Outreachy Wrap-Up

My Outreachy internship ended last week, March 7 (6 in the US). Three months have gone by fast, part of me still can’t believe I finally upstreamed my first driver.

Since last update, I worked on supporting both I2C and SPI by factoring out common code and using regmap API to handle relevant calls of the I2C/SPI subsystem. I also got the opportunity to learn about ACPI and the Device Tree which are necessary in enabling enumeration of the sensor especially when using SPI protocol¹. The last few weeks I worked on writing support for triggered buffer where I get to explore interrupt handling, IIO trigger and buffer. I submitted the patchset this week and will be working on revisions from here on.

I’m happy and content of the work I’ve done. I learned a lot out of this experience and I’m very grateful of this opportunity to contribute to the Linux Kernel. I can’t imagine what it’s like if I haven’t taken “20 seconds of courage” to join the outreachy-kernel mailing list.

The internship journey was fun and nerve-wracking at the same time. Things were not always smooth sailing:

• Wiring mishap leading to -EPROTO error.
• Internet connectivity issues (has always been stable, why does it have to occur during the internship???) – this lead to moving on into another ISP provider.
• Got sick on one of the weekends. It was stomach pain that made me uncomfortable for a few days. Doctor’s hunch it could be Hyperacidity. Took the prescription and got better. Have to avoid coffee and spicy foods during this time which is sad.
• I cannot get some stuff to work. These are instances where Daniel (one of my mentors) would connect to my computer to help troubleshoot things.

These incidents diversified the experience. On the upside, working on the patches led to exploring other parts of the kernel. I didn’t expect I’d get a chance to submit patches about device tree or regmap. I don’t think it won’t be the last though since I plan on continuing the project on my spare time. So yes, there will be more adxl345 related-posts in the future.

I would like to thank the organizations that made this program possible, the Linux Kernel for accepting me as an intern, my mentors Daniel and Alison for the guidance, and lastly Jonathan (IIO maintainer) and other people who comment on my patches for their insightful code reviews.