μblog: engineering from the trenches

My family is moving from Yalta to Washington D.C. so I am taking some time off to get their house ready. I have some spare time to explore the “advanced” features of my mobile phone. Below are a few tools that I found very handy in getting the most of my Verizon smartphone.

• BirdieSync - This tool synchronizes your Windows Mobile phone with Thunderbird. It is quite good for maintainging your address book as well as your tasks. Since Thunderbird can integrate with Google calendar, you can maintain an on-line calendar for your coworkers that syncs with your phone.
• PdaNet - This tool allows you to use your smartphone (with a data plan) as a broadband internet connection. I have had good functionality when I connect my phone with ActiveSync over bluetooth and then initiated the connection. See results.
• Yahoo! Go - This tool is meant to give your phone access to the Yahoo! network of sites. I use it mostly to upload images to flickr. I figure that is easiest to put them on-line for easy access so I don’t have to drag and drop them when ActiveSync connects.
• Google Maps - No triangulation, however, this Google Maps is still very useful. Integrates well with the i760 touchscreen.

del.icio.us | digg

As I had hoped, I finished the 100km charity ride this past Sunday in a little over four hours. The organizers did an excellent job providing refreshments and snacks and the track layout was pretty flat. Near the end of the ride, the sun was out and my bike computer indicated that the temperature was above 40C/105F for the last 1.5 hours, peaking at 45C. I can truly say that I slept like a baby on Sunday night.

del.icio.us | digg

It is well known that written composition is not one of the strong points of most engineering-oriented curricula. The joke around my undergraduate university (George Mason University) was that Computer Engineering majors, such as myself, were totally illiterate as they were only subjected to two English courses in order to maximally combine the Computer Science and Electrical Engineering programs. Most of the other engineering programs had three courses, so although they could read and write, we made their computers operate.

I have been trying to fill the hole left by the one missing English course and to be more coherent in written and verbal conversations, so I have spent a little bit of time looking to avoid common pitfalls in the English language. To my surprise, there is a fairly good list of commonly misused Physics terms as maintained by Donald Simanek. There is some humorous intention, however, it is a good starting point. There is also the list of commonly misused English phrases, as well as a list of English words with disputed usage. I am sure that undergraduate engineering students will continue to loathe their English courses (as I did), however, the bright pupils may use proper grammar and composition as a tool to separate themselves from the rest.

( Photo is from surrealmuse. )

del.icio.us | digg

As promised last week, here is the MAX 660. With computer issues resolved, we now have pictures. Thanks go out to Neil B. for supplying me with this chip.

max660-10x-stitch.jpg

del.icio.us | digg

I decided to sign up to do Tour de Cure this year (in June) to help raise funds and awareness for diabetes research. The event I will be in is the 100km ride in Reston, VA along the W&OD trail. If anyone would like to offer sponsorship (in any value), I would gladly accept. The link to make a donation is at the bottom of the page and the donation is tax-deductible (in the USA at least). Please post any comments or questions you may have and wish me luck. Conversely, if you will be in the Washington D.C. area and are interested in doing this, you can join my friends any I and make it a team effort.

( Donation page for N. Chernyy )

P.S. For extra kicks, the bike above is the one that I will be doing the 100km on. It is not a road bike, but it is really well tuned and rides smoothly.

del.icio.us | digg

A pair of OLPC XO laptops arrived at our lab today. Given the hype and drama surrounding their debut, I decided to give them a small run through to see how usable the machine was. As the box was opened, I was very surprised at the tiny size of the device. Since this was designed for children, the size seemed fairly appropriate. The trouble started when I tried to use the device. The keyboard was about 30% smaller than a laptop keyboard and was covered with a single piece of rubber. This made the key unresponsive and made it fairly hard to type quickly. Furthermore, the mouse track pad had very poor response and was a total pain to use at points. Finally, the machine seemed very underpowered and took about ten seconds to start up a terminal without anything else running.

From a positive perspective, the laptop’s user interface was fairly intuitive and well labeled. The included video capture software worked on par with a typical 1.3MP camera phone and seemed to capture video smoothly. The device had no problem associating with our wireless network, however, there was some difficulty getting it on the VPN. The number of ports is pretty good (~3USB, audio, etc) and the battery life seems to be on par with typical portable machine. The $180 price tag was a bit higher than the $100 original, however, I foresee that the price will gradually drop as components get cheaper. Eventually adding a touchscreen would not be a bad idea.

