A week ago I asked: what you would like to see next on this blog? Thank you all for your reaction and comments! To me, the result is interesting:

Poll Results

Where should I go?

70% of the votes are for technical content (hardware, software, tools), and 14% votes are for ‘non-tech’ content (like BBQ, nature, etc). 8% leave it up to me, and 8% votes are for ‘Other’ with commenting on what they would like to see (more about the comments later).

It is no surprise that most of the votes are for tech content: that’s why I have started this blog, and actually most of the articles are tech oriented anyway. I counted the ‘non-tech’ articles and they count for a total of 12% of the articles. So I feel I’m pretty much in range of the expectation of 14% for ‘food and nature’. So it looks the mix is about right: most tech, with some non-tech content from time to time.

💡 The interesting thing is that I receive many more ‘likes’ for the non-tech articles than for the tech ones?

Comments

There was an option in the survey to vote for ‘Other’ and to specify this in a comment. They are listed below, and I have added my answers and thoughts to all of them:

1. i.MX6/7/8 projects & articles
   ⇒ Yes, absolutely. I started some projects around i.MX, so hopefully I can get some articles out about this topic in the near future. All the i.MX devices are definitely a ‘hot’ topic.
2. Tools, techniques, tips, standard methods, recommended practices.
   ⇒ I admit that I wrote not much about methods/practices, but that certainly something to consider, thanks for the suggestion!
3. Software concepts, like design patterns, system engineering, etc
   ⇒ Same as above, thanks for the suggestion!
4. More about good designs for embedded SW, including error detection/management
   ⇒ Yet another suggestion. I do cover some aspects in my university lectures, but I have not really covered that in my blog. Point taken.
5. I would like some posts like the good old projects with the FRDM-kl25z. 🙂
   ⇒ Yes, I hear that a lot too. The challenge is that I explored advanced areas, and some of the later articles are not ‘basic’ any more. Need to start publishing again articles for newcomers.
6. ethics
   ⇒ I’m not sure about this comment? Should I write about engineering ethics?
7. even more , it’s possible? 🙂
   ⇒ The frequency of articles varies over time, and I do my best to keep the pace. I don’t think I can increase the pace.
8. the mix oft food, nature and tech makes your blog so different and enjoyable!
   ⇒ Thanks! I enjoy different subjects myself, and my intend was giving all the technology a short break from time to time too.
   
9. You forgot to put your bike photos.
   ⇒ Indeed. I did not had much time to take out the motorbike recently.
   
10. BLE, Wifi, webserver
    ⇒ These are definitely hot topics. I’m working on a LoRa project so hopefully I can write about this soon.
11. Keep up the great work!
    ⇒ Sure, I’ll give my best.
    
12. xmc1100 🙂
    ⇒ I have used Infineon parts a while back and somewhat got blindsided. Reminds me to check out their portfolio, so thanks for that!
    
13. not only freeRTOS, but other operating systems and baremetal 🙂
    ⇒ We have used uCOS for educational purpose, but this has now been switched to FreeRTOS as well. I tried ChibiOS, but compared to FreeRTOS and its ecosystem it was not really an alternative. FreeRTOS is so small and easy to use, that I use baremetal only on the very tiny projects. Embedded Linux is something else I have my hands on, but for this there are so many good articles available, no need to re-invent the wheel here.
    
14. What do you think about the “big green egg”?
    ⇒ I have seen it, and it is really a cool and interesting concept. Especially because in winter time the smoker is loosing too much heat, so the “big green egg” with its ceramic coating and insulation could be a very good thing to try. On the other end I love burning wood as part of the process, and using charcoal is not that much my thing. I might need to think more about this.
15. more project? something like “Building a temperature controller”
    ⇒ What I have started and what is only half baked is temperature controlled BBQ Smoker. I definitely want to do more projects which include 3D printing.
16. Great Blog !
    ⇒ Thanks!
    
17. Ideas about doing things different.
    ⇒ Not sure about this one. What kind of things? What I’m digging in for a while is debugging multicore on Linux (with FreeRTOS :-)) in a way that it does not need expensive software and tools. I consider that as ‘different’ as it seems that this does not exist yet.
18. thank you! keep the goal on open source embedded developement 🙂
    ⇒ Sure! Without open source and sources available, how can someone develop?
    
19. talk more about lpc devices
    ⇒ Used LPC devices a while back before moving to Kinetis. Ironically, with the Freescale and NXP merger both are now in the same company, so definitely I’ll touch LPC on newer projects.
    
20. Keep up the good work
    ⇒ Will do!
    
21. you are doing a great job – thanks a lot! :o)
    ⇒ Thanks!
    
22. I like the Kinetis boards you use, but I’m also interested in the KE0x series.
    ⇒ I hope NXP support for the KE0x series will get better. At the time when I evaluated the KE series for 5V, there were only 3.3V ealuation boards available, so that opportunity evaporated. But as long there is no Kinetis SDK support for the KE series, I don’t think I can consider the KE series.
    
23. LPC Cortex-M MCU’s (LPC4000 and LPC54100 series), NFC technology, IAR EW
    ⇒ LPC is on my radar, and I started a NFC project too. IAR EW is something I consider only on the side: it is much less powerful than Eclipse and expensive. I like their compiler optimization, but GNU tools are more versatile and produce acceptable code size and code speed. What would be more interesting to write about is clang/LLVM.
24. DSP + sound processing
    ⇒ That’s an interesting topic. My projects did not need such a thing, so I have not touched it.
25. I don’t use Eclipse, so most of the software posts aren’t helpful to me.
    ⇒ To bad, and this blog has that as central theme :-(. To me, Eclipse might not be the best IDE in the world (but I’m convinced it is 🙂 ). The advantage of Eclipse is that learning it and investing time in it is very well spent, as pretty much everything out there in the IDE world is Eclipse based.
    
26. Great blog. Keep up the good work.
    ⇒ Thanks!
    
27. IOT and Home automation
    ⇒ I try to avoid the term of IoT as this is overused and more a hype than ‘real’. But connectivity is definitely a topic to focus more. I’m using openHAB so I think I should write about this more.
    
28. Keep up the good work!
    ⇒ giving my best to continue it.
    
29. Imponit finem sapiens et rebus honestis
    ⇒ I try to set realistic goals and want to describe things from my perspective. Thanks for reminding me about what I have learned with many years of Latin 🙂
    
30. version control with git
    ⇒ I had started with an article about that, but then I think other places like git or GitHub have so many good material about how to use git, is it really worth to write about it too?
    
31. Future of Processor Expert 😦
    ⇒ Yes, that’s a good topic. I cannot predict the future, what I can do is to write about how I’m dealing with this change.
    

Be free to comment or follow up, I’m curious what you think.

Summary

The survey indicates a general direction of ~80-90% technology content, with a mix of ~10-15% of non-tech article. In summary, I think I’m on the right track for that expectation, and should continue in that direction. And the ‘Other’ category gave me a nice list of things to focus on.

Or let me know what you think!

Happy Blogging 🙂