**** BEGIN LOGGING AT Mon Feb 06 02:59:58 2012
Feb 06 08:56:50 <Gear_> hey
Feb 06 08:58:08 <Gear_> I'm making a kite that will have my n900 attached and can drop stuff
Feb 06 08:58:25 <Gear_> so far I have gstreamer working for a wireless video feed to my netbook
Feb 06 08:59:02 <Gear_> I need to think of a way to control a usb device connected to the n900 in order to drop stuff
Feb 06 09:06:14 <SpeedEvil> Gear_: the easy way is to simply enable USB power
Feb 06 09:06:27 <SpeedEvil> and run it directly from the ~5V 200mA out.
Feb 06 09:06:58 <SpeedEvil> This could in principle run a _very_ small motor, or more sanely, switch another higehr power signal
Feb 06 09:07:30 <Gear_> what I need to figure out is how to switch things remotely using SSH
Feb 06 09:08:20 <Gear_> like realistically I only need to trigger one thing, the rest of the hardware can be built around that
Feb 06 09:09:26 <Gear_> I need to turn a switch on and off with my n900, the n900 will be connected via wifi to my netbook
Feb 06 09:09:40 <SpeedEvil> See above
Feb 06 09:09:48 <SpeedEvil> Turn on USB hostmode power
Feb 06 09:09:55 <SpeedEvil> this is your signal.
Feb 06 09:10:38 <DocScrutinizer> Gear_: ssh c booston
Feb 06 09:11:03 <DocScrutinizer> or rather, open ssh, then simply start booston
Feb 06 09:11:23 <Gear_> I'm waiting for my host cables to arrive in the mail so I can't try this yet
Feb 06 09:11:27 <SpeedEvil> Also - you can use the audio out
Feb 06 09:11:33 <SpeedEvil> simply beep
Feb 06 09:11:50 <SpeedEvil> Or a photodiode, and hte camera flash LED
Feb 06 09:12:10 <Gear_> shit, the beep is like the simplest and best idea yet
Feb 06 09:12:13 <DocScrutinizer> well, 200mA@5V seem more appropriate to drive a not so small servo
Feb 06 09:12:23 <SpeedEvil> Actually
Feb 06 09:12:42 <SpeedEvil> an opamp and a diode, should get you a servo-compatible signal from an audio output
Feb 06 09:13:12 <Gear_> I was gonna worry about the whole "dropping stuff" mechanism AFTER I found a way to at least remotely trigger some sort of signal
Feb 06 09:13:23 <DocScrutinizer> no way the simplest idea. The absulte simplest idea is to use the 5V from USB
Feb 06 09:13:30 <SpeedEvil> Well - yes.
Feb 06 09:13:54 <SpeedEvil> But with the audio option, you can control multiple servos, and actually fly it using the GPS and a couple of servos and the accellerometer.
Feb 06 09:14:07 <DocScrutinizer> indeed
Feb 06 09:14:16 <Gear_> it's connected to a kite
Feb 06 09:14:29 <DocScrutinizer> but that requires full RC equipment
Feb 06 09:15:05 <Gear_> I cant' control the kite much except reel it in or reel it out, and the video feed will show me what's beneath the kite
Feb 06 09:15:51 <SpeedEvil> You won't get more than a few tens of meters unles syou aim an appropriate dish at the n900 from your antenna
Feb 06 09:15:59 <SpeedEvil> from your router, even
Feb 06 09:16:34 <Gear_> 40m ? 50m?
Feb 06 09:16:53 <SpeedEvil> Possibly
Feb 06 09:16:54 <DocScrutinizer> should work line of sight
Feb 06 09:17:05 <SpeedEvil> ranges will gretly depend on if there is any interference.
Feb 06 09:17:14 <Gear_> it's line of sight because it's on a kite and I'm on the ground
Feb 06 09:17:18 <SpeedEvil> And relative orientations are fun
Feb 06 09:17:31 <Gear_> the n900 has to face camera towards ground
Feb 06 09:17:32 * SpeedEvil hangs out on #highaltitude
Feb 06 09:17:40 <SpeedEvil> We're launching balloons :)
Feb 06 09:18:13 <SpeedEvil> Yesterday, we flew one 100 miles over england, and overshot a little, the cutdown failed, it landed 300 yards offshore, and blew back on.
