Brief History of Nearly Nothing! » MyLab

Hacking the Weather II

rizal — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 04:34:45 +0000

I was in “hacking mood” yesterday so I pulled off some old hardware from my messy rack and follow the instructions here to produce the following graphs of my room temperature.

For those who don’t understand the picture above — it is actually the graph of temperature against time (in Celcius) of my study room at home in Riyadh.
Outside temperature is 40++ Celcius during the day (yes it is summer in Riyadh) but getting cooler as Ramadhan is approaching .Do you know that the temperature would reach below 10 Celcius during the winter here?

So to recall — the idea of starting this project goes back ages ago but was delayed due to many undisclosed reasons — you know it’s not easy being a father of 4, living in Riyadh bla bla bla .
How it works? You can build your own 1-wire temperature sensor (search for DS1820 with google and you’ll find many related projects) or you can buy a ready made kit or the one that I am using here is TAI8520 if you are too lazy to like me.

Build/assemble your own

Or just follow this easy step-by-step instruction by Instructables .

The USB interface that I am using is DS9490R and connected to my EEEPC which is running Ubuntu with Digitemp and rrdtool applications. The graph was later ftp’ed to my blog every 5 minutes via crontab. Insyaallah I will try to install another sensor outside my house so that we can see the temperature difference in and out of the house!

The blue USB on the right is the DS9490R .

My Digital Jukebox

rizal — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 01:34:44 +0000

During my trip back home to Nusa Subang from KLIA airport recently, my brother showed me this portable hard disk player he bought to be coupled with his TFT screen mounted on the middle of the car’s roof. He proudly said that it was a Korean technology (Sarotech) “a bit high end” and much better compared to one of those China made player they sold in Lelong. A portable player -(depends on your how much you’re willing to spent on the storage!) hmm…that could be handy if to be use during traveling — immediately I know I am desperately need one of those!!
So having a month worth of vacation ( also while waiting for Nokia to bank in my next salary ) I started my search for a portable multimedia player. After looking around at lelong and ebay, this TVIX M-4000PA really caught my eye — love at first sight!

Check the specifications :-

UNIVERSAL DIGITAL JUKEBOX
# Ultimate Digital Jukebox for Movie / Music / Image / DVD Backup files.
# Decoding and viewing almost all formats of MPEG1/ MPEG2/ MPEG4/ XVID files.
# Decoding and viewing of recorded high definition transport stream files.
# Support high-definition AVI files up to 1920X1080
# Playback the DVD backup files in HDD just like DVD (DVD Jukebox functionality)
# Decoding and playback the MP3, WMA, OGG, WAV, FLAC music files
# Playback the JPG/ JPEG image files
# USB host port to connect digital camera/ flash drive/ external HDD
# Ethernet port to connect PC via NetShare, FTP and Samba
# Optional Wireless LAN extension thru USB port
# Support NTFS, FAT32, FAT file system

Cool? At first I was considering to build my own DIY multimedia box with my mini-itx
but later decided to use the mini-itx for other purpose (1-wire weather
, my cisco lab etc etc) and this TViX stuff just need to be next to my
TV permanently !
How much does it cost ? I bought it at RM850 and the 500GB cost me another RM480 ( I have a huge collection of DVDs!!)

In Malaysia you can find the list of reseller here elsewhere check here

Some photos of the T ViX.

Having this setup, the next task is to fill the HDD with multimedia
files. You can just transfer all your photos, mp3s, DViX movies (and
other supported formats) via USB and if you find difficulties
converting some DVDs into ISO you might consider using DVD Encrypter .
I have not fully use the “network” and the PVR features of the TViX , still waiting for the right time when I move to a new “wired” house coming October

Should I start doing programming?

rizal — Sat, 19 May 2007 15:31:33 +0000

One of the things I always wanted to do (other than learning to swim haha!) is to challenge myself to write program. I already bought few books ever since, one of them is this other than some Delphi books that I bought ~ 10 years ago. (We learnt Turbo Pascal at UMIST and a friend of mine said I should try Delphi!)

