Raymond P. Burkholder - Things I Do - Gadgets

Hardware with POE

nospam@example.com (Raymond P. Burkholder) — Tue, 27 Oct 2020 13:24:19 +0000

MySensors Hardware
OpenHardware.io
ESP8266 Wiki - sleeping the ESP8266
Arduino - 3.5A DC DC Buck converter, USR-ES1 W5500 SPI / Ethernet
ESP32-POE
freetroinics Power over Ethernet for Arduino

ADB Mechanism of Removing Unremovable Android Apps

nospam@example.com (Raymond P. Burkholder) — Sat, 12 Jan 2019 22:20:14 +0000

Learned at Samsung Phone Users Perturbed to Find They Can't Delete Facebook:

1. Download Android platform tools for your platform: https://developer.android.com/studio/releases/platform-tools...
2. Unzip it, open cmd and head to the unpacked folder.
3. Enable developer tools and USB debugging in your Android.
4. List packages avaiable:
```
adb shell pm list packages
```

5. Delete the unwanted package:

adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.package.name

Keyboards

nospam@example.com (Raymond P. Burkholder) — Sat, 27 Jan 2018 18:50:45 +0000

It seems there are a number of keyboard layouts available. I started with the standard 'qwerty' in school. In University, I programmed a mainframe's terminal keyboard to use Dvorak. But keyboards with a native Dvorak are not easily obtainable (zero effort wise). I have defaulted to using qwerty for now.

Today I encountered the Workman Keyboard Layout, as described by OJ Bucao, September 6, 2010, which is said to have further improvements over the Dvorak layout.

A layout needs the mechanical bits. 68 keys provides all the designs to build one's own keyboard from the ground up.

For pre-assembled keyboards, Mechanical Keyboards seems to be the place to be. Some keyboards have Workman as a built-in selection.

And so that I may remind myself of a previous entry which is tangentially relevant: i3 Window Manager and a Kinesis Keyboard

2018/09/16 - HN discussion on the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard (missing an ESC key).

2019/02/18 - HN discussion on Dvorak. Now if there was a Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 with a Dvorak layout, I would give that a try. Well, Linux: How to Switch to Dvorak Keyboard Layout shows how to switch the keyboard layout in LXDE. Just need to print out the layout diagram and I'm all set. Just flying a little blind (can't look at the keyboard). As a reminder, shift-caps-lock switches layouts.

Getting Side Tracked

nospam@example.com (Raymond P. Burkholder) — Sun, 24 Dec 2017 02:42:46 +0000

Altus Metrum: Open hardware and software designs for high powered model rocketry by Bdale Garbee and Keith Packard. The site leads to all things about model rocketry with links to vendors, clubs, gear, and research material.

Advanced Circuits is a site referenced from the previous one. Advanced Circuits provides all manner of custom printed circuit production.

Gargoyle: free firmware upgrade for your wireless router: monitor bandwidth, set quotas and throttles, block forbidden websites, .... (alternative to dd-wrt, tomato, ..)

ArduPilot: is an open source autopilot system supporting multi-copters, traditional helicopters, fixed wing aircraft and rovers.

How does PCBWay stack up as a low budget PCB fab: a maker's entry about PCB board manufacturing, delivery, and quality. Other blog entries are equally enlightening.

2018/06/11 - Adding a PCB Vendor: OshPark: Producing Perfect Purple PCBs Promptly

2020/03/29 - lasergist - Your custom design in pure, laser-cut Stainless Steel.

Maker Space - 3D Prints via Debian

nospam@example.com (Raymond P. Burkholder) — Mon, 16 Oct 2017 11:33:42 +0000

Petter Reinholdtsen mentions Generating 3D prints in Debian using Cura and Slic3r(-prusa).

He has a link to Cura which "3D printer / slicing GUI built on top of the Uranium framework"

2017/12/22 udpate: Cura enters Debian Unstable.

VillageTelco & Mesh Networks

nospam@example.com (Raymond P. Burkholder) — Mon, 27 Mar 2017 19:05:47 +0000

I have this page in my browser as an interesting project, called VillageTelco, developed by a group of people for the 'more remote places' of this planet. The have developed low power gear and used open source tools to build "easy-to-use, scalable, wireless local, DIY, telephone company toolkit". It works on a mesh principle, and they call their devices "Mesh Potatoes".

When looking at kernel commits, I saw BATMAN, and was wondering what it was. That led to open-mesh, which lead to their projects page, which linked to the VillageTelco project.

