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[Phil Hobbs]

Martin Brown wrote:

On 04/01/2023 22:25, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 4 Jan 2023 10:30:35 -0800, Joerg
news@analogconsultants.com> wrote:

On 1/2/23 2:34 PM, Joe Gwinn wrote:
[snip]
Antenna pattern is first calibrated by a like process.

My time-domain routine didn\'t need any golden numbers and
converged every single time within less than half a second. We
let the uC handle that because the computational load dropped to
peanuts. The big DSP became unemployed.

The project start was the usual, everyone saying that FFT was the
name of the game and there wasn\'t any other decent way. If it
didn\'t work in time domain I\'d have to buy everyone a beer at
night. If it did, everyone had to buy me a beer. I needed a
designated driver that night ...

Given an actual waveform a(t) and a desired waveform d(t), we can
fix a to make d with an equalizer having impulse response e(t)

d(t) = a(t) ** e(t) ** is convolution

Finding e is the reverse convolution problem.

The classic way to find e(t) is to do complex FFTs on a and d and
complex divide to get the FFT of e, then reverse FFT. That usually
makes a bunch of divide-by-0 or divide-by-almost-0 points, which
sort of blows up.

Which is why no one apart from an EE who skipped all the advanced
maths classes would ever try to do it that way.

Effective deconvolution algorithms have been known since the late
1970\'s when computers became powerful enough to implement them. The
first big breakthrough in applying non-linear constraints like
positivity of a brightness distribution was Gull & Daniel, Nature
1978, 272, 686-690 (implementation was mathematically a bit flakey
but it still worked OK)

https://www.nature.com/articles/272686a0

Prior to that you would always have non-sensical rings of negative
brightness around bright point sources caused by the truncated
Fourier transform.

Slightly later more mathematically refined versions widely used:

John Skilling & Bryan\'s Maximum Entropy Image Reconstruction

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1984MNRAS.211..111S/abstract

Tim Cornwell\'s & Evans VM at the VLA

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1985A%26A...143...77C/abstract

Prior to that there were still some quite respectable linear
deconvolution methods that involved weighting down the higher
frequencies with a constraint (additive frequency dependent term in
the denominator). Effectively a penalty function that prevents wild
changes between adjacent pixels by constraining the second
derivative.

Later Maximum Entropy deconvolution methods became routine and could
solve very difficult problems albeit at high computational cost.
They were the way that deconvolved images from the flawed HST were
made.

The fault in the primary mirror was determined using a code from
Jodrell Bank intended for adjusting the panels for focus on the big
dish.

I do it in time domain.

Feed forward compensation for step changes in input signal is as old
as the hills. Mass spectrometers have used it since their invention.
It is a one trick pony and only works in very limited circumstances.

Once you\'re formed an intensity-only image on a detector, a lot of the
possibilities are lost. It\'s hard to avoid in optical astronomy, of
course, but in instruments you have more optical tools in the bag,
notably interferometry, so linear deconvolution is more fruitful.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[Phil Hobbs]

Martin Brown wrote:

On 04/01/2023 22:25, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 4 Jan 2023 10:30:35 -0800, Joerg
news@analogconsultants.com> wrote:

On 1/2/23 2:34 PM, Joe Gwinn wrote:
[snip]
Antenna pattern is first calibrated by a like process.

My time-domain routine didn\'t need any golden numbers and
converged every single time within less than half a second. We
let the uC handle that because the computational load dropped to
peanuts. The big DSP became unemployed.

The project start was the usual, everyone saying that FFT was the
name of the game and there wasn\'t any other decent way. If it
didn\'t work in time domain I\'d have to buy everyone a beer at
night. If it did, everyone had to buy me a beer. I needed a
designated driver that night ...

Given an actual waveform a(t) and a desired waveform d(t), we can
fix a to make d with an equalizer having impulse response e(t)

d(t) = a(t) ** e(t) ** is convolution

Finding e is the reverse convolution problem.

The classic way to find e(t) is to do complex FFTs on a and d and
complex divide to get the FFT of e, then reverse FFT. That usually
makes a bunch of divide-by-0 or divide-by-almost-0 points, which
sort of blows up.

Which is why no one apart from an EE who skipped all the advanced
maths classes would ever try to do it that way.

Effective deconvolution algorithms have been known since the late
1970\'s when computers became powerful enough to implement them. The
first big breakthrough in applying non-linear constraints like
positivity of a brightness distribution was Gull & Daniel, Nature
1978, 272, 686-690 (implementation was mathematically a bit flakey
but it still worked OK)

https://www.nature.com/articles/272686a0

Prior to that you would always have non-sensical rings of negative
brightness around bright point sources caused by the truncated
Fourier transform.

Slightly later more mathematically refined versions widely used:

John Skilling & Bryan\'s Maximum Entropy Image Reconstruction

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1984MNRAS.211..111S/abstract

Tim Cornwell\'s & Evans VM at the VLA

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1985A%26A...143...77C/abstract

Prior to that there were still some quite respectable linear
deconvolution methods that involved weighting down the higher
frequencies with a constraint (additive frequency dependent term in
the denominator). Effectively a penalty function that prevents wild
changes between adjacent pixels by constraining the second
derivative.

Later Maximum Entropy deconvolution methods became routine and could
solve very difficult problems albeit at high computational cost.
They were the way that deconvolved images from the flawed HST were
made.

The fault in the primary mirror was determined using a code from
Jodrell Bank intended for adjusting the panels for focus on the big
dish.

I do it in time domain.

Feed forward compensation for step changes in input signal is as old
as the hills. Mass spectrometers have used it since their invention.
It is a one trick pony and only works in very limited circumstances.

