Update on my Raspbmc media player project.

The Infrared Remote control is working great now.  This means that I can just reuse a free old remote control and move the $20 wireless USB keyboard onto another project.    This also means that the player draws even less power now, the IR Receivers are amazingly low power.  I am re-using the old remote control from the media player that Netgear deactivated as soon as I hooked it up to the Internet. 

I got an IR receiver from Lady Ada's site here:  http://www.adafruit.com/products/157 for just a couple of dollars.  Plus shipping, so buy a lot of other stuff there too. *L*

I also bought the cable and bread board connector for the Raspi here:  http://www.adafruit.com/products/914 Since this is  reusable for many projects I consider it a tool and am not adding it to the cost of this single project.

If you want they sell a remote control with a configuration file all figured out for you already.  If you want to reuse and old remote, that is easy to do too.

I followed the directions on Ada Fruit as well and programmed my remote control in just a few minutes.

http://learn.adafruit.com/using-an-ir-remote-with-a-raspberry-pi-media-center

I had to type in the commands from a screen shot, here is something you can copy and paste from:

sudo modprobe lirc_rpi
sudo kill $(pidof lircd)

mode2 -d /dev/lirc0

irrecord -d /dev/lirc0 ~/lircd.conf

 

A lot of remote controls have been programmed already, and the config files shared at this site: http://lirc.sourceforge.net/remotes/

This receiver is so much more sensitive than any I have ever used before.  I can literally point the remote control 180 degrees away from the chip and it still reads the button presses.  The old media player would sometimes not get a button press pointing right at it.

I have three more of the chips and 3 more Raspi boards, so I will be adding a wire harness to each of these 4 chips and wiring up every Raspi I own with inexpensive IR. 

The Raspi's can also send IR so I will be working on that next. 

Reply from my Senator regarding illegal NSA data collection.

Dear Mr. [Name Redacted]:

 

Thank you for sharing your concerns regarding the recent revelations of data sharing between Verizon and the National Security Agency (NSA).

 

According to documents released in the press, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) sought permission to collect data on cell phone use of Verizon customers as part of a classified program aimed at preventing acts of terror in the United States. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), which oversees requests for classified electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence gathering, approved at least one request that Verizon provide the FBI and National Security Agency (NSA) with select call log data for Verizon customers. The FBI claims the data collected and shared includes routing information such as originating and receiving phone numbers, individual mobile subscriber numbers, calling card numbers, and the time and duration of each call. It does not include content of the call, or the personal location or identification information of customers.

 

The FISC was created in 1978, and is composed of 11 federal judges. Its authority to grant access to business records was established under the USA PATRIOT Act and was extended in 2008 and 2012.

 

Thank you also for sharing your concerns regarding the National Security Agency’s (NSA) data collection program “PRISM.”

 

The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) recently confirmed reports that the NSA has used a classified computer system known as PRISM to collect foreign intelligence information. The system contains communications of foreign citizens located abroad that have been collected by internet service providers and delivered to the NSA for analysis. The DNI also released a public fact sheet about the program. It is available at: http://1.usa.gov/1bhNPkX.

 

PRISM’s information gathering falls under procedures that were passed in the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (FAA) and extended by the FISA Amendments Act Reauthorization Act of 2012. While the internet service providers subject to information requests have not been confirmed, the DNI stated that all information was provided after the law enforcement and intelligence agencies’ requests were approved by the FISC.

 

I fully support efforts to protect our nation, but such efforts must not compromise the very foundation that makes our country great; our civil liberties and Constitutional rights. Many questions, including the breadth of the information gathering, the extent of information about U.S. citizens that was gathered, and the length of time that the information was kept on file, must be addressed.

 

It's critical that we find a balance between security and freedom. Protecting our national security is critically important, and we still need to learn more, but any sort of overbroad surveillance is cause for serious concern. I voted against the Patriot Act in 2001, the FISA amendments in 2008, and the extension of Patriot Act provisions in 2011. I will continue to support measures that protect our nation from terrorism while also reforming the most dangerous parts of this law to protect our civil liberties and constitutional rights.

 

I will continue to closely monitor this situation as additional details about both incidents come to light. Should any legislation related to intelligence gathering and our civil liberties come before the Senate, I will keep your views in mind. Thank you again for getting in touch with me.

 

                         Sincerely,

              

                         Sherrod Brown

                         United States Senator

 

 

Flexible, Low Power, Yet Powerful Computing System.

