Risto H. Kurppa » Open source

GPSTrack GPS logger on Linux

Risto H. Kurppa — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 20:58:05 +0000

Last weekend I inherited a GPS tracker from my aunt who got it as subscription gift from a magazine. It says ‘Geotech’ in the back, it has a small 1 inch LCD screen, a on/off button and a four-way button (M, UP, DOWN, ENTER).

GPS tracker

Five memory slots to save positions
Compass chip to show north even inside. Not THAT reliable but gives some kind of hint
Shows distance to any of the five stored positions
It doesn’t show coordinates on screen, only time and date
Walk/Bike/Car modes (5, 15 and 80 km/h I think the manual said)
2x AAA batteries
Is told to work as a GPS antenna (connected over USB to computer to navigate/draw track, exports in EMEA format)
Sirf IV chip, they say but not sure if I believe it
miniUSB slot, cable & software (Track by Starview Software)
backlight
battery and GPS signal strength meter

[ 4883.010028] usb 7-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 2
[ 4883.408261] USB Serial support registered for pl2303
[ 4883.408396] pl2303 7-1:1.0: pl2303 converter detected
[ 4883.420176] usb 7-1: pl2303 converter now attached to ttyUSB1
[ 4883.420198] usbcore: registered new interface driver pl2303
[ 4883.420201] pl2303: Prolific PL2303 USB to serial adaptor driver

Bus 007 Device 002: ID 067b:2303 Prolific Technology, Inc. PL2303 Serial Port

As you see, connecting it to Linux over USB shows it as Prolific PL2303 Serial Port USB adapter and it appeared as /dev/ttyUSB1

To make Wine see the USB serial port, run ln -s /dev/ttyUSB1 ~/.wine/dosdevices/com1

I was able to install the program smoothly. It runs but the built-in Google Maps view doesn’t work. However I’m able to download the track from the device and save it in .track format. Now when I open this .track format with the app, it gives me the option to store KML and GPX.

However saving in GPX (and KML?) fails and the result is a broken GPX as the program, for some reason, writes coordinates in

instead of

so search and replace all commas (,) to periods (.) and the tracks start to behave.

A nice device with a decent battery duration, about 10 hours or so on two AAA’s it needs. GPS track isn’t that great: most of the time it’s missing the elevation information and then every now and then it takes me to over 20 kilometers. However it gives easily a nice overview of the route.

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24hour timelapse with webcam

Risto H. Kurppa — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 15:56:07 +0000

I have a Logitech HD Webcam C270 at work. It has 1280×720 resolution, works out-of-the box in *buntu Linux. Nice. As I’ve recently found timelapse shooting, I wanted to try how it works with webcam where the battery power will not be the issue. I decided to run about 24 hour timelapse session that became 26 hours.

Shooting

gphoto2 I’ve been using to control external cameras over USB doesn’t work with webcam so I had to find something else and found streamer (that’s the name of the command and the name of the package in Ubuntu repositories)

streamer -o 0000.jpeg -s 1280x720 -j 100 -t 20:00:00 -r 0.1

takes 1280×720 resolution images with jpeg quality 100, interval 0.1 images/second (right, this sucks, I’d like having the option to use fps instead of fsp) until 20:00, and names the images as xxxx.jpg where xxxx is the running number of the image.

streamer -o 0000.jpeg -s 1280x720 -j 100 -t 2900 -r 0.05

Does the same except doesn’t care about the clock but takes 2900 shots.

Cleaning

I shot around 2300 images with about 33s interval. From these I removed about 1000 images of boring nothing-but-black night shots – just to make it more interesting to watch.

Parsing

mencoder -nosound mf://*.jpeg -mf w=1280:h=720:type=jpeg:fps=40 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=2160000:v4mv -o movie.avi && vlc movie.avi

1230 images with 40fps results a 45s movie.

Pros / Cons

Webcam’s great as you don’t run into problems with power. But that’s about all.
The image quality isn’t very great compared to 3000×2000 px SLR. The automatic color/exposure/contrast/… adjustment is bad and doesn’t allow one to see properly the change of lightning conditions. On the other hand if you want to be sure to see all details what happens somewhere this will do it but so will a ‘proper camera’ in automatic mode.

So, if you want..
Long shooting duration: Webcam or normal camera with AC power
Good quality shots or manual settings: normal camera (with AC power)

Result

Not really that interesting, just another demo of what can be done easily with Linux + webcam.