Feb 06 09:18:30 <DocScrutinizer> hehe
Feb 06 09:19:04 <DocScrutinizer> SpeedEvil: hope you're fine with the weather
Feb 06 09:19:24 <Gear_> I'd love to operate a blimp or something, but I am poor as hell and don't wanna see my n900 go floating away to never be seen again
Feb 06 09:19:40 <SpeedEvil> Not quite as epic a failure as the team that launched on the very western tip of the USA, meant to go 500 miles or so, but ended up in the Med.
Feb 06 09:19:44 <Gear_> I'm in australia
Feb 06 09:19:53 <SpeedEvil> Oh - a number of people down there doing it too.
Feb 06 09:19:56 <Gear_> it's summer right now
Feb 06 09:20:03 <Gear_> are they in melbourne?
Feb 06 09:21:59 <SpeedEvil> From memory, yes.
Feb 06 09:22:16 <Gear_> I should probably try to find them
Feb 06 09:22:18 <SpeedEvil> One launched from melbourne, and got just off the sea next ot sydney
Feb 06 09:22:21 <SpeedEvil> #highaltitude
Feb 06 09:22:52 <SpeedEvil> We have a nice predictor.
Feb 06 09:23:17 <SpeedEvil> That can predict accurately (fairly) the path of a released balloon, given certain thins like rise rate and burst altitude.
Feb 06 09:23:28 <Gear_> actually I shouldn't have really said what my project even was, I thought you'd all be anonymous poeple extremely far away
Feb 06 09:23:34 <SpeedEvil> http://habhub.org/predict/
Feb 06 09:24:00 <SpeedEvil> Mapping from kites is quite common - also see #openstreetmap over on irc.oftc.net
Feb 06 09:24:38 <SpeedEvil> :)
Feb 06 09:24:43 <Gear_> I've already worked out a script to stream video from the camera, to my netbook which is in AP mode
Feb 06 09:25:09 <SpeedEvil> You have built a polystyrene shell for the n900?
Feb 06 09:26:12 <Gear_> the kite I'm making is huge, hopefully it won't fall
Feb 06 09:26:32 <Gear_> 5 feet, parafoil style
Feb 06 09:26:35 <SpeedEvil> Ah
Feb 06 09:26:45 <SpeedEvil> I had a UAV design.
Feb 06 09:26:55 <SpeedEvil> The sensitive parts were shock-mounted on a PCB.
Feb 06 09:26:58 <Gear_> all I really have is a thick silicone case for the phone
Feb 06 09:27:13 <Gear_> a piece of crap that cost 2 dollars and probably won't protect it from anything
Feb 06 09:27:25 <SpeedEvil> Inside a carbon fibre egg. Inside a polypropylene foam shell. Inside an outer fibreglass shell.
Feb 06 09:27:46 <SpeedEvil> It was designed to take full power impacts onto concrete.
Feb 06 09:28:11 <Gear_> a polystyrene shell would probably blow in the wind and aim the camera in the wrong direction so I couldnt' see where the stuff lands when I drop it
Feb 06 09:28:18 <SpeedEvil> I'd strongly recommend you make a polysyrene block with the n900 in the middle, and just enough cut away to clear the lens
Feb 06 09:30:17 <Gear_> I might use some high density foam or something, if it's too big the n900 will be blown by the wind and won't be looking at the ground
Feb 06 09:31:06 <SpeedEvil> Do you have a frame?
Feb 06 09:31:11 <SpeedEvil> Or is it totally tensioned?