But, today I found about this Realbasic software from a list of cool GPL+free+demo Windows list that I have been browsing for so many days now (its a huge list and I can’t afford to download them all!). Realbasic sounds cool – it was said to be very easy to learn for a programmer wannabe like me+ it also works with Windows, Linux and Mac too!

Nothing much to be said , the downloading is still on progress at 40% now…

Hacking the Weather I

rizal — Sun, 26 Mar 2006 18:44:23 +0000

Received these 2 items on my mailbox last week.

It consists of these 2 items in 1 box.

and

The interest to build a weather station at home, went back to year 1998 when I first read the following article in Linux Journal ( I still have the copy of the magazine) . It was delayed without any progress, even though I visited (many times!) the website (attempted to buy but always click at the CANCEL button of the checkout page!) and also subscribed to the weather mailing-list .
My initial plan was to start small with a basic temperature sensor like DT1A so at 2002, I wrote to Brian Lane the author of the digitemp software asking whether he ship to Malaysia- (yes he did) but back then PayPal was not available to Malaysian so he asked me to pay in US cheque instead somehow I didn’t proceed with it.

Last year, I bought some DS18S20 from RS , hobbyboards temp kit
also this DT1A but the project stuck halfway mainly due to time factor—the tight 3G project schedule + a new baby was on the way (we were raising 3 kids without maid!)—yeahh right.. Rizal with his reasons again

How was the progress ?
Nothing much! I managed to revive the dead Linux PC (recent lightning casualty) and installed Fedora Core 3 on it. Thats it!
I felt a bit guilty spending too much time (hacking) on the project while the kids were awake. Uje will countlessly asking me about a lot of things.. “Abah what is this?” , “Abah, why did you do this” and Sabrina will be busy poking the screwdriver on the PC casing—she already broke my Icute front door casing.
So just wait!

Computer Notes Nov/Dec 1975

rizal — Sun, 29 Jan 2006 18:46:16 +0000

I lost my bid at Ebay for the Popular Electronics so I got this instead!

Received it yesterday, via mail after so many days waiting . It is the original copy of Computer Notes tabloid of Nov/Dec 1975 issue which was published by MITS where Bill Gates was once an employee, he left to found Microsoft soon after that.

The following timeline might help you to get a picture of what is it all about .

January 1975 A mock-up of the Altair 8800 appears on the cover of Popular Electronics

February 1975 Paul Allen and Bill Gates demo and then license their BASIC implementation to MITS

March 1975 The MITS Altair newsletter, Computer Notes, declares, “Altair BASIC—Up and Running.”

October 1975 MITS introduces the Altair 680
BASIC 2.0 is released for the MITS Altair

November 1975 Altair 680 on cover of Popular Electronics
The name Micro-soft is used for the Gates/Allen software partnership

Source http://www.blinkenlights.com/altair.shtml

Or for more details you should read this
The Altair Story
From the last quarter of the article you will find this line..

“By June 1975, David Bunnell was editing a monthly tabloid called Computer Notes, a Publication of the Altair Users Group. In the November/December issue of Computer Notes, Bunnell announced in a banner headline ALTAIR CONVENTION.The meeting, which was Bunnell’s brainchild, was officially called the MITS 1st World Altair Computer Convention. It was scheduled for March 26-28, 1976 to coincide with the completion of the move to the new MITS headquarters in a brand new building adjacent to the Albuquerque Sunport.”

So this is the actual monthly tabloid -as mentioned in Ed Robert’s interview they never expect to attract people to convention but turned out to be a big hit among computer enthusiast.

Altair Convention!

Altair 8800 bid

rizal — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 18:15:25 +0000

OK, I lost my bid
Please look closely , its not any ordinary Popular Electronics magazines. It was the legendary one with Altair 8800 featured.
Remember Ed Roberts? , the first PC? The guy who found fame (a while) invent the first PC kit and later quit computing to become a medical doctor? Yup! The same PC most of us using now. The machine that later inspired Bill Gates to write ALTAIR BASIC later DOS, Windows bla bla and now became the richest man in the world?
Ring a bell?

I actually quit bidding at USD133 – shipping would cost me another USD28 to be delivered to Malaysia. I am not sure, I was supposed to be happy/sad/depress/joyful or not losing the bid (bonus is months away!) but I was glad that I made the attempt.