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Meego and Qt after Microsoft & Nokia: a summary of “facts”

Risto H. Kurppa — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 23:27:59 +0000

Updated 2011-02-17: added FLOSS@WP7

You know the story, Nokia announced their co-operation with Microsoft. Here’s a summary of what’s been said by people who know about these things.

MEEGO@NOKIA: Under the new strategy, MeeGo becomes an open-source, mobile operating system project. MeeGo will place increased emphasis on longer-term market exploration of next-generation devices, platforms and user experiences. Nokia still plans to ship a MeeGo-related product later this year.
Nokia Press Release
MEEGO@ELOP: First, we cannot blame Elop for this. He did not kill MeeGo in February 2011. He was one of the finalists for CEO, who had to propose a plan to solve Nokia’s severe crisis. That involved painful cuts no matter how you looked at it. The Board approved a plan in September, where one part meant MeeGo was dead. Elop didn’t kill MeeGo now. It died last September and the Board approved that plan where MeeGo would go.
Communities Dominate Brands – the best analysis so far (based on public information so not 100% accurate..)
MEEGO@INTEL: “Intel is disappointed at Nokia but life goes on. Our decision and resolve on MeeGo is only stronger.”
Intel’s response
MEEGO@NOKIA: #info Elop: Nokia would continue to develop the MeeGo operating system in collaboration with Intel
So, definetly this work will continue.
#meego-meeting irc-logs from 2011-02-15. I’ve heard the same from other people inside Nokia that the work on Meego still continues. Some teams have been told to stop their work but definitely not all of them.
MEEGO@N900: #meego – No way in hell that we’re giving up! #wearemeego and we’re ready for battle and very much alive.
Carsten Munk, MeeGo Nokia N900 hardware adaptation maintainer
QT@KDE: What we in KDE need are calm, stable heads to plot the lay of the land first and then examine how our strategy should be adapted and extended. Change often produces opportunity, but first one has to understand the change to recognize the opportunities. Right now it’s infeasible to speak to what the real opportunities and challenges are without first doing our homework.
Aaron Seigo, KDE developer
QT@NOKIA: Unequivocally, Qt is not dead. This morning we heard top Nokia executives like CTO Rich Green talk about Qt and the future. Qt will continue to live on through Symbian, MeeGo and the non-mobile Qt industries and platforms.
Head of Web and Community & Communications Manager at Nokia
SYMBIAN&QT@NOKIA: Qt will continue to be the development framework for Symbian and Nokia will use Symbian for further devices; continuing to develop strategic applications in Qt for Symbian platform and encouraging application developers to do the same. With 200 million users worldwide and Nokia planning to sell around 150 million more Symbian devices, Symbian still offers unparalleled geographical scale for developers.
Nokia’s letter for developers
QT@WINDOWS PHONE7: Qt will not be ported to Windows Phone 7. One of the key benefits of joining an established ecosystem is that there is an established toolchain that everyone uses. All Windows Phone apps will run on all WP7 devices. Adding Qt to the mix would only cause fragmentation.
Head of Web and Community & Communications Manager at Nokia
FLOSS@WP7: But one thing is extremely obvious. Microsoft wants to keep its platform clear of Free Software. Period. Jan Wildeboer
SHAREHOLDERS: We are a group of nine young Nokia shareholders. All of us have worked with Nokia in different capacities in the past. We plan to challenge the company’s strategy and partnership with Microsoft in the next Annual General Meeting scheduled for May 3, 2011.
nokiaplanb.com This was a hoax after all. Forget it.
Backup plans for Nokia, nokiaplans.com.

So Meego will live on, both inside and outside Nokia. Qt will live on, both inside and outside Nokia. Symbian will die. Qt will not be ported to QP7. KDE will survive.

The bad news is that no FLOSS on WP7 (Market?) – and many (up to 5000?) Meego, Qt and Symbian devels in Finland will loose their jobs. Feeling sorry for you guys. Maybe now it’s time to start a new Nokia?

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First prints with Reprap, the Open Source 3D printer

Risto H. Kurppa — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 22:38:19 +0000

Take an open source idea, three guys, metal workshop, some knowledge on the required software and hardware. Four moths later you have a 3D printer.

I heard about it some years ago. RepRap – the printer that could print 3D objects – even print parts for another RepRap.

End of August I started to talk about it to someone in our Lab. He got excited – and we decided: Let’s do it. First we’d start with the extruder (the part that feeds the ABS plastic through a heated nozzle. The ‘print head’) which is the most critical part.

Software

Also Anders joined the team. He’s been building his own CNC mill for a while and he is familiar with EMC2 software and all the other bits of software, file formats and everything you need to convert 3D designs into 3D objects. He said it shouldn’t be a problem to make a translation stage to move as we wanted. Sound’s good!