Related to IP Telephony, in an open-source world, I also came across Kamailio:(successor of former OpenSER and SER) is an Open Source SIP Server ... used to build large platforms for VoIP and realtime communications – presence, WebRTC, Instant messaging and other applications. On their web site:

Among the powerful features: asynchronous TCP, UDP and SCTP, secure communication via TLS for VoIP (voice, video, text); WebSocket support for WebRTC; IPv4 and IPv6; SIMPLE instant messaging and presence with embedded XCAP server and MSRP relay; asynchronous operations; IMS extensions for VoLTE; ENUM; DID and least cost routing; load balancing; routing fail-over; accounting, authentication and authorization; support for many backend systems such as MySQL, Postgres, Oracle, Radius, LDAP, Redis, Cassandra, MongoDB, Memcached; Json and XMLRPC control interface, SNMP monitoring.

A related SIP site is intel.org, which is home to the SIP Express Router, SIP Express Media Server, and SIP Express Router Web.

CSRP is a captive solution making use of the above products. I can't vouch for the product, just saw it in passing, which lead to the above resources.

HDMI Encoding Hardware

nospam@example.com (Raymond P. Burkholder) — Mon, 27 Mar 2017 10:12:49 +0000

Continuing along on the series of articles on HDMI Encoding, I came across some additional boards which provide various indirect ways of getting HDMI to a CPU which can perform the encoding.

Pender Electronic Design has a HDMI2CSI: 4K HDMI to CSI Interface for NVIDIA TX1 Evalboard. This is a card which rides on the TX1 as a mezzanine card, takes two channels of HDMI in, and uses the Toshiba TC358840 to convert to CSI-2 signals for input to the TX1. A TX2 could probably be used as well. Audio channels are included. I encountered the description in a blog post. An additional blog post talks about Open Source Driver for HDMI2CSI Module Release. Kernel and drivers are available on github InES-HPMM.

Auvidea carries a number of NVIDIA Jetson TX1 carrier boards and CSI-2 Bridges. The bridge boards are single HDMI-in to CSI-2 interfaces. These have bee used atop the Raspberry Pi devices. These modules use the Toshiba TC358743XBG.

LWN has an article about the Linux Driver for Toshiba TC358743 HDMI to CSI-2 bridge.

Interesting Small Boxes for HDMI Encode/Decode

nospam@example.com (Raymond P. Burkholder) — Sat, 11 Mar 2017 17:54:40 +0000

Khadas VIM: credit card sized 64 bit quad-core ARM cortex-A53 with Broadcom AP6212/AP6255 Wifi/Bluetooth and HDMI.

NVIDIA Jetson Modules: "his is an AI supercomputer on a module, powered by NVIDIA Pascal™ architecture. Best of all, it packs this performance into a small, power-efficient form factor that’s ideal for intelligent edge devices like robots, drones, smart cameras, and portable medical devices. It supports all the features of the Jetson TX1 module while enabling bigger, more complex deep neural networks."

HiKey960: development platform is based around the Huawei Kirin 960 octa-core ARM

Visual Special Effects

nospam@example.com (Raymond P. Burkholder) — Mon, 10 Mar 2014 00:25:26 +0000

I've been looking at various special effects with respect to motion control, motion tracking, camera tracking, 3d modelling, animation, LED lighting, with some possible real time interactions. I've put together a list of sites to which I have to re-visit once life settles down some.

AdaFruit has various kits relating to Arduino, LED strips, and accessories. Another LED strip. Learning about them. My jumping off point: AusChristmasLighting. Strips in bulk, but the older style WS2811 IC, Alibaba.
Robot Shop with Arduino YUN: mix of Arduino and Linux. They also have a Raspberry Pi touch screen.
Sparkfun also has Arduino and Raspberry Pi modules.
LRTimelapse and DslrDashboard: Using a tablet to control a camera and an Emotimo.
Planetary Stepper: possible substitute motor for Emotimo stepper.
Phidgets also has Stepper motors for the Emotimo (which sometimes is out of stock)
Waterott has motor controllers for Pololu A4988 stepper motor driver. 3 axis stepper.
To control the focus, zoom, and iris of a Panasonic HPX 170, I can use some Voltage Controlled Resisters off an Arduino. I'm looking at a Microchip MCP4361-503E/ST and a 20-Pin TSSOP and SSOP Evaluation Board.
Fast C++ library for image and sound processing: Intel® Integrated Performance Primitives (Intel® IPP)
Primitives like these could be incorporated into DirectShow filters in order to expedite processing. But this reduces the ability to be cross platform if running on more than just Windows is required.

HTC P3300

nospam@example.com (Raymond P. Burkholder) — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 00:47:52 +0000

I've had an I-Mate PDA2K (codename BlueAngel) for the last year or two. It has been a reliable workhorse. Although, it has been showing it's age recently. Two tiny screws, one up on the left side, and one up on the right side have departed. As a result, I've had to tape the sides together to keep it from falling apart. And as such, have been unable to use the slideout keyboard. Not too much of a deal there. The only real think it lacks is EDGE capabilty. GPS would be nice to have. Users at the XDA Developers Forums have come up with a way to load the unit with Windows Mobile 5. I was thinking of doing that but decided to wait for something new.
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