Adam's song

Adam and Max, two of our new recruits, have been working on a slick networking trick with our LIDARs. They want to make each LIDAR its own separate entity on the vehicle network, so it doesn't have to pass data through a computer. Why? Well, last year we needed a separate serial card for each LIDAR, and we actually ran low on PCI slots in our computers. It worked fine for the 3 LIDARs we used last year, err, so long as the computers didn't crash (in other words, it didn't work so well).

Anyway, this year Adam and Max are making each LIDAR communicate directly with the vehicle network through its own reader microcontroller. The micro would act like a liason between its sensor and the vehicle network, so each sensor would be independent of the computers. It apparently also allows for some killer pulse-based timing, so we bypass sketchy Windows thread scheduling altogether (imagine trying to time-stamp something when you don't know when it was created).

They have the system working, err, mostly:

One of the weird things about microcontrollers, however, is that you never quite know what's going on inside them. They operate at a much lower level than something like Windows, so they can be a pain to debug. Sometimes even getting the silly little red light to flash is an all-day accomplishment. This song, which can be sung to the notes of Blink 182's Adam's Song, describes their plight:

~I never thought~

~this wouldn't work.~

~The HCS12 is being a jerk.~

~I traced the LIDAR to its card.~

~It really shouldn't be this hard.~

What, you want me to finish the song? Psh, I have work to do; nevermind the fact that it took me all morning to come up with it.