Parts

So I ordered the thermal barrier & nozzle, 2x thermistor, 5xbearing and NiChrome wire (30.45€ all together) from mendel-parts.com and 1lbs blue ABS from robomaa.com (23.90€). It took quite a long time for all the parts to arrive. All costs about 55€.

The stepper motor was taken from an old 5 1/4 -inch floppy disk drive..

Extruder

While we were waiting for the parts, we got some help from the guys at our mechanics workshop: they NC-milled us the Wade’s Geared Extruder as we didn’t have a RepRap to print us these parts. It was beautiful.

The parts arrived, we put the printing head together. Then there was a break of many weeks when nothing happened in the project. One day we again got interested, taped (Kapton) the NiChrome wire on the nozzle, added the termistor and tried it rotating the gears manually. We were able to get some blue ABS come through the nozzle. WIN!

Then Anders and Antti started working harder. They built electronics to control the stepper, heater and thermistor.

Translation stage

One day we went and got an old, huge, heavy translation stage from the storage. Then made the first EMC2 tests with the extruder. WIN again! So now we only needed to mount the extruder on the translation stage, build the cables to connect the computer, translation stage and the extruder and put it all together. The guys at the workshop helped with the mounting (Great work again!! Beautiful!) and improved the grip in the filament feed rod.

Today we put it all together. Here’s the result.

Then I had to leave but Anders and Antti kept on going and succeeded great!

We still have to work a bit on the software: need to convert .STL files (for example from thingiverse) to G-code understood by the EMC2. The extruder is the A-Axis in absolute mode. At the moment our best guess is RepSnapper. Maybe also work on the temperature control and ABS feed rage.

Looking good!

Here are some comments from #reprap irc channel people wrote when I linked Anders’ blog post.

22:55 < c> good evening 22:55 < t> yes it is :) 22:57 < rhkfin> it's great! 22:59 < c> I would not agree as much on that as you :) 23:02 < rhkfin> c: http://www.anderswallin.net/2010/12/3d-printer-first-test/ <- that's the reason of being happy :) 23:02 congrats rhkfin, now the fun starts. 23:02 < c> rhkfin, that is great news :) 23:02 < c> sexy gears 23:02 < rhkfin> indeed :) 23:02 < c> that brightened my evening some :) 23:03 < rhkfin> c: thanks :) We have a metal workshop that wanted to help :) 23:03 < s> looks very good! 23:03 hmm using emc2? 23:03 < rhkfin> b: yes ... 23:03 < r> omg im in love with those gears 23:03 that extruder is made of sexy. ... 23:05 < c> congrats to the print! :) ... 23:10 rhkfin, 0.5mm layers are pretty damn thick, I'm suprised it worked at all. 23:10 < rhkfin> b: so you think it should be thinner with slower feed? 23:10 < d> b: it is pretty usable btw 23:11 if it works use it. I was never able to get above 0.4mm layers. 23:11 < rhkfin> ok 23:11 your prints will be fast! 23:11 < rhkfin> :)

Now go and check Anders’ blog post for more.

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Tags: hardware, planet-fnoss, planet-reprap, planet-vapaasuomi, reprap

Meego 1.1.80.10.20101214.1 on N900

Risto H. Kurppa — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 23:16:53 +0000

Another quick Meego@N900 test. Earlier tests here and here.

UPDATE: Someone correctly reminded me that it isn’t very fair to review latest unstable images that go through major changes all the time. So when reading this post, remember that ‘there’s more than this’ and nobody is telling this is the image to use! And I’m using a slow, class4 uSD card so don’t take me seriously when I talk about speed!

Starting Meego on N900 with Ubuntu

wget http://repo.meego.com/MeeGo/builds/1.1.80/1.1.80.10.20101214.1/handset/images/meego-handset-armv7l-n900/meego-handset-armv7l-n900-1.1.80.10.20101214.1-mmcblk0p.raw.bz2 wget http://repo.meego.com/MeeGo/builds/1.1.80/1.1.80.10.20101214.1/handset/images/meego-handset-armv7l-n900/meego-handset-armv7l-n900-1.1.80.10.20101214.1-vmlinuz-2.6.35.3-13.8-n900

Make sure you have bzcat pv and flasher-3.5 installed
Insert mmc in card reader of your desktop computer, check with dmesg where it is (/dev/sde here). Then run:
bzcat meego-handset-armv7l-n900-1.1.80.10.20101214.1-mmcblk0p.raw.bz2 | pv | sudo dd bs=4096 of=/dev/sde

Remove MMC from card reader, install it in N900, shut it down (yes!). Then run
sudo flasher-3.5 -l -k meego-handset-armv7l-n900-1.1.80.10.20101214.1-vmlinuz-2.6.35.3-13.8-n900 -band connect the USB cable of N900.

