Upgrading LG G3 Mobile Phone to Android Mashmallow (6.0)

Recently I brought a used Korean version LG G3 mobile phone for a Virtual Reality (VR) project. The mobile phone required update to the latest version of Android operating system. This Korean model of LG G3 didn't offer Over the Air (OTA) updates.

The first step in the update process is to connect the model phone to the computer using USB cable. However the standard Android 'Google USB Drivers' didn't work. After some searching I found that LG Universal Mobile Drivers from LG support site.

Next I used the LG Mobile Support Tool program on my computer to start updates. This model is not supported by LG Bridge Software. After couple of updates I managed to upgrade the mobile phone to Android 6.0 Marshmellow. Each update requires a download of 1GB update and you need to wait for the phone to reboot and optimize all the Android applications.

There was one glitch in the upgrade. Had to restart an upgrade when I faced 'Upgrade stopped due to an error' message.

Here rather straight forward way to upgrade the phone to latest Android 6.0 (Marshmellow):

• Download LG Universal Mobile Drivers.
• Connect the phone and put it in MTP mode.
• Download LG Mobile Support Tool.
• Follow instructions on the screen. Each upgrade download is about 1GB

India's Hidden Hotbeds of Innovation

Prof.Anil Gupta is father of my friend. A quiet unassuming man dressed in hand spun cotton shirt. Only years later I learnt about his work with grassroots inventors and innovators.

Anil Kumar Gupta taught at famed business school, he started 'Honey Bee Network' to help grassroots inventors and innovations. Every year his management class traveled to rural India to study and learn from traditional knowledge and innovation of the people.

In this 2009 TEDTalk India's Hotbeds of Invention he shares his experiences with Honey Bee Network. Enjoy and get inspired.

Deploying Jenkins Continuous Integration (CI) Server on Ubuntu LTS

For the past few weeks I have been helping Internet-in-a-Box(IIAB) team develop their Continuous Integration (CI) infrastructure setup using Vagrant, VirtualBox and Jenkins CI server.

Running Jenkins server from .war file might be convenient. But it is recommended to deploy GNU/Linux Continuous Integration (CI) server using these instructions.

# Add Debian package repository of Jenkins GPG key:
$ wget -q -O - https://pkg.jenkins.io/debian-stable/jenkins.io.key | sudo apt-key add -

# Then add the following entry to your/etc/apt/sources.list:
$  echo deb http://pkg.jenkins.io/debian-stable binary/ | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/jenkins.list

# Update your local package index:
$ sudo apt-get update

# Install Jenkis server:
$ sudo apt-get install jenkins

# Start Jenkins service and verify its status:
$ sudo systemctl start jenkins
$ sudo systemctl status jenkins

# Open http://localhost:8080 in your browser and copy paste in the secret password.
# Follow the on screen instructions to create Jenkins server admin account
$ sudo cat /var/lib/jenkins/secrets/initialAdminPassword

# Open the ports 8080 through your firewall:
$ sudo ufw allow 8080
$ sudo ufw status

Adding a monit service to monitor the Jenkins server is a good idea. Monit ensures that Jenkins server is restarted automatically when it crashes.




# Create a Jenkins monitoring file with following lines with:
$ sudo nano /etc/monit/conf.d/jenkins
check process jenkins with pidfile /var/run/jenkins/jenkins.pid
    start program = "/etc/init.d/jenkins start"
    stop program  = "/etc/init.d/jenkins stop"

Also you'll need to configure mail server to send Jenkins build reports.

ProDisk Mini White Balance Card

I picked up a Seculine ProDisk Mini White balance/ Grey Card/Color balance card combo in Bangkok. Apart from the usual white balance calibration filter, grey card and color card. This one also comes with a mirror on the back. Now this is a complete mystery to me.

Wonder what's the purpose of a mirror? I hope it's not for checking my nose hair or something.

"Misha" Childrens Magazine

Do you remember 'Misha' children's magazine?. I have a fond memory of reading the magazine sitting on the windowsill waiting for my parents to return home. After two decades I visited the store that sold these English language magazine published in Russia, there were no trace of any magazines. Sometimes you would see this magazines in secondhand book stores but that is very rare now.

Searching through the Internet, I found this blogger share a digital copy of the magazine. He writes in this post titled Remembering Misha

"Back in the 1980s, Misha (which translates to bear in Russian) was the most popular children’s magazine in India published in English. Within its glossy pages, you were treated to folk tales, science fiction, riddles, photographs,pen pal sections, puzzles and illustrations. As an added bonus, it smelled awfully good."

