Systems engineering

Infrastructure and engineering systems

RS485 — a standard for industrial networks. What are the main features of the transceiver microcircuit?

Миландр corporate blog Circuit design *Manufacture and development of electronics *Electronics for beginners Systems engineering

When building a network for communication between a large number of devices, one may think: what interface to choose? Each interface has its own pros and cons that determine its application: CAN — Automotive, RS485 / RS232 — Industrial, Ethernet — Consumer Electronics / Server. What features of the transceiver microcircuit help to protect against many problems during installation and operation? How is the process of measuring and researching of transceiver microcircuits going on? New RS485 microcircuit is ready to get to market!

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XaBoK 17 March at 03:35

Architecting Architecture: Makers and Takers

System Analysis and Design *Product Management *Systems engineering

Translation

The step has been made. Not sure where to, but for sure from the point of no return. Keep calm and keep walking. It is about a time to look around and understand the smelly and slippery route before you. And what are those noisy creatures swarming around our fishy “innovative” design we called Mandelbrot blueprint. You don't get a buzzing-noise like that, just buzzing and buzzing, without its meaning something.

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XaBoK 14 March at 00:53

Architecting Architecture

System Analysis and Design *Project management *Systems engineering

Translation

Architect. This word sounds so mysterious. So mysterious that to understand it you almost forced to add something. Like “System Architect” or “Program Architect”. Such addition does not make clearer, but for sure adds weight to the title. Now you know – that’s some serious guy! I prefer to make undoubtful and around 10 year ago added to my email signature “Enterprise Architect of Information Systems”. It’s a powerful perk. Like “Chosen One”. With architects it is always a matter of naming, you know. Maybe that is why the only way to become and architect is to be named as one by others. Like with vampires. One of them has to byte you! That is probably the easiest way to earn the title as there is no degree or school to grant you one. And if there’s a troubling title, somebody’s making a trouble, and the only reason for making a trouble that I know of is because you’re an Enterprise. Huge old and complex multinational corporation. Like a one-legged pirate. Strong and scary, but not a good runner. You own your ship, you had good days, you have some gold, you need new ways.

To get to new treasures and avoid losing second leg to piranha regulators and local business shark swarming waters near every enterprise ship – every pirate has a map. Map is a list of major features and requirements in desired order and priority.

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ultral 9 October 2020 at 12:11

Agreements as Code: how to refactor IaC and save your sanity?

IT systems testing *IT Infrastructure *Designing and refactoring *DevOps *Systems engineering

Before we start, I'd like to get on the same page with you. So, could you please answer? How much time will it take to:

Create a new environment for testing?
Update java & OS in the docker image?
Grant access to servers?

There is the spoiler from the TechLeadConf. Unfortunately, it's in Russian

It will take longer than you expect. I will explain why.

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ultral 4 May 2020 at 15:24

Ansible: CoreOS to CentOS, 18 months long journey

System administration *Server Administration *Monetization of IT systems *DevOps *Systems engineering

There was a custom configuration management solution.

I would like to share the story about a project. The project used to use a custom configuration management solution. Migration lasted 18 months. You can ask me 'Why?'. There are some answers below about changing processes, agreements and workflows.

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ultral 3 May 2020 at 16:33

How to test Ansible and don't go nuts

IT systems testing *System administration *IT Infrastructure *DevOps *Systems engineering

It is the translation of my speech at DevOps-40 2020-03-18:

After the second commit, each code becomes legacy. It happens because the original ideas do not meet actual requirements for the system. It is not bad or good thing. It is the nature of infrastructure & agreements between people. Refactoring should align requirements & actual state. Let me call it Infrastructure as Code refactoring.

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Alex_Isakov 14 December 2019 at 18:51

Holographic Principle, new type gyroscope, information without light speed limit, teleportation of physical objects…