Once you\'re formed an intensity-only image on a detector, a lot of the
possibilities are lost. It\'s hard to avoid in optical astronomy, of
course, but in instruments you have more optical tools in the bag,
notably interferometry, so linear deconvolution is more fruitful.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[Phil Hobbs]

Martin Brown wrote:

On 04/01/2023 22:25, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 4 Jan 2023 10:30:35 -0800, Joerg
news@analogconsultants.com> wrote:

On 1/2/23 2:34 PM, Joe Gwinn wrote:
[snip]
Antenna pattern is first calibrated by a like process.

My time-domain routine didn\'t need any golden numbers and
converged every single time within less than half a second. We
let the uC handle that because the computational load dropped to
peanuts. The big DSP became unemployed.

The project start was the usual, everyone saying that FFT was the
name of the game and there wasn\'t any other decent way. If it
didn\'t work in time domain I\'d have to buy everyone a beer at
night. If it did, everyone had to buy me a beer. I needed a
designated driver that night ...

Given an actual waveform a(t) and a desired waveform d(t), we can
fix a to make d with an equalizer having impulse response e(t)

d(t) = a(t) ** e(t) ** is convolution

Finding e is the reverse convolution problem.

The classic way to find e(t) is to do complex FFTs on a and d and
complex divide to get the FFT of e, then reverse FFT. That usually
makes a bunch of divide-by-0 or divide-by-almost-0 points, which
sort of blows up.

Which is why no one apart from an EE who skipped all the advanced
maths classes would ever try to do it that way.

Effective deconvolution algorithms have been known since the late
1970\'s when computers became powerful enough to implement them. The
first big breakthrough in applying non-linear constraints like
positivity of a brightness distribution was Gull & Daniel, Nature
1978, 272, 686-690 (implementation was mathematically a bit flakey
but it still worked OK)

https://www.nature.com/articles/272686a0

Prior to that you would always have non-sensical rings of negative
brightness around bright point sources caused by the truncated
Fourier transform.

Slightly later more mathematically refined versions widely used:

John Skilling & Bryan\'s Maximum Entropy Image Reconstruction

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1984MNRAS.211..111S/abstract

Tim Cornwell\'s & Evans VM at the VLA

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1985A%26A...143...77C/abstract

Prior to that there were still some quite respectable linear
deconvolution methods that involved weighting down the higher
frequencies with a constraint (additive frequency dependent term in
the denominator). Effectively a penalty function that prevents wild
changes between adjacent pixels by constraining the second
derivative.

Later Maximum Entropy deconvolution methods became routine and could
solve very difficult problems albeit at high computational cost.
They were the way that deconvolved images from the flawed HST were
made.

The fault in the primary mirror was determined using a code from
Jodrell Bank intended for adjusting the panels for focus on the big
dish.

I do it in time domain.

Feed forward compensation for step changes in input signal is as old
as the hills. Mass spectrometers have used it since their invention.
It is a one trick pony and only works in very limited circumstances.

Once you\'re formed an intensity-only image on a detector, a lot of the
possibilities are lost. It\'s hard to avoid in optical astronomy, of
course, but in instruments you have more optical tools in the bag,
notably interferometry, so linear deconvolution is more fruitful.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[Don Y]

On 1/5/2023 4:38 PM, Dan Purgert wrote:

On 2023-01-05, Don Y wrote:
On 1/5/2023 10:29 AM, Dan Purgert wrote:

Don\'t be dismissive of them. Each algorithm has different characteristics
and cost-benefits, depending on what you are trying to sort. E.g., adding
one item to a sorted list is different than sorting a \"random\" list.

Oh, I\'m not. But I meant the _writing_ of one of those algorithms \"in
the real world\" is generally not done -- a parallel to your \"nobody
builds a powersupply\".

They are nice, simple interview questions to see if the applicant
has any *theory* instead of just \"coding experience\". (No need to
have him code the algorithm, just *describe* it and tell me where
it shines/suffers)

They are great exemplars for showing the *cost* of different approaches
(sort is sort is sort, right? so, wouldn\'t you opt for the cheapest??)

Knuth wrote a series of tomes covering most of the \"basic\" algorithms.
Surprisingly, much software is just a rearranging of these core
algorithms in different combinations.

TAOCP is on my amazon wishlist ...

You may be able to find a used copy. OTOH, many folks are content to
have them on their bookshelves, even if not referenced.

This was considerably slicker. As you positioned the \"sugar cubes\"
together, the schematic of the circuit you were building was visible.
I.e., a \"diode sugarcube\" had a symbol of a diode on top of the
sugarcube with leads heading off to the two opposing sides that
had the metallic contacts on them. Ditto for a resistor. So,
\"wiring\" a resistor in series with a diode involved positioning
the two sugarcubes adjacent to each other, their \"side contacts\"
abutting, and you would then see a schematic with those two
elements visible on their top surfaces. You never had to trace
PHYSICAL wires to figure out what the circuit was doing.

oh, that is slick

Ha! Perseverance pays off!

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raytheon_Lectron>

Ouch! Hadn\'t realized it was that long ago (not sold since 1969)

[...]
Quite so. But C doesn\'t really have much more in the \'aha\' space for

C can be interesting if you start trying to adopt different
programming practices. E.g., most of my current project is coded
in C but is entirely object-based. And, objects are referenced by
something akin to file handles.

Sure, but there\'s only so much one can do on a micro, especially one
that doesn\'t have much (anything) in the way of \"external connectivity\"
(okay, sure, someone could _take_ it, but meh)

There are all sorts of different processors available. You just
have to decide what features you want and what price you are
willing to pay.

Even \"dirt cheap\" MCUs can have interesting applications.
E.g., WRITE a program to read an A/DC to determine the
current \"output voltage\" and, based on that value, decide
whether or not to turn on a pass transistor (feeding a
choke) and for how long. Presto! You have your own
switching power supply -- implemented in software!

(you can even design it so the processor is *powered*
by that power supply -- that *it* is actively regulating!)

