Andrey Mikhalchuk’s Blog

iPhone with all its user interface bells and whistles, great functionality and stylish design is a great device, I have very little doubt about that. Unfortunately for a few days I was experiencing a problem with it that made me think being the best organizer ever it is one of the worst phone ever. You see, on a regular phone you always have this little red button that would immediately hang up when you press it. In iPhone everything is done via touch screen and software and there is no guarantee this software won’t fail you. All my long experience with conventional phones only twice lead me to a situation when I was unable to hang up the tube. A few days with iPhone brought me a dozen of such accidents. The problem was simple: once I make a call the screen randomly goes black. Sometimes this was happening a few seconds after the start of the call, sometimes only when I move it to my ear. I checked my wife’s phone and it appeared it does the same and this is actually a battery-saving feature. But her phone was returning to normal state once you move the phone from ear and mine wasn’t. It just stayed in this strange state when you can hear and talk to someone, but can’t do anything that could only be done via the touchscreen including hanging up. Here is the solution …

One of the most significant disadvantages of iPhone’s iPod part for a long time remained the lack of possibility to stream audio via bluetooth. iPhone OS 3.0 fixes this problem. So is it really fixed? Find out more.

If you dare to build OpenOCD from svn trunk and lucky to have a USB JTAG adapter there is a good chance you will see something like

/bin/sh ../libtool --tag=CC --mode=link gcc -std=gnu99 -g -O2 -I/root/Distr/ftd2/libftd2xx0.4.16 -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -Wformat-security -Wextra -Wno-unused-parameter -Wbad-function-cast -Wcast-align -Wredundant-decls -Werror -o openocd main.o libopenocd.la -ldl /root/Distr/ftd2/libftd2xx0.4.16/static_lib/libftd2xx.a.0.4.16 -lpthread
libtool: link: gcc -std=gnu99 -g -O2 -I/root/Distr/ftd2/libftd2xx0.4.16 -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -Wformat-security -Wextra -Wno-unused-parameter -Wbad-function-cast -Wcast-align -Wredundant-decls -Werror -o .libs/openocd main.o /root/Distr/ftd2/libftd2xx0.4.16/static_lib/libftd2xx.a.0.4.16 ./.libs/libopenocd.so -ldl -lpthread
./.libs/libopenocd.so: undefined reference to `FT_GetLatencyTimer'
./.libs/libopenocd.so: undefined reference to `FT_Close'
./.libs/libopenocd.so: undefined reference to `FT_SetBitMode'
./.libs/libopenocd.so: undefined reference to `FT_GetDeviceInfo'
./.libs/libopenocd.so: undefined reference to `FT_OpenEx'
./.libs/libopenocd.so: undefined reference to `FT_Read'
./.libs/libopenocd.so: undefined reference to `FT_SetTimeouts'
./.libs/libopenocd.so: undefined reference to `FT_SetVIDPID'
./.libs/libopenocd.so: undefined reference to `FT_Write'
./.libs/libopenocd.so: undefined reference to `FT_SetLatencyTimer'
./.libs/libopenocd.so: undefined reference to `FT_ListDevices'
./.libs/libopenocd.so: undefined reference to `FT_Purge'

Here is how to fix that:

This is a famous/popular question in many Linux forums. The typical answer to the question is “Login (especially autologin) into a system as root is bad”. That’s right, but WTH! The person is asking how to do that, not if it is good or bad! If you don’t know the answer, don’t answer the question you’re not asked about!!
Anyway, if you need to autologin as root for some reason here is the recipe for Open SuSE 11.1 KDE 4.2.2 that could work for other Linux/KDE combinations:

In some versions of KDE (like 4.2.2) there is a bug in knote that prevents users from resizing the note. The bug is fixed in 4.2.3, but if you are still using 4.2.2 you still can resize it.

Good news is OpenWRT 8.09 got recently released. Bad news is that you can’t compile it as root. Yes, compiling as root is bad, but in some situations you absolutely need to do that and you’re just unable to do that. In previous versions it was possible to “export FORCE=1″ and compile everything under root account. In this version there is a bug. And here is the bugfix:

New interesting DIY on my other site: how to control Pleo with Wii Nunchuck.

Looking for routerbots and other robotics stuff? It’s not here anymore. I created a new web space 100% dedicated to robotics called RoboStuff.com. It’s better, cleaner, englisher and it’s for everyone. If you have your robotics project and looking for a please to publish it please contact me and get your personal project page on robostuff.com. Also new website is not only about DIY Projects, but also contains news, robopedia, catalog of robots and more robotics stuff. New information is being added almost every day.

If you’re flying beginners’ coax helicopters like Lama v4 you probably have heard about those undestructable Airy Harden Blades. Unfortunately all information about the blades in the internet is limited to a very impressive video and a review from a guy who seemed to be somewhat interested in positive test result. I have no interest in that so here is my quick review.

