Comments on: Temperature Fail

By: bob

bob — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 23:26:17 +0000

YOU MISSPELLED “HOBBES”!

By: bob

bob — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 23:15:56 +0000

MY TOWN IS NOT HELL!

By: bob

bob — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 06:38:16 +0000

This is in the town where I live! I’ve seen this sign a million times (though not at this point, we, obviously, were snowed in that day)! We don’t appreciate Osky being called hell, though. >:(

By: Anneliese Michel

Anneliese Michel — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 01:36:08 +0000

-Teeth Chatters-
I-Its So H-Hot Today… -Shakes-

By: Anneliese Michel

Anneliese Michel — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 01:34:58 +0000

xDDDD
That Makes So Much Sense, Its Really Funny!

By: Alex Kramer

Alex Kramer — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 00:21:39 +0000

God Damn its cold

By: built_for_genius

built_for_genius — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 18:36:04 +0000

Maybe they forgot the decimal point, or perhaps the light responsible for the decimal point burned out. So it might actually be 11.9˚, instead of 119˚.

By: cheesy puffs

cheesy puffs — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:52:08 +0000

Maybe it was kelvin….?:)

By: Lisa Simone

Lisa Simone — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 14:01:19 +0000

Dilan – good point I don’t think anyone offered yet. If we could watch the erroneous values changes as the temperature changes a couple degrees, that would help us figure out if the reported temperature has a pattern or is more garbage from a bad sensor. Lisa

By: Dilan

Dilan — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 04:27:01 +0000

Check the thermal sensors, anyone?

By:

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:46:02 +0000

because this world is hell

By: cocolashapop

cocolashapop — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:19:46 +0000

I know, right? And they say Canadians are weird.
Up high, my friend.

By: Anssi

Anssi — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:02:38 +0000

@Lisa: One possible exlanation: the sensor uses normal two’s complement presentation for the temp output and the software ignores the MSB. Since 119 is 1110111 in binary, we can assume actual byte read is 11110111. Now that’s a negative number in two’s complement.

To get to the corresponding positive value, you subtract one and flip the bits, which gives 00001001 or 9. So it should read -9 degrees, in celsius.

By: kosher ham

kosher ham — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 22:37:47 +0000

Maybe it does have an 8-bit register, but some douche is holding a lighter to the sensor.

By: 27

27 — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 12:42:02 +0000

you fail, because kelvin doesn’t use the “degree” symbol
its only the number and a big “K”.

By: Astudent

Astudent — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 02:06:45 +0000

science fail….
1) Kelvin isn’t part of physics
2) Kelvin doesn’t use a degrees symbol, nor has it ever
3) 119K= -154.15 degrees Celsius

By: jose

jose — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 15:30:46 +0000

they forgot the negative sign

By: Lisa

Lisa — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 15:13:00 +0000

Not quite. If the variable is signed, it ranges from a min of -128 to a max of 127. When it rolls under from 0 to -1, it becomes -128, not +128. Instead of doing this in decimal, do it in binary and you’ll see the upper (signed bit) issue. In order for the display to read 119, the signed bit isn’t used (or is ignored).

How can this happen? Several theories abound. The most logical is that the display doesn’t have enough room to display the negative sign after roll under, so “-119″ appears as “119.”

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 02:48:22 +0000

Explanation of this FAIL:
This was a software bug as follows:
the Variable was declared as a signed 8 bit integer
which has a MAX value of 128, overflowed when going negative

Actual Temp. : Stored Temperature in the variable
3 : 3 (note all positive temperatures are correct)
2 : 2
1 : 1
0 : 0 (the variable Overflow happened)
-1: 128 (now all Negative temperatures are wrong)
-2: 127
-3: 126
-4: 125
-5: 124
-6: 123
-7: 122
-8: 121
-9: 120
-10:119 so, 119 was displayed when the temp was -10 deg. F

1 deg F

By: Caroline

Caroline — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 04:10:05 +0000

This is CLEARLY not a fail. You know, there are other ways of the temperature outside besides Celsius and Fahrenheit!

By: DB

DB — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 20:59:49 +0000

It’s actually -10?
What country do you live in that use a unitless temperature scale?

By: DM

DM — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 12:22:16 +0000

it is in kelvin

By: Andrew Ong

Andrew Ong — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 06:33:04 +0000

They need to have that temperature display fixed…

By: hippyjipsn

hippyjipsn — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 05:46:25 +0000

It says 11.9 degrees…

By: James1011R

James1011R — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 18:55:44 +0000

That thing is busted!

By: Maw

Maw — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 06:28:19 +0000

Its actually 11.9° Fahrenheit.. theres simply a comma missing…

By: colBoh

colBoh — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 04:51:44 +0000

Maybe it means 119 Kelvin.