"Unfortunately the collapse of the USSR spelled death for many Soviet publishing houses (Raduga, Mir and others) and Misha soon became extinct."

According to few sources, the magazine continued to publish in Russian for long time after the collapse of the USSR. I reached out to the former editor of the magazine for confirmation.

LaCie saves the day once again!

Three weeks into my photographic assignment. My teammate accidentally knocks the laptop running the backups, the laptop and the connected external drives crash to the floor.

Fortunately my LaCie rugged drive survives and lives to fight another day. The laptop and the other external hard drive took lot of damage. The moral of the story, mistakes happens especially when you are on the road and exhausted. Make sure you invest in good gear.

Noise Bridge China Trip # 7

It time for the next edition of Noise Bridge China Trip #7. This annual trip is organized by San Francisco based Noise bridge hackerspace.

Head over to the event Wiki page for more information on how to join the trip. If you are interested to travel with fellow makers and hackers to various manufacturing spaces in China then this is your golden opportunity.

As of writing this blog post, this is tentative schedule.

• 7-October-2017 -- Leave home for Hong Kong (arrive in Hong Kong on 8-October)
• 8-October-2017 -- We all meet in Hong Kong -- hotel: to be determined
• 8-October to 11-October -- Hong Kong
• 11-October to 16-October -- Shenzhen
• 13-October: tour of factories
• 15-October, 4pm-6pm: Chaihuo x.factory Bring-A-Hack
• 16-October to 19-October -- Xi'an
• 19-October to 24-October -- Beijing
• 24-October to 28-October -- Shanghai
• 28-October-2017 -- fly home (arrive NA or EU on same day)

Keep an eye on the Wiki page
https://noisebridge.net/wiki/NoisebridgeChinaTrip7 for most up-to-date information.

The very first funny Cat Video? (Video)

Just watched yet another funny cat video on Internet. I wonder when our fascination with funny cat videos began. It turns out that the earliest cat video dates back to the birth of motion pictures. Thomas Edison the consummate commercializer of his innovations made earliest movies to promote the motion picture camera "Kinetograph. After the initial popularity of these penny movies (penny was the cost of ticket) of humans moving, dancing and sneezing waned. He moved on to man's furry friends. In 1894 the boxing cats motion picture was hit among the audiences at the penny arcades.

Getting started with Arduino Starter Kit

I have always been fascinated by electronics. Growing up I tried to learn electronics by reading radio repair guides and engineering textbooks in vain. Always got stumped by mathematics and dry tone of the books. The advent of Arduino changed all that. Now it is easier to learn electronics without getting bogged down by technicalities and focus on making something fun!.

The 'Arduino Starter Kit' is suitable for self-learning Arduino with simple fun projects. Lot of attention has given to developing course material and overall ascetic design of this kit. The Starter kit comes full set of high quality electronic components and a 170 page project guide book. The ready to use cardboard cutouts makes it great activity kit that could used by parent and the child.

The project guide book explains all the basic electronic components, their function and use in a simple lucid manager. The quality
of the book and its design is very tasteful. The programming code is explained in full detail. Further online resources are also
provided to aid learning.

Here is complete list of the components that are bundled in the kit.

• 1 Projects Book
• 1 Arduino / Genuino Uno
• 1 USB cable
• 1 Breadboard 400 points
• 70 Solid core jumper wires
• 1 Easy-to-assemble wooden base
• 1 9v battery snap
• 1 Stranded jumper wires (black)
• 1 Stranded jumper wires (red)
• 6 Phototransistor
• 3 Potentiometer 10kOhms
• 10 Pushbuttons
• 1 Temperature sensor [TMP36]
• 1 Tilt sensor
• 1 alphanumeric LCD (16x2 characters)
• 1 LED (bright white)
• 1 LED (RGB)
• 8 LEDs (red)
• 8 LEDs (green)
• 8 LEDs (yellow)
• 3 LEDs (blue)
• 1 Small DC motor 6/9V
• 1 Small servo motor
• 1 Piezo capsule [PKM17EPP-4001-B0]
• 1 H-bridge motor driver [L293D]
• 1 Optocouplers [4N35]
• 2 Mosfet transistors [IRF520]
• 5 Capacitors 100uF
• 5 Diodes [1N4007]
• 3 Transparent gels (red, green, blue)
• 1 Male pins strip (40x1)
• 20 Resistors 220 Ohms
• 5 Resistors 560 Ohms
• 5 Resistors 1 kOhms
• 5 Resistors 4.7 kOhms
• 20 Resistors 10 kOhms
• 5 Resistors 1 MOhms
• 5 Resistors 10 MOhms

You will also learn how to program Arduino using Processing programming language. The fun projects: Love-O-meter, Zoetrope, motorized pinwheel helps you build skills gradually. The first simple projects could form the basic model for your more complex electronic projects in the future.

