Using VLC; Hobbyist way!

All the blog data for some of the posts have been moved to my other site.  Will continue here after their backup 🙂

http://www.embedded4fun.com/using-vlc-hobbyist-way/

 

GIT on the surface : part-I Adding ssh keys

All the blog data for some of the posts have been moved to my other site.  Will continue here after their backup 🙂

http://www.embedded4fun.com/git-on-the-surface-part-i-adding-ssh-keys/

Automation!! My old persistant love! Part-I

Necessity is the mother of invention..Old saying – one more proof

So, winters are approaching and I was studying out one of the greatest creations of Walter Isaacson for Jobs.  Ahha, I have completed it more than half!! \m/

My room is situated at the upper corner of our house.  So, its pretty isolated and best suitable for any experimentations, work and Yes, watching movies and the blue stuff too.. 😉   I know that I am a big LAZY guy, I dont get up to switch on the fan if I feel like hot from my Magical Chair at PC or If I am on bed using my laptop then there is no chance for me to get up easily and I remember in every winters I spend whole days without moving from bed…

Similar is the situation when I was reading the book, and felt cold today  so thought of switching the fan off, but being lazy I didn’t.  Lights and fan were on and I was thinking the way out to switch them off!!! Obviously without moving an inch!!

I decided not to switch off them and sleep as it is.  But cold is something than can make you feel heavily uncomfortable and can turn your AALAS/lazyness disappear.    At about 4.am. I quit, and actually have to stood up but not for turning them on, rather for making a quick and rapid solution for this on/off condition..
All time I am using my Android Mobile fone or my PC and sometimes my Laptop too.  My pc has got only Fedora installed over 250gb space which is now almost full.  😦  And in my laptop, I am having original genuine windows! (woahhh! I still have to rely on windows (sometimes) for the official documents because of the misalignment and other problems associated with the people and officials via openoffice or libreoffice.

So, I decided to simply control these lights and fans using these *objects*

pinouts from intel motherboard docs

In my PC, my serial port is all time busy, with my Single board computers, or GPS or GSM modem etc.  So I cann’t use the serial port.  Rest things were USB and the parallel port.  But guess what, My motherboard Intel GV41 doesn’t got a parallel or serial port 😦 .  I use a PCI card for two serial ports.  But yes, one thing to mention, these boards like that of Intels’ have got no connector for serial and parallel but they have got an onboard pins for those.  So one just have to got the motherboard related documents from the official site.

Looking at the pinouts, one can easily deduce out the required data pins.  I simply wired the pins to a relay board (our own product)of ours at ATRIM,    and did a little tweaking in the electricity board of my room and yes, the hardware part was over!!

Programming AVR chips-“Open” way!

Phew!!!!! Because quite a few people asked me how to do programming in AVR microcontrollers.  There may be the case that they are starting up all this or they are switching from another microcontroller to AVR now [though it is old too 😦  or you may say obselete…]  So, here I am going to explain in short and working way to “make” the things up.

Obviously this tutorial is for linux users, OPEN SOURCE advocates, so we will be learning how to program AVR chips in linux environment open source way.  We will be using Open source tools/techniques and softwares.  The programmer AVRDUDE, the toolchain, VIM editor, usbasp programmer; All are Open Source.  One can use Windows being loyal to Microsoft, (Ughhhh,, I am not going to get a job there if I praise them or boast about them…ooopss…is  there is anything to boast upon for them… 😉 lolzzz..)  Really, In case of windows things works `I DONT KNOW HOW & WHY` and one actually needs to do nothing to make the program compile and burn and thus getting no knowledge about the things being done, what all is involved, who is doing what, etc. etc. etc. So, in case of linux systems, programming AVR is really easy NOW because of some lazy linux users.  People want that they can program in linux without getting much of the pain.  (Yeah, you are thinking right, I am saying for the scary compilation of the toolchains).