By: Tiffany

Tiffany — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 21:27:51 +0000

If that’s Kelvin it’s -245.2 ºF outside. Maybe the picture was taken in Antarctica.

By: Brettr

Brettr — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 16:41:06 +0000

Y does U Amerikans still use this shtupid F system?

By: forge

forge — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 15:03:10 +0000

Our local bank’s time-temperature-weather phone line used to do that. This is Central Florida we’re talking here, so no snow, but nonetheless we’d get “Time now: 4:22 p.m. Temperature: One hundred forty-six degrees. Weather: Partly cloudy today, with a chance of rain in the afternoon and cooler tonight.” MMMmmmMmmmmmkay.

By: Joel Micah Donovan

Joel Micah Donovan — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 14:33:21 +0000

wz is mistaken about -10; it’s actually -9, but it’s true that you only need seven bits if it’s unsigned. The range of unsigned 7-bit integers is 0 to 127. 1110111b = 119
If you interpret it as a signed 7-bit int, 1110111b is -9.

By: Someone

Someone — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 14:10:07 +0000

Maybe it’s in Kelvin.

By: Lisa

Lisa — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 13:38:58 +0000

Hi wz, good thoughts, but if you are using a 7-bit signed system, you can’t express the value 119 in binary. The 7th bit becomes the signed bit, leaving you only 6 bits for the actual numbers – so you can only express -64 to 63. Not 119.

You can also look at it in reverse. Start with -10 and see what decimal (temperature) value you get. To compute -10 in 7 bit format, start with +10 and take the twos-complement. 10 dec = 000 1010. To get -10, invert and add 1: 111 0101 + 1 = 111 0110.

Now, if this truly were a 7-bit signed system, the top bit represents the negative sign, leaving 11 0110 as the actual value. 11 0110 = 0×36 = 54. Therefore, -10 in a signed 7-bit system is actually 54 decimal, not 119.

By: Brandon

Brandon — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 06:41:56 +0000

Ah yes.Summer time in Canada.

By: John

John — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 03:47:53 +0000

I think it’s 11.9

By: Kafka

Kafka — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 20:57:42 +0000

11,9 F = -11 C, right?

By: Zach

Zach — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 20:23:39 +0000

WIN!!!

By: wz

wz — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 16:47:31 +0000

That is -10 in unsigned 7 bit integer format.

By: Porsche

Porsche — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 16:02:06 +0000

Wow, it’s 119 °C and this white thing ain’t snow. It’s the foam of boiling water, because the water starts to boil at 100 °C.

By: Lisa

Lisa — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 15:50:08 +0000

… Sorry typo, the signed char range is -128 to 127.

By: Lisa

Lisa — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 15:21:57 +0000

Okay folks, here’s the answer. Assume the real temperature outside is -9F. Assume they used signed 8-bits to describe the range of -127 to 128 decimal degrees. -9 decimal is binary 1111 0111. If the top (signed) bit got switched to a 0, then the binary number becomes 0111 0111 or 0×77, which is = 119 decimal. (I love embedded software bugs!)

http://www.lisaksimone.com/phoneonfire

By: IT Freak

IT Freak — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 14:55:46 +0000

This is just too much…

By: sajansan

sajansan — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 14:54:49 +0000

lol

By: Pepsi Plunge

Pepsi Plunge — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 13:29:41 +0000

Fahrenheit obviously sucks.

By: vanadyel

vanadyel — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 10:59:25 +0000

It could be just Celsius but the “dot” is missing and the “minus” couldn’t be displayed due to the lack of space. So that it is -11.9 Celsius (the author says -10 C).
The display could have been designed not to go under -9.9 C. So it’s still an engineering fail…

By: AferVentus

AferVentus — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 10:24:04 +0000

I really don’t think you can blame the pirates for this one.

By: AferVentus

AferVentus — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 10:08:19 +0000

Aren’t you ♫ the lucky one ♫ ? Now, ♫ how am I supposed to carry on ♫ ?

By: AferVentus

AferVentus — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 09:59:08 +0000

If I could walk that way …

By: Joel Micah Donovan

Joel Micah Donovan — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 09:49:53 +0000

YES! I was wondering how far down I’d have to scroll to find someone who knew anything about computers, hehe. In a signed 7-bit number, the 7th bit is worth -64, so you can express any integer between -64 and 63 (not very useful for Fahrenheit but I assume this thermometer measures in Celsius). Somewhere along the line, the 7th bit was accidentally interpreted as 64 instead of -64, so the display would show a temperature 128 degrees too high. Way to go, @Zarggg! Why the cheap bastards didn’t spring for the whole byte in the first place is beyond me. I’d actually be much less surprised if it said 247 degrees.

By: Albert

Albert — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 08:02:15 +0000

It’s not a temperature, it’s an angle.