I highly recommend buying the Arduino Starter kit. It is not cheap at USD $99.90.

Keep watching this space for more reviews of Arduino kits and books.

.

Animata Open Source Real-time Animation

In my efforts to explore the use of technology in art and social change. Looking at few ideas in creating new media installation art. Following my friend Prayas's advice I first looked at Animata developed by Budapest Kitchen.

The software is not currently in active development. Though I was able to compile it on Ubuntu gnu/Linux machine using the latest code. They were some stability issues.

Here are the instructions to compile and run Animata on Ubuntu LTS.

# Download Animata from https://code.google.com/archive/p/animata/source/default/source

 $ wget https://storage.googleapis.com/google-code-archive-source/v2/code.google.com/animata/source-archive.zip

# Uncompress the archive

 $ unzip source-archive.zip

# Change direction into animata source directory

 $ cd animata/trunk

# Install the dependencies

 $ sudo apt-get install scons
 $ sudo apt-get install libfltk1.1*

# Build

 $ scons

# Run the build

 $ ./build/animata

That's all folks. Please let me know your experiences with Animata.

Testing Unity3D editor on gnu/Linux

Few days ago Unity3D editor support on gnu/Linux reached an important milestone. Thanks to efforts of Na'Tosha Bard and her team, we now have mainline beta builds of Unity3D editor for gnu/Linux operating systems. This has been my long time feature request (Kudos Na'Tosha!).

Now gnu/Linux could become a platform of choice for Indie game developers. Along with Blender for 3D characters design and game environment asset development and Audacity for game audio.

You can download the Unity3D gnu/Linux beta builds in this thread. The latest builds would be in the latest post of this thread, so don't forget to scroll down until you find that last post.

# Download the Unity3D editor .deb package using wget or torrent. 

$ wget -c http://download.unity3d.com/download_unity/linux/unity-editor-5.5.0b1+20160830_amd64.deb
--2016-09-01 19:07:08--  http://download.unity3d.com/download_unity/linux/unity-editor-5.5.0b1+20160830_amd64.deb
Resolving download.unity3d.com (download.unity3d.com)... 175.28.3.10, 175.28.3.16
Connecting to download.unity3d.com (download.unity3d.com)|175.28.3.10|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 206 Partial Content
Length: 2680067522 (2.5G), 718427586 (685M) remaining [application/x-debian-package]
Saving to: ‘unity-editor-5.5.0b1+20160830_amd64.deb’

unity-editor-5.5.0b1+20160830_amd64.d 100%[+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++===================>]   2.50G   446KB/s    in 22m 36s 

2016-09-01 19:29:44 (517 KB/s) - ‘unity-editor-5.5.0b1+20160830_amd64.deb’ saved [2680067522/2680067522]

# Install the downloaded package using dpkg program 

$ sudo dpkg -i unity-editor-5.5.0b1+20160830_amd64.deb 
Selecting previously unselected package unity-editor.
(Reading database ... 697456 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack unity-editor-5.5.0b1+20160830_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking unity-editor (5.5.0xb1Linux) ...
Setting up unity-editor (5.5.0xb1Linux) ...
Setting permissions on chrome-sandbox...
Done.
Processing triggers for bamfdaemon (0.5.3~bzr0+16.04.20160701-0ubuntu1) ...
Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/bamf-2.index...
Processing triggers for gnome-menus (3.13.3-6ubuntu3.1) ...
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils (0.22-1ubuntu5) ...
Processing triggers for mime-support (3.59ubuntu1) ...
Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme (0.15-0ubuntu1) ...
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.23-0ubuntu3) ...

# Start Unity3D editor on command line by typing  
$ /opt/Unity/Editor/Unity

You can track various bugs in this Unity3D Linux Editor forum. There are few of well known issues, such the excessive CPU usage bug (lovely nick-named 'Spock') and here.

Please don't forget to share your experiences with testing Unity3D editor on gnu/Linux.

Noisebridge Hacker Trip to China #6

If you are excited by my previous post about Shenzhen the silicon valley of hardware, then here an exciting opportunity to visit China with fellow hackers and makers.

