Blog

It is often said that the technology industry moves quickly, with the old quickly discarded for the new. This overlooks a number of technologies that hang around much longer than expected. One such example, is DECT (Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications). DECT was originally conceived for cordless handsets, and standardised in 1992. Wind forward more than 20 years and it is still being designed into new products, despite the emergence of competing wireless standards. Over the years, Pentland Edge has been involved in a number of new projects using DECT. Some examples in chronological order: High-end DECT cordless phone system Wireless […]

Recently, the programming language Erlang has found new fans owing to its success in helping a number of companies, most famously WhatsApp, build scalable web services. What has received less attention is its potential as a platform on which to build embedded applications. What is Erlang? Erlang originated within Ericsson as a language for creating telecoms switch software, suitable for handling a large number of simultaneous connections reliably. Originally proprietary, it is now available under an open source license. Erlang code runs on its own virtual machine, which can in turn be run on most devices that are capable of […]

A few years ago 32-bit microcotrollers with enough power to run Linux became comparable in cost to devices with 8 or 16bit cores, making the extra performance a no (or low) cost option.

This article relates to the author’s own efforts learning the functional programming language Haskell. Three prominent books were used, and some of the strengths and weaknesses of each are discussed, Hopefully this might be of use for someone attempting the same thing.