Python Setup Tools 2.6

Setting up "easy-setup" (haha, not so easy!) for python 2.6 under windows is a bit of a convoluted process.

These are the steps:
1. Install Python.
2. Download the python egg file
3. Download ez_setup.py (Takes a while till you find a working one!)

You may wish to place it into your python 'scripts' folder first.

Then run the python program "ez_setup setuptools-0.6c9-py2.6.egg".

Now you can use any setup script that relies on easy setup.

IT Salary Levels in Perth

I was having a look at some IT salary survey data for Australia.

It has always annoyed me that "less difficult" tasks were valued more than more "difficult tasks". For example, a C++ programmer in Perth contracts from $40-$75, a VB developer gets the same, and a .Net developer gets more ($80), with Java winning out at $90. Even web developers get more, starting at $55.

This has always annoyed me about Perth. However, take a look at a different city, and you will see a different story. Take our nearest neighbor, Adelaide.


.NET $40-$75, Java to $65, VB to $65, Web developers to $65, With C++ topping it out at $85. Seems a lot more reasonable to me.

In Adelaide, help desk staff start at $37k and get paid $58k, tops, unlike Perth, where desktop support staff start at $45k and top out at $65k. This is the same starting salary for a C++ developer in Perth. This certainly explains why people in Perth don't bother to stick around if they get a good education. If you can earn as much on help desk straight from school as you can with a university degree as a programmer, why bother?

What is wrong with Perth?

Simulating Sensors

For many robotics tasks getting good readings from the sensors to estimate your current state is very important. The system may come to rely on the sensors so much that any hardware failure for the sensor would cause devastating consequences.

A few simple noise simulations placed into your sensor readings can help you assert that your system can handle failed sensors. But what to simulate?

There are a number of academic papers available that discuss sensor noise models, but they are typically highly detailed and specific to one sensor type.

Here is a list of common faults that you should simulate for testing analog sensors:

Completely on/off, this will only happen if there is a problem with the power supply, you will either get 0 or full positive, this helps to detect shorts, etc and other common failures.
In code: sensor = 0, or sensor = high;

An additional DC offset, this will simulate a slowly drifting ground, you may also wish to simulate this with a slow rise/drop over a long time.
In code : sensor+=dc_offset;

Inversion fault, if someone installs a sensor the wrong way round, or wires something up the wrong way.
In code : sensor = 1-sensor;

Random noise, white noise is not really a very common input from the real world, but its a cheap test routine. Adding it to your signal can help determine that your filters have an appropriate noise cut-off level.
In code : sensor = rand(); or sensor+= signed_rand();

Sinewave, you will find sinusoidal interfearence coming from a number of sources, such as interfearance from a nearby radio unit, micro controller, or PWM. Often higher frequency signals will be aliased and presented as a low frequency sine wave.
In code: sensor = sensor + sin

Spikes/Ramps, these will sometimes occur due to the way an analog signal is read or converted to a digital form, or some rotary encoders will droop down. Poorly designed hardware filters can also be the cause.
In code: sensor = sensor + spike, or sensor = sensor + ramp

The last one is a little trickier to implement, but some nice common curves can help. First, the smoothstep function:

float smoothstep(float a, float b, float x) {
    if (x    if (x>=b) return 1;
    x = (x-a)/(b-a);
    return x*x * (3 - 2*x);
}

(I originally found this function in Texturing & Modeling: A Procedural Approach)


The spike function:

double spike(double t) {
    return 1/(1+150*(t-0.5)*(t-0.5));
}

you may wish to play with the 150x factor to make it more 'spiky'.