What I would like to have is a computer with many programmable circuits so that the system can reconfigure and rewire itself on the fly. 

When you want a music player or a video player, or a video encoder, or whaterever, it loads the codexs onto very low power circuits and the main CPU idles as it only does enough to keep data fed between the memory, disk, screen, and the circuits.  Imagine a computer that could play 1080P video while encoding the video at the same time in real time and only draw a few watts of power.   Imagine being able to convert a half dozen videos at the same time, in less time than your most powerful computer can do it now, and still draw less than 10 watts. 

A few dozen common protocols and functions could be permanently loaded into ASICs so that they are always ready to go without any setup time.

The computer could be upgraded by just replacing the ASICs with newer ones, or stacking more

Makerbot Replicator 2 has an Extruder Feed Problem.

But the community already had a fix before I even got my printer.  The symptoms are varied.  Prints won't stick to the platform no matter how carefully you adjust the table.  You might just get a missed layer here or there, which really weakens a print.  Or you might get the dreaded air print, when you leave a job that is going to run for 12 hours and you come back to find it only printed half the job and is now just merrily printing nothing into the air.

The problem is the design that came from the original reprap and is a common design issue with many of the modern printers that derive from this venerable ancestor.  There is a hard plastic nub that presses the filament against the extruder drive gear.  The nub is positioned with a hex screw whose position is behind a fan and some wires.  I had issues each time I adjusted the tension on the nub because I would move the wires and the heater would lose power and not maintain temperature until I pressed the wires back into the connector.  The only tension on the nub is from a tiny rubber o-ring, but any more than minor fluctuations in filament diameter would cause the filament to stop feeding.

The problem part, from it's location in the top of the printer, to it's placement on the stepper motor, to where it is in the plastic housing.

Driver stepper motor in place on extruder head from center to right.

Motor and drive gear removed from extruder head.

The assembly that guides the filament and presses the filament into the drive gear.

The solution to the problem is to print an upgrade part from Thingiverse that fixes the problem.  This can be found here:  http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:42250


This is my fix in place before I put the fan cover back in place:

One problem that I had with this upgrade was the high cost of shipping for just a single part, or having to buy far in excess of what I needed for this one project.  Another was the time to get the parts.  I foolishly orded


So what I am proposing to do is to offer the 9 kits that I made up for sale, either just the hardware or the hardware with the plastic piece, just in case you waited too long and your printer can no longer print.

The kit with the plastic parts printed and fit together looks like this:

Kit assembled and printed in Yellow plastic, red and green are also available.

Update May 2013

It looks like Makerbot finally recognized their problem and are having a batch of replacement parts made to update their machines in the field.  I paid $9 for the "free" upgrade, which they claim is for shipping and handling, but that was months ago and I have yet to get the parts to do the repair.  I suggest still doing this fix until you get the mass produced replacement parts.

Dec 2013
I got the replacement part a couple of months ago, finally.  Was too busy in college to upgrade the printer at the time.  Going to tear into the printer at the beginning of the year to finally fix this issue.

Added an OPDS library book server to my media server.

I had no real concept about what software was available to share a library onto a network.  I knew that it was possible because I saw the option in fbreader.  Fbreader is some great software that I have been using for years.  

I did a google search and stumbled across this site by luck:  http://blog.slucas.fr/en/oss/calibre-opds-php-server

What this person did was to use a database and directory created in Calibre as the basis of his library, and then write software to put that library onto the network using the OPDS protocol so that it was accessible to any compatible book reader.    His philosophy is that Calibre is a great product, but way too large a foot print and too many dependencies to use for an embedded file sharing system, like I built last weekend.
 
Getting the service running was a breeze. I just followed the 5 step directions on the site where I downloaded the web app. The only snag I hit was having a space in the directory name of the path to the book folder. Once I got rid of the space it just worked. The error page I got was very clear and pointed me right at the problem.

I pointed fbreader on my pad computer at the library by clicking back, open network library, add catalog and putting in the path to where the software lives on my web server.   

This web service works amazingly well. I am using fbreader on my pad computer and am able to browse the directory of books about 100 times faster than browsing the same directories on a local sd card on the pad computer itself.   The memory consumption and required processing power to share the library is minimal as well.

Great job Sebastien Lucas!  He is the author of this great web service.

Now I just need to load everything I own into that Calibre library and I will be set.

This is the view of the web service running in a web browser.