Quick test results

Menu is quite slow
Settings menu now has more items but most of them have no content.
At least Language & Keyboard and Applications have content but most others don’t.
Connecting to open Wifi was no through settings -> applications -> wifi
After this I tried to connect to my Twitter account but with no success.
Tried to connect to Google Talk but could’nt add . with the hardware keyboard
On-the-screen keyboard is a mess, it needs to be taught to write what I want, not remove characters when I try to add new and so on.. (I think I actually have seen the same bug on Openmoko Freerunner on one of it’s browsers. Can’t remember which one, though, but it was in SHR.
All strings (including menus, buttons etc) have !! in front of them. Doesn’t really improve usability, maybe they are there to remind that the strings are not final.
The top bar shows a small aeroplane icon. Am I not registered to the GSM network? Tried to call N900 and nothing happened.
However I was able to place a call using Meego so after all it’s registered.
The test call automatically used the phone speaker again
Top bar also shows that I’m soon running out of battery (surprise, it’s N900 :), bluetooth icon, WLAN icon and time. Also some simple unidentified green icon.
The screen sometimes goes black, then maybe flickers, shows the image unsharp and then later again settles back to normal.
Meego now recognizes the orientation of the phone and rotates the screen accordingly. Quite smooth. I can even turn it upside down!
On Fennec, the web browser, the on-screen keyboard works OK
I was able to get to yle.fi website. Very slow but eventually it was there!
I would like to know how to take screenshots. Maybe for the next review. Or how do I start terminal?

Not so encouraging this time. In it’s current state I can’t recommend Meego for anyone with N900, unless you’re a real haxxor interested in improving Meego. In that case, please do try it! Waiting for Meego 1.2 to come out.

UPDATE: Someone correctly reminded me that it isn’t very fair to review latest unstable images that go through major changes all the time. So when reading this post, remember that ‘there’s more than this’ and nobody is telling this is the image to use! And I’m using a slow, class4 uSD card so don’t take me seriously when I talk about speed!

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Arduino: automatic compile time stamp

Risto H. Kurppa — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 08:18:25 +0000

I wanted to see the revision or in this case date and time of compiling every time I start my Arduino program. This is the solution I figured out with the help of #arduino (@IRCnet) IRC channel.

void setup() { // initialize the serial communication: Serial.begin(9600);


//Precompiler fills in __DATE__ and  __TIME__

char compiledate[] = __DATE__;

char compiletime[] = __TIME__;
//Time for you to start your serial monitor

delay(3000);
//Printing date one char at the time

for(int i=0;i
Serial.print(compiledate[i]);

}
Serial.print("  ");
//Printing time one char at the time

for(int i=0;i
Serial.print(compiletime[i]);

}
}
void loop() {
/* your main program */

}

Works great!

Also check RTC

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Meego 1.1.80.7.20101119.1 on N900

Risto H. Kurppa — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 22:01:28 +0000

As I earlier wrote, I had hard time figuring out how to try Meego on N900. Now I know how it works and decided to try the latest build, 1.1.80.7.20101119.1

Here’s a quick list of things that have changed and other:

Overall look is a bit more finished than it was in 1.1
Wifi still works :)
Couldn’t any more see any icons in the top part of the screen indicating the status of GSM network or anything else
Starting web browser (Fennec) is quite slow (but hey, optimization comes later, I’ve been told..)
period (.) key still failed in the browser, it moved the cursor to left :/
UI buttons have a touch of Maemo: Close on top right and ‘Exposé’ or similar in top left
Couldn’t really use the zoom function of the browser but zooming with HW buttons works nicely.
Closing the HW keyboard of N900 shows the on-screen keyboard. Nice! (I guess this is only when I had a text field activated)
Sliding finger to left/right on Fennec shows tabs or settings/navi bar
Coulnd’t find Xterm in the menu any more to try command line interface. In 1.1 it was still there.
While making a test call I did hear the ‘connecting’ tone this time – but still from the speakers, not from the ear piece.
I couldn’t call TO the Meego@N900 for some reason, Meego gave me no indication of incoming call.

