If you’ve been a regular user of the Interactive LED Sign here at operation 9—and there have been many thousands of you since the beginning of 2009—you may be wondering what happened; it’s been down for a couple of months now, after all. Well, there’s a story to that.

After moving from Windows XP Pro (SP3) to Windows 7 Ultimate x64, things started getting hairy given the control 7 likes to have over its ports. Not only that, the “upgrade” path—or rather, the lack of one—wiped the server environment. While I was able to get all that patched up, something else inevitably happened early last month: the PC’s motherboard up and died a few days after being laid off from my job of nearly 5 years, rendering the machine inoperative for a few weeks. Unfortunately, the replacement motherboard doesn’t have a serial port on-board, which means I need to shell out a few bucks to buy one to occupy an open card slot. Not a big deal, really, but I’ve been concentrating my efforts on gainful employment in the meantime.

So, to make it short and sweet, it’ll be back sooner or later. Don’t fret.

If you’re interested in setting up your own interactive LED sign, don’t forget to check out Alphabrite. Not only is it being used by nerdy enthusiasts like myself, several have written to let me know they’ve integrated it into their internal corporate environment. Not bad for an application whose 1.0 release was written in the span of a week.

Donations to fund further development are, as always, graciously accepted.

One of the more useful shields for the Arduino I picked up in the last month has to be Seeed Studio’s Solar Charger Shield. Costing $10.50, I couldn’t pass it up. I put together a quick demonstration using a solar panel I parted out of some sub-$10 solar chargers I bought on eBay and a 2000mAh Lithium-Ion battery pack I received as part of Sparkfun’s Free Day.

Do pardon the intermittent squeaking; granite countertops and header pins don’t mix.

Version 1.0 of Alphabrite LED Display Control Center—or, simply enough, Alphabrite v1.0—is ready for download. This application allows remote or local administration of your Alpha or Betabrite LED Display using PHP4 and 5 with the cURL extension. The application supports every sign that adheres to the Alpha 1.0 Protocol. (See README for more details.)

Available Modules:

• Public Interaction: Interface your LED sign to the Internet through your website. By only embedding two lines of code, you’ll have everything you need on the front-end to accept feedback—without interrupting the flow of your other active modules. Includes optional notification of messages by email and/or to its own Twitter feed.
• Stock Quotes: Define the stocks you want to watch and keep tabs on them through the ticker. (Stock quotes are on a 20-minute delay, so DON’T use it for determining whether to execute a trade.)
• Weather: Get Current Conditions for your ZIP code, as well as Local Forecasts for two days out.
• RSS Feeds: Define your feed and scan whatever headlines you feel like staying abreast of.
• Twitter Recapping: Create an account for your sign on Twitter and, in combination with the Public Interaction module, display both current and archived messages sent to your sign. Or, if you prefer, display your personal feed instead.
• Time/Date Display & Synchronization: For those, like me, without proper serial clock chips inside their Alpha or Betabrite unit, these functions will both display and regularly synchronize your time and date (on supported models).
• Basecamp Integration*: If you’re a user of Basecamp by 37signals, keep track of the latest activity through this module. Especially useful for Project Managers.
• IMAP Inbox Check*: Check how many unread messages you have, and how many messages you have total. This is pre-set to Gmail for your convenience.

Hardware Functions Provided:

• Set Date/Time, Set Day of the Week, Set Time Format, Schedule Messages, Speaker On/Off, Generate Tone, Clear Priority Message (A0), Clear Non-Priority Memory (page or entirely), Soft Reset, Set Sequence (Data Reset), Update Sequence (Data Refresh)
• Includes the PHP RS-232 method (alphawrite.php), which requires the fantastic and included ‘php_serial.class.php’ by Rémy Sanchez (http://hyperthese.net/).
• Furthermore, unit resets and refreshes can be automated via a simple crontab (or its Windows equivalent) using the provided utilities.

