Richi's blog

Category: Projects

  • locally encrypted remote storage

    Unlike the ordinary users, tech savy people are well aware of what can happen to your data, if you store it on cloud services such as dropbox. There are services that promise to encrypt your data locally, so that they can’t access them, a prominent one being wuala. On one hand, I don’t know if […]

  • switching the christmas tree online

    The first time I got interested in home automation, was when browsing the arduino libraries. That was all about X10, which communicates over power lines. There are switches that can replace the regular light switches and are pretty cheap in the US. If you want such switches here in Switzerland, you’ll be surprised how expensive […]

  • accelerated ray tracer

    In all the great online classes I attended over the last year, there was one topic missing. Finally I found an offering for a Computer Graphics class. After all, that’s the field I ‘ve been working in for the last five and a half years. The class is offered at edx.org and is from Berkley. […]

  • rs232 bluetooth adapter

    Usually, headless embedded systems can be managed conveniently using ssh. The consumer focused devices have web interfaces. SSH is perfect, for when the system is running, but if the boot process has problems, there is no screen to read the boot messages that the kernel prints out.  For this purpose these devices usually log to […]

  • RaspberryPi reading analog input using an AtTiny through i2c

    The raspberrypi has some GPIO (General Purpose Input Output) pins. That’s great for experimenting with electronics for example sensors and actuators. It’s totally different than an Arduino in many respects, but that’s something they have in common. Some of the pins have special functions. For example SPI, I2C, UART … There is a breakboard adapter […]

  • LED debugging the stereowrap hardware

    I found out earlier that 5V is not enough to drive the shutter glasses. With my breadboard setup for stereowrap, I fed 12V to the op amps from an external source. Now that I moved the thing to a strip board, I added a step up converter that generates 12V from the 5V available on […]

  • payment slip reader

    Probably the first time I got in contact with one of the pen style payment slip readers, was when I was working for TCG. They only come with drivers for Windows and in the meantime also for Mac. I contacted their support more than once, asking for a linux driver. No success so far. So […]

  • software defined radio on the cheap with a DVB stick

    I think I first learned about software defined radio a few years ago on the chaosradio podcast. I was totally excited about the idea, and immediately installed gnuradio not only on my computers, but at times also on the smartphone. The USRP has been on my wishlist ever since. That’s the hardware device most commonly […]

  • The cheapest netbook

    When I read this blog post telling that there are netbooks available from china for $65, where it is possible to install a proper linux distro, I knew I must have one. Yes, the specs are lowest end, but even more so is the price. It has a WonderMedia 8650 system on a chip. That’s […]

  • machine learning class

    Another one of these incredibly interesting online classes came to an end. Machine learning was one of the first two classes that started last fall. As I thought to make AI and ML in parallel would be too much, I decided for AI with the intention to make ML later. The second round of ML […]