Feb 06 09:32:01 <Gear_> I haven't made the kite yet but I think it'll use the same setup as they use with kite aerial photogrpahy
Feb 06 09:33:06 <Gear_> it hangs from the line
Feb 06 09:33:56 <Gear_> another cool thing would actually BE kite aerial photography, so far the video feed I have going with gstreamer is at 320x240 and looks really fucking bad
Feb 06 09:35:10 <Gear_> it's over wifi, I connect the phone using the netbook as an AP and it's like a streaming web feed, I'm looking at it with VLC player
Feb 06 09:35:22 <Gear_> (I started learning linux about 4 weeks ago)
Feb 06 09:37:40 <Gear_> 320x240 was the best I could actually get to work :/
Feb 06 09:40:36 <SpeedEvil> :)
Feb 06 09:45:08 <Gear_> there's clearly room for serious improvement, but I also want to be able to say "I did this myself", instead of "I used something that a bunch of other people figured out and just connected my phone to the kite"
Feb 06 09:45:48 <SpeedEvil> Fair enough
Feb 06 09:47:17 <edheldil> Gear_:  sounds like a fun project :)
Feb 06 09:47:50 * SpeedEvil needs to get on with some fun stuff.
Feb 06 09:48:02 <Gear_> arg
Feb 06 09:50:56 <Gear_> so just powering a servo from USB is one way of doing it
Feb 06 09:53:30 <Gear_> when I turn on usb mode, it'll make the servo go... I assume in one direction? how could I control the servo more? or how could I use USB host mode as more of an on/off switch so I could just use a relay and then build the rest of it however I want
Feb 06 09:55:41 <SpeedEvil> It would just be on/off
Feb 06 09:55:51 <SpeedEvil> In principle, you could plug in a USB servo controller
Feb 06 09:55:56 <Gear_> so I turn usb host mode on, then turn it off again?
Feb 06 09:56:12 <Gear_> I dont' want to buy one of those
Feb 06 09:56:49 <SpeedEvil> yes, it's just a 5V switchable signal
Feb 06 09:58:05 <Gear_> I know next to nothing about linux but I assume that using ssh, I could just run a script that turned on usb host mode for like one second then turned it off again?
Feb 06 09:58:27 <Gear_> or 500ms or something
Feb 06 10:00:55 <Gear_> I was waiting for some crappy usb host adapters to arrive so I could plug a normal usb plug into those and go from there, but now I should probably just cut up any old cable and use the signal directly from that
Feb 06 10:02:30 <Gear_> how woudl I turn hostmode on for about 500ms then off again?
Feb 06 10:44:02 <Gear_> did anyone answer the question I had, I'm using some webchat thing and it disconnected
Feb 06 10:52:50 <andre__> nope
Feb 06 11:06:19 <dhbiker> hi there
Feb 06 11:06:46 <dhbiker> i'll ask again... is there any problem with updating ALSA on N900 ?
Feb 06 13:11:14 <SpeedEvil> http://www.theonion.com/video/braindead-teen-only-capable-of-rolling-eyes-and-te,27225/ - on facebook
Feb 06 13:25:11 <Macer> heh
Feb 06 13:28:27 <Gear_> hey how can you put a timer in a script
Feb 06 13:28:58 <Gear_> like start a program, wait x seconds then stop it
Feb 06 13:30:09 <e0x> bash script ?
Feb 06 13:30:35 <Gear_> yeah I think so
Feb 06 13:30:41 <Gear_> like x terminal
Feb 06 13:30:44 <e0x> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1226094/how-to-include-a-timer-in-bash-scripting
Feb 06 13:30:53 <Gear_> I started learning linux a few weeks ago
Feb 06 13:34:50 <Gear_> I think that's a bit beyond what I know so far, I just want to start usb host mode, wait a second at MOST then stop it
Feb 06 13:35:38 <Gear_> someone is asking how to make a script that checks for an internet connection every hour
Feb 06 13:36:05 <Gear_> what do I take from that to "run program, wait 500ms then stop that program"
Feb 06 13:36:38 <Gear_> or even 1 second if it really has to be
Feb 06 13:39:46 <e0x> you can take the same concept and apply to you scenario
Feb 06 13:40:37 <e0x> Gear_: anyway you can use
Feb 06 13:40:41 <e0x> the command sleep
Feb 06 13:41:19 <e0x> example : sleep 10 | cd / ; will wait for 10 seconds and do cd to /
Feb 06 13:42:25 <Gear_> so "whatever | sleep 1 | whatever else"
Feb 06 13:42:40 <Gear_> will do whatever, wait one second, then do whatever else
Feb 06 16:56:35 <penguinbait> http://cooklikeyourgrandmother.com/2010/08/bacon-turtle-power/
Feb 06 16:56:46 <penguinbait> miss you lcuk :(
Feb 06 17:11:45 <trumee> does anybody know why 'umount' is not need in PCSuite on windows?