This was tested on an Alpha PPD220—a two-line, red LED display by Adaptive Displays. Should you run into any problems, please submit them here.

* See the README for important details and security caveats involved with the utilization of these modules.

Download: Alphabrite v1.0 (97kb, zip)

If you use and/or like what you see, consider clicking here to help fund further development.

With my other LED reverse-engineering project waiting on a cable, I picked up an Alpha PPD220 (Personal Priority Display) LED Sign—probably the most basic model there is in their product line—off eBay at about 15% of the MSRP. (I’d prefer a Alpha 4160C, but I’m pretty sure the WAF (wife acceptance factor) wouldn’t permit it.)

Telling by the message that was still in its memory when I powered it on, this particular LED sign used to serve as a display at a lottery terminal somewhere in South Carolina. Within an hour or so of hacking away on some code from these guys, however, I was able to interface it using PHP and Perl—the latter posing as the messenger with the RS-232 serial interface—to accept messages from the public at large.

So, with that done, it was time to improve upon it. In between moments of helping my wife recover from all four of her wisdom teeth being pulled, I decided to build a library (from scratch) for the sign. Because of the shared protocol, the library I have in development should work with most, if not all Alpha and Betabrite models from Adaptive Displays, but I really can’t test that to verify beyond this basic little unit.

Here’s a bit of what it does in its current state:

• Supports the Alpha 1.0 protocol mostly, with a little (untested) 2.0 and 3.0
• Accommodates both paged sequences (AA-AZ) and PRIORITY Text (A0)
• Synchronizes the system clock on the unit with the server automatically
• Pulls in RSS feeds using Simplepie
• Pulls in Current Weather and the Local Forecast via Yahoo’s API
• Allows people visiting my site to enter messages without interrupting the flow of information (news, weather, time, etc.)
• Added basic administrative functions (soft reset, speaker on/off, clear memory, etc.)
• Added the ability to update a Twitter account with the last submitted message from the web. Sad.
• Added the ability to notify me by email when someone submits a message. Doubly sad.
• Updates every hour on the hour via a crontab which refreshes all the data

There’s still a lot of work to be done to maximize its utility (and for me to be comfortable enough to release it), but I’ll get to it as time permits. As it is, it’s become something far more useful than displaying lottery numbers and jackpot totals.

Want to give it a whirl? Feel free to check the sign out over here and drop a note while you’re at it.

Seth Fogle has an interesting write-up about the hackability of Axis cameras, in this case the 207W. I can personally confirm that the 206M also falls for the exact same exploits, which likely means the entire 206/207 line is at risk and perhaps even the 205 (which I haven’t been able to confirm, but they share much the same if not exactly the same platform if memory serves me correctly).

As I also have an Axis 2120, I was originally led to the above by a great CNet article highlighting the fact that many government agencies and other organizations still make use of the 2100 model which, like my 2120, has long since been discontinued (and can be often found on the aftermarket still, on sites such as eBay). Axis said in the article they were working to patch the model, but a check on their site tonight still displayed the last available firmware as 2.43—last updated in 2004.

Since I’m not insane enough to expose the 2120 to the Internet at-large, I’m not all that worried. However, what these two generations of cameras share is a weak system open to XSS attacks and a lack of security foresight to use encryption to protect the system from backdoor exploitation. Then again, it’s not as if everyone who buys them even knows the basics of configuring them, rendering advanced attacks unnecessary to begin with.

As it stands right now, it would appear that Big Brother-esque camera systems are potentially far less secure than the governments implementing them might think. Very, very interesting findings indeed.

Ok, this is awesome. A computerized BBQ gadget that keeps things nice and toasty — not to mention consistent. Here’s what one happy customer on Make had to say about this newfangled tech:

“The device is amazing. I used it earlier in the week to do a 17 hour cook of a pork leg. The Stoker maintained temperature within a few degrees of 210 for all 17 hours without a problem. Awesome.”