[Of course, a bug in your code can fry your processor! :> ]

 

[Don Y]

On 1/5/2023 4:38 PM, Dan Purgert wrote:

On 2023-01-05, Don Y wrote:
On 1/5/2023 10:29 AM, Dan Purgert wrote:

Don\'t be dismissive of them. Each algorithm has different characteristics
and cost-benefits, depending on what you are trying to sort. E.g., adding
one item to a sorted list is different than sorting a \"random\" list.

Oh, I\'m not. But I meant the _writing_ of one of those algorithms \"in
the real world\" is generally not done -- a parallel to your \"nobody
builds a powersupply\".

They are nice, simple interview questions to see if the applicant
has any *theory* instead of just \"coding experience\". (No need to
have him code the algorithm, just *describe* it and tell me where
it shines/suffers)

They are great exemplars for showing the *cost* of different approaches
(sort is sort is sort, right? so, wouldn\'t you opt for the cheapest??)

Knuth wrote a series of tomes covering most of the \"basic\" algorithms.
Surprisingly, much software is just a rearranging of these core
algorithms in different combinations.

TAOCP is on my amazon wishlist ...

You may be able to find a used copy. OTOH, many folks are content to
have them on their bookshelves, even if not referenced.

This was considerably slicker. As you positioned the \"sugar cubes\"
together, the schematic of the circuit you were building was visible.
I.e., a \"diode sugarcube\" had a symbol of a diode on top of the
sugarcube with leads heading off to the two opposing sides that
had the metallic contacts on them. Ditto for a resistor. So,
\"wiring\" a resistor in series with a diode involved positioning
the two sugarcubes adjacent to each other, their \"side contacts\"
abutting, and you would then see a schematic with those two
elements visible on their top surfaces. You never had to trace
PHYSICAL wires to figure out what the circuit was doing.

oh, that is slick

Ha! Perseverance pays off!

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raytheon_Lectron>

Ouch! Hadn\'t realized it was that long ago (not sold since 1969)

[...]
Quite so. But C doesn\'t really have much more in the \'aha\' space for

C can be interesting if you start trying to adopt different
programming practices. E.g., most of my current project is coded
in C but is entirely object-based. And, objects are referenced by
something akin to file handles.

Sure, but there\'s only so much one can do on a micro, especially one
that doesn\'t have much (anything) in the way of \"external connectivity\"
(okay, sure, someone could _take_ it, but meh)

There are all sorts of different processors available. You just
have to decide what features you want and what price you are
willing to pay.

Even \"dirt cheap\" MCUs can have interesting applications.
E.g., WRITE a program to read an A/DC to determine the
current \"output voltage\" and, based on that value, decide
whether or not to turn on a pass transistor (feeding a
choke) and for how long. Presto! You have your own
switching power supply -- implemented in software!

(you can even design it so the processor is *powered*
by that power supply -- that *it* is actively regulating!)

[Of course, a bug in your code can fry your processor! :> ]

 

[Don Y]

On 1/5/2023 4:38 PM, Dan Purgert wrote:

On 2023-01-05, Don Y wrote:
On 1/5/2023 10:29 AM, Dan Purgert wrote:

Don\'t be dismissive of them. Each algorithm has different characteristics
and cost-benefits, depending on what you are trying to sort. E.g., adding
one item to a sorted list is different than sorting a \"random\" list.

Oh, I\'m not. But I meant the _writing_ of one of those algorithms \"in
the real world\" is generally not done -- a parallel to your \"nobody
builds a powersupply\".

They are nice, simple interview questions to see if the applicant
has any *theory* instead of just \"coding experience\". (No need to
have him code the algorithm, just *describe* it and tell me where
it shines/suffers)

They are great exemplars for showing the *cost* of different approaches
(sort is sort is sort, right? so, wouldn\'t you opt for the cheapest??)

Knuth wrote a series of tomes covering most of the \"basic\" algorithms.
Surprisingly, much software is just a rearranging of these core
algorithms in different combinations.

TAOCP is on my amazon wishlist ...

You may be able to find a used copy. OTOH, many folks are content to
have them on their bookshelves, even if not referenced.

This was considerably slicker. As you positioned the \"sugar cubes\"
together, the schematic of the circuit you were building was visible.
I.e., a \"diode sugarcube\" had a symbol of a diode on top of the
sugarcube with leads heading off to the two opposing sides that
had the metallic contacts on them. Ditto for a resistor. So,
\"wiring\" a resistor in series with a diode involved positioning
the two sugarcubes adjacent to each other, their \"side contacts\"
abutting, and you would then see a schematic with those two
elements visible on their top surfaces. You never had to trace
PHYSICAL wires to figure out what the circuit was doing.

oh, that is slick

Ha! Perseverance pays off!

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raytheon_Lectron>

Ouch! Hadn\'t realized it was that long ago (not sold since 1969)

[...]
Quite so. But C doesn\'t really have much more in the \'aha\' space for

C can be interesting if you start trying to adopt different
programming practices. E.g., most of my current project is coded
in C but is entirely object-based. And, objects are referenced by
something akin to file handles.

Sure, but there\'s only so much one can do on a micro, especially one
that doesn\'t have much (anything) in the way of \"external connectivity\"
(okay, sure, someone could _take_ it, but meh)

There are all sorts of different processors available. You just
have to decide what features you want and what price you are
willing to pay.

Even \"dirt cheap\" MCUs can have interesting applications.
E.g., WRITE a program to read an A/DC to determine the
current \"output voltage\" and, based on that value, decide
whether or not to turn on a pass transistor (feeding a
choke) and for how long. Presto! You have your own
switching power supply -- implemented in software!

(you can even design it so the processor is *powered*
by that power supply -- that *it* is actively regulating!)

