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Skewjo / SysLat_Firmware

Arduino firmware for SysLat project
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Is the microcontroller type/sensor type readable from the microcontroller? #3

Open Skewjo opened 3 years ago

Skewjo commented 3 years ago

Is the microcontroller type/sensor type readable from the microcontroller?

The sensor type probably isn't necessary and the code for different sensors is probably different, right(analog vs. digital)? The microcontroller specs have got to be known to the microcontroller...right?

henmill commented 3 years ago

Is the microcontroller type/sensor type readable from the microcontroller?

Not exactly sure what you mean by this. Are you asking if someone could hook it up to their computer and tell which microcontroller we're using? The answer is likely yes.

The sensor type probably isn't necessary and the code for different sensors is probably different, right(analog vs. digital)?

The microcontroller specs have got to be known to the microcontroller...right? Again, not quite sure what you're getting at. The model number is printed on top of the microcontroller so if someone is interested in knowing what hardware we used, they could just crack open the case and look, if that's your concern. But they could also find the model number through various non-intrusive ways on the computer. The microcontroller doesn't "know" anything about the photosensor, it is just looking at one of its pins for a voltage change. You could still use "analogRead" with the photosensor I chose but I happen to know that it is faster to use "digitalRead" so I figured that would be better for this application. Not sure if I'm answering your question though..

Skewjo commented 3 years ago

Sorry, I originally posted this issue just as a reminder to myself so I didn't add any reasoning.

2 reason:

  1. I want to be able to log a "hardware version" to the tests if a user is using our hardware.
  2. If we were going to share this design for anyone to use, and people use microcontrollers other than an Itsy-Bitsy, I want to log what type of microcontroller they're using.
henmill commented 3 years ago

Ohh ok. One thing we could do is send a description of the hardware at the beginning of a test session. Then it would be up to other people to include that info themselves if they made a clone with a different microcontroller. The MCU (microcontroller unit) itself might have a device identifier kept in a protected memory area too, not sure. Might have to think on this more if you want to include that feature.

Skewjo commented 3 years ago

Yeah, I think this is definitely something to move on down the road. Going to be talking to a patent attorney sometime this week hopefully.