Awesome, indeed. Taking this gadget from mere utility into the land of pure geekdom, well, this just blows my geek mind:

The best part is that the Stoker will happily grab an IP address via DHCP if you plug an ethernet cable between it and your home net. You can subsequently control target temperatures, high/low alarms, food alarms and other parameters remotely.

Seriously, this is the kind of gadget everyone can enjoy. Well, except geeks, who probably don’t need another excuse to sit around.

After climbing time and time again onto the hot tar-laden roof of our apartment for much testing, adjusting, and testing some more, I think I’ve finally finished both siting and futzing around with the weather station.

In the end, I ended up modifying the anemometer with a retrofitted RJ11-to-CAT5 solution (involving much splicing and soldering) that will prevent odd wind spikes into the 50-80mph range, and wrapped electrical tape around the body of the anemometer itself in order to prevent any light leakage from throwing off the directional sensor. All-in-all, everything seems to be working to its potential at this time. If you look at at this graphic from the 14th and note the wind direction from 3pm-6pm or so compared to today’s after 2pm (it was inside for testing before that time), you can definitely see a marked improvement in accuracy. (Hint: The wind isn’t incoming at 247 degrees (without deviation) around here for three hours straight. Ever.)

Some exciting developments are in the hopper for personal weather station owners, so stay tuned. For now, I can say that the staff of Weather Underground are among the most helpful, responsive, and friendly around.

The La Crosse WS-3610 arrived last week, and just now am I getting the finishing touches done on the mount located on the roof of our apartment. I was able to fashion an alternative configuration of this mount holding the anemometer, while the rain gauge sits on a level platform a few feet away…

→ continue reading "Weather Underground Station "KILCHICA64""

This weekend was pretty productive — on domestic projects. As my wife and I have up until this weekend been using cell phones that in “cell years” would be somewhere around 75 years old (approximately 5 human years), we decided to trade them out: I got a Motorola RAZR v3m while my wife picked up a Samsung a640.

There’s something about going through a serious technological leap (such as these new cell phones) that lends itself to wasting the subsequent three hours messing with the new features just because you can. And that’s just what we did.

I know I mentioned domestic productivity earlier. Well, we did buy a new vacuum and get some work done around the apartment. I swear.

Later this week, the weather station mount and shield I ordered last week from Ambient Weather should arrive, allowing me to finally get the weather station I mentioned online and loading weather data to Weather Underground.

...very soon, in fact! I’ve spent a good lot of time over the weekend removing outdated and bad feeds, and introducing new ones. So far, I’ve been able to get through about half the countries in the collection. Look for it to show up sometime this coming week.

On the NWS4Cast front, I’ve managed to get the connectivity in place, the SOAP schema read in, and start parsing out and formatting forecasts; however, it’s going to take some thought as to how I want to package this up in the future, given the inherent space constraints and new requirements this new build will require. Right now it requires two separate parsers between the XML and SOAP feeds, which I need to reconcile down to one before I feel comfortable releasing it.

In any case, I’ll more than likely release two versions: a basic package containing only NWS4Cast without forecasts, and one with everything bundled in—with the option to turn off forecasts, if desired.

Edit: I have a La Crosse WS-3610 coming in to replace my Discovery Channel STX-7000, so perhaps another version of NWS4Cast for personal weather stations isn’t entirely out of the question…

The /gaming and /link sections have gone boom. Honestly, it’s about time I pared down to something a bit more modest since I haven’t the time to keep especially the /gaming section moving. It’s still accessible by the search engines for posterity and the sake of anyone searching games using Google, but it will no longer be updated.

I’ve made a few other changes, but they’re not very notable.

Onto another subject, the Axis 2120 arrived yesterday and really is a great piece of kit. Installation took five minutes, a firmware upgrade took another five minutes, and the configuration took another 30 since I insisted on messing around with controls and settings. Outside of the live feed — which I’m sure as hell not linking here — the standalone 2120 also uploads a current photo every 30 seconds via FTP, which you can now see to the right.