[Of course, a bug in your code can fry your processor! :> ]

 

[Fred Bloggs]

On Monday, January 2, 2023 at 10:50:03 AM UTC-5, John Larkin wrote:

On Mon, 02 Jan 2023 07:16:18 GMT, Jan Panteltje
pNaonSt...@yahoo.com> wrote:

On a sunny day (Sun, 01 Jan 2023 11:31:26 -0800) it happened John Larkin
jla...@highlandSNIPMEtechnology.com> wrote in
0dn3rh1i79j4tondt...@4ax.com>:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJ4wk6bOtJI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpd1KwMXE5o

We get no rain all summer and then get \"atmospheric rivers\" worth. The
geometry of SF funnels a lot of water into the low spots. We had a
mudslide+rock just the other side of the canyon from our house, on
O\'Shaughnessy Boulevard.

5\" rain in one day is a record. 20\" a year is common.

We have a single sewage+drainage system, which can be nasty.

Same here, Dec 31 was the warmest ever recorded,
at midnight I had like +15.1 C Celsius...
and it has been raining now intermittently for week.
Sugar Bowl, the ski area at the Sierra peak, got 34\" of snow in the
last 24 hours, 216\" so far, and the snow season has just begun. They
get 80 feet in a good year.

Our summer water supply is mostly snowmelt from the mountains.

We\'re expecting another few big \"atomospheric rivers\" this week. Once
the ground saturates, we get floods and landslides. We have a lot of
non-native eucalyptus trees which get very tall and tend to fall over
when it rains.

Jeremy Renner severely injured himself plowing snow around his ranch in Lake Tahoe area. Looks they got about 5ft. A snow drift must have fooled him, covering up a steep embankment enough to lure him in and roll his truck more or less violently.

 

[Fred Bloggs]

On Monday, January 2, 2023 at 10:50:03 AM UTC-5, John Larkin wrote:

On Mon, 02 Jan 2023 07:16:18 GMT, Jan Panteltje
pNaonSt...@yahoo.com> wrote:

On a sunny day (Sun, 01 Jan 2023 11:31:26 -0800) it happened John Larkin
jla...@highlandSNIPMEtechnology.com> wrote in
0dn3rh1i79j4tondt...@4ax.com>:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJ4wk6bOtJI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpd1KwMXE5o

We get no rain all summer and then get \"atmospheric rivers\" worth. The
geometry of SF funnels a lot of water into the low spots. We had a
mudslide+rock just the other side of the canyon from our house, on
O\'Shaughnessy Boulevard.

5\" rain in one day is a record. 20\" a year is common.

We have a single sewage+drainage system, which can be nasty.

Same here, Dec 31 was the warmest ever recorded,
at midnight I had like +15.1 C Celsius...
and it has been raining now intermittently for week.
Sugar Bowl, the ski area at the Sierra peak, got 34\" of snow in the
last 24 hours, 216\" so far, and the snow season has just begun. They
get 80 feet in a good year.

Our summer water supply is mostly snowmelt from the mountains.

We\'re expecting another few big \"atomospheric rivers\" this week. Once
the ground saturates, we get floods and landslides. We have a lot of
non-native eucalyptus trees which get very tall and tend to fall over
when it rains.

Jeremy Renner severely injured himself plowing snow around his ranch in Lake Tahoe area. Looks they got about 5ft. A snow drift must have fooled him, covering up a steep embankment enough to lure him in and roll his truck more or less violently.

 

[Fred Bloggs]

On Monday, January 2, 2023 at 10:50:03 AM UTC-5, John Larkin wrote:

On Mon, 02 Jan 2023 07:16:18 GMT, Jan Panteltje
pNaonSt...@yahoo.com> wrote:

On a sunny day (Sun, 01 Jan 2023 11:31:26 -0800) it happened John Larkin
jla...@highlandSNIPMEtechnology.com> wrote in
0dn3rh1i79j4tondt...@4ax.com>:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJ4wk6bOtJI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpd1KwMXE5o

We get no rain all summer and then get \"atmospheric rivers\" worth. The
geometry of SF funnels a lot of water into the low spots. We had a
mudslide+rock just the other side of the canyon from our house, on
O\'Shaughnessy Boulevard.

5\" rain in one day is a record. 20\" a year is common.

We have a single sewage+drainage system, which can be nasty.

Same here, Dec 31 was the warmest ever recorded,
at midnight I had like +15.1 C Celsius...
and it has been raining now intermittently for week.
Sugar Bowl, the ski area at the Sierra peak, got 34\" of snow in the
last 24 hours, 216\" so far, and the snow season has just begun. They
get 80 feet in a good year.

Our summer water supply is mostly snowmelt from the mountains.

We\'re expecting another few big \"atomospheric rivers\" this week. Once
the ground saturates, we get floods and landslides. We have a lot of
non-native eucalyptus trees which get very tall and tend to fall over
when it rains.

Jeremy Renner severely injured himself plowing snow around his ranch in Lake Tahoe area. Looks they got about 5ft. A snow drift must have fooled him, covering up a steep embankment enough to lure him in and roll his truck more or less violently.

 

[whit3rd]

On Thursday, January 5, 2023 at 8:36:12 AM UTC-8, John Larkin wrote:

On Thu, 5 Jan 2023 09:53:21 +0000, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 04/01/2023 22:25, John Larkin wrote:

d(t) = a(t) ** e(t) ** is convolution

Finding e is the reverse convolution problem.

The classic way to find e(t) is to do complex FFTs on a and d and
complex divide to get the FFT of e, then reverse FFT. That usually
makes a bunch of divide-by-0 or divide-by-almost-0 points, which sort
of blows up.

Which is why no one apart from an EE who skipped all the advanced maths
classes would ever try to do it that way.

That statement makes no sense. There
are lots of academic papers about
this method, with various kluges to keep the divides under control.