Feb 06 17:12:43 <trumee> ofcourse while accessing the drive via PCSuite mode rather than mass storage.
Feb 06 17:14:06 <Sicelo> ask yourself why umount is needed in the first place .. buffers.. prolly pcsuite doesn't wait.. just immediately performs the data transfer needed
Feb 06 17:14:54 <trumee> Sicelo, could be an explanation
Feb 06 17:14:59 <Sicelo> just my guess though
Feb 06 17:15:02 <Sicelo> :)
Feb 06 17:15:06 <trumee> ~ping
Feb 06 17:15:07 <infobot> ~pong
Feb 06 17:16:05 <trumee> Sicelo, windows doesnt even show up an option to safely umount.
Feb 06 17:16:05 * Sicelo hasn't used pc suite since 2010
Feb 06 17:16:07 <trumee> makes me scared.
Feb 06 17:17:10 <Sicelo> lol, there's Safely Remove Hardware  on the taskbar next to clock (of course, not pcsuite) :P
Feb 06 17:18:49 <trumee> Sicelo, never noticed that. will check it next time.
Feb 06 17:19:55 <Sicelo> come to think of it .. say u are accessing your N900 file system  via ssh .. there's no mechanism to 'safely unmount' if connection breaks suddenly.. not sure if that could damage anything though
Feb 06 17:20:45 <Sicelo> trumee: that's for Mas Storage mode only though..
Feb 06 17:21:20 <trumee> Sicelo, ok doesn't matter then
Feb 06 19:24:15 <DocScrutinizer> e0x: sorry, | pipe char isn't used with sleep
Feb 06 19:24:29 <DocScrutinizer> as sleep doesn't read from stdin
Feb 06 19:28:10 <e0x> oh
Feb 06 19:28:53 <e0x> sleep 10 && something ?
Feb 06 19:29:03 <DocScrutinizer> more like it
Feb 06 19:29:49 <DocScrutinizer> but that's an "if a then b", you'll not want to check if sleep was ok, so why not simply whatever; sleep 5; whatelse;
Feb 06 19:30:02 <e0x> ok
Feb 06 19:30:51 <DocScrutinizer> mkdir foo && echo bla >foo/bar
Feb 06 19:31:14 <DocScrutinizer> ls | wc
Feb 06 19:31:46 <DocScrutinizer> mkdir foo || echo "mkdir failed!"
Feb 06 19:33:14 <DocScrutinizer> which is a short form of `if ! mkdir foo; then echo "mkdir failed!" `
Feb 06 19:33:21 <DocScrutinizer> which is a short form of `if ! mkdir foo; then echo "mkdir failed!; fi" `
Feb 06 19:33:53 <DocScrutinizer> scratch first one
Feb 06 19:34:44 <DocScrutinizer> if mkdir foo; then echo bla > foo/bar; fi
Feb 06 19:36:38 <DocScrutinizer> which again could get more verbose: ` mkdir foo: if [ 0 -eq $? ]; then echo bla > foo/bar; fi
Feb 06 19:37:13 <DocScrutinizer> s/:/;/
Feb 06 19:37:38 <DocScrutinizer> s/ foo: / foo; /
Feb 06 19:37:51 <DocScrutinizer> ~status
Feb 06 19:37:51 <infobot> Since Fri Feb  3 08:40:52 2012, there have been 13 modifications, 144 questions, 0 dunnos, 0 morons and 74 commands.  I have been awake for 3d 10h 56m 59s this session, and currently reference 118373 factoids.  I'm using about 22460 kB of memory. With 0 active forks. Process time user/system 28238.36/1245.81 child 0/0
Feb 06 19:38:27 <DocScrutinizer> ok, scratch that again
Feb 06 19:38:36 <DocScrutinizer> which again could get more verbose: ` mkdir foo; if [ 0 -eq $? ]; then echo bla > foo/bar; fi
Feb 06 19:58:48 <vi__> HELLO
Feb 06 20:01:37 <vi__> ruskie: !!!
