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Awesome Music Technology

Floppy drive music

I knew this could be done! … Game of Thrones’ main theme played by 6 floppy drives. Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYQWLlBz8hE&feature=youtu.be&t=7m27s

Categories
Awesome Programming Technology Web development

Peer to peer in JavaScript

I just came across PeerJS – Peer-to-peer JavaScript library. Great to see this kind of API available, hope  we will soon see some real-world applications.

Categories
Awesome Programming Technology

Project idea – Fixing the ISS

There is an interesting project for your next free weekend – fixing the ISS by inventing a solar panel positioning algorithm. Sounds fun!

http://hackaday.com/2013/01/19/write-code-fix-the-space-station-win-10000/

For more information: http://www.topcoder.com/iss/

Categories
Open source PicoPosts Programming Technology

Inferno vs. Java

An interesting read back from the year 1996 about Inferno vs. Java – http://doc.cat-v.org/inferno/historical_documents/website/infernojava

Infernos with its programming language (Limbo) seemed like such an awesome project. Why did it not take off and why do we use Java instead? I guess some concepts just come too soon, before it is their time to shine…

Categories
Raspberry Pi Technology

Plan 9 on Raspberry Pi – done

Finally got it working. All it needed was a 2+ GB SD card and not only 1 GB, which resulted in a restart-loop with error messages not far from “Something is broken! Panic!”.
Next on my agenda – hook up all of my 5 RPis and form a “supercomputer”!

Source: http://bendyworks.com/geekville/lab_projects/2012/11/getting-plan-9-running-on-the-raspberry-pi

Also interesting: http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sources/contrib/miller/

To get you started: http://www.quanstro.net/newbie-guide.pdf

And by the way – the user experience is ground-breaking and paradigm-shifting. The scrolling wheel works in an opposite direction! (+ some other mind blowing things)

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PicoPosts Raspberry Pi Technology Uncategorized

Raspberry Pi case

It is finally here! My new Raspberry Pi case.

You can buy it here – http://www.emko.cz/katalog/it-skrine/mini-itx-skrine/em-raspberry-little-case-b

Categories
Linux Open source PicoPosts Raspberry Pi Technology Uncategorized

Distributed Pi

Plan 9 – distributed operating system, now ported to Raspberry Pi.

http://bendyworks.com/geekville/lab_projects/2012/11/getting-plan-9-running-on-the-raspberry-pi

…newly on my ToDo list.

Categories
Linux Open source Raspberry Pi Technology

Raspberry Pi – sound HOW-TO

Here are a few pointers on how to make the sound work on Raspberry Pi. I’ve gathered these bits and pieces along the way of using this tiny computer.

First of all – Arch Linux for ARM (i.e. alarm) is the best distro I’ve used on RasPi so far. Lightweight, starts in just a few seconds, has a lots of packages and you can install it just the way you want. And this is also the distro for which I am writing this short How-To.

How to add the sound module

To make the system see the integrated sound card you need to load the appropriate kernel module. Like so:

sudo modprobe snd_bcm2835

To check whether it is loaded, just check the output of lsmod. The command written above has to be executed every time the system starts. To make it “stick”, add the module to the list of automatically loaded modules. That is create a new file  /etc/modules-load.d/sound.conf containing just a single line:

snd-bcm2835

That’s it. The sound module should now load every time you start your RasPi.

How to install Alsa

Most of the programs will be able to output sound using Alsa. To install it, issue this command:

sudo pacman -S alsa-utils alsa-plugins alsa-lib alsa-firmware

Now you can run speaker-test and it should produce a nice white noise on your speakers.

How to enable analog sound

If you want to select which sound output should be used (HDMI or analog 3.5mm jack), the command to use for Alsa and analog output is:

sudo amixer cset numid=3 1

Or substitute the last “1” for “2” if you want HDMI.

How to make VLC or mplayer work with Alsa

If you are getting messages like this:

alsa audio output error: cannot commit hardware parameters: Invalid argument
jack audio output error: failed to connect to JACK server
main audio output error: no suitable audio output module

All you have to do is fix the sound card configuration via creating a simple *.conf file: /etc/asound.conf with the following content:

pcm.!default {
   type hw
   card 0
}
ctl.!default {
   type hw
   card 0
}

For more info, take a look at this: http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting#Sound

Categories
PicoPosts Technology

Raspberry Pi @ home

Finally! Raspberry Pi with 512 MB of RAM is here, in my hands! Let the fun begin…

Categories
PicoPosts Programming Technology

Java on a microcontroller

Finally a way to write code for those “simple” microcontrollers – in Java!

http://hackaday.com/2012/10/15/%CE%BCj-a-java-virtual-machine-for-microcontrollers/