That statement is perfectly sensible; the FFT algorithm has no mechanism to
accept data with non-constant signficance, which is what, obviously,
happens with a divide-by-almost-zero step in the data processing.
It\'s gonna give you what the \'signal\' says, not what the \'signal\' and known
signal/noise ratio, tell you. That means using an FFT for the inverse is
excessively noise-sensitive. There\'s OTHER ways to do a Fourier inversion
that do allow the noise estimate its due influence.

 

[whit3rd]

On Thursday, January 5, 2023 at 8:36:12 AM UTC-8, John Larkin wrote:

On Thu, 5 Jan 2023 09:53:21 +0000, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 04/01/2023 22:25, John Larkin wrote:

d(t) = a(t) ** e(t) ** is convolution

Finding e is the reverse convolution problem.

The classic way to find e(t) is to do complex FFTs on a and d and
complex divide to get the FFT of e, then reverse FFT. That usually
makes a bunch of divide-by-0 or divide-by-almost-0 points, which sort
of blows up.

Which is why no one apart from an EE who skipped all the advanced maths
classes would ever try to do it that way.

That statement makes no sense. There
are lots of academic papers about
this method, with various kluges to keep the divides under control.

That statement is perfectly sensible; the FFT algorithm has no mechanism to
accept data with non-constant signficance, which is what, obviously,
happens with a divide-by-almost-zero step in the data processing.
It\'s gonna give you what the \'signal\' says, not what the \'signal\' and known
signal/noise ratio, tell you. That means using an FFT for the inverse is
excessively noise-sensitive. There\'s OTHER ways to do a Fourier inversion
that do allow the noise estimate its due influence.

 

[whit3rd]

On Thursday, January 5, 2023 at 8:36:12 AM UTC-8, John Larkin wrote:

On Thu, 5 Jan 2023 09:53:21 +0000, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 04/01/2023 22:25, John Larkin wrote:

d(t) = a(t) ** e(t) ** is convolution

Finding e is the reverse convolution problem.

The classic way to find e(t) is to do complex FFTs on a and d and
complex divide to get the FFT of e, then reverse FFT. That usually
makes a bunch of divide-by-0 or divide-by-almost-0 points, which sort
of blows up.

Which is why no one apart from an EE who skipped all the advanced maths
classes would ever try to do it that way.

That statement makes no sense. There
are lots of academic papers about
this method, with various kluges to keep the divides under control.

That statement is perfectly sensible; the FFT algorithm has no mechanism to
accept data with non-constant signficance, which is what, obviously,
happens with a divide-by-almost-zero step in the data processing.
It\'s gonna give you what the \'signal\' says, not what the \'signal\' and known
signal/noise ratio, tell you. That means using an FFT for the inverse is
excessively noise-sensitive. There\'s OTHER ways to do a Fourier inversion
that do allow the noise estimate its due influence.

 

[Joerg]

On 1/11/23 8:11 AM, John Larkin wrote:

On Tue, 10 Jan 2023 20:05:13 -0800 (PST), Three Jeeps
jjhudak4@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tuesday, January 10, 2023 at 5:57:10 PM UTC-5, Joerg wrote:
On 1/10/23 8:22 AM, Phil Hobbs wrote:
Phil Hobbs wrote:
Joerg wrote:
On 1/2/23 5:57 PM, Phil Hobbs wrote:
John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 2 Jan 2023 11:00:52 -0800, Joerg <ne...@analogconsultants.com
wrote:

On 1/1/23 11:08 PM, Jan Panteltje wrote:
[...]
In the EE school I was in it was known that only \'hobbyists\'
would pass the final exams. The dropout in the first year was
very very very high.


At my university the drop-out rate (start to degree) was at times
83%.

Too many kids selected an EE degree based on some high school
counselor\'s advice, or dreams of a tidy income. Too late.

I dunno. Washing out of a hard program isn\'t the worst thing that can
happen to a young person. It\'s not nearly as bad as hanging on by the
skin of your teeth and then failing over a decade or so in the
industry.

The old saying, \"C\'s get degrees\" has caused a lot of misery of that
sort.


I had pretty bad grades because I worked a lot on the side, did
\"pre-degree consulting\" and stuff like that. Bad grades are ok.

In an honest system, bad grades mean that the student either didn\'t do
the work, or was unable or unwilling to do it well. There can be lots
of reasons for that, such as being unavoidably too busy, but that\'s
not the usual case.

The result is wasted time and money, and usually a skill set that\'s
full of holes and harder to build on later. It sounds like you were
sort of making up your own enrichment curriculum as you went on, which
is a bit different, of course.

I really lost interest in attending university lectures after a few
things were taught by professors that were profoundly wrong. The first
one was that RF transmitters must have an output impedance equal to the
impedance of the connected load or cable. The week after I brought in
the schematic of a then-modern transistorized ham radio transceiver and
pointed out the final amplifier. The professor didn\'t really know what
to say.

Number two: The same guy said that grounded gate circuits in RF stages
make no sense at all. Huh? I did one of those during my very first job
assignment when the ink on my degree was barely dry. And lots before as
a hobbyist.

Number three: Another professor said that we only need to learn all this
transistor-level stuff for the exam. Once we graduated this would all be
obsoleted by integrated circuits. That one took the cake. Still, it
seemed I was the only one who didn\'t believe such nonsense. However, it
provided me with the epiphany \"Ha! This is my niche!\". And that\'s what
it became. Never looked back.

This was at a European ivy league place which made it even more
disappointing.
I knew some very smart folks whose grades were poor, but they were
mostly unmotivated or undisciplined. One guy (a math genius) was in
my grad school study group for awhile, but was way too handsome for
his own good--he spent his time playing soccer and chasing women, and
tried to skate by on talent as he\'d always done. Eventually it
stopped working. If you go far enough, it always does.
My dad hinted that I was a bread scholar who\'d only learn something if
it can be put to profitable use, and prontissimo. For the most part he
was right.