Every year San Francisco based Noise bridge hackerspace organizes a trip to China. This trip gives makers and hackers an chance to learn what's happening in China.

This year the trips covers vast tracks of China from Beijing to Hong Kong. You'll have an opportunity to attend various events such Shanghai Maker Carnival and Maker Faire Shenzhen along with a visit to local maker spaces and hackerspaces.

Here is tentative schedule.

• 10-October-2016 -- Leave home for Shanghai (arrive in Shanghai on 11-October)
• 11-October-2016 -- Meet in Shanghai (hotel TBD)
• 11-October to 17-October -- Shanghai
• 15-16-Oct: Shanghai Maker Carnival
• 17-October to 19-October -- Hong Kong
• 19-October to 24-October -- Shenzhen
• 21-23-Oct: Maker Faire Shenzhen
• 24-October to 1-November -- Beijing
• 1-November-2016 -- fly home (arrive NA or EU on same day)

Send an email to the organizer and put your name up on the Noisebridge hacker trip to china #6 wiki page . Too bad I couldn't join the China trip this year but I'll try to join the next trip.

Blender missing shared library gotcha!

Here is a simple solution to Blender missing 'libavcodec.so.54' shared library on Ubuntu Xenial (16.04.1 LTS) box. There are numerous posts about this problem but very few solutions.

$ blender
blender: error while loading shared libraries: libavcodec.so.54: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Solution for Blender missing library

Let me share what worked for me. Let's try to locate and add the library to ldconf path.

# Install the libavcodec-extra package using apt-get package manager.
$ sudo apt-get install libavcodec-extra-56

# Verify the location of libavcodec.so.54 file path.  
$locate libavcodec.so
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libavcodec.so
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libavcodec.so.56
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libavcodec.so.56.1.0


# Create a new ldconfig file with proper path to the shared library. 
$ sudo nano /etc/ld.so.conf.d/blender.conf

# Add the following line in the file. 
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/

# Rerun ldconf 
$ sudo ldconf 

# Start blender normally. 
$ blender  

That's all folks!. Enjoy blender.

Shenzhen: The Silicon Valley of Hardware (Video)

Follow maker and hacker extraordinary Andrew 'Bunnie' Huang to Shenzhen, China. This Wired.com documentary provides a rare insight into Shenzhen,the silicon valley of hardware. Understand what makes Shenzhen produce such innovative products at an incredible speed.

For me, the one most striking highlight of this documentary was to learn about 'Shenzhai' culture, it is akin to hacker or maker culture. I believe the values of open design, sharing of technical know-how and healthy dose of hubris defines Shenzhai culture. It drives the innovative product design in Shenzhen. Today this culture of design and easy availability of manufacturing facilities is attracting designers, makers, hackers and entrepreneurs.

I hope you'll enjoy this documentary and hopeful make your way to Shenzhen in near future.

Google Cardboard 360° Photosphere Viewer with A-Frame

In my previous post "Embedding Google Cardboard Camera VR Photosphere with A-Frame", I wrote that some talented programmer would probably create a better solution for embedding Google Cardboard camera photosphere using A-Frame.

I didn't know that Chris Car had already created a sophisticated solution for this problem. You can view it here on A-Frame blog.

You first might have to use Google Cardboard camera converter tool to make your Google Cardboard photosphere.

.

Embedding Google Cardboard Camera VR Photosphere with A-Frame

Early this year I started looking into the VR (Virtual Reality) web applications. Web browsers now natively support VR applications using WebVR JavaScript API. We can now design virtual worlds using markup language and connect them to devices such as Oculus Rift and Leap motion controller using just a web browser.

To hit the ground running with WebVR. I started an experiment to capture Hackerspace Phnom Penh using Google Cardboard camera app and display it using A-Frame framework. The Google Cardboard camera photosphere is not supported by A-Frame. But the positive responses to my query encouraged me to try an hack using A-Frame Panorama component.

Is it possible to embed Google cardboard camera image capture in a @aframevr powered site?

— Arky (@playingwithsid) December 17, 2015

And it works. Almost I had to tweak the scale setting a bit to try get the perspective right but it does work. The ideal solution is to create a A-Frame custom component, that I leave it for more skilled people.

The markup needed for this demo is simple, you can achieve this with one line.

<a-scene>
     <a-sky src="img/hackerspace.vr.jpg" radius="2400" scale="2 1 2"> </a-sky>
    </a-scene>

You can see the demo on Youtube or visit this webpage in an compatible web browser.

