouts

Got 15 seconds? Then check out this video of a oil-rig blowout — the action starts at exactly 00:15:



Fortunately, no one got hurt in the incident. And just as fortunately, real-time control devices called blowout preventers (BOPs) are making blowouts a thing of the past. This week, Control Engineering magazine profiled a BOP based on the QNX Neutrino RTOS and the McObject high availability database. It’s a pretty cool system, but more important, it keeps oil rigs from bursting into incendiary versions of Old Faithful.

Oil rigs are surrounded by saltwater. Lots of it. Salt plays havoc with electronics, so this is one system where redundant, standby controllers come in handy. To achieve this redundancy, the BOP relies on QNX Neutrino transparent distributed processing (TDP), which can merge any number of real-time control systems into a seamless, peer-to-peer network. Together with the McObject database, QNX TDP ensures that the primary and standby controllers share the same, up-to-date view of the system.

This application is a shoe-in for my list of all-time life-saving QNX-based systems.

Balancing act

Want to see a cool example of real-time control? Check out this video of a QNX-based system controlling a Furuta pendulum:



This isn't just a parlor trick. Furuta pendulums help engineering students learn the principles of controlling dynamic or unstable systems, such as walking robots. In this case, the pendulum was part of a student project at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

Remotely related trivia: Josef Hofmann, a piano virtuoso and inventor who lived from 1876 to 1957, is credited with inventing windshield wipers for cars. Story has it, he got the idea by watching a metronome — which, of course, is a pendulum — swinging back and forth. (Metronomes, thankfully, went digital in the 1980s. The older mechanical types had a tendency to beat out syncopated rhythms when placed on anything less than a perfectly flat surface.)