Herein you’ll find articles on a very wide variety of topics about technology in the consumer space (mostly) and items of personal interest to me. I have also participated in and created several podcasts most notably Pragmatic and Causality and all of my podcasts can be found at The Engineered Network.
What People Like about a PLC, isn't the PLC
As a long time PLC programmer I’ve come across many different types of PLC out there and perhaps too many to list. What I find interesting is that people tend to become attached to a particular brand or model of PLC and prefer it over all others. What’s interesting is that for most of those people the PLC hardware itself and its appearance, reliability and servicability make up only a very small part of their personal preference towards that PLC. It’s fair to say that most PLC hardware is manufactured by large scale manufacturers and with more and more products using standardised components that are mass produced the reliability of the PLC hardware far surpasses that of PLCs from 20 years ago.
What drives loyalty the most, interestingly, is the programming software and languages the PLC supports. There are two ways PLC software can be written - interpreted or compiled. From a programming convenience point of view, online editing and offsite works with minimal disruption to the end user during updating there is no doubt that interpreted is the better approach. Having said that compiled languages are generally easier to write in and have more efficient use of memory space than interpreted languages.
Beyond the interpreted/compiled differences it’s then down to programming languages. Things have come a long way in the last 10 years in particular as more and more vendors support IEC standardised languages and terminology for Statement List (also called Structured Text Language), Function Block Diagram and Ladder Logic. That said some manufacturers don’t follow it to the letter and still have their own subtle variants but largely PLC programming software today supports the big three language types for the commonly used PLCs. This makes it less of a differentiator to drive personal preference.
Finally it’s the programming software itself. The layout, the online help and the usability of the software. The problem seems to be that every manufacturer has their own naming ideas for different functions (the classic Siemens “Generate References” as opposed to the industry standard “Cross-References” for example) and this makes things difficult for the programmer trying to work on the next platform as the project requires.
By extension you could say that if a software manufacturer (not a PLC manufacturer) made a stand-alone set of PLC programming tools that were excellent, used common terminology and was able to write to the top 10 PLC types, they could potentially make a killing. Alas this seems unlikely as each PLC hardware manufacturer has its own proprietary communication system for sending data from the programming PC to the PLC. A single firmware update for the PLC and software update for the programming software and it’s back to square one for the all-in-one software package. Not to mention the threat of invalidated warranties I’m sure the PLC manufacturers would dangle in front of users not using their proprietary programming software. There’s another discussion for another time…
Import Non-iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad 2 Video into iMovie 1.2 for iOS
Despite Apple’s suggestions to the contrary it is possible to take footage on a camera or another kind of phone other than an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad 2 and edit it using iMovie for iOS. My instructions are for 720p video however it should work for any resolution and type of video up to 720p. Here’s how to do it. If you don’t already have it download and install the latest version of MPEG Streamclip (v1.2 for Windows and v1.9.2 for OSX). Open the file you want to convert in MPEG Streamclip then “Export to Other Formats…”. If MPEG Streamclip can open and play it then it can export it - if not you’re out of luck. There are several settings that work however my favourite that seems to maintain the best quality (in my tests thus far - I’ll let you know if/when I find better settings or alternative software) are: Format = Quicktime Movie, Frame Size = 1280x720 HDTV 720p (or match the source of your video - don’t rescale the video unless you want to lose quality). Save the destination file somewhere on your PC. Now the video is in a compatible format so then you need to get it onto the iPad. I have the camera connection kit which makes it really easy. If you have an SD card and you can write files to it that works, or if you have a USB Flash Disk (Thumb Drive, USB Disk whatever you want to call it) put it in your PC and make sure there’s a directory called “DCIM” at the root level of the folder structure, then copy your modified movie files onto the card/drive. Make sure the movie file names are no greater than 8 characters long and end in “.MOV” or it won’t work. Now eject your flash card/drive and then plug it into your camera connection kit and then into your iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch 4th Gen with iMovie installed. Photos will load up and ask you to import the video files off your card/drive. Import them - it’s up to you if you want to then delete them from your card/drive it doesn’t make any difference to getting this to work. Close Photos and open iMovie and your videos should load when you open/create a project and browse your video media files. I’d like to say it couldn’t be easier but oh well. We live in hope that Apple improve things in future and make this process easier. Enjoy editing whatever video you like on your iOS device with iMovie.
Update: There are limitations to the size of the flash disk as larger flash disks when using the USB Camera Connection kit. A 2Gb drive works okay but an 8Gb will not. An SD Card is a better option for transferring larger files.