Now I’d need a way to SSH in to Meego@N900 over WLAN and figure out a way to take screenshots for you :)

KDE elements or mostly Plasma on Meego looks promising, check this:

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First experiences with Meego

Risto H. Kurppa — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 19:47:34 +0000

I finally got so interested in Meego that I had to do something about it.

First I installed the Meego Software Developer Kit. It was easy, copying commands and things worked fine. Got QTcreator up and running, I was even able to create my first Meego RPM package. QEMU-meego also started fine and I was able to SSH in there.

Then I got interested in Meego itself.. and decided to install it on 8GB MMC. Pretty straight forward again – awesome instructions. I used the images meego-handset-armv7l-n900-1.1.80.7.20101119.1.

Flasher uploads the kernel, I see some text on the screen but with no backlight so the text is not readable. Yellow led is on. Last line says “stdoops: ready 5, 6, (no erase)”.

Now I wonder if this normal, do I need to wait longer or did something fail?

Retrial

Tried on two-three images – when I finally figured out (someone pointed out that to me) that you need to dd it to the card, not partition! So here are the commands to use:
bzcat meego-handset-armv7l-n900-1.1-mmcblk0p.raw.bz2 | pv | sudo dd bs=4096 of=/dev/sde

then install the MMC on N900, close cover and run
sudo flasher-3.5 -l -k meego-handset-armv7l-n900-1.1-vmlinuz-2.6.35.3-10.3-n900 -b

and connect the USB cable. And it boots!

Meego

These tests have been made with meego-handset-armv71-n900-1.1.

You’ve all seen the screenshots – and I have no idea how to take one. But colorful background, menu at the bottom.
Photo viewer works fine.
Overall speed decent.
Phone software – horizontal only.
Making a call – actually was quite successful: didn’t hear the dialing voice at all. Audio came out from phone speaker, not from where it’s supposed to come out, the ear piece.
I was able to connect to our open WLAN and even open Firefox.
Navigating and using it is hard as period (.) and arrow keys don’t work. However I was able to google for google and the page opened.
I also tried to SSH in with no success so far.
Animations are smooth. The demo video ‘Big Buck Bunny‘ plays also smoothly (240p). Playing with videos made Meego stop working, nothing happened except from power button that restarted (to Maemo5).

Summary

1.1 not recommended for you unless you’re a developer and want to have hardware to test your software on. However don’t forget that Meego 1.2 should already be much more usable:

MeeGo development continues forward on a six-month cadence. MeeGo 1.2 is scheduled for April of 2011 and it will include a Handset UX release with a complete set of applications, and support for other device usage models.

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Diaspora experiences, part III

Risto H. Kurppa — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 21:15:07 +0000

Things move on with Diaspora, the open-source-future-replacement-of-facebook.

Diaspora is now the most ‘trending repository’ in GitHub
Cross-seed friending starts to work here and there, someone figured out that the primary port to connect is 443 and 80 is used as fallback.. Or something.
I started a wiki page to list seeds you can try. Openlinkup.com seems to be a nice working seed, you can find me there with nick rhk.

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Diaspora experiences, part II

Risto H. Kurppa — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 22:02:13 +0000

After playing around with Diaspora for a day or two, some new quick thoughts.

The Start

In April/May, four students announced that they will build an open-source social network. People were able to donate money for that. Very quickly they got loads of money – they collected around $200 000 which is about 2000% of what they wanted!

They take the money and start working. We had no idea who they are and what they know. And now, around 5 months later we get the developer version. I’m sure they made the best, but it means that the fundamental design plans are made with their best knowledge. Are they good enough in the long run or how long it takes before something fundamental needs to be rewritten?

Diaspora got the attention a project like this needs. Have you heard about Appleseed? Open source, fully distributed and decentralized social networking software. Neither have I. This is what’s good with Diaspora – people know about it!

Now

I now have tried four instances. They failed in talking to each other, can’t add friends from another seed. Someone at #diaspora IRC channel (Freenode network) reported now that they’ve been successful in sending requests from a seed to another. Also adding photos seems to work, the instance I first tried had its problems. You can try some of the public, official seeds listed at FAQ or join the IRC channel or mailing list and ask if someone has a public instance to offer. All important links are listed at the bottom of the announcement blog post.
A nice Diaspora review by Computerworld is available here.

Future

Anyway, Diaspora took well off, it’s clear that people were willing to have an option for Facebook. Now we wait to hear how the open sourced version works and to see what’ll be the pace of the development with the community – and also, what’s important, how will they communicate with the community.
Also check the Roadmap, looks very promising!

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Tags: diaspora, planet-fnoss, planet-vapaasuomi, review, software, some