Random Geekage

Just made an initial stab at some arduino software to control the motors of the tank thing. Nothing fancy, just some functions that move forward, back and do turning. I haven’t coded reverse turning yet, didn’t occur to me until now.

The syntax of the code is C style so those who can code in C, C++, Java etc should be able to read and understand this no problem.

There is no real code that does anything at the moment. I plan to add serial communication to the code so it can interface with the python code I wrote a while ago. Lacking an arduino makes development difficult and the kit I want is out of stock.

Robot Army arduino, geek, programming, robot

Warning, this post my be considered very geeky. If you are afraid of circuit boards, this is not for you.

Top case requires removal of 8 screws, phillips head.

Main circuit board:

Click on the photo for notes on the Flickr page

3 pin headers:

• Microphone - 2 pin, red and black for + and -
• Antenna - 2 pin one used
• Camera - 3 pin, red, black and yellow for +, - and signal respectively

Right next to the camera header is a daughterboard with a large shield and an antenna. I believe this is some sort of video processor and transmitter. Possibility for covert video capture and transmission when coupled with an amplifier

Motor control uses 6 wires grouped into 2 sets of 3, each triplet controlling one motor. Circuit board has designations for ground, m1+, m2+, m1- and m2- leading me to believe that the motors are either full forward, full reverse or off. This will make things easier as I do not need to worry about any speed control.

I plan on using an Arduino for this project as it seems like a very capable microcontroller board. It has a range of digital I/O and analogue inputs as well as flexible power supply capabilities (usb, pin header or power socket).

Robot Army geek, reverse engineering, robot

For a while I have been trying to get used to using the command line for all of my application needs. One of the sticking points for me is email. As far as I can see, the two main text based email clients are Alpine and Mutt.

Mutt seemed to be a pain to configure, I couldn’t find an entry in the config file to put in my details and it brought in a whole bunch of other packages onto my system. Mutt seems to only be able to retrieve mail on its own. Sending requires the extra software which is a downside to me. Extra stuff to update, more possibility of security holes. Alpine on the other hand, has no such problems.

The other main part of email for me is GPG functionality. The default email client in Ubuntu, Evolution, has a really simple way of configuring GPG, just put your key ID into a text field and it does the rest. However, Evolution has a ton of bells and whistles like calendars and address book functionality. Plus I can’t have it backgrounded.

Klaatu did a Hacker Public Radio episode on how to integrate GPG and Alpine but I felt that during the main part he spoke too fast and never went over the proper syntax of the configuration lines, like the need for correct capitalisation. After hunting around a bit more, I found a page that had the correct lines ready for copy and paste (Edit: the symlinks are needed to use the filters properly).

First, open a shell and do the following commands:
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/gpg /usr/bin/encrypt
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/gpg /usr/bin/sign

Then open your .pinerc file and amend the display and sending filters to this:

display-filters=_LEADING("-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE")_ /usr/bin/gpg --decrypt,
_LEADING("-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE")_ /usr/bin/gpg --decrypt

sending-filters=/usr/bin/gpg --encrypt -r _RECIPIENTS_ -a,
/usr/bin/gpg --clearsign

Whack that into your .pinerc file in the right places and so long as you have GPG set up encrypted mail should work.

Weblog Alpine, command line, email, geek, gpg, guis are for the weak, Mutt

I have finally managed to upload the video I made from a presentation at the local Linux User Group. The topic is on the running of a Highlands Wireless ISP.

The quality is not the best. The lighting in the room was messing with the camera a bit and the sound is a bit low so you may want to turn up the volume. I am by no means a video expert, I just dumped the footage, whacked on a title and credits then encoded it twice, once to mpeg and the next to xvid.

Hopefully it will be educational/entertaining. Liscensed under a Creative commons By-Sa 2.5 liscense, you have permission to copy, give to folk and edit it so long as you attribute the source and distribute your versions under the same liscense.

Weblog geek, linux, LUG, video

So I’m sitting in front of my computer and I remembered I was given a guide on how to use the mobile internet functionality of my N95 with an EeePC. I figured I would give it a shot.

I selected PC mode as the usb connection type. Lo’ and behold, NetworkManager picked it right up. Told it I was on the o2 network with a contract, hit apply, disabled the wifi and I was online through my phone.

No terminal, no esoteric config files, just select from a menu and hit a button. Can it really be this easy?!  I was looking forward to something more interesting. Oh well.

