Monitoring Batch Jobs The Cylon Way With Python And A Parallel Port

November 18, 2011 by Mike Nathan 14 Comments

parallel-port-trigger

If you happen to do a lot of video encoding, you know that your computer can really drag while the process is carried out. Our own [Mike Szczys] transcodes videos at home fairly often, and because the process is automated, he doesn’t always know if a conversion is taking place in the background.

He has been tinkering with Larson Scanners recently and thought he could put everything he’s learned along the way to good use by using the scanner as a “busy” indicator for his PC. He hooked the scanner up to the computer’s parallel port, and took a few minutes to bang out some Python code that would alert him when his PC was busy.

He set his notifier script to launch along with FFMPEG, whenever his MythTV setup had something ready to convert. The Python script drives a pin on the parallel port high, triggering the Larson Scanner’s animation. Every minute, the script checks the status of FFMPEG and continues to hold the pin high until the application exits. Once the conversion is done, the scanner goes back to sleep, letting [Mike] know that the coast is clear.

Check out the video below the break to see his parallel port trigger in action.

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ColorHug: A Reasonably-priced, Completely Open Color Calibration Tool

November 15, 2011 by Mike Nathan 27 Comments

colorhug-opensource-color-calibrator

[Richard] wanted to create a color profile for his computer monitor, but he wasn’t thrilled with the existing color calibration offerings he found for sale. Color calibration tools can be somewhat costly, but even more troubling to [Richard] was the fact that they are all closed source. Closed hardware and closed software can be a drag, especially when manufacturers drop support for a product, so he set off to design his own open-source monitor calibration tool.

Once his ColorHug sensor is placed against a monitor, it begins sampling colors from the screen, creating an ICC color profile from the data it gathers. The sensor is a Linux-only tool at the moment, but he has created a live CD from which a color profile can be created, then subsequently used in Windows or OSX.

While ColorHug doesn’t sport all the features of its commercial competitors, its color sampling rate is second to none, and since the software is open, anyone is free to implement any sort of functionality they wish.

[Richard] is currently selling finished ColorHug modules to anyone interested in giving them a test drive, but you can always build your own from the plans found at ColorHug’s Github repository.

[via Adafruit blog]

NES Controller Is A Slick Way To Carry Around Your Portable OS

November 13, 2011 by Mike Nathan 14 Comments

nes-controller-linux-drive

[Oliver] had an old NES controller laying around, and without any other use for it, he decided to repurpose it as a portable storage device.

He gutted most of the controller, removing the plastic standoffs, leaving the D-pad and remaining buttons intact. He crammed a 32 GB flash drive inside, along with the guts from an SD card reader. Using a Dremel he cut several openings into the controller, one for the flash drive and SD card reader’s USB ports, as well as for the SD card itself. When the physical modifications were finished, he installed a small Linux distro on the flash drive, which can be run by any PC that supports booting from USB.

While some might argue, we think it’s a neat way to reuse an old gaming peripheral that he might have otherwise thrown out. The portable OS is something that would certainly come in handy, though we can’t wait until the Raspberry Pi is finished – it would be awesome to have a complete computer packed in there too.

Recovering A Corrupted EEE PC BIOS

October 25, 2011 by Mike Nathan 23 Comments

recovering_eeepc_bios

[Jeremy] had an ASUS EEE PC 1000HE netbook on his hands which had succumbed to a corrupted BIOS. In most situations, people replace a motherboard when the BIOS is damaged beyond repair, but considering the price of motherboards, especially those built for portable devices, he simply refused to go that route.

Instead, he took it apart and did a little investigation to find out what SPI flash chip ASUS used in the netbook. With that information in hand, he put together an SPI flash programmer using a breadboard and a DLP-USB1232H USB to UART module. He couldn’t program the flash chip in-circuit, so he had to desolder it and deadbugged it onto his programmer. Using a few Linux-based flashing tools, he was able to reprogram the chip with a functioning BIOS in short order, saving him from a costly motherboard replacement.

While some motherboard manufacturers have built in secondary BIOS chips to prevent the need for this sort of recovery, it’s nice to know that the process is relatively straightforward, provided you have some basic soldering and Linux skills.

This also isn’t the first time we’ve seen someone recover an EEE PC from the brink – if you’re looking for an Arduino-based alternative, be sure to check this out.

Beefing Up Your Laptop’s Gaming Chops With An External GPU

October 19, 2011 by Mike Nathan 42 Comments

If you’re not willing to shell out for a reasonably powerful laptop it seems that there’s not a ton that can be done to boost your gaming performance. That is, unless you have an empty Express card slot and the right chipset.

[Phatboy69] recently put together an external video card for his notebook, with fantastic results. His Vaio Z128GG had an Nvidia GT330M graphics card onboard, which is decent but nothing to write home about. Using an Express card to PCIe adapter, he added an external Nvidia GTX580 to his system, and he couldn’t be more pleased with the results. While the card does take a performance hit when connected to his laptop in this way, he claims that his graphics performance has increased ten-fold, which isn’t too shabby.

There are many variables on which this process is heavily dependent, but with the right amount of tweaking, some great laptop gaming performance can be had. That said, it really does take the portability factor of your notebook down to about zero.

If this is something you might be interested in, be sure to check out this thread over at the Notebook Review Forums – it’s where [Phatboy69] found all the information he needed to get his system up and running properly.

[Thanks, Henry]

PC Temperature Monitoring System Lights Up When Things Get Hot

October 4, 2011 by Mike Nathan 23 Comments

gpu_overheating_warning_system

[Taylor] popped a new graphics card into his computer, but before he could settle in for a round of gaming, his card started to overheat. He eventually tracked the problem down to an undersized power supply, but the prospect of cooking his new GPU to death made him think twice about how he was monitoring his system’s health.

To continually keep tabs on his video card’s temperature going forward, he put together a small circuit that will alert him if things start to get too hot. He mounted a small temperature sensor on his graphics card near the GPU, wiring it to an Arduino. The Arduino monitors his video card, lighting an RGB LED blue if conditions are alright. If the temperature rises above 50C, the LED changes to red, signaling a problem.

We’re aware that there are all sorts of software applications that can monitor component temperatures for you, but the appeal of [Taylor’s] system is that it can be easily seen from across the room rather than via the desktop. That said, we think that his system could take advantage of his PC’s case fan lighting for a more visible warning, and it wouldn’t hurt to wire in an auto-shutdown feature in case his computer overheats while he’s away.

Broken Vintage Record Player Reborn As A Portable MP3 Cabinet

September 7, 2011 by Mike Nathan 23 Comments

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[Julian] picked up an old record player that was sitting in somebody’s trash pile, and brought it home to see if it could be restored to working order. When he got it home he discovered that it didn’t work at all, so he and his wife decided to modernize it a bit.

In an effort to simultaneously reunite himself with his music collection and piss off audiophiles/antique collectors in the process, he gutted the radio and began rebuilding it to serve as an MP3 jukebox. Once the innards were removed, his wife refinished the cabinet and gave the front grill a new cloth cover.

An old PC was installed inside the cabinet, along with a set of relatively cheap (but better than paper cone) speakers. A pair of custom cut plexi panels were used to cover the computer, while providing space for the monitor and Apple wireless keyboard + trackpad [Julian] uses to manage the jukebox.

The refurbed record player came out looking quite nice, and although it likely raises the ire of several different groups of purists, we think it’s pretty cool.