That\'s the real benefit of weed-out courses--not that many people
flunk, but that the ones who succeed have to learn to learn mental
discipline in the process. That\'ll stand you in good stead for a
lifetime. (Flunking isn\'t the worst thing that can happen to you. I
got fired from my first job, which was very beneficial overall.)

Agree, it makes the students tough. Just like military service does.
When I was at boot camp I really resented being in the Army, life was
hard, sergeants screaming in our faces, and so on. Later in life I
realized that it had taught me a lot that I use to this day.
Students sometimes ask me for advice, and I always tell them three
things: first, in every field, make sure you have the fundamentals
down cold; second, concentrate your course work on things that are
hard to pick up on your own, especially math; and third, join a
research group where you can do a lot of stuff on your own. (The
ideal is to have an interesting smallish project, where you have to do
everything, and a bunch of smart and supportive colleagues.)

That\'s the most direct path to wizardhood that I know about.

I think a job is very educational. In Germany we had to do a minimum of
six months of \"relevant industrial practice\" for a masters degree. Sort
of internships, during our studies. Three of those months had to be
completed by the 4th semester. It could not be all at one place but
AFAIR at four companies. The jobs had to be meticulously documented.
These documents had to be turned in and the university had to approve
them or it wouldn\'t count. Not always easy. Two of mine were in a
foreign language (to them) and they gave me some grief about that.

They did away with that requirement which I think was a major mistake.

I did some other bigger jobs also and at some point was a taxpayer in
three different countries. That alone is a teachable situation.

Another upside of this is that you don\'t finish university with a chunk
of student debt but with savings in the bank.

[...]
I should add that \"good grades\" don\'t always mean A/A+. The US
educational system has long had this tendency to reward letter-perfect
regurgitation over understanding and independent thought. That\'s very
prevalent in K-12 but less so in university. Still, one might be better
off taking one more course per semester and not being letter-perfect.

Stanford was/is on the quarter system, so you have more choices.

I have never attended any American schools other than some snippets of
open learning (without credits) but I have interviewed lots of
candidates. US and Canadian Universities seem to be pretty good and IME
it doesn\'t make much of a difference whether that was a small local one
or ivy league. US schools OTOH often seem to be the pits. Many kids
can\'t even spell correctly or understand math. Except kids from
non-public schools like home-schoolers, charter or parochial. A
surprising number of good job candidates had a Jesuit High background.
They must be doing something right.
--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

umm \"The first one was that RF transmitters must have an output impedance equal to the
impedance of the connected load or cable. \"
I am not an \'RF\' guy but have dabbled with ham radio designs, and did do audio amp designs. I clearly remember circuit analysis being done to ensure that impedance matching was done because it is essential for maximum power transfer. So how is that wrong?

At the classic maximum power transfer point, the generator dissipates
as much power as the load. So efficiency is at best 50%. You can do
that in small systems, like an RF MMIC driving a cable or something.

Bingo. I told him that the cooling pond of the nearby shortwave
transmitter would evaporate within a few hours if the TX effcicieny were
that low. And it would be less than 50% with his idea. Not to even
mention the cost of electricity being almost double.

[...]

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

 

[Joerg]

On 1/11/23 8:11 AM, John Larkin wrote:

On Tue, 10 Jan 2023 20:05:13 -0800 (PST), Three Jeeps
jjhudak4@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tuesday, January 10, 2023 at 5:57:10 PM UTC-5, Joerg wrote:
On 1/10/23 8:22 AM, Phil Hobbs wrote:
Phil Hobbs wrote:
Joerg wrote:
On 1/2/23 5:57 PM, Phil Hobbs wrote:
John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 2 Jan 2023 11:00:52 -0800, Joerg <ne...@analogconsultants.com
wrote:

On 1/1/23 11:08 PM, Jan Panteltje wrote:
[...]
In the EE school I was in it was known that only \'hobbyists\'
would pass the final exams. The dropout in the first year was
very very very high.


At my university the drop-out rate (start to degree) was at times
83%.

Too many kids selected an EE degree based on some high school
counselor\'s advice, or dreams of a tidy income. Too late.

I dunno. Washing out of a hard program isn\'t the worst thing that can
happen to a young person. It\'s not nearly as bad as hanging on by the
skin of your teeth and then failing over a decade or so in the
industry.

The old saying, \"C\'s get degrees\" has caused a lot of misery of that
sort.


I had pretty bad grades because I worked a lot on the side, did
\"pre-degree consulting\" and stuff like that. Bad grades are ok.

In an honest system, bad grades mean that the student either didn\'t do
the work, or was unable or unwilling to do it well. There can be lots
of reasons for that, such as being unavoidably too busy, but that\'s
not the usual case.

The result is wasted time and money, and usually a skill set that\'s
full of holes and harder to build on later. It sounds like you were
sort of making up your own enrichment curriculum as you went on, which
is a bit different, of course.

I really lost interest in attending university lectures after a few
things were taught by professors that were profoundly wrong. The first
one was that RF transmitters must have an output impedance equal to the
impedance of the connected load or cable. The week after I brought in
the schematic of a then-modern transistorized ham radio transceiver and
pointed out the final amplifier. The professor didn\'t really know what
to say.

Number two: The same guy said that grounded gate circuits in RF stages
make no sense at all. Huh? I did one of those during my very first job
assignment when the ink on my degree was barely dry. And lots before as
a hobbyist.

Number three: Another professor said that we only need to learn all this
transistor-level stuff for the exam. Once we graduated this would all be
obsoleted by integrated circuits. That one took the cake. Still, it
seemed I was the only one who didn\'t believe such nonsense. However, it
provided me with the epiphany \"Ha! This is my niche!\". And that\'s what
it became. Never looked back.

