As promised, I am back to continue my series of posts on working on a FreeRTOS port for the AEMB core. Yet before I go in any further, let me give a short introduction about FreeRTOS and walk you through my overall plan for getting my project done before I finish my internship at AESTE. FreeRTOS Intro FreeRTOS is a small real-time kernel that supports two mode of operations; Cooperative and Preemptive multitasking. The kernel itself is three or four Read more
Another good thing to do with a bunch of work-stations is to combine their computing capabilities to speed up complex tasks. One such complex task in an engineering company is compiling code. Thankfully, there are useful solutions to this problem that can be implemented easily. Guide here. It took about 15 minutes to install and setup distcc as the distributed compiler. What this does is to spread out C/C++ code compilation across a number of machines. Best thing about it Read more
At our office, there are a number of work-stations used for development work. However, I have a small concern about the safety of the files on these machines because they are all stored on a local hard-disk. The traditional method of backing-up would involve the use of a file-server and backing up the data onto it. That model of data backup is still a valid one. However, seeing that there are already a number of work-stations in the office, it Read more
AESTE was engaged by Cradle Fund Sdn Bhd to help with a problem that they have been having recently – open-source. Cradle is a Malaysian government agency that focuses on pre-seed funding for start-ups. While they cover a wide variety of fields, they have been getting more and more applicants who are doing open-source, in one way or another. However, since most of their people are investment analysts and not software developers, they are not sufficiently familiar enough with open-source. Read more
Hi everyone! This is my first time to post at AESTE blog, so here is a short introduction about me: My name is Abdullah Shamil Hashim, you can call me Abdullah or Abdu. I am a final-year student at Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP), studying Electrical & Electronics Engineering. My field of interest lies within computer system architecture . What am I going to do at AESTE ? I shall be working on an I/O processor for the AEMB as the Read more
Earlier this week, there was some construction work along a side-road leading away from the office. At first, I did not know what it was until I took a closer look – they were contractors installing a couple of large enclosures for Unifi – our national optical fibre broadband service. This means that the area around the office has been earmarked for the next stage of fibre deployment. Although I was not sure when the office would be covered, I Read more
My journey at Aeste started on 1st of March 2011 when I was welcomed by my supervisor and was briefed about the company road-map. Well, to be honest with you my friend, from the moment that I approached the company, I knew for sure that working here won’t be a waste of time and it will need a lot of effort considering my background and what the company is doing. So after being briefed on my first day, i was Read more
Virtualisation comes in handy for a small-office – we can run a bunch of disparate services on limited hardware. Hardware A second-hand laptop is used as the KVM host and is installed with Debian and Lib-virt. I like using laptops as servers because of the built-in UPS. However, it is important to take care of cooling and hard-disk reliability in laptops. For the purpose of cooling, some cheap (RM10) laptop cooler fans were installed. Storage is off-loaded to a dedicated Read more
I’ll talk a little about the wiring up and networking infrastructure in the office. I had a lot of old networking equipment lying around my home and decided to work with that instead of buying new ones. However, the future is also important and I have planned for easy upgrades and growth. Wiring The main backbone of the office network is wired. While wireless networking has its place, it is not a replacement for good old copper wiring in terms Read more
AESTE moved out of my home and into its new offices at Queen’s Avenue about a year ago. The renovations were completed and the furniture was installed in stages. Almost all of the furniture comes from IKEA because they sell startup-friendly furniture at a very startup-friendly price. The image above illustrates the office plan. While things are always under construction, there is very little deviation from the original plan. Let’s start with a virtual walk-through of the office. When a Read more