...so what did you do on this workers day...

[adrianh]

I got up at 10am and got to work. I simply carried on with the tasks at hand and although it is now 18H00 I will still continue till about 23H00. And the same tomorrow, the day after and so on... To me rung a small business simply means keeping on at it no matter what.

Public holidays are simply a luxury for the employees of this world...

I just realized that all the work that I am doing today is in support of three ladies who run small businesses. All three of them rely on me to produce what they need so that they can make a living...shows you...the little people have to support one another...

[Blurock]

What is the meaning of workers day? With so many meaningless public holidays, most people do not even know which day we are "celebrating". Our workers actually asked us to work today, so we gave them Friday off so that they can have a long weekend. We agreed that no overtime should be paid. Yes, we are closed tomorrow, but will still answer the phones.

[KimH]

I did what I do on the other 6 days of the week,... work. I did give my assistant Thursday and Friday off though
There are clients to keep happy, bills to pay, stock to purchase for Vape Den and exams on the 15th May. What else am I going to do,... wander around the malls like the rest of the mall zombies? No thanks!

Thankfully Wednesday is the last of the madness for a while at least.

[Justloadit]

I hate these public holidays, they serve no purpose, but to reduce production, which is already at a substandard value, and to make employers fork out more hard earned cash to keep the masses happy.
Much more of this and we will be sliding deeper into oblivion.

I still worked at home with some brain work, and on a project which should have been ready months ago, but just could not seem to find the solution. Got the software and hardware going for what I call a curtain falling product counter for a conveyor production line. Basically it is a strip of infra red transmitter and receiver LEDs facing each other, 600mm wide, used to count product falling off a conveyer belt. Took me a while to get the algorithm right, not to count more than one of the product as a sphere, or any odd shaped that has a minimum detection area of 20mm width/height. The other trick to get right was that it must be able to count more than one product simultaneously through the complete width. The product could also be a cigar sized tube and could fall at odd angles, and still count it as 1 product.

Got the curtain working, and stable now, but I think my raster scan is a wee bit slow, 140 times a second, and occasionally it misses a sphere of 26mm. My calcs tell me that the sphere moves a distance of 12mm with in the first 50milli seconds of falling off the conveyor. I can not speed my raster up, as the micro takes almost 4 milliseconds to do the algorithm. So now I am waiting for delivery of a faster processor. The current one can do 16 million instructions per second. The new one will do 70 million, so i should speed up the raster to sample over 300 times per second.

[HR Solutions]

Working on a public holiday is (unfortunately)pointless in our industry, (there is only so much admin work you can do on some of the public holidays) therefore spent the day clearing out a study and spare room we have at home. Got the whole family involved and their girlfriend and boyfriend and had quite a fun productive day. The two rooms are now looking really cool and a lot less clutter. My 2014 "philosophy" is to get rid of the clutter in my life. We ended off the day with a lekka braai - was quite a cool day with the whole family.

[adrianh]

I hate these public holidays, they serve no purpose, but to reduce production, which is already at a substandard value, and to make employers fork out more hard earned cash to keep the masses happy.
Much more of this and we will be sliding deeper into oblivion.

I still worked at home with some brain work, and on a project which should have been ready months ago, but just could not seem to find the solution. Got the software and hardware going for what I call a curtain falling product counter for a conveyor production line. Basically it is a strip of infra red transmitter and receiver LEDs facing each other, 600mm wide, used to count product falling off a conveyer belt. Took me a while to get the algorithm right, not to count more than one of the product as a sphere, or any odd shaped that has a minimum detection area of 20mm width/height. The other trick to get right was that it must be able to count more than one product simultaneously through the complete width. The product could also be a cigar sized tube and could fall at odd angles, and still count it as 1 product.

Got the curtain working, and stable now, but I think my raster scan is a wee bit slow, 140 times a second, and occasionally it misses a sphere of 26mm. My calcs tell me that the sphere moves a distance of 12mm with in the first 50milli seconds of falling off the conveyor. I can not speed my raster up, as the micro takes almost 4 milliseconds to do the algorithm. So now I am waiting for delivery of a faster processor. The current one can do 16 million instructions per second. The new one will do 70 million, so i should speed up the raster to sample over 300 times per second.

Amazing. What about using cameras?

[Justloadit]

Amazing. What about using cameras?

The camera solution is extremely costly, and the client would not go for it. It would need a redesign of the existing production line.
There was a system in place, some old machines designed in Netherlands, but they no longer exist. They used infra red LEDs and photo diodes to measure light intensity. Never worked too well because the specific product is not the same shape, as it is organic in nature, and if two items fell simultaneously, it would only count it as one, simply because the measured 'dark light' was done as a comparator to a single reference. In other words if the value measure was more than a preset figure, it would regard that as one count, irrespective of how high the value was.

I got sucked into this project to make the control board for the machine, as the original was a problem. When the project was requested, there was no discussion that the existing detection system did not work very well, and was an integral part of the main controller. I had given my word that I would make it work, and lo and behold, when I got stuck in I realized that the system could not function if I did not have a decent detection system, and that's when the the proverbial s...t hit the fan. So it became a challenge. Fortunately I have had not given a price, but was given a budget. The budget when I started was fair, but with all the extra time and prototypes made, it is far too low, so I will be pushing the envelope. I am quite sure the customer will pay, as they count out 16million units every year, and the current loss of errors, by over supplying to compensate will far out weight the development cost.

I have looked on the net, and found only one supplier world wide who may have something that could have worked, so it is a very unique detector. There may be a market once I have completed this project for other clients.

[PieterPrinsl]

Worked

[Houses4Rent]

working most of the day

[Alice Rain]

Sorry when was workers day? Have been working [at home] so don't really keep track of such things. I am worried that I may forget to go and vote!