--

I ran into one issue with minidlna needing too much memory if I had it include my image and music folders.  I only have 256MB of RAM on the server, but plan on buying a 1GB memory card next week when I make a trip to the big city. This should allow me to index and share my music and images using minidlna.

Every American with a phone is being monitored by the NSA.

This blog is not just about technology, it is also a blog about freedom and rights. Because if you are not free then you are not free to use technology in the ways you want.  In a totalitarian regime it is illegal to communicate freely, so you can't share cool hacks with each other.  It becomes illegal to use encryption, or to program micro-controllers, except under the watchful eye of a political officer.

We are finally finding out just how far down the rabbit hole we have fallen. Last month we found out how many reporters were being electronically surveilled. https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/blog/2013/05/virtually-everything-government-did-wikileaks-now-being-done-mainstream-us-reporters  This month we get to find out exactly how many American Citizens are being monitored daily, and it appears that anyone with a phone is being tracked.  The EFF organization has a great write up regarding this entire issue which arrived in my inbox tonight.  The subject line begins  with two words.  "Stunned. Angry."

https://supporters.eff.org/civicrm/mailing/view?reset=1&id=427

This is not a Republican issue, or a Democrat issue, since the same thing has now happened under two different administrations, one of each party. This is an American issue that we should all care about.

I doubt very much that the Feds would just make Verizon hand over all their records everyday, so this must be happening with every telecom company in America. It appears that every phone call in the USA; local, state, interstate, and international, is being illegally tracked without a warrant. How many of those calls are also being listened to, authorized by a judge that will rubber stamp literally anything that crosses his desk, is anyone's guess. 

If they track who you are calling then they have a list of your friends, family, and business associates. For what purpose they need lists like this I have no idea, but the purposes that such lists have been used historically is sickening.

Low cost electric boosted covered seated bike.

Gas prices getting you down?  

I am working on an electric boosted, covered, one person seated bike.  Basically take a tandem frame style bike with a shell and add an electric motor.  Cover the bike for aerodynamics, safety, and to allow the bike to run in bad weather.

Design specification

Take one person, a book bag, and a couple of bags of groceries from home, to school, and then back home again.  Keep the person driving the bike from getting too hot or too cold, keep them dry, and be safe.  A 10 mile trip should take about a half an hour.

Aerodynamic

It is important that a design like this needs to be aerodynamic so that it will slip through the air with as little effort as possible, this allows you to use much smaller batteries and motors to maintain the speed you want. Design will have to incorporate a light weight carbon fiber shell that covers every part of the vehicle.  This shell would have to be very light weight, mostly just a single layer of carbon fiber, but with reinforcements in critical areas, and large enough windows to allow the person in the bike a clear field of view.

Insulated

About a half an inch inside the shell I would like to have a layer of silver bubble paper to reflect summer heat away from the person in the seat.  This stuff is very light weight and is great at reflecting heat.

Ventilation

There will have to be air vents that allow external air to flow through the compartment on hot days, these vents would have to be adjustable so that on colder days you can close the vents to keep the compartment warm.  The compartment has to be sealed tight enough so that the shell reinforces the frame, but enough air has to come in to keep the driver from suffocating.

Power

A small electric motor and small battery pack will supplement pedal power, not replace it.  Shouldn't even require a license plate, electric bikes that can only go 20mph don't need to be licensed.  You state laws will vary.  As you accelerate or go uphill the motor will boost the person pedalling to make it easier.  When you decelerate or go down hill the motor will brake the bike and recharge the battery.

If possible put a thin solar panel on top of the bike to recharge the battery as long as the sun is shining.  We will also be able to hook a small fan to force air through the cockpit to keep the person cool, and power that fan directly from the solar panel. The more intense the sun shine, the harder the fan will blow. 

No heater

A lightweight design with thin tires would just not be safe in the winter anyway.

Frame

The frame would have to also be a light weight welded aluminium with a heavy duty light weight floor that can handle a lot of abuse. Maybe put a thin wooden panel over the aluminium frame using construction adhesive, and then vacuum seal a carbon fiber layer on both sides of the frame, sandwiching the floor panel and frame inside a carbon fiber and epoxy shell. 

Phone Dock

Use power from the battery to recharge the phone and run a low power amp running a couple of speakers so you can listen to music or audio-blog as you ride around.  

Security

Because this bike is light enough to carry away then there has to be an external strong point to lock it to the end of a bike rack.  The compartment should also lock at a strong point.