Sandbox

🔥 Technotext 2020

Warning First, all the objects and theories described in this article have the status of hypothetical at the moment. That is, the holographic hypothesis and string theories have not been experimentally confirmed many.Second, a fundamentally new type of mechanical gyroscope with six degrees of freedom is proposed for experimental verification (base) of hypotheses. Of the two and three degrees of freedom mechanical gyroscopes known to science, this is the last of the possible types with the maximum number of degrees of freedom in the holonomic system (GYRO_6DoF).Third, with the advent of the experimental base — the tops of the physical pyramid, string theories, and the holographic hypothesis, which is actually the foundation of the future Theory of Everything, are temporarily removed from criticism until the moment of practical implementation of the experiment and measurements.Abstract Even people far from physics know that the maximum possible data transmission rate of any signal is equal to the speed of light in a vacuum. It is denoted by the letter «c», and this is about 300 thousand kilometers per second. The speed of light in a vacuum is one of the fundamental physical constants. The impossibility of achieving speeds exceeding the speed of light in three-dimensional space is a deduction from Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity (SRT). Usually, when it is argued that SRT prohibits the transmission of the information above the speed of light, an implicit assumption is made that there is no other way other than to «bind information» to a photon and transmit it. However, there is another way. The well-known physical hypothesis — the Holographic Principle (a modern and widely used tool in theoretical physics) points to an interesting phenomenon: “Phenomena taking place in three-dimensional space can be projected onto a remote screen without losing information” — Leonard Susskind “The World as a Hologram ”[p. 3].

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emirochnik 1 November 2019 at 05:56

Optimising server distribution across the racks

IT Infrastructure *Server optimization *Computer hardware Systems engineering

Recently, a colleague asked me in a chat:

— Is there an article how to pack servers into the racks properly?

I realised that I'm unaware of it. So, I decided to write my text.

Firstly, this is an article about bare metal servers in the data centre (DC) facilities. Secondly, we estimate that there are a lot of servers (hundreds or thousands); the article doesn't make sense for fewer quantities. Thirdly, we consider that there are three constraints in the racks: physical space, electric power per each one, and cabinets stay in the rows adjacent to each other, so we can use a single ToR switch to connect servers in them.

The answer to the original question depends significantly...

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markbenson123 5 July 2019 at 08:13

Most Popular Computer Problems We Are Facing Everyday

IT Terminology Desktop PC's Systems engineering

In today’s contemporary world the private computer has become a staple of daily life.
Even those few persons who don't use computers in their daily work life can possibly have access to a computer on that they perform alternative necessary tasks.

With all of the access to info that computers permit and with all of the work they will facilitate a personal perform, this trend of a computer in every home and in each workplace of business isn't shocking.

But what may be shocking, and downright aggravating, is when the computer you are working on suddenly shuts off, goes blank, or explodes in the dreaded blue screen of death.

These and other common computer problems are among the most frequently occurring issues that one might experience with their computers.

The following may be a list of 5 common Computer issues and what may be done to mend them.

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kashtan404 5 June 2019 at 14:00

Moto. Mock AWS

IT systems testing *Amazon Web Services *DevOps *Systems engineering

Testing is an important part of the development process. And sometimes developers need to run tests locally, before committing changes.

If your application uses Amazon Web Services, python library moto is the perfect thing for that.

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DmitrySpb79 8 April 2019 at 00:04

Flightradar24 — how does it work? Part 2, ADS-B protocol

Python *IT Standards *Distributed systems *Popular science Systems engineering

I’m going to have a guess and say that everyone whose friends or family have ever flown on a plane, have used Flightradar24 — a free and convenient service for tracking flights in real time.

In the first part the basic ideas of operation were described. Now let's go further and figure out, what data is exactly transmitting and receiving between the aircraft and a ground station. We'll also decode this data using Python.

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DmitrySpb79 17 February 2019 at 14:53

Flightradar24 — how does it work?

Network technologies *Computer hardware DIY Systems engineering

I’m going to hazard a guess and say that everyone whose friends or family have ever flown on a plane, have used Flightradar24 — a free and convenient service for tracking flights in real time.

But, if my friends are any indication, very few people know that the service is community-driven and is supported by a group of enthusiasts gathering and sending data. Even fewer people know that anyone can join the project — including you.

Let’s see how Flightradar and similar other services works.

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DmitrySpb79 12 February 2019 at 00:05

How does a barcode work?

Python *Programming *Algorithms *Popular science Systems engineering

Hi all!

Every person is using barcodes nowadays, mostly without noticing this. When we are buying the groceries in the store, their identifiers are getting from barcodes. Its also the same with goods in the warehouses, postal parcels and so on. But not so many people actually know, how it works.

What is 'inside' the barcode, and what is encoded on this image?

Lets figure it out, and also lets write our own bar decoder.

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DmitrySpb79 6 February 2019 at 00:23

Understanding the POCSAG paging protocol

Python *Network standards Gadgets Old hardware Systems engineering

Long time ago, when a mobile phone costed about 2000$ and one minute of voice call was 50 cents, pagers were really popular. Later cellular phones became cheaper, calls and SMS prices became lower, and finally pagers mostly disappeared.

For people, who owned a pager before, and want to know how it works, this article will be useful.

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