wal5hy's comments

Thanks! Like yourselves we saw a clear niche for a ultra-reliable small embedded board suitable for robotics and other space constrained systems. I'd be very happy to send you one of our products to compare, i'll message your team email.

By "buy-in" I was referring to the parent comment and how the electronics guy chose to buy-in a pre-made module rather than design their own.

ha, true! However at expos often the person asking is a vendor looking to sell SPE components to us, or someone in the industry trying to determine if a technology is popular. Can be a bit of an echo chamber.

Our company is often asked at expos if we supply 2 wire ethernet switches (e.g. Single Pair Ethernet SPE[1]) but the reality is there's little demand (outside of automotive) we see in the Industrial marketplace for this type of product.

The other issue is that there is at least 2 competing industrial connector standards for SPE, the main ones being from Harting[2] and Phoenix Contact[3]. I think this could be a great option for the future and ultimately lead to lower cost cabling and smaller products.

[1] https://www.single-pair-ethernet.com/en

[2] https://images.app.goo.gl/ND9d9x66YNUckS7g6

[3] https://images.app.goo.gl/yWAiUAx4Y5vRmmbZA

Congratulations MUREX Robotics team, great job!

There are products at different price points on the market, for example this 55x55mm switch from my company Brainboxes[1] is sub $50. We choose that size so that we could also produce a gigabit option with the exact same footprint. We opted for microMatch[2] style connectors as you can get board to board as well as board to cable options.

Your co-leads decision to buy-in is quite common, as you can reduce time to market and also not have to manage the component lifecycle if you go with an off the shelf option.

[1] https://www.brainboxes.com/product/pure-embedded/pe-505

[2] https://www.te.com/en/products/brands/micro-match.html?tab=p...

Thanks. We felt for London commuters just the live image of the map would be enough to enable them to visualise their route. And for tourists/infrequent users the added route planning would show them how and why they should take a particular journey. You can also manually open and close stations/lines and get instant feedback on how that effects the planned journey (although this is mainly hidden in the UI)

The key concept which we considered interesting was that the image of the underground map also updates to reflect the current status of the lines. Giving instant visual feedback.

That's a very good point and we want to add that feature. Is the fact that it redraws the map based on the current state of the lines visually useful? I would like to redraw the official tfl underground map

Weekend project of a friend and I uses live London Underground tube line status to improve route planning. Its still in a very rough state, but feedback of any kind would be very interesting to hear. Thanks. http://www.livetubemap.com/

ah can't correct the spelling mistake now, thanks for spotting it.

A video I saw on a few years ago which was great for getting a fast paced over-view of how starting with digital electronics one can build a computer and write a program to work on it "From NAND to Tetris in 12 steps" http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7654043762021156507

Having finished a degree in Electronics I would recommend the following two books:

* Engineering Maths by K. Stroud http://www.amazon.co.uk/Engineering-Mathematics-6th-K-Stroud... to my mind there's no better maths book, very logical step by step approach to improving maths skills by building on previous knowledge

* The Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Hall http://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Electronics-Paul-Horowitz/dp/052... this is often referred to as the bible of electronics and acts as a great reference book (there is a circuit chip designer in my workplace who came from a physics background and taught himself electronics with this book)