When I moved into a new house a few months ago I decided to start life in the new place with completely new energy saving policy and replaced 90% of bulbs in the house with those spiral energy saving light bulbs you see advertised on every corner in every supermarket. The energy saving commercials were extremely clear and promising - you pay just a little more for the bulbs but then you enjoy 5 years of reduced electricity bills and help conserving natural resources!! What could be better? One month later I replaced most of those energy saving bulbs with the traditional ones and here is why…

I like this photo frame alot! Samsung SPF-83V not only does have excellent 800×600 resolution, but it also supports content retrieval from other computers and directly from the Internet RSS channels via WiFi. Of course it is not perfect, it is not the easiest photo frame to set up, all content retrieval technologies are Microsoft-oriented, but the most frustrating feature is that for some reason Left and Right buttons are reversed!! Why would anyone do that I have no clue. Here is how to fix the problem.

It appeared that some DNS servers keep old information about my domain and redirecting some users to the old server. So some comments go to the new server and some go to the old one. I plan to merge them later this week. If you don’t see your comments posted please don’t worry they will reappear soon.

If you decided to mod your wrt54gl router and turn it into one of the most capable routers for soho network, probably the first mod you should start with is adding serial interface to it. Why? Because when you do the other mods (like adding SD reader, turning into robot, adding leds etc) you definitely send the router into the brick state. And the best way to unbrick it is to look at the router’s console output. The entire operation is very easy and should not take longer then 1 hour. Here is how to do this:

I’m currently moving the site, so the content (images, in particular) might not be available for for another 24 hours. Sorry about inconvenience.

Pleo is a wonderful dinosaur, way more charming then roboraptor and other sapiences. It is the most advanced toy robot currently available on the market in the <$700 price range (Pleo price is around $330 shipped). It has a huge potential which is limited by the fact it is completely standalone. I tried to fix this by adding bluetooth interface to it. This mod allows issuing commands to Pleo from virtually any bluetooth-enabled device, including many cell phones, communicators and generic computers. It also allows retrieving information from Pleo on-the-fly, like sounds it hears, pictures it sees etc.

Before you continue reading this post please acknowledge that this mod is not approved by Ugobe and most probably will void the warranty. Also there is always a chance that something will go wrong and you might damage your robopet. If you’re going to implement this mod you are the only one responsible for damaging this very expensive toy. I’m providing the information below only as a personal experience for educational purposes.

And here is how to make it:

I experience serious problems with the webserver load. After a few posts about the routerbot (which is 7+months old!) on a few popular websites the server start suffering from low RAM/CPU power. Last time I remember something like this only during pizza.com times.

I beg my apology for this situation. The server will get upgraded later this week.

I’ve uploaded the new video about getting your very own wireless dinosaur. It shows how you can control Pleo from almost any bluetooth-enabled device, including cellphones, smartphones, communicators, PCs etc. All you need is bluetooth and a terminal program.
I’m going to publish more details about how to make Pleo wireless later next week. Nothing complicated :)

At the moment Canon Vixia HF100 is the best consumer HD flash camera. It’s not perfect, I found plenty of glitches and inconveniences like

1. Sometimes it takes up to 15 seconds to switch the mode (Play/Record)
2. The navigation is not very intuitive
3. The official video backup process via Pixela Mixer (i.e. you need to install a piece of commercial software before you will be able to get your video from camera to computer)

Despite all those and many other issues it is still the best. The video quality is just outstanding, it’s like having whole Hollywood in your pocket. While I can do nothing (so far) with #1 and #2 annoyances #3 is easily solvable. You don’t need to install this special piece of software called PixelaMixer. In fact I didn’t even try it after reading couple reviews saying it’s no good at all. You can just connect the camera to the PC or insert the SD card into the card reader and copy .mts files from <drive>\private\avchd\bdmv\stream to your backup device. Then you can process the files with whatever software you prefer.
If you also want to backup the images then get them at <drive>\DCIM, as usually.

I actually think this method will work for Visual Basic and other similar languages too. Here is the code for a sample frame called TfrKnob:

You’ve probably heard about Pleo - the greenest and coolest dinosaur available on today’s market. My daughter got one for her birthday recently from her loving parents. She enjoyed it for a few days and then just got bored because it was the same moo, mrrr and urf and not much walking at all. Well, two more days of interest were raised with additional downloadable personalities, but that was it.
I tweaked the dino into something more interesting and made it wireless, so you can issue commands to it remotely (via bluetooth). Ok, one more day of fun. Then I wrote something a bit more usable then Dinomite and other tools available from Ugobe website. The development was going well until one day Pleo didn’t wake up …