Memos From the Cube

Finally, I’ve managed to grab some time to write a new post. I know a lot of you (well, possibly one of you) have been desparingly refreshing your RSS feeds waiting for a new Memos From the Cube post – so here it is!
The usual fare has been preventing me from writing more – University, which is now in full swing, work and other commitments. University’s a huge time-sap; not only do I have to attend the double-degree workload of lectures, tutorials and practical classes, I also have to complete assignments. Unlike highschool, “dog ate my homework” will only net you a fierce stare and a failed unit. On the upside, I’m actually finding the new maths (yes, I finally passed first year maths) to be interesting so far. Laplace transforms are one of the elements of mathematics which makes you wonder how you never thought of it yourself, once you’ve had it explained to you.

Now, on to business. I’m ecstatic to announce that along with Casainho’s generous Atmel SAM7 based hardware donation, two other LUFA-loving users named Nico and Dave (last names not published, in case they want to protect their identities) have donated a brand-new EVK1101 board. The EVK1101 is something I’ve been eyeing off for a while, and is based on the AVR32 UC3B chipset, and comes with a raft of onboard features. It’s a bit like a souped up USBKEY board, and I’m looking forward to playing with it and eventually creating a LUFA port.
In preperation of the impending LUFA multi-architecture ports, I’ve branched the main repository. The trunk (I love all these new revision control terms I’ve discovered!) will continue on as usual, with all port work done in the MultiArch branch, until such time that it can be merged back. That will allow me to continue simultaneous development of both the current and future LUFA codebases. I think I’ve figured out how to merge branches back into the trunk, but I’ll have to investigate how I can keep the branch code current against the trunk.

The LUFA will have to take on a new meaning once the ports are done, as it will no longer be just for AVRs. The current meaning (Lightweight USB Framework for AVRs) will remain until the multi-architecture branch work is complete, whereupon it will take on the slightly different meaning of Lightweight USB Framework for Architectures. Not super-elegant, but it will prevent another name change to the project.

I’ve taken the time tonight to also reply to almost all my mail, which has been backing up over the last week like a toilet at a frat party as of late. I do sincerely apologise for my tardiness in replying both on the LUFA support group and via private mail, but I do ask for people’s understanding due to my current workload. With any luck, the support group will become at some point self-sustaining, and users will be able to help out other users once more people become intimately familiar with the library API.

Some more good news, but this time to me; my new Acer Aspire One, sent in for repairs due to a noisy fan, has finally been repaired and is being shipped back to me. I’m not thrilled about the seven week repair time to replace a single component, nor am I happy about losing over a month’s warranty on a new machine which only comes with a year’s warranty, but I’ll be happy just to have it back. Woohoo!