Fuzzy Logic

V-Moda Remix Remote Headphones and Droid X compatibility

Jason Young — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 22:52:07 +0000

http://www.v-moda.com/headphones/remix.aspx

Basically, just know that the V-Moda Remix Remote headphones do not work with the Droid X other than as headphones. The microphone does not work at all. So don’t buy them unless you’re using an iPhone.

VNC in Ubuntu 11.04 Fix

Jason Young — Tue, 31 May 2011 19:44:35 +0000

Vino, the VNC server that’s set up by default in Ubuntu 11.04, has a huge problem: it doesn’t refresh after the initial login. You can click and type and it’ll register, but it won’t actually redraw the screen. The following post has the solution:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=10775950&postcount=13

Lenovo Ideapad Z565 running Ubuntu 10.04

Jason Young — Wed, 25 May 2011 00:19:11 +0000

I’ll start out with this: Do not try to make this work unless you’re into pain.

So basically there are three problems with this

1) The touchpad doesn’t work. Evidently, this post seems to solve that problem (but I never got that far)

2) The wireless doesn’t work. It runs on a Broadcom BCM4313 (rev 01) chipset which isn’t built into 10.04 LTS. Another Ubuntu Forums post details a way to solve this, involving compiling some new kernel drivers, however….

3) The ethernet doesn’t work either. To get it working, all you have to do is compile another kernel driver.

So you would have to download all of the necessary packages and source, then go from there. Have fun.

Digimesh Connectport X2B in TCP/UDP server mode

Jason Young — Mon, 16 May 2011 12:44:48 +0000

So, my boss recently bought a Connectport X2B for me to develop with. I wanted to use the feature for forwarding via TCP, but saw absolutely nothing regarding that in the interface. So, after about a day of digging, I found the following link (and, more importantly, the implications of it): ConnectPort X2 – 802.15.4.

On that page are different firmwares. It turns out that my ConnectPort was loaded with 82002161_B2.bin firmware. This would be fine, except I wanted the ConnectPort to forward my packets for me. It turns out that, from there, I needed to actually use 82002162_B2.bin to give my ConnectPort the appropriate software. Okay, but no big deal. All would be fine after that! All I had to do would be throw it into TCP or UDP server mode and away I would go.

Incorrect. While setting up the TCP server options I came across this help page:

Help page for ConnectPort showing TCP Server

This would be extremely helpful, except for the tiny fact that the feature was removed from the web interface and never removed from the documentation. This seems to be the story of the Digi documentation. It is either incorrect or misleading, which can be incredibly frustrating. Not that I’m frustrated.

Anyhow, it turns out that, at this point, you have to revert to the terminal help documentation to get from there. Ignoring the fact that their terminal doesn’t support the traditional backspace (gotta ^H it) and is slower than anything I’ve used since the third grade, it actually provides a useful interface to the device. Looking at the commands set autoconnect for TCP server settings and set udpserial for UDP server settings makes it work.

Or, at least in the case of UDP, ‘kinda’ makes it work. I currently have a situation where it seems to be dropping two bytes every packet when it sends me the data over UDP, so I’ll be talking to Digi about it today….

Digimesh Realport for Windows 7 x64

Jason Young — Thu, 12 May 2011 12:04:17 +0000

For some reason, the version of Realport included on the CDs won’t work. Instead, you have to download it from their site:
http://ftp1.digi.com/support/driver/40002549_e.zip
Once you download that, run the Setup64.exe
Link obtained from
http://forums.digi.com/support/forum/viewthread_thread,7603

Digimesh API Packet Spec

Jason Young — Tue, 10 May 2011 14:40:01 +0000

Took me too damned long to find this…
http://www.sparkfun.com/datasheets/Wireless/Zigbee/XBee-2.5-Manual.pdf
Pages 55-70

EDIT: That is outdated, the newest version is here: http://ftp1.digi.com/support/documentation/90000991_C.pdf

Symbolic Links in Windows 7

Jason Young — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 13:37:51 +0000

Posting this here because I always forget where it is:

http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/hardlinkshellext.html

Best. Thing. Ever.

DigiMesh 2.4 XBee Drivers for 64-bit Windows 7

Jason Young — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 19:53:16 +0000

My boss purchased the Digimesh 2.4 Development Kit. I was hoping to develop with it on Windows 7 x64, but the included drivers didn’t work. I contacted Digimesh and they linked to the support page. Somehow I was unable to find it but oh well.

The specific link to the drivers was located at ftp://ftp1.digi.com/support/driver/ftdi_WindowsVistaDrivers.zip.

Geant4 and the bad_alloc() error

Jason Young — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 23:22:23 +0000

I was having some problems running large simulations (500k+ particles) in Geant4. Every once in a while I would get a std::bad_alloc() error. A reboot seemed to fix it but I didn’t understand WHY this would be a problem. Anyhow, I found this post which seems to be onto a possible solution. Simply increasing the memory your shell has access to seems to fix this memory error. We’ll see….

whereas increasing the stack size by using the command ulimit -s 900000 allowed the program to run apparently without a crash:

EDIT: Nevermind, I had created a bomb. Oops.

Apple uses CT

Jason Young — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 14:32:56 +0000

I tweeted about this, but it was so cool I thought it deserved its own post. While the rest of Apple’s press conference yesterday was pretty worthless (27 minutes of “there is no problem” and 3 minutes of “here’s your stupid case”), there was a pretty interesting part of an Engadget article that was posted later.

Evidently Apple uses computed tomography to scan the insides of their devices when they are undergoing testing. Seeing as how I also use CT to scan cargo containers, I thought that was pretty damn cool.