My only complaint so far is that I won’t be able to easily mount it in order to zoom in on the skyline, but I’ll work past that eventually with some ingenuity and an 802.11g wireless bridge.

So, I haven’t been entirely satisfied with the cheap 1.2Ghz wireless CCTV solution I picked up a few weeks ago, though it’s worked well in certain indoor situations such as monitoring the home while we’re away. Having sold off yet another sizable chunk of my video game collection, I decided to pick up one of the better options out there — the Axis 2120 Network Camera with interchangeable C/CS lenses and by far the best performance in the industry.

I’ve actually had great experiences with Axis Communications’ products in the past; having managed the purchase and installation of one of the first Axis network camera models (using an outdoor Pelco enclosure) back in 1999 for the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, I already have an affinity for the brand, its performance, and reputation for ease-of-use. Of course, quality and performance have greatly improved since those days, with improved bandwidth efficiency, resolution, and M-JPEG codec use instead of requiring the typical proprietary controls the old cameras necessitated back in the old days.

The one I managed to pick up happens to be a lightly-used PAL model purchased by an American a couple of months ago from Europe. All things taken into account, it really doesn’t matter the format, since the system bypasses closed-circuit television in favor of Internet-based transmission by default. [NTSC vs. PAL]

Another nice thing: while the going price still happens to be somewhere near $1,000 even today, post-model discontinuation, I managed to pick up the unit for a tiny fraction thereof — another win for being patient and frugal. I’m really looking forward to digging into it when it arrives.

Having recently picked up a cheap wireless 1.2Ghz CCTV unit and receiver combo, I decided to fiddle with the webcam space here on the site and implement a smoother solution that didn’t require an entire page reload every time a new image was uploaded. Every 20 seconds, it’ll now update automatically — assuming there’s a new picture — in a pretty subtle fashion.

Right now, the camera unit sits on a ledge outside the 4th (attic) floor window of our apartment, pointed down our somewhat sleepy road toward Division Street. The relative brightness of the closest tree compared to its surroundings is due to the decent onboard infrared LED array bouncing its light off the branches. The feed comes through the receiver directly into a old ATI TV Wonder VE VisionTek Xtasy Theater 550 Pro capture card; the image is then processed and uploaded using the freeware webcam app Fwink every 20 seconds.

That lone dot in the upper-left corner at night? It’s the Sears Tower.

Many hours of work and endless tweaking later, my latest project, this time involving a Toshiba Libretto 100CT, is a success. The GPS receiver came in yesterday afternoon, after which I promptly went to do a couple of hours of wrangling with nonexistant installation instructions, then eventually testing with Streets & Trips 2006.


Starting Specs for the Toshiba Libretto 100CT:

• Pentium 166Mhz
• 32MB RAM
• 2.1GB HDD
• Windows 98
• Internet Explorer 4.0
• Office 97
• Lotus Notes
• McAfee Antivirus 4.0
• Xircom 56k Modem/100mbps Ethernet Card

Post-Project Specs:

• Pentium 266Mhz (after soldering modification to the motherboard)
• 64MB RAM (after reseating a loose 32MB module)
• 2.1GB HDD
• Windows 98SE (pared WAY down, and secured)
• Office 97
• Firefox 1.5
• Thunderbird 1.5
• Microsoft Streets & Trips 2006
• Winamp 2.9 (streams smoothly from Shoutcast, and from MP3s over the LAN)
• Filezilla FTP Client
• AVG Anti-Virus Personal Edition
• AMN Refrigerator v2.x (for cooling the CPU, unit has no built-in fan)
• Netgear WG511v2 802.11g Wireless Card
• Xircom 56k Modem/100mbps Ethernet Card
• PQI CompactFlash to PCMCIA Adapter (GPS receiver/digital photos)
• Generic UG-200-CF CompactFlash GPS Receiver
• …and about 20 classic games from the 90s (Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, etc.)

