Blog
Emissare Part 2: Put up your jukes
I bought some boxing gloves recently. The gym in my apartment complex has a few punching bags, and since I will do anything to avoid traditional cardio, I figured some bag work might just be the ticke...
Emissare Part 1: Pressing play
Have you ever used a universal remote? My folks have one, and I hate it with all my heart. It is capable of so many things, and yet it sucks at many of its most common tasks. So although it technicall...
Vervr Part 4: The hidden forks
In case these posts are starting to sound like a pity party, I want to assure you these self-reflections are meant to gain insight, not condolences. But it never hurts to hear from people, so please c...
Vervr Part 3: Fake it or make it?
Once upon a time, there was an engineer who was so satisfied at work that when they got home, they simply relaxed. They didn’t touch a computer or a calculator. They maybe even picked up a book or dab...
Vervr Part 2: Well, that was fast
“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life.” Jean-Luc Picard
Vervr Part 1: Failure is very much an option
I swore I would never pivot. Pivoting is for people who didn’t start out with a plan. Pivoting is for people who don’t get it right on the first try. Okay, now that I’m writing this down, it seems cle...
DRIVR Part 11: Ghost in the machine
The promised potential of virtual reality is based on trust. You cannot allow yourself to become fully immersed in a virtual world if you feel the need to constantly monitor the real world for dangers...
DRIVR Part 10: Talk the talk
It’s Christmas morning, you’ve unwrapped your new VR headset and now you’re in the living room lined up at the 40-yard line waiting to run a Super Bowl-winning route that will launch your imaginary ca...
DRIVR Part 9: One bite at a time
A journey of one thousand miles begins with deciding that it would take way too long to walk that far, and wouldn’t it be easier to build a car instead? Okay, cool, but we don’t have enough money to b...
DRIVR Part 8: Unlocke your potential
As Goethe once said, “There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, a metaverse that is neither tethered nor confined. Oh, and Costco hot dogs...
DRIVR Part 7: On your marks
Alright, so it’s a been a while. But don’t worry, although we may be publishing at George R. R. Martin speeds, we actually know where we’re headed with all of this. So what have we been up to these pa...
DRIVR Part 6: The future ain't what it used to be
You know that giant projection TV that was still at your parents’ house long after you went away from college? It’s crazy to think that at one time that was the pinnacle of home entertainment technolo...
DRIVR Part 5: Aslantis
A lot of you have been asking me questions about the wisdom in relying so heavily on a wireless network for offloading the vehicle computation. No, I’m kidding, nobody is asking questions. There are o...
DRIVR Part 4: Go backwards forwards quickly
So we all know that the government laced our vaccines with microchips and hid 5G repeaters in our masks, but while the rest of you were baking sourdough, I studied the blade. Wait no, I was figuring o...
DRIVR Part 3: A throne of lies
Did you know that the carbohydrate-to-sugar ratio contained in a large Little Caesar’s pepperoni pizza and a two-liter of Mountain Dew is perfect for overclocking your brain to over 32 PFLOPS? Of cour...
DRIVR Part 2: Why it's fun
Welcome back! If you’re here, you’re family. Wait…no, if you’re here that probably means you already read our first couple posts, so you know that we’re building a completely different gaming experien...
DRIVR Part 1: What we're building
You remember that episode of Rick and Morty where they find all the Gotron ferrets to make a Gotron, but then Rick isn’t satisfied and they find more Gotrons to make a Gogotron, and then a Gogogotron,...
Introducing DRIVR: Your next great driving experience
If you’re here, then you’ve probably seen the following video. Just in case you somehow reached this page accidentally, here it is again:
13. 1+1=1
No need to pull out your calculator, folks, the math here isn’t literal. Today we’re talking about how it was possible to add a multirotor controller to our fixed-wing autopilot in just 4 days thanks ...
12b. AI in the Sky
Welcome to the thrilling continuation of our RealFlight simulator discussion. If you remember from last time (I had to go back and look too), we were able to capture video from a downward-facing view ...
12a. Real to Reel
Welcome back, everyone! I hope you all enjoyed not leaving the house for the holidays. Isn’t it crazy that people used to wear pants like every day? Wild.
11. Kibbles 'n Wits
Welcome back! If you noticed that there wasn’t a write-up last week when there should have been, then I think you’re the only one. So congratulations, and please head over to the online store where yo...
10. Plan it, Janet!
Is it weird that two of my favorite fictional characters are both named Riff Raff? Well, technically one them is real, but he goes so hard in the paint that he makes me wonder if maybe I’m the one who...
9. Con Air(frame)
I’ve been reading imagining all your feedback, and I couldn’t agree more. The action movie references have really dwindled lately, and it’s unacceptable. The engineering should probably take a back se...
8. The Dolt of Volt
Throughout my career, I’ve had the nasty habit of holding on to preconceived notions for far too long without questioning their validity. Often times, I will let a single bad experience with a product...
7. The Mimic Gimmick
What’s that saying? “Fake it until you make it.” Well today’s topic goes a little something like this:
6. SimPATHy
For someone who keeps using the word “autopilot”, I sure have avoided the autonomous part of the project for a long time. Well, hold onto your socks because today we’ll be describing how the vehicle a...
5b. Good HIL Hunting
If you remember from last time, we were parsing X-Plane data output messages and converting them to native Elixir messages that contained the same information. By doing this, the Estimation module cou...
5a. "X" Marks the Spot
Today we’re going to talk about something near and dear to my heart: staying inside.
4. Attested Development
Do you ever look back on your life and think:
3. Commands on Demand
Welcome back! Unless you never left, in which case, maybe it’s time for a snack?? Previously we were discussing the notion of taking two sources of hardware output and somehow rectifying them into a s...
2. Code for any Mode
From the start, this autopilot was designed to use multiple nodes operating on a local network. And with that premise in mind, I introduce you to Segal’s law (not to be confused with Steven Seagal’s A...
1. Hardware vs. Software
Software is great, but at some point it has to interact with hardware or it’s useless. One of the pressing questions early on was how many of the hardware interfaces could be written in Elixir. For ex...
0. In the beginning, there was the middle...
You’re jumping into a novel at about Chapter 6. And no, that’s not because you missed the earlier chapters. I am only writing it now because it has finally become something worth recording (and hopefu...