One has to make the binary utilities ready for cross compilation, gcc for AVR architecture, avrdude, avrlibc, simulAVR, gdb for avr before starting to think to program AVR in linux.  Frankly saying, I was screwed up when I compiled the  toolchain for the first time.  I referenced 4-5 tutorials for it even then it took a lot of time.  Thanks to Atmel AVR because they provide toolchain for AVR architecture both 8 bit and 32bit. http://www.atmel.com/tools/ATMELAVRTOOLCHAINFORLINUX.aspx

One can simply download the toolchain, and start working out.  For very obvious reasons, things are not as easy as they appear to be.  Toolchain contains essential binutils and avr-gcc, avr-objcopy etc. but the two most important things are still left.

• avrlibc
• avrdude

So, download avrlibc from here : http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/avr-libc/

Avrdude from here: http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/avrdude/

Go for our favorite method of building program from source code, (obviously iff you like it, you may opt for direct use of it, but I just like to make things work from as low level as I can do).Download the avr-libc from the link provided, and just unzip it, then go for compiling 1.AVRLIBC:

• $ cd avr-libc-<version>
• $ ./configure –build=`./config.guess` –host=avr
• $ make
• $ sudo make install

now here, config.guess is intelligent script that checks for your systems and configures itself.  Rest is self-explanatory. Or download directly in case of package managers. Ubuntu/debian:

sudo apt-get install gcc-avr binutils-avr gdb-avr avr-libc avrdude

sleepy programming!!

Yes, it was about 5 a.m. and I had a torrent of MATLAB 2012a being downloaded.  I did hear about the competition from Mathworks Simulink and think of trying for that.  Matlab was approximately 5gb and it is too much for a download speed of 64kbps!!!  Though I started it as my PC is usually all time ON.. It can give challenge to servers man, lolzz . The maximum time it was on was 3 and a half days continuously downloading a game from torrent.

I was actually feeling sort of tension because I had to go to college too after a few hours, first lecture is of MaZumDaaar madam!!!!!  So I decided to sleep putting an alarm alongwith (yeah, yeah yeah,, every other lazy and careless guy like me keeps an alarm to wake up, though it doesn’t make any affect…lolz.  I looked around for the alarm watch and I was not able to find it because actually I dont have one!!! 🙂 

So, I picked my phone but guess what It had already 3 alarms set for daily basis at 6:00 am to 7:00 am.  So I thought of making a new alarm because this alarm never works! Looking at my PC and my SPEAKERS, I had an idea of making the alarm on my PC.  As we all know there is already a watch available on everyone’s PC, no matter which OS you use, we usually get the ALARM  facility like that of Kalarm and others with different distros.  I thot of making it by my own irrespective of the fact that I was too much sleepy(on eye was almost closed sitting down on the chair).

Serial Ports problem for Embedded guys in PC and laptops!!

So, its all about SERIAL PORT! and its problems for the Embedded guys.  All the stuff we come across usually have a serial port to interface or a USB port.  Older ones are usually having the Serial port to interact with as it is heavily cheap, a max232 and a few capacitors generally makes the work done under 20Rs. and voila! you are communicating serially!!!

Its really simple making the serial connections with any micro-controller 8051/AVR or PIC with such a cheap price.  Another thing “Arduino”, the open source hardware BOSS for 8 bit controllers has a USB support for it.

FTDI232 is the one which helps in interfacing the serial and USB in a real simple manner!!   Every other USB supported board uses it now, I guess.??

The modules in market like that of GSM/GPRS, RFID, GPS, Fingerprint scanner, Gyrosensor and a few other are easy to interface with serial connection as they send data over the serial line.  So, serial communication becomes quite important  to rely upon.

Most of the old motherboards gives the serial port as connector at the back(DB9).  The new ones don`t  provide the connector but a few do provide the connectors at the motherboard, You may click out some wires from the motherboard itself(another cheap way iff you got lucky to have the pin connectors ).