So sick of Good Mobile Flash Coming Soon
As reported by Engadget recently, the latest version of mobile flash for Android is now available. They note that while 480p video ran fine without dropping frames 720p was far from watchable. Adobe say that a version with full hardware acceleration with be available in a few more weeks or so. The problem is that Adobe are damaging their own reputation by continually releasing flash for mobile devices that has some aspect that is sub-standard. Yes, it’s getting better, but with their approach of incremental releases it feels like it’s taking forever. When Apple released the iPhone it played H.264 at 480p out of the box with considerably lower spec hardware than Android phones have today.
Using iMovie 1.2 for iOS on an iPad 1
While Apple will tell you iMovie is only allowed to run on an iPad 2, iPhone 4 or iPod Touch 4th generation, the fact is by using the iPhone Configuration Utility (no jailbreaking required) it is possible to install iMovie 1.2 on your iPad 1. Google it to find out the gory details if you like. Why anyone would want to do this is simple: iPad 2’s are in short supply in North America and they haven’t been released yet elsewhere in the world and it’s unlikely they will launch worldwide on schedule given the shortages in North America. It may sound surprising to some that iMovie does work well enough on an iPad 1. Apple clearly wanted the faster processor speed and larger memory (that’s RAM not flash) on the iPad 2 for iMovie as it clearly is laggy on the iPad 1 (that and they’d appreciate your money spent on a new iPad 2 as well). It is however, perfectly functional and quite usable if you don’t mind the lag in the user interface and if you don’t mind the annoying error message that pops up every time you plug it in to iTunes to sync (just hit cancel and it works fine - Oh dear it doesn’t - see my Update below). This is not going to be a blow by blow this is how you do x, y and z but more a summary of my opinions having used it now for a few days on the train to and from work to cut together over 2 hours of video. First of all, the biggest gotcha: unless you convert your raw camera video into an acceptable format (more on that another post) it only works with video shot on an iPhone, an iPod Touch or an iPad 2. That’s fine for me right now as I’ve been going through 15 months worth of iPhone 3GS video but next in line is my Panasonic Lumix 720p camera video that I’m working on converting to try editing it on the iPad. Next gotcha: make sure you have enough free space on your iPad for the converted file. I have a 32Gb iPad and converting an hour of footage with by iPad reporting 3.3Gb to spare made it to 90% and died. Give yourself plenty of headroom if you’re editing longer videos like me. What not to expect: accurate cuts between scenes - I say this because there’s no audio when you scrub and this means you need to really concentrate on the exact moment visually in the scene you want to cut into or out of. I found it especially hard when the subjects in the video weren’t moving much and I needed to hear the audio at the right moment to cut in. Clearly real-time audio scrubbing was put in the too hard basket for this release. With the iPad 2 it shouldn’t be too taxing on top of the video scrubbing that works just fine. What not to expect: Chapter markers. This is a real pain for me as I often break my 2+ hour family movies with key moments highlighted as chapters and easy to search for on an Apple TV. It’s not a deal-breaker but I’m really hoping they add it in future updates. What not to expect: A good choice of transitions. There is only a cross-dissolve and the transition of the theme chosen (and it doesn’t tell you what that transition is on the selector it’s listed as “Theme”). If you want to mix it up a bit then forget it, you just can’t. I hope you like cross-dissolves. When using the application Landscape mode is the obvious choice. The amount of screen real-estate wasted on the timeline when in portrait mode is criminal. The Landscape layout feels about right with the timeline, media chooser and preview windows getting good relative screen proportions. Having said all of the above we need to take a reality check: it’s not desktop software and it’s being run on an ARM core mobile chip. It’s meant for cobbling together a few scenes from clips you take on a holiday or around the house - not really intended for 2 hour long sagas. Having said that it did make a 2 hour saga just fine. I enjoyed using it and it allowed me to edit videos efficiently on the train I spend 7-1/2 hours on every week turning that time into something more productive. Editing on a laptop with a trackpad is a nightmare whereas this is a pleasant and intuitive experience with a good result. In summary I liked it, but be aware of its limitations and if you have an iPad 1 like I do, don’t buy an iPad 2 just to use it.
Update: After trying to free up more space to make my bigger movies I hit another snag if you need to sync your iPad 1 for any reason. Once iMovie is on your iPad 1 the “Cancel”, “Don’t Authorize” and “Authorize” buttons appear. Following the original instructions I found using Google selecting Cancel seemed to let everything sync okay but it doesn’t - in fact the cancel stops the sync dead in its tracks. Which means you need to clear off free space on your iPad 1 before you install iMovie and start editing. If you realise you’ve run out of space halfway through you’re doomed. The problem is that if you try to export your movie to iTunes, then save the project in iTunes under Apps->File Sharing->iMovie you can do that but you need to sync to get it back on again which you can’t do once iMovie in installed. If you do click “Don’t Authorize” because you really need to sync you will lose all of your iMovie projects and will need to reinstall iMovie manually again afterwards. It’s not ideal but then Apple wants you to buy an iPad 2 for the privilege of using iMovie remember?