The Development of Gyroc
I wrote this several years ago (maybe in 2002?), and recently stumbled across it again. I’m adding it here, so that I have a convenient place to point, when I am asked questions.
Gyroc 1 was the first actively stabilised model rocket developed and flown in the UK (to our knowledge). Using a custom gyroscope to give an inertial platform, a digital flight computer and a gimbal-mounted rocket motor, Gyroc 1 was able to remain vertical whilst under power. The project has been predominantly developed by James Macfarlane and Michael Procter, although others have also made valuable contributions.
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Filed under: embedded, projects | 2 Comments
The old XOR swapping trick
Many people have heard of how to swap two values without using temporary storage, using XORs. This is often summarised as:
a ^= b ^= a ^= b;
There are other operators that can be used to do the swap, but in the degenerate case, this essentially becomes the XOR trick again.
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Spin Buffers
There has been a flurry of discussion recently over the buffering technique known as Spin Buffers. Much of this has centred on the author’s claim that they eliminate the need for synchronization. This has been met with scepticism by some, and discussed in more detail by MenTaLguY. This article lists the key assumptions made by the author, and then discusses systems where these apply. Finally, an attempt is made to find a niche for this technique – when can Spin Buffers be usefully applied?
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