So, what to do if you got the new motherboard and FORTUNATELY  no serial port to work with.  (poor guy…)

You have got two options hereby,

• purchase a usb to serial converter.
• purchase a pci serial/parallel card.

Usb to serial Converter works easily i.e. OUT OF THE BOX; if you have got linux otherwise go and have fight with WINDOWS drivers :(…(lolz..) .  Do care while searching for the 64 bit drivers with Windows…(windows really SUCK..)

The second options is quite stable and reliable for PC case, and it gets into the CPU cabinet itself and you get a feel as if you have got a Serial/Parallel port.

Fun with RFID!

RFID stands for Radio-Frequency IDentification. It actually refers to small electronic devices that consist of a small strange chip and an antenna. The chip is capable of carrying 2,000 bytes of data or less(as what I have read from somewhere…lolzz).

The RFID device serves the same purpose as a bar code or a magnetic strip on the back of a credit card or ATM card; it provides a unique identifier for that object. And, just as a bar code or magnetic strip must be scanned to get the information, the RFID device must be scanned to retrieve the identifying information.

So, that was the introduction with the RFID.  My RFID device is from MAC-NET technologies and it works on 125KHz.

Actually whenever I am demotivated, I use to shout saying anything that makes me feel better, or play any Rock song!

Recently I developed a habit of shouting MANNN, YOU ARE JUST AWESOME, so everytime I do anything good or demotivated ; I scream it. It is actually a LOL sort of activity…:)

Yet another Hello World: This time for ARM

Holidays are getting more and more frustrating.  I am about to OR already LOST and confused a lot!!!
Mann, I need a break…

Though recently I had a one and a half week break, still!!! So What,  I need another one, Afterall I am a fun loving guy..

Ummmm…, This post is for those people who want to see the simplest of the application for the ARM architecture.  Basically it is incredibly simple!
For ex- when we compile a program, a normal C program or (my fav.) assembly program, what we do?

We basically do nothing(out of the total work to be done)! We write a simple C code, the simplest part!, and compile it for our PC architecture using any of the preferred compiler (most of the time its GCC, I guess)

A Few of the Coders and App. developers rarely bother about this stuff(I dare not to say for the whole community…lolz).. How actually a C language code results in giving out the output? The most interesting part and the most difficult too is usually left over.

Lets take a simple example of hello world :

Hpdv6 laptops with Linux : solution with Mageia

Finally, my laptop is USABLE and worth of it…
My HP dv6 laptop with specs as:

•  Intel® Core™ i7-3610QM  2.3 GHz

• 6gb RAM(4+2)

• 640 GB SATA (5400 rpm)

• NVIDIA GeForce GT 630M (2 GB DDR3 dedicated)

• 3 SuperSpeed USB 3.0

• 4 x Beats Audio™ Internal speakers; Beats Audio™ Audio playback; HP Triple Bass Reflex Subwoofer

Yeah, I said finally my laptop is usable because the day I went to purchase  my laptop, I went with an intention to purchase a dos based laptop.  But ALAS! there was no such dos based laptops with a satisfactory configuration so I HAVE TO accept and buy windows laptop.  It has windows 7 home Premium pre-installed..

->After Coming to Home, without wasting any time, I inserted the Fedora 16 dvd in order to install it.  But just after the initial startup it got hang!!!!
->I thought it as a problem with the Fedora DVD, so repeated the procedure several times but still the same problem!  Then I used my Fedora 15 DVD, again the same problem, Installer(Anaconda) got hang at some or other point, no movement via mouse, no effect of the NUM LOCK led.

Changing default menuentry in GRUB2

Initially i had to hit the arrow keys while GRUB menu comes, to choose windows or any other in list… had i been late by few seconds, and fedora, by default  starts booting by default, i have to press the CLTR+ALT+DEL for reboot…

GRUB menu

Finally i decided to change the default menuentry to windows or whatever  you want use frequently…

first let us know something about GRUB…