Feb 06 20:01:47 <vi__> ruskie: you are a smart linuxy chap.
Feb 06 20:01:57 <vi__> riddle me this...
Feb 06 20:03:11 <vi__> hello?
Feb 06 20:03:16 <ruskie> still waiting
Feb 06 20:03:17 <ruskie> heh
Feb 06 20:03:21 <vi__> !!
Feb 06 20:03:46 <vi__> assuming I have 2 headsets connected to 2 audio devices on the same computer...
Feb 06 20:03:59 <vi__> can I make them talk to each other like an intercom?
Feb 06 20:04:09 <vi__> full duplex
Feb 06 20:06:53 <vi__> is that a thing I would have to do with pulse audio?
Feb 06 20:07:00 <vi__> where else can I ask?
Feb 06 20:11:24 <DocScrutinizer> meh, use alsa
Feb 06 20:12:20 <vi__> alsa, pulseaudio...im easy
Feb 06 20:12:36 <vi__> can I pair 2 bluetooth devices to my n900 at a time?
Feb 06 20:12:44 <vi__> I.e. 2 headsets.
Feb 06 20:13:00 <DocScrutinizer> simple form: (arecord -D hs1|aplay -D hs2 )&; (arecord -D hs2|aplay -D hs1 )&; 
Feb 06 20:13:19 <DocScrutinizer> no, not to same BT transceiver/dongle
Feb 06 20:13:42 <vi__> gst-launch pulsesrc ! pulsesink
Feb 06 20:13:54 <DocScrutinizer> (alsa) you may want to learn about alsaloop
Feb 06 20:13:57 <vi__> mmm
Feb 06 20:14:23 <vi__> perhaps I could use the wired headset for one person, a bluetooth headset for the other?
Feb 06 20:17:53 <vi__> DocScrutinizer: What about a BT dongle on USB hostmode. 2 Headsets attached.
Feb 06 20:18:07 <vi__> Do they just present themselves as mics+speakers to the OS?
Feb 06 20:18:34 <DocScrutinizer> well, I guess as bt headset
Feb 06 21:23:00 <badcloud> is there a way to get hardware alt-key to work in bash?
Feb 06 21:24:30 <mgedmin> hardware alt key?
Feb 06 21:24:50 <badcloud> aka blue-arrow key
Feb 06 21:24:55 <mgedmin> it's not alt, it's fn
Feb 06 21:25:01 <badcloud> oh, right
Feb 06 21:25:04 <mgedmin> mapped to ISO_Level3_Shift, IIRC
Feb 06 21:25:31 <mgedmin> generally to get alt+letter in bash you press Esc then the letter
Feb 06 21:25:41 <mgedmin> esc is on the toolbar, IIRC
Feb 06 21:26:01 <badcloud> mgedmin: nice, thanks
Feb 06 22:00:03 <DocScrutinizer> mgedmin: I'd be interested in how to get e.g. alt on toolbar
Feb 06 22:00:43 <DocScrutinizer> seem you can put any arbitrary key there, except qualifier keys other than ctrl
Feb 06 22:01:21 <mgedmin> on a n9? no clue
Feb 06 22:01:25 <DocScrutinizer> which is especially silly as ctrl is available on hw kbd
Feb 06 22:01:35 <DocScrutinizer> on N900/N810
Feb 06 22:01:44 <mgedmin> sorry, I meant n900
Feb 06 22:02:02 <mgedmin> on the n9 it's possible, I believe -- maliit is more advanced than the old osso-xterm toolbar
Feb 06 22:41:22 <trumee> _freemangordon, ping
**** ENDING LOGGING AT Tue Feb 07 02:59:58 2012