Archive for the ‘travel’ Category

BACnet Meetings and Embedded Systems Conference

Tuesday, May 24th, 2011

I had BACnet meetings the week of May 2, 2011, in San Francisco. It also happened that the Embedded Systems Conference was the same week in San Jose. I perused my BACnet meeting schedule, and found that I could attend the Embedded Systems Conference on Thursday morning, which would enable me to see the exhibits, and also hear the keynote from Jeri Ellsworth.

My flight to San Francisco from Birmingham went through Houston.  In Houston, I got to ride the Automated People Mover train between concourses, always a highlight on my trips since I worked on these vehicles at several airport and downtown systems for Westinghouse Transportation Systems from 1992-1997.   The train performed flawlessly – perfect programmed stop, smooth acceleration, and very little jerk.  Much to my delight, San Francisco Airport also had Automated People Mover trains, and they also worked very well to get me to the rental car garage.

Guideway for the Automated People MoverView from Automated People Mover

The BACnet meetings were held at the The Pacific Energy Center in downtown San Francisco.  We discussed the Property_List property for objects, the Zero Config algorithm for MS/TP MAC addressing, and the You-Are service for address and device ID assignment. More importantly, we celebrated Cinqo de Mayo at Chevy’s.

BACnet Meeting at Pacific Energy CenterBACnet Meeting at Pacific Energy CenterCinco de Mayo at Chevy's

On Thursday I arrived at the Embedded Systems Conference a little early, and got to meet Jeri in her motion activated Light Emitting Dress before her talk. After the keynote, I toured the exhibits and picked up several new development kits from microcontroller vendors. The nice surprise was to see my STM32 Challenge contest entry displayed at the STM exhibit. I didn’t win, but I had fun.  The STM32 Design Challenge entry was just a simple port of my BACnet Protocol Stack to the STM32F103 ARM Cortex M3 XL-Density Performance Line microcontroller with 1 MByte of embedded Flash and 96K SRAM. I also created a printed circuit board to attach to the STM32 Discovery Kit so that I could integrate RS-485, LEDs, and a DIP switch.

Jeri Ellsworth keynote presentation at ESCT-Rex at ESCSTM32 Design Challenge Finalists

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BACnet Meets in Salt Lake City

Monday, June 23rd, 2008

Salt Lake City Mountains

The BACnet committee met in Salt Lake City at the end of June.  We had a large number of Addenda that had finished public review, and had lots of comments for which to respond.  Salt Lake City had some interesting sites and some street items that I had not seen before.  The “Look” on the pavement, as well as the flags used at some crosswalks.
Look Both Ways! Street Crossing Flags

I attended Mass at Cathedral of the Madeleine on Saturday night.  It was a beautiful church and a thought provoking sermon.

Altar at the Cathedral

I ate some wonderful food in Salt Lake City, including a fabulous carrot cake at Squatter’s Pub Brewery, and some delightful salmon at Cucina Toscana.

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Sharkfest ’08 Conference for Wireshark

Monday, April 7th, 2008

sharkfest logoI was invited to attend Sharkfest ’08, a conference for Wireshark users and developers, held March 31-April 2 at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, California. I had a great time, and am so grateful that Gerald invited me to attend. I attended as a Wireshark developer since I actively maintain the BACnet dissector. I went to the conference with several goals in mind:

  1. Figure out how to do BACnet segmentation
  2. Figure out how to get BACnet MS/TP into libpcap/winpcap.
  3. Add a couple of BACnet dissector enhancements to Wireshark.
  4. Learn about using Wireshark for problem network analysis.

I attended Laura Chappell’s training sessions, and learned a whole lot about Network analysis and the love-hate relationship between TCP/IP SYN, ACK, and Keepalives (#4 completed). I also wrote some Wireshark code during the classes which I promply submitted (#3 completed). Loris came into the activity center and sat down with my son Joshua and me, and so we discussed how to integrate BACnet MS/TP RS485 from serial port into libpcap/winpcap (#2 completed). On the last day and the last session of the conference, I attended a session by Richard Sharpe about file sharing protocols and learned about Wireshark conversations (#1 completed).

Vint Cerf and Gerald CombsWe were treated to an inspiration talk on Tuesday morning by Vint Cerf. After the talk, I went to Laura’s session, and Joshua talked to Vint. Vint signed Joshua’s Half-Life player guide, had photos taken with Vint and Gerald, and the Wireshark crew gave Joshua some swag.

Gerald treated the developers to dinner on Tuesday night at Trader Vic’s. I drove to dinner with Joshua and Jaap Keuter, and learned about PBX systems and Jaap’s passion for skydiving. At dinner I sat next to Ulf Lamping and learned about yet another division of Siemens and about Ulf’s love for motorcycle riding. Guy Harrris and Mike sat across from me.  Joshua ate with Gerald’s wife and daughter, and John Bruno’s wife.

The Foothill College campus was beautiful and on Spring Break. The food was awesome and plentiful.  The people were great!  The Wireshark sessions were helpful.  Maybe I will get to attend next year.

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BACnet at Long Beach

Saturday, June 30th, 2007

We had our Summer BACnet committee meeting in Long Beach, California. We mostly discussed new addenda or responses to public review comments on addenda that had been out for public review.

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Our traditional Saturday evening BACnet dinner was held at the Rock Bottom Brewary.

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We had time to shoot billiards after our dinner was served.

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I stayed on board the RMS Queen Mary, a former cruise ship and former troop carrier during World War II.

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California Differences

Saturday, June 16th, 2007

Palm trees at the poolHaving just moved to San Diego, California, I’ve noticed some unique things about it that I wanted to write down before they became commonplace to me.

Traffic lights – only one light above two lanes.

Snails on sidewalks after watering – similar to worms on sidewalks in the East.

California Refund Value (CRV) – you pay extra for cans and plastic bottles, and if you take them to a recycling center after emptying them, you get money back.

Increased speed limits on surface roads – surface roads I would consider 35 or 45 mph limits are posted as 50 or 55 mph. The locals drive very fast.

Bike lanes, and lots of bikes use them.

Interstates and state highways are referred to as “The Five” instead of “I-5″ or “Interstate 5″; “The Seventy-Eight” instead of “CA-78″ or “California 78″ or “State Highway 78″.

Lots of pregnant women. I see more pregnant women here than anywhere I’ve lived. Maybe it is the weather. Maybe it is the water. Maybe it is the culture.

Lots of things are known to be toxic in the State of California. Proposition 65.

The traffic report includes delay time to get across the United States border to Mexico. The report also includes the delay coming into the United States from Mexico. Today it was a 2 hour delay.

Dr. Laura and Bill Handel are local radio hosts.

Sticks of butter in California stores have different dimensions than the ones I have seen in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Florida, Colorado, and Tennessee.   Wikipedia says that the sticks are known as Western-Pack shape and are common West of the Rocky Mountains.

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