All-in-all, it was a pretty challenging project. Endless swapfile tweaks and whatnot kept me on my toes for days. The biggest impediment to getting anything done was easily the paltry size of the hard drive — Streets & Trips takes up 1.1GB on its own, leaving the rest to sit in the remaining 900MB of space. At last check, I still have anywhere between 150-175MB free (varying due to the swapfile).

In the end, though, I’ve taken what was a pretty ancient, unused computer and given it a new life as a lean, ultra-portable machine not only capable of accessing the Internet from most anywhere, but of reading in photos from the CF card and of course uber-cool GPS functionality for the road — normally retailing in the hundreds for a standalone unit. Since it has Office 97, a modern web browser, and a decent mail client, I can pretty much do anything I’ll ever need to on it when a larger laptop would be too unwieldy. It was well worth the effort put into it; it handles everything much faster and more efficiently than I ever expected from a computer literally the size of a VHS cassette.

Image Archive: http://www.op9.net/images/libretto/

The Discovery Channel Weathertech STX7000 (a.k.a. the La Crosse Technology WS-8015) arrived today, much faster than I’d expected having used USPS Parcel Post. It’s actually much larger than I assumed it would be, and I’m impressed by the readability of the LCD at fairly long distances, even if lacking a built-in backlight. Setup was easy, and after calibrating the barometer and a couple of other settings, it was ready to go. Comparing early results to that of other local weather stations, the readings so far seem to correlate nicely and aren’t far off at all, if any.

Looks like the station arrived not a moment too soon, though, with Hurricane Dennis slowly trudging up through Alabama in the next couple of days. Inevitably, Atlanta will get its fair share of storms (rising in intensity daily) starting today and running through Monday or Tuesday.

I’m a sucker for the weather. Ever since I was a child, I’ve had a deep fascination with it. When The Weather Channel came about back in the 80s, I was glued to it for as long as my parents would allow (which, as an aside, also helped quite a bit when I was learning geography back in the day) and still it doesn’t take much to recall the old familiar jingles. So, it goes without saying that this guy’s site is weatherporn to me. Oh-so-beautiful weatherporn, indeed.

Since purchasing a decent weather station for my father-in-law on Father’s Day a few weeks ago, I’ve taken an renewed interest in obtaining a true-blue weather station—preferably a very scaled-down setup compared to the above guy, but full-featured enough for (at least) PC data transfers. XML feeds, data manipulation, and simply messing around for the sake of gadgetry… I guarantee it’ll be like Christmas whenever I finally find one within a sane price range (less than $200, preferably) that can spit out the raw data I need to get started.

Until then, I made a solid purchase of a lesser model—the Casio DQR-300 ($29.95 via eBay, MSRP $120.00) seen to the upper-left—though lacking many of the features of a Davis Vantage Pro, or even the mid- to upper-range models you’d see from La Crosse or Oregon Scientific. In short, it’s a beginner unit: atomic time, barometric pressure, 12/20-hour forecasting, indoor/outdoor temperature, and indoor/outdoor humidity measurement are the included features, sans any PC-link. This will suffice until I can drop the dough to get something more comprehensive.

Eventually, in reference to my NWS4Cast app, I’d like to combine the weather data (either NOAA, or that of a weather station in the future) with traffic feeds from Georgia Navigator into a customized version, which should paint a more accurate picture of the current state of affairs around our apartment. Right now I’m relying on NOAA’s XML feeds for my little NWS4Cast app, but given the propensity for KPDK to have differing conditions than my apartment, I’d certainly prefer using my own weather data.

Edit: I managed to find an even better deal on a more comprehensive model last night: a brand-new Discovery Channel Weathertech STX7000 (above, right) which features much more than the Casio, for 58% off the $199.95 retail price. Still no PC-link and it’s pretty much just a rebadged and price-hiked La Crosse, but it’s a great mid-range station to start out with and an ideal display to show everything at a glance. That said, I’ll probably throw the Casio up on eBay as soon as it gets here.