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.
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.
Keep an eye on the Wiki page
https://noisebridge.net/wiki/NoisebridgeChinaTrip7 for most up-to-date information.
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.
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.
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.
Hong Kong and Shenzhen are mecca for hardware enthusiasts. In my previous blog post I shared about buying Arduino in Hong Kong. Let me share some more information about sourcing electronic components in Hong Kong and Shenzhen.
Dim Sum Labs Hong Kong's hacker space maintains a local guide to buy electronics on their Resources page.
View HK/SZ DIY Computer, Electronics (Hackjam/DSL) - Google Maps in a larger map
The Scoutbots projects aims to explore and protect the Oceans with Open Technologies. They maintain a comprehensive list of material suppliers in Hong Kong and Shenzhen here https://sites.google.com/a/scoutbots.com/wiki/home/references/material-suppliers-in-hong-kong-shenzhen
Happy shopping!
In this post I take a journey into the past and relive the days of arcade games. My colleagues at the Hackerspace Phnom Penh decided to make a game arcade using Raspberry Pi running PiPlay (formerly called PiMAME) and couple of old Xbox controllers.
Download the PiPlay 0.8.0 Beta 6 image. The Raspberry Pi can't power all peripherals. You'll need a compatible powered USB hub to power both Raspberry Pi and Xbox controllers. The additional USB slots on the hub could used to connect keyboard during configuration.
# Download the latest PiPlay SD Card.
$ unzip ~/Downloads/piplay-0.8-beta6.img.zip
Archive: ~/Downloads/piplay-0.8-beta6.img.zip
inflating: piplay-0.8-beta6.img
# Write to card using unetbootin or dd command. Be Patient, This process takes some time.
$ sudo dd if=./piplay-0.8-beta6.img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
# Boot the Raspberry Pi. The default username and password is 'pi' and 'raspberry'.
# Use 'raspi-config' to expand the file system.
# (Optional) While you are at it, You might want to configure timezone change keyboard layout as well.
$ sudo raspi-config
# Configure Wifi using command-line or visual tools http://raspberrypihq.com/how-to-add-wifi-to-the-raspberry-pi/
# If you don't get any sound over HDMI: Try adding the following line to /boot/config.txt
$ sudo nano /boot/config.txt
hdmi_drive=2
#Download some game ROMs and upload them to Raspberry Pi.
More instructions about the setup are on my HackADay.io Gaming Console with Raspberry Pi PiPlay page.
Game on, Fight!
To bring electronic circuits to life by drawing them is an amazing experience. You can use the good old pencil on paper. Bare Conductive developed a non-toxic paint to draw electronic circuits on any surface. You can pick up a tube of Bare conductive paint at your local RadioShack.
Andy tweeted this Circuit Scribe Kickstarter project that lets you create circuits with a conductive ink pen. Things just got interesting. :)
Walking through the Taipei National Museum, I noticed this interesting rig with six GoPro cameras mounted on a monopole. Asked the owner about the project, he mimed 'I am taking 360° videos of the palace grounds'.
Back at the hotel I searched for more information about this DIY project. Perhaps it is similar DIY-Streetview.com camera system.
Please do leave a comment if you have any information about this project. :)
My Toshiba NB200 netbook freezes on BIOS splash screen. Looks like the netbook was shipped with a faulty motherboard. Unfortunately I can't do BIOS update as suggest in this post. Removing the Hard drive, RAM has no effect.
Am not ready to throw away the laptop. Wonder if anyone has a better solution.
Didn't expect it would be so hard to buy Arudino open source prototyping platform hardware in Hong Kong. On a brief stopover in Hong Kong to attend Gnome Asia 2012. It would take a lot of time to hunt for Arduino boards in Hong Kong's famed electronics markets. It would be wise to do some homework before hitting the markets.
Got a lucky break while digging through the Dimsum Labs facebook page. Found the Candy Chan's shop address in Sham Shui Po in Kawloon. The shop's website lists all the Arduino boards, shields and various electronic components. Navigating the maze of shops in Sham Shui Po is not for faint hearted. You won't have any problems finding these shops with the direction given below.
Take the MTR to the Sham Shui Po station, exit through Gate D2 on to Fuk Wa street. You will find yourself facing the Golden Computer Center, the Wonder building is on your right. You will find the shop on the ground floor of this building.
Stumbled upon Man Wai-Yun's shop that offered a large collection of sensors, kits from DFRobot.com. You need to wait few days for the components to be shipped in from Taiwan.
The shop in the basement level of the Golden Computer Center. The best way to find the shop would be to ask the guard at security desk to guide you to the shop No. 60.
It is easy to find open hardware online but finding a shop that stocks them would be really hard. Next time I'll buy the open hardware online at DealExtreme.com .
Download the firmware for RT28XX/RT30XX USB series (RT2870/RT2770/RT3572/RT3070) zip file and extract the rt2870.bin file to /lib/firmware.
