accordionfolder wrote:
In reply to alfadriver: I know you work for an OEM from other posts, but in what capacity? I'm spending my spare time on embedded projects ... Maybe one day I can get my foot in the door, I've always wanted to work on firmware. Right now I just do Android.
I'm a calibrator. which means I put the numbers into the computer to make the engine run. More specificually, I do a lot of emissions work.
I do work with people who write the code, and with people who design the engine, and with people who design the exhaust. We are the ones who co-ordinates everyones ideas.
Firmware, not so much anymore. It's been a decade, at least, since I personally knew someone who did firmware for the PCM. Once we spun off Visteon, we've been marketing it out ever since.
In reply to alfadriver: Interesting. Well, I love cars and programming so my goal is to try to sneak in some capacity, just glancing through GM's job opening reveals a lot of embedded work and some higher level tools. It helps tune my spare moments a bit to see what job opening are looking for.
In reply to accordionfolder:
We do write a LOT of software. I don't think we do much firmware. Unless that phrase has changed since I started using it 20 years ago.
I'm sure you can get in, but a love of cars is not required.
Accordionfolder brings up a good point; how many billions of miles have Toyota cars with electronic throttles been driven, and how many actual failures resulting from poor firmware have there been?
There are so many of those e-throttles out there now that if there truly was a "terrible" problem with them we would be hearing about an epidemic of failures but that has not happened.
In reply to dculberson:
It's definitely not billions of miles that they were tested, but a valid point. Honestly, it's likely to do with age. You're not going to see these programming illogical issues pop up when the engines are new, but add on a few mils of carbon buildup on all the sensors, throttle blade, etc and now the variables are getting into where they need to ask more questions/run through more routines, bringing up more chances at an issue.
All that said, the programming errors shouldn't be in there in a smart phone app, let alone the firmware that controls a two-ton missile. That's management, engineering, and software incompetence.
alfadriver wrote:
In reply to accordionfolder:
We do write a LOT of software. I don't think we do much firmware. Unless that phrase has changed since I started using it 20 years ago.
I'm sure you can get in, but a love of cars is not required.
Yeah, that was me using the wrong word. We'll see, I've been puttering around with some flashable micro-controllers and writing some C code (honestly one of my favorite languages for as much flack as it receives), I'm quite good at Java/C#/etc, but would love a change to go a bit lower to the hardware (I love all flavors of assembler, not used directly that much anymore). I see several UI and tools based jobs I'm already qualified for, but that would be moving to more of the same as I already do.
In reply to accordionfolder:
I'm a big C fan, it's easy to read. Now we see more autocoding crap. Not sure what they use for that.
Toyota software lameness:
My friend's Land Cruiser had a soft battery Saturday morning. It has a proximity key/push start. When his wife tried to start it, it powered up, then went into an infinite do-loop trying to engage the starter. click--click---click. There was no escape until he hooked up a jump box and it fired right up. Weak.
Thinking of proximity keys reminded me of my friend whose mom drove off in his Prius after he started it. The key was in HIS pocked of course and there was much aggravation. When my wife managed to do the same thing with our Volt AND somehow missed the "Key Not Present" warnings, the car was smart enough to go into a standby mode that permitted restarting w/o the key when she shut it off at her destination. I left it on and used the OnStar app to lock/unlock it.
