Category Archives: Useful Links

Links to resources & pages that I have found useful

Phillips Webcam with Linux

Posted on by
2

I bought three Phillips SPC  900 NC webcams because they claim to support up to 90fps and I have had good luck using linux with the PWC drivers in the past.  Plugged into a generic Ubuntu 7.10 install, I found that 640×480 resolution was automatic, with 15fps. 320×240 worked at 30fps. (I tried 160×120 resolution, but wasn't able to get a speed faster than 26fps with that, so I'm doubtful of the 90fps claim from Phillips, at least with the stock Ubuntu drivers.)

This useful website looks to provide nice OpenCV support for this camera. 

I have also archived the relevant files on my site, in case the above link goes down. 

Webcam to OpenCV package

Webcam software manual

Freeing my V3xx phone from Cingular

Posted on by
14

After getting ATT/Cingular to take the subsidy lock off my phone, I decided to flash it with the generic International Motorola firmware. The advantages:

  • The Motorola firmware is not “branded” and gets rid of all of the “Shop Cingular” links, menu items, etc.
  • The quadband firmware claims to support all 4 GSM bands (instead of the 3 that the Cingular firmware supports).

The downsides:

  • The Motorola firmware is not “branded”, and I had to re-configure any Cingular specific settings that I like, such as the MediaNet connectivity settings and Cingular Video bookmarks.
  • The Cingular version of the phone has a slightly different button layout than the Motorola generic version (the Clear key is swapped with the Cingular Video key) and I had to remap those keys back to match the custom key layout.
  • Because I flashed the phone, all of my previous SEEM edits and java fixes were lost, so I had to repeat them.

As daunting as the downside list is, I have to say that getting rid of all of the Cingular branding was like a breath of fresh air. You really don’t notice how bad the branding was until it’s gone. Then you just notice all of the extra room in the menus, bookmark lists, etc.

Continue reading →

D-link DWL-G122 with WPA under Linux

Posted on by
1

The D-Link DWL-G122 USB 802.11g (revision B1) wifi adaptor works great for open or WEP encrypted networks and is supported by Ubuntu out of the box. Unfortunately, the open source driver doesn't support WPA2 (and only supports WPA via non-standard iwpriv settings, and even then, the support is flaky).

I was able to get it to connect to a WPA network once, following Jermey's instructions. But the network connection was not reliable (as in, I never got it to connect again).

To make it work with the standard wpa_supplicant package, I had to break down and use ndiswrapper to wrap the windows XP drivers. (I also had to blacklist the default rt2570 kernel module). Hopefully the Open Source rt2x00 kernel module will start to support this device (and others based on this chipset) in the future for WPA/WPA2 security.

Even after I used the ndiswrapper, it would only connect to a WPA Personal / TKIP access point. (I could not get it to work with the AES or AES+TKIP settings on WPA or to work with WPA2 at all.)

To make the ubuntu system auto-load wpa_supplicant on boot, Continue reading →

Screen Scraping Amazon Album Art for MythTV

Posted on by
12

mythtv icon

I wanted to get Album Art for all of my (newly ripped) songs on my MythTV box. 

Thierry has a nice perl script which finds album art on Amazon and automatically downloads it, but unfortunately for me the music plugin for MythTV has upgraded their database schema and the script no longer worked.  I am using the trunk SVN code, so it's a bit more up-to-date than the latest packaged release, but this means that scripts designed for the packaged versions may not work. (This specific script had a problem finding the correct directory to store the album art, so all the album art was stored in the root directory, overwriting itself with each album.)

Luckily, I know just enough SQL and Perl to be dangerous, so I whipped up a few changes to his code that fixed my problem (after exploring the new database format). The updated script is here if anybody needs it.

UPDATE: I also added features that allow you to run the script multiple times (if an albumart.jpg file already exists, it will skip that album) and improved the searching (if "album by artist" is not found, it will try searching by "album" name only).

Updated New File: amazon_album_art_scraper.txt (Thanks to Mike Wilson for updates to Amazon’s HTML!)

OLD FILE: Amazon Album Art Scraper Script

Encrypted home directory under Ubuntu linux 7.04 & 7.10

Posted on by
1

Lock on doorUsing directions from Felipe Alfaro Solana, I set up an encrypted home directory in Ubuntu 7.04. I only had one problem, that exhibited an error message as follows:

Command failed: Incompatible libdevmapper 1.02.08 (2006-07-17)(compat) and kernel driver

This was caused by the dm_mod module not being loaded. I fixed it for the session by issuing a  modprobe dm_mod command, and fixed it forever by adding dm_mod to my /etc/modules file.

Continue reading →

Listing of Atlanta/Decatur Digital OTA Channels

Posted on by
3

transmission tower A list of the channels easily avaliable with a small amplified Radio Shack antenna from the Decatur Area:

  • 2-1 -WSB-DT – ABC
  • 2-2 (Blank, no signal)
  • 5-1 WAGA – Fox HD
  • 5-2 WAGA – Fox SD
  • 11-1 WXIA-D NBC-HD
  • 11-2 WXIA-D (NBC Weather, All the time!)
  • 14-(1,2,3,4) – Ion subchannels.
  • 17 – WTBS-HD – TBS
  • 30-1 – PBS
  • 36- WATL-D -MyATL
  • 43-1 WUPA – CW
  • 46-1 – WGCL-HD CBS

RadioShack HDTV antenna, Catalog #: 15-2186

    Enabling the IMAP4/POP3/SSL email client (and other goodies) on a Motorola v3xx phone via SEEM editing

    Posted on by
    32

    Cell Phone Tower

    My new Motorola RAZR V3xx phone is Cingular branded, which means that Cingular has added many money making links to it ("Shop Cingular!") and have hidden some of the nicer features that Motorola originally built into the phone. For example, Cingular has hidden the IMAP4/POP3/SSL email client that is built into the phone. Luckily for me, by changing a few bits in the phone's memory I can re-enable the features I want. I have already fixed Java on my phone so that Google Maps doesn't ask for permission to access the network every time I zoom or scroll, which is another hack I recommend you do to your V3XX phone. Now I will describe the SEEM edit I made.

    Continue reading →

    Creating udev rules to name your devices in Mandriva

    Posted on by
    Reply

    I have a Motorola cell phone, and when it is plugged into my linux laptop via a USB cable it appears as a /dev/ttyACM0 device. (Unless I already have an ACM device plugged in, then it appears as /dev/ttyACM1).  BUT, it's much nicer to be able to point my phone programs (such as kmobiletools and moto4lin) at a logical device, such as /dev/mobile where the number won't change than to point it at the kernel device name.

    Continue reading →