Neat to see a Rob Robinette article pop up here, his website is a fantastic resource for guitar amp work. His articles on Amp Startup and Troubleshooting were particularly helpful when I built a tube amp for the first time. I hadn't heard of using an incandescent bulb as a current limiter in startup before, I was glad to have additional options for trying to make the troubleshooting process a bit safer given the high voltage involved.
Yeah, Carrier has been making heat pumps for quite a while now. I'm not entirely sure when they were first introduced, but when I worked there a few years ago the heat pumps were far from a new addition to the product line.
George Gillard's PID document is circulated widely for teaching high school students about PID for the VEX Robotics Competition: https://smithcsrobot.weebly.com/uploads/6/0/9/5/60954939/pid...
I'd also add a +1 to the suggestion of the Controls Engineering in FRC book, but the math in that book is significantly more complex than Gillard's guide.
Love to see this writeup, and that you're enjoying FTC! I spent a ton of my time in college leading a VEX U team, and it was a tough but incredibly rewarding experience. It's a lot of fun and made me a much better engineer. It's unfortunate that FIRST doesn't really have any collegiate programs (excluding the mentoring groups that some colleges have), but VEX U gives you a similar experience to FTC with the increased freedom in machining and such. I would highly recommend joining or starting a team if/when you go to college!
Neat to see this on HN! I'm in a couple of fifth-wave emo bands currently, and there's some incredible music being made in this genre right now. I'll second the recommendations above, and add:
Saturdays at Your Place, Ben Quad, Summerbruise, Arm's Length, MooseCreek Park, and Home is Where. They've all put out incredible albums in the last year or so :)
A good case for toe socks here -- unfortunately I don't have the separated toes needed to wear them! I'm not entirely sure how common it is (I'm only aware of myself and my grandfather having this), but the webbing between some of my toes extends far up the toes, kind of like a duck's foot. Toe socks and those toe shoes are out, I'm afraid.
It's really neat to see some FRC code here, lots to be learned from student robotics competitions!
Shameless plug: I work on [PROS](https://github.com/purduesigbots/pros), an open source programming environment for VEX. We've talked about adding coroutine support there, this article is an additional push for getting that done!
I got hired a few years ago by emailing a contact in a "who's hiring" post. Still working there, and it's a great job! A big step up from my previous role.
QMK support on a laptop's internal keyboard would be fantastic! I've gotten very used to my corne, and switching to using my laptop's keyboard on the rare occasions when I need to is a bit disorienting.
