On Thursday 13 March 2008 21:52, Ziser, Jesse wrote: > Eww! Don't you HATE that? I'm so embarrassed for my country. > > Today I got a spec for a piece of hardware-interface software I'm supposed > to write. It said that several of the digitized and transmitted quantities > are stored in what it called "centi-Amps" and "centi-PSI". I groaned a bit > and got on with it. I'm not sure who directly wrote the spec, but if I > find out, I'd like to have a brief chat with them about units and notation. > I probably can't do anything to get them to switch from PSI to a saner > unit, though. Fortunately, this is the first PSI I've seen at work. Most > people here who do things with pressure seem to be using pascals like > reasonable human beings.
Weird units are fairly common in embedded systems. Many years ago I worked on a battery charger which measured in seventeenths of a volt. Its range was 0 to 15 V, which went into a resistor divider and an ADC ranging from 0 to 255. Once I was at a meeting discussing this device, and someone mentioned a voltage setting which was something like 9.41 V. I rattled off "9.411764705882353". Plotters measure in fortieths of a millimeter, which I think printers should also (or some submultiple thereof) instead of the currently common 300th of an inch. Pierre