Next use the BootManager configure bootup program to blacklist rt2800usb kernel module and enable rt2800sta module instead. These steps should enable Ralink usb wireless card support in puppylinux.
Few hours before flying out of Nepal the Acer Aspire One netbook died. The BIOS got screwed, netbook won't even complete Power On Self Test(POST). Competent computer hardware technicians I hear are as rare as the famed Himalayan Yeti. Wiping my tears and picking up the thousand pieces of shared ego from the floor, I set about reflashing the BIOS. Thankfully, the relief was quick.
Please be careful, you might end up bricking your netbook. :)
If you believe amnesia is a malady that effects humans, think again. Recently a Acer Aspire One netbook landed on my table with a similar problem. It refused to charge the battery, perhaps it always thinks the its battery already full. The only way you can use this machine was by connecting it the power outlet.
A quick search on the Internet will turn up a lot of Acer Aspire One (AOA) owners reporting similar problems. Quite often people update the Bios to fix this problem. However there is similar solution.
The Amber (Orange) battery light blinks constantly and netbook works only on AC power.
Follow the steps given below. (Please be careful when handling computer electrical components like batteries and AC Adapters)
After a few tries the computer should start charging normally. The amber battery stops blinking and turn green when fully charged.
The newly ordered batch of Dell Vostro 1014 Laptops have a ALSA sound problem. When you plugin the headphone, sound plays both on headphone and internal speakers as well.
Name: Enable Headphones
Command: amixer sset Master frontleft mute
Name: Disable Headphones
Command: amixer sset Master frontleft unmute
Having a lazy Saturday morning. Flipping through this mornings newspaper I stopped in my tracks when I saw this clipping about LG Solar-powered phone. Living in one of the sunniest places on this side of planet I would love to have one of those cellphones that charge under the sun. And to top it all the phone is built with eco friendly materials.
Designed to symbolize a flat and well rounded shiny pebble, Blue Earth is the first solar powered full-touch screen phone. By charging with the solar panel located on the back of the phone, users can generate enough electronic power to call anytime anywhere.
Blue Earth is made from recycled plastic called PCM, which is extracted from water bottles, helping to reduce fuel consumption and carbon emissions in the manufacturing process. The device, including charger, is free from harmful substances such as Brominated Flame Retardants, Beryllium and Phthalate.
read me
There aren't many accessible portable media players for blind. In a group discussion on this topic at IISE, Robbie mentioned about Rockbox project. Rockbox provides firmware for some audio player from Apple, Archos, Cowon, Iriver, Olympus, SanDisk, and Toshiba. This project features voiced menu's. I have yet to get hold of a compatible player and try this out.
Meanwhile fourth generation (4G) iPods introduced voice menu too. I don't think its targeted for blind per se (correct me) but aims for different non-visual functionality as explained in this technology Review article published few years ago.
This one is strictly for electrical engineers . The 40 odd Dell Vostro A840 laptop we have on campus sometimes stop booting with this warning screen. If you figure this out, do drop me a line.
The AC power adapter wattage and type cannot be determined.
The battery may not charge.
The system will adjust the performance to match the power available.
Please connect a Dell 65W AC adapter or greater for best system performance.
To resolve this issue, try to reseat the power adapter.
Here is an update on the strange error on dell vostro 220s desktop problem reported on this blog sometime back. It was very puzzling but my hunch turned out to be right after all. I tested the latest alpha release of Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) on this machine. The LiveCD booted but half way through the installation it died with a [Errno 5] Input/output error.
Ever heard of Splashtop, I guess not. Ever wished had a computer that just booted in a jiffy, you bet. I found about this interesting company after reading the Linux Journal story titled Linux Gets Faster this morning.
Some time ago I wrote about the tireless Grazinano Sorbaioli and his campaign to convince DELL to start selling a free software computer . I received an email from him this afternoon asking everyone to "vote to convince Dell to preinstall gNewSense on their computers."
Please read more about it here on this Ideastorm page.
The idea is to offer a line of laptops and desktop PCs whose hardware perfectly fits what this GNU/Linux distribution supports (and it doesn't support only a few hardware devices, notably some wifi chips and some Nvidia and ATI cards). It should be quite possible to build a system that doesn't contain any such unsupported parts.
The benefits of doing this is offering a choice for those who wish to have a completely legally free operating system working out of the box on Dell computers. There is a great number of people within the Free Software community who would appreciate having such a choice and would buy it for themselves and recommend it to their relatives and friends.
It would also certainly attract attention of the Free Software Foundation which would publicly commend Dell for offering this choice, which is very good for bettering Dell's reputation within the whole of Free Software and Open Source movements.
If Dell decides to do this, they should brand these boxes by the correct terminology, calling the operating system they are offering as "GNU/Linux" because the GNU Project, sponsored by the Free Software Foundation, started what we today know as GNU/Linux, a popular free operating system that rivals Microsoft Windows. Many of the core and essential components of the OS come from the GNU project.