(This was done with Ubuntu 8.10, Intrepid Ibex, I doubt it would be this easy with an earlier version)

Weblog cool, geek, internet, linux, mobile, ubuntu n95

Just done a tally of my storage media. I have nearly 2.5 terabytes of data capacity in various hard drives and flash media. Most of it is fairly empty. This is not including the stack of blank cds and dvds.

Think I’m gonna set up a RAID or something similar.

Weblog geek, storage

Had trouble convincing it to run in a virtual machine.

Partitioner is confusing as hell (using cylinders to determine partition size?!)

Install was very fast (10 mins)

FVWM is the default window manager which I hate.

Lacks binaries for libiconv and gettext so gnome won’t install.

Ports system is somewhat confusing

CVS won’t work

No wget! This is blasphemy! Have to use ftp to grab stuff!

OpenBSD is more complicated than Slackware and that is a difficult thing to have. Still, I have the most secure OS avaliable to the general public. I just can’t use it for anything.

Weblog confusion, geek, headdesk, OpenBSD, unix

I have the adapter for my implementation of Project Gargoyle almost done. I just need to aquire a 9 volt battery snap and it will be complete. In the meantime, take a look at my crappy soldering work.

Weblog geek, project gargoyle, soldering

For a while I have been interested in wearable computers, small devices which let you stay connected to the net wherever you go so you can access data and record important stuff on the go. The main sticking point for this is the displays so you can see the data. They either look big, ugly and kludgy or are very expensive. This is not likely to change for a while.

I opted to go for the cheaper solution and got what would normally be considered a kid’s toy off ebay. It is one of these things kids use to spy on folk and suchlike. The toy consists of a tank like remote controlled vehicle with a camera mounted on the front which wirelessly relays video to the user. The video is shown by way of a head mounted display, which is the part I was after. The display accepts composite video signals through a 3 pole 3.5mm jack (the same as found on headphones).

My phone, a Nokia N95 8Gb has video out capability, conveniently in the form of a composite video signal delivered through a standard phono jack. Combining the two is a relativley simple affair, some minimal soldering is required but nothing that will be permanent between the two devices.

My phone was chosen as the main processor due to the wealth of functionality it provides: bluetooth, wifi, 3g internet, installable applications, media playing etc. If I didn’t know better, I would say this was meant to be.

I do have to credit Soylent_Bomb (aka PseudoKroW) for this, his review and notes on the headset are what convinced me to try it out. The fact that I had to get the rest of the toy is a tad annoying but hopefully I will be able to repurpose the tracked vehicle into a robot chassis, depending on how easy it is to subvert to my whims. If not, it will be ebayed.

Weblog computer, geek, hacking, wearable

Ubuntu 8.10 codenamed Intrepid Ibex was released yesterday. DIligently, I launched the update manager to begin the update process. As usual, a ton of stuff to download. Mostly happened without a hitch.

Flash player was the hitch. Took over 2 hours to download 3.8mb. That is pretty bad. Once it was finally installed, all was good. Upgrading a running system is always gonna be interesting. Things change before you. Like Firefox. I launched it and found that it looked shinier than it used to. Some of the panels had a glossy effect to them. Not sure if it is a theme but it looks good. A yellow bar appeared suggesting that I find out about my rights by clicking on the button. That launches a new tab with the url of about:rights which basically says you can modify and redistribute the firefox code but not the icons. Another bar appeared a while after asking me to restart firefox due to some other upgrades which is a nice feature.

Gnome, in my chosen theme, looks pretty shiny as well. Nautilus has tabs! That is awesome. No more multiple windows!

Transmission (bittorrent client) has also had a polish. The web interface is no longer a seperate addon but is built in which could be useful for folk wanting to check up on their downloads from elsewhere.

I do have a criticism of Transmission though. There is no tray icon to minimise to. I have to keep the main window up to download which is not a good thing. Not sure if it is a bug or not. Thats about the only bad thing I have found so far.

Pidgin has also been improved a bit. Has support for the Live Messenger personal message things. Still no webcam support.

One of the new features is a usb stick creator which allows you (as the name says) to create a bootable pendrive with ubuntu on it. Aparrently lets you store documents and whatnot on it, might be useful. Wonder if it will let you use non ubuntu isos.

Overall, the upgrade has been good. Not had a proper poke around yet but nothing major has broken.

Weblog 8.10, geek, intrepid ibex, linux, release, review, Ubuntu