To conclude, this laptop seems to be very appropriate for young kids. The keyboard seems like it could resist liquids and debris and the device looks durable. I didn’t see if there are any parental controls available as I doubt any parent would want to let their 5 year old sit behind a computer all day long. As for adult use, it is better to spend a little bit more money and get a subcompact laptop from ASUS or a budget laptop from Dell. The size of the machine and lack of ports (ethernet, parallel, serial) make it less attractive from a hacking perspective.

del.icio.us | digg

I have recently sent my Q to greener pastures in favor of a Samsung SCH-i760 (Verizon). I have yet to experience the phone at great lengths, however, I have a few things to share with prospective users:

• This phone has a touch-screen and runs the full PocketPC version of Windows Mobile 6 (as compared to the smartphone edition on the Q)
• With the extended battery (1500mA), the phone is thick (see below) and almost twice as heavy (6oz) as Q
• That’s okay because it hides a full QWERTY keyboard
• The extended battery stays charged for 2-3 days with moderate use (AIM, constant email checking, few phone calls)
• There are a lot of buttons (all around the edges of the phone)
• No Verizon Get It Now
• Can be used as a broadband modem without paying the $15 service fee
• Has a better camera than Q (both are 1.3MP)
• Google maps can be moved using touch screen
• Built in 802.11b/g, bluetooth, stylus for screen
• Did I mention the phone is heavy and bulky?
• Fairly intuitive usage and notifications
• Back-lit keyboard
• LED that can light up half of the bedroom while being charged
• Same Thunderbird integration (via BirdieSync)
• Non-standard connector (as compared to Q’s mini-USB)
• Cannot be charged with included non-standard to USB cable
• MicroSD slot, just like Q
• Supports Adobe flash and various flash video sites

All in all, I am happy with the i760 so far, more so than I was with the Q. Throughout the benefits, the main downside of the phone is its thickness which makes it fit less well in the front pants pocket. The interface is more polished, however, there is a small delay when the phone is switched between landscape and portrait modes while sliding out the keyboard. I will try to post small hacks as I see them come up, however, you will have to look for the modem bit on your own. Please feel free to ask any questions if you are considering one and are not sure or have some difficulties.

del.icio.us | digg

I was not too surprised when I read about BestBuy’s new official trade-in program (on Ars Technica). I figured that they were following GameStop’s lead and getting into the business of reselling used hardware. Curiosity lead me to put in my broken Dreamcast console, just for entertainment. Again, I was not surprised to learn that the broken console without any accessories or games did not have any trade-in value. What did surprise me was the option to recycle the console via BestBuy’s service at no cost to the consumer. Most of the time, it would be easiest for everyone to just find a local recycling center and simply drop off the hardware, however, sometimes there are no convenient locations. The next easiest recycling method would be filling out the form via the BestBuy service, boxing the device(s) and putting on the shipping label. The current weight limit for processing is 70lbs, however, this is definitely a step in the right direction, especially for a company that sells so many electronics. I hope that the inclusion of the recycling option was not a fluke and is continued to be honored by BestBuy. All I can say at this point is job well done.

del.icio.us | digg

Some time ago, I wrote a guide for compiling OpenWRT firmware for the la Fonera router. I began to really like OpenWRT and decided that I may want to put it on some other devices I have around, namely a Linksys WAP54G and WRT54G. I could have modified my development suite, however, I figured that it is better to let someone else do the work this time. Freifunk has done just that and has posted modified OpenWRT images that will even fit on the limited WAP54G. I have one of the TRX files loaded on my version 2.0 WAP54G and running without problems. The only slight hickup was that the Linksys firmware did not want to “downgrade”, so I pointed the a browser to http://router_ip/fw-conf.asp and disabled both check there and then simply uploaded the new TRX file using the updater. When everything was done, the router was back up on the same IP and was accepting ssh connections with username “root” and password “admin”. [I previously posted the password was "password", that is incorrect, sorry for the error.]

[ Image is from KJH.com ]

del.icio.us | digg

We got some new drives in the lab today and I accidentally looked at the power consumption of these 1TB SATA drives and discovered that the +5V line required 700mA and the +12V line required a mere 550mA to operate. I compared it to 200GB Maxtor drive and noted that the +5V rating was about the same, however, the +12V rating was 1500mA. The 12W power rating reduction is impressive. WD’s product specifications page notes that read/write power is about 7W while idle power consumption is around 4W. Anandtech claims that Seagate’s 1TB drive is also fairly efficient. Please understand that I have no financial interest in selling these drives, I am simply impressed that we can get 1TB of storage in such an energy-efficient footprint. Combining this with one of an energy-efficient x86 system could soon become the new trend in always-on home media servers.

del.icio.us | digg