kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Lorenzo Marcantonio <l.marcantonio@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, Apr 06, 2013 at 09:21:40PM +0300, Vesa Solonen wrote:
> Great insight Lorenzo, just what to expect from you in addition to
> surprising amount of commits :)

The day of more layers is nearing... also some cleaning up from
prehistoric things (did you know that there where wholly unused layers
in eeschema?)

> I agree on the complexity issue, but maybe some compromise could be
> found. I just don't enjoy the DRCless editing at all these days. The
> star-connection should happen automatically in the PCB editor when it's
> defined in the schematic. I think the three+ track star junction could
> be just highlighted up to 5x the track width on each of the tracks.

I agree that something more would be useful. Even eagle has interclass
clearance... but I can't even think of a useable interface for this..

> I can imagine. At least it gets quite dangerous easily. 1m³ of gas has
> the blast power of a bagfull of dynamite... I'm waiting for the day when
> there is no gas line to every apartment just for cooking/heating/hot water.

There are special safety rules for gas in fact. One of these safety
rules is that preexisting thermocouple gas valve are inherently safe,
which is actually mostly true... gravity is free and reliable; the only
situation in which that valve could be stuck open is when there is no
gas (since it's pressure that close it when the springy stuff fails). No
gas and valve open is still safe :D

Electronically controlled thermocouples instead are *very* concerning,
there is too much that can fail (thermocouple, amplifier, the controller
and so on) so you need to design in a huge amount of redundancy. *Or*
you can bribe the safety inspectors, since I've seen on the market
burners with not only just one MCU (the law says at least two with an
external watchdog: it contained just a simple ATMEGA128... brrr) but
even software bugs which kept the valve open with the flame off...

> Naturally I know that the reasoning is quite different in the areas of
> warmer weather and higher population density.

Italy has the higher price for electricity in the whole europe. Enough
said. Induction cooking is something we only *export*...

-- 
Lorenzo Marcantonio
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