Eco City: Projection Mapping For Social Impact

Japanese artist Hidetaka Nakamura uses animation to bring about awareness about social issues in Cambodia. In this post, I talk about his Eco City project, he makes large screen projections of animations drawn by children on the wall of underground sewage plant. The children visit this underground sewage plant along the river front of Phnom Penh, they participate in pop quiz about environmental issues. The animated characters teach the children about recycling and garbage disposal.

This the second edition of the Eco city project in Cambodia. I'll be working with Hidetaka on the next projection mapping to bring real time animation of the drawings and immersive interaction of projection mapping next year. Stay tuned.

Free SSL Certificate from Mozilla Let's Encrypt project

Last week Mozilla Let's Encrypt project announced the launch of its free, automated and open certificate authority. I had been waiting for this news for a long time. I quickly deployed Let's Encrypt on my staging server to learn how this technology works. The deployment process is painless and very straight forward. The certificates needs to renewed every 3 months, the Let's Encrypt client does this automatically. Thank you Jerome and Ryan for all your help!.

At the time of writing this blog post, Let's Encrypt client was not available for Ngnix server. So I am using the manual method to obtain the SSL certificate here. Please read the latest docs for additional information.

# Check out the let's encrypt source code
$ git clone https://github.com/letsencrypt/letsencrypt

# Stop the Nginx server, we need the client to bind to port 80.
$ sudo service nginx stop

# Start the let's encrypt client and follow the instructions on screen. You need to provide an email address.
$ sudo ./letsencrypt-auto --server https://acme-v01.api.letsencrypt.org/directory certonly --domains staging.example.org
IMPORTANT NOTES:
 - Congratulations! Your certificate and chain have been saved at
   /etc/letsencrypt/live/staging.example.org/fullchain.pem. Your
   cert will expire on 2016-01-02. To obtain a new version of the
   certificate in the future, simply run Let's Encrypt again.
 - If like Let's Encrypt, please consider supporting our work by:

   Donating to ISRG / Let's Encrypt:   https://letsencrypt.org/donate
   Donating to EFF:                    https://eff.org/donate-le

# Edit the Nginix config to point to generated certificates.
$ sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/staging.example.org

 listen 443 ssl;
        server_name staging.example.org;
        ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/staging.example.org/fullchain.pem;
        ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/staging.example.org/privkey.pem;

# Restart the Nginx server
$ sudo service nginx start

Please don't forget to test your server using an comprehensive SSL server test such as SSLLabs.

EpiHack Myanmar 2015

Join fellow developers, open data enthusiasts and health specialists at EpiHack 2015 in Yangon, Myanmar, to uncover new ways to collect, track, and share data on emerging disease outbreaks. The event will held from January 18 till 22 2016.

What is <EpiHack/> ?

EpiHack is a health focused hackathon bringing together health and technology specialists to collaboratively produce ideas, tools and a network that can act as a first line of surveillance and response for disease outbreaks.

EpiHack Myanmar is the latest in a series of events implemented in partnership with the Skoll Global Threat Fund in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Tanzania and Brazil.

Why Myanmar?

Connectivity is quickly increasing across Myanmar with the arrival of new mobile providers and growing investments in infrastructure. Mobile and web technologies offer unprecedented opportunities to optimise and streamline the collection, dissemination, aggregation and visualisation of disease related information. EpiHack will build on such technologies to improve disease surveillance and outbreak response in Myanmar.

This event is by invitation only. Please register here. To keep informed on EpiHack Myanmar and EpiHack developments, follow @EpiHack on Twitter and join the EpiHack community on Facebook.

Also join the world's biggest unconference Barcamp Yangon right after Epihack 2015.

How to make DIY compost bin for kitchen waste

At Hackerspace Phnom Penh we are always trying to new ideas. Salla Mäkinen had been talking about composting kitchen waste. One afternoon I decided to try to make DIY compost bin with Salla's help. The design is simple and easy to make in less than an hour.

We head down to hardware shops along the Russian Market area to buy used paint buckets. The first bucket with a lid holds the composting material and the second one collects the drainage seeping from the compost. Salla and I drilled lot of small holes in the first bucket. Then put in four large bolts to hold the bucket up, this seems better design than putting a brick at the bottom. That's it. Now the compost bins are ready for my kitchen waste.

We need to improve this design to make it easy to churn the compost for aeration. Let's use know if you have any design suggestions. And do come over to Hackerspace Phnom Penh if you are interested to learn to make your own DIY compost bins for your kitchen waste.