This was at a European ivy league place which made it even more
disappointing.
I knew some very smart folks whose grades were poor, but they were
mostly unmotivated or undisciplined. One guy (a math genius) was in
my grad school study group for awhile, but was way too handsome for
his own good--he spent his time playing soccer and chasing women, and
tried to skate by on talent as he\'d always done. Eventually it
stopped working. If you go far enough, it always does.
My dad hinted that I was a bread scholar who\'d only learn something if
it can be put to profitable use, and prontissimo. For the most part he
was right.

That\'s the real benefit of weed-out courses--not that many people
flunk, but that the ones who succeed have to learn to learn mental
discipline in the process. That\'ll stand you in good stead for a
lifetime. (Flunking isn\'t the worst thing that can happen to you. I
got fired from my first job, which was very beneficial overall.)

Agree, it makes the students tough. Just like military service does.
When I was at boot camp I really resented being in the Army, life was
hard, sergeants screaming in our faces, and so on. Later in life I
realized that it had taught me a lot that I use to this day.
Students sometimes ask me for advice, and I always tell them three
things: first, in every field, make sure you have the fundamentals
down cold; second, concentrate your course work on things that are
hard to pick up on your own, especially math; and third, join a
research group where you can do a lot of stuff on your own. (The
ideal is to have an interesting smallish project, where you have to do
everything, and a bunch of smart and supportive colleagues.)

That\'s the most direct path to wizardhood that I know about.

I think a job is very educational. In Germany we had to do a minimum of
six months of \"relevant industrial practice\" for a masters degree. Sort
of internships, during our studies. Three of those months had to be
completed by the 4th semester. It could not be all at one place but
AFAIR at four companies. The jobs had to be meticulously documented.
These documents had to be turned in and the university had to approve
them or it wouldn\'t count. Not always easy. Two of mine were in a
foreign language (to them) and they gave me some grief about that.

They did away with that requirement which I think was a major mistake.

I did some other bigger jobs also and at some point was a taxpayer in
three different countries. That alone is a teachable situation.

Another upside of this is that you don\'t finish university with a chunk
of student debt but with savings in the bank.

[...]
I should add that \"good grades\" don\'t always mean A/A+. The US
educational system has long had this tendency to reward letter-perfect
regurgitation over understanding and independent thought. That\'s very
prevalent in K-12 but less so in university. Still, one might be better
off taking one more course per semester and not being letter-perfect.

Stanford was/is on the quarter system, so you have more choices.

I have never attended any American schools other than some snippets of
open learning (without credits) but I have interviewed lots of
candidates. US and Canadian Universities seem to be pretty good and IME
it doesn\'t make much of a difference whether that was a small local one
or ivy league. US schools OTOH often seem to be the pits. Many kids
can\'t even spell correctly or understand math. Except kids from
non-public schools like home-schoolers, charter or parochial. A
surprising number of good job candidates had a Jesuit High background.
They must be doing something right.
--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

umm \"The first one was that RF transmitters must have an output impedance equal to the
impedance of the connected load or cable. \"
I am not an \'RF\' guy but have dabbled with ham radio designs, and did do audio amp designs. I clearly remember circuit analysis being done to ensure that impedance matching was done because it is essential for maximum power transfer. So how is that wrong?

At the classic maximum power transfer point, the generator dissipates
as much power as the load. So efficiency is at best 50%. You can do
that in small systems, like an RF MMIC driving a cable or something.

Bingo. I told him that the cooling pond of the nearby shortwave
transmitter would evaporate within a few hours if the TX effcicieny were
that low. And it would be less than 50% with his idea. Not to even
mention the cost of electricity being almost double.

[...]

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

 

[Joerg]

On 1/11/23 8:11 AM, John Larkin wrote:

On Tue, 10 Jan 2023 20:05:13 -0800 (PST), Three Jeeps
jjhudak4@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tuesday, January 10, 2023 at 5:57:10 PM UTC-5, Joerg wrote:
On 1/10/23 8:22 AM, Phil Hobbs wrote:
Phil Hobbs wrote:
Joerg wrote:
On 1/2/23 5:57 PM, Phil Hobbs wrote:
John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 2 Jan 2023 11:00:52 -0800, Joerg <ne...@analogconsultants.com
wrote:

On 1/1/23 11:08 PM, Jan Panteltje wrote:
[...]
In the EE school I was in it was known that only \'hobbyists\'
would pass the final exams. The dropout in the first year was
very very very high.


At my university the drop-out rate (start to degree) was at times
83%.

Too many kids selected an EE degree based on some high school
counselor\'s advice, or dreams of a tidy income. Too late.

I dunno. Washing out of a hard program isn\'t the worst thing that can
happen to a young person. It\'s not nearly as bad as hanging on by the
skin of your teeth and then failing over a decade or so in the
industry.

The old saying, \"C\'s get degrees\" has caused a lot of misery of that
sort.


I had pretty bad grades because I worked a lot on the side, did
\"pre-degree consulting\" and stuff like that. Bad grades are ok.

In an honest system, bad grades mean that the student either didn\'t do
the work, or was unable or unwilling to do it well. There can be lots
of reasons for that, such as being unavoidably too busy, but that\'s
not the usual case.

The result is wasted time and money, and usually a skill set that\'s
full of holes and harder to build on later. It sounds like you were
sort of making up your own enrichment curriculum as you went on, which
is a bit different, of course.

I really lost interest in attending university lectures after a few
things were taught by professors that were profoundly wrong. The first
one was that RF transmitters must have an output impedance equal to the
impedance of the connected load or cable. The week after I brought in
the schematic of a then-modern transistorized ham radio transceiver and
pointed out the final amplifier. The professor didn\'t really know what
to say.

Number two: The same guy said that grounded gate circuits in RF stages
make no sense at all. Huh? I did one of those during my very first job
assignment when the ink on my degree was barely dry. And lots before as
a hobbyist.

