Ask HN:What was the one hack which took most time?

2 pointssamikc1 comment

We have all been through that one hack which took so much time. But feels great when it's done. It has that aha moment to it.

Let's share the story.

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Not really a web based hack but writing the functions to detect and decode a valid stream of manchester encoded data over a 433MHz link on a PIC microprocessor too me an age, mainly because I designed it to detect the baud rate from within the received data stream. The most irritating part about it all is that the encode part of the system is like 5 lines of code that took two minutes to write. The decode however is several timers, interrupts and about 5 weekends of work.

It works well enough but it's on breadboard so will never be perfect.

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