Research in Embedded Devices

A few months ago I was asked to give my view on the reliability of embedded devices and networks by the INRIA in Nice. My first idea was to think deep and come up with a smart and complicated presentation about how OSGi was providing all this reliability in a magic way. At that deep thinking time my father called and needed help with his newly bought Phillips 520 Personal Video Recorder. He had been trying to get it to work for days and was now completely lost (he was never the kind of person to enjoy asking for help). I could not solve it through the phone so when we visited my parents a few weeks later I figured out that this device required you to program both the satellite decoder as well as the PVR if you wanted to record a program. What do you think the changes are you can get that right? Fortunately he could get his money back. However, I started thinking about how we seem to slide backwards in usability. I once saw an MP3 player that had a hard time keeping up with pressing the keys, but hey! It was running Linux! Or how I spent the whole weekend reducing from 7 remote controls to only 3! I thought that was a nice subject for a presentation.

I am not sure it was what the audience had expected, we'll see if they invite me again next year ...

    Peter Kriens

posted by Peter @ Friday, June 17, 2005