Number three: Another professor said that we only need to learn all this
transistor-level stuff for the exam. Once we graduated this would all be
obsoleted by integrated circuits. That one took the cake. Still, it
seemed I was the only one who didn\'t believe such nonsense. However, it
provided me with the epiphany \"Ha! This is my niche!\". And that\'s what
it became. Never looked back.

This was at a European ivy league place which made it even more
disappointing.
I knew some very smart folks whose grades were poor, but they were
mostly unmotivated or undisciplined. One guy (a math genius) was in
my grad school study group for awhile, but was way too handsome for
his own good--he spent his time playing soccer and chasing women, and
tried to skate by on talent as he\'d always done. Eventually it
stopped working. If you go far enough, it always does.
My dad hinted that I was a bread scholar who\'d only learn something if
it can be put to profitable use, and prontissimo. For the most part he
was right.

That\'s the real benefit of weed-out courses--not that many people
flunk, but that the ones who succeed have to learn to learn mental
discipline in the process. That\'ll stand you in good stead for a
lifetime. (Flunking isn\'t the worst thing that can happen to you. I
got fired from my first job, which was very beneficial overall.)

Agree, it makes the students tough. Just like military service does.
When I was at boot camp I really resented being in the Army, life was
hard, sergeants screaming in our faces, and so on. Later in life I
realized that it had taught me a lot that I use to this day.
Students sometimes ask me for advice, and I always tell them three
things: first, in every field, make sure you have the fundamentals
down cold; second, concentrate your course work on things that are
hard to pick up on your own, especially math; and third, join a
research group where you can do a lot of stuff on your own. (The
ideal is to have an interesting smallish project, where you have to do
everything, and a bunch of smart and supportive colleagues.)

That\'s the most direct path to wizardhood that I know about.

I think a job is very educational. In Germany we had to do a minimum of
six months of \"relevant industrial practice\" for a masters degree. Sort
of internships, during our studies. Three of those months had to be
completed by the 4th semester. It could not be all at one place but
AFAIR at four companies. The jobs had to be meticulously documented.
These documents had to be turned in and the university had to approve
them or it wouldn\'t count. Not always easy. Two of mine were in a
foreign language (to them) and they gave me some grief about that.

They did away with that requirement which I think was a major mistake.

I did some other bigger jobs also and at some point was a taxpayer in
three different countries. That alone is a teachable situation.

Another upside of this is that you don\'t finish university with a chunk
of student debt but with savings in the bank.

[...]
I should add that \"good grades\" don\'t always mean A/A+. The US
educational system has long had this tendency to reward letter-perfect
regurgitation over understanding and independent thought. That\'s very
prevalent in K-12 but less so in university. Still, one might be better
off taking one more course per semester and not being letter-perfect.

Stanford was/is on the quarter system, so you have more choices.

I have never attended any American schools other than some snippets of
open learning (without credits) but I have interviewed lots of
candidates. US and Canadian Universities seem to be pretty good and IME
it doesn\'t make much of a difference whether that was a small local one
or ivy league. US schools OTOH often seem to be the pits. Many kids
can\'t even spell correctly or understand math. Except kids from
non-public schools like home-schoolers, charter or parochial. A
surprising number of good job candidates had a Jesuit High background.
They must be doing something right.
--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

umm \"The first one was that RF transmitters must have an output impedance equal to the
impedance of the connected load or cable. \"
I am not an \'RF\' guy but have dabbled with ham radio designs, and did do audio amp designs. I clearly remember circuit analysis being done to ensure that impedance matching was done because it is essential for maximum power transfer. So how is that wrong?

At the classic maximum power transfer point, the generator dissipates
as much power as the load. So efficiency is at best 50%. You can do
that in small systems, like an RF MMIC driving a cable or something.

Bingo. I told him that the cooling pond of the nearby shortwave
transmitter would evaporate within a few hours if the TX effcicieny were
that low. And it would be less than 50% with his idea. Not to even
mention the cost of electricity being almost double.

[...]

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

 

[bitrex]

On 1/1/2023 11:04 PM, John Larkin wrote:

https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/18/electrical_engineers_extinction/?td=rt-9cp

I\'ve been thinking for some time now that EE schools don\'t turn out
people who like electricity, but maker culture might.

\"And to make it your life, there has to be a lot of high-status,
high-wage, high-interest jobs to do at the end.\"

Software-startup culture is glamorous in its way, the young kids can
very quickly feel like they\'re working on something novel.

The EE jobs available tend to be at established companies, like Northrop
Grumman or Nexteer Automotive or Fisher Scientific or BAE systems etc,
you can go down the list on job sites and see what they are.

Biggest complaints you hear from EEs about working places like that is
that the jobs aren\'t particularly high status. They don\'t pay
particularly great. The \"company culture\" sucks. And worst of all the
job responsibilities tend to be rigid and the work not particularly
interesting.

 

[bitrex]

On 1/1/2023 11:04 PM, John Larkin wrote:

https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/18/electrical_engineers_extinction/?td=rt-9cp

I\'ve been thinking for some time now that EE schools don\'t turn out
people who like electricity, but maker culture might.

\"And to make it your life, there has to be a lot of high-status,
high-wage, high-interest jobs to do at the end.\"

Software-startup culture is glamorous in its way, the young kids can
very quickly feel like they\'re working on something novel.

The EE jobs available tend to be at established companies, like Northrop
Grumman or Nexteer Automotive or Fisher Scientific or BAE systems etc,
you can go down the list on job sites and see what they are.

Biggest complaints you hear from EEs about working places like that is
that the jobs aren\'t particularly high status. They don\'t pay
particularly great. The \"company culture\" sucks. And worst of all the
job responsibilities tend to be rigid and the work not particularly
interesting.