potatoeskillme

TI-86 Intervalometer for Canon XTi

admin — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 07:33:43 +0000

I just came across this instructable yesterday and forgot all about that TI-86 in my backpack buried somewhere in the closet. So I dug it out, found the 2.5mm cable and gave it a whirl using my Canon 400D. It didn’t work at first, but after a bit of googling all I had to do was splice the cable (red and white on the calculator side to red on the camera side then reconnect ground) and make sure the camera was in manual focus. It worked!

Here’s the first test run:

I was inspired by this, but somewhat unhappy with the lack of options using the code supplied in the instructable. It’s been almost a decade since the last time I programmed something in TI-BASIC, but alas, I wanted more options. So I hacked away and ended up making 3 basic modes for the intervalometer:

Shoot: Fires the shutter at will by pushing the F1 button
XLoop: Input a number and interval and it will shoot that number of times at the given interval
Lapse: For extra long time lapses, loops infinitely and exposes at the supplied interval

The loop and lapse modes also display the number of shots. Code for the program is below:

^?View Code TI-BASIC

:Lbl Z
:ClLCD
:Disp "XTiControl V 0.5","","Approx Intervals:","800 = 5sec","2000 = 10sec"
:Menu(1,"Shoot",R,2,"XLoop",L,3,"Lapse",A,5,"Quit",Q
:End
:
:Lbl Q
:ClLCD
:Stop
:
:Lbl R
:ClLCD
:Disp "Ready to fire"
:Menu(1,"Fire",F,5,"Quit",Z
:End
:
:Lbl F
:1->E
:ClLCD
:Disp "Shooting..."
:Send(E)
:Goto R
:End
:
:Lbl L
:ClLCD
:Input "How many shots? ",N
:Input "Interval: ",I
:ClLCD
:For(B,1,N
:ClLCD
:Disp "Shooting: "+B	
:For(T,1,I
:End
:Send(B)
:End
:Goto Z
:
:Lbl A
:ClLCD
:Input "Interval: ",V
:1->X:While X>0
:ClLCD
:Disp "Shooting: ",X
:Disp "","","","","Press ON to quit"
:For(H,1,V
:End
:Send(V)
:X+1->X
:End

Bad interpreter error – linux shell script

admin — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 20:27:18 +0000

I recently encountered this error after modifying a shell script in Windows then FTPing it to a linux server. When executing the script in SSH, I got the following error:

: bad interpreter: No such file or directory

Apparently there are issues with carriage returns and line feeds CR/LF between windows and linux. A simple perl command fixed the issue.

^?View Code BASH

perl -i -pe's/\r$//;' <filename>

MintTv

admin — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 07:03:02 +0000

A modified script (based on the earlier one for feisty) to sync audio with TvTime in Ubuntu 8.10 — I’m actually testing this on Linux Mint 6 which is based on 8.10. So for those of you out there with SAA7134 tuner chipsets, look closely at the sox line below. I’m using alsa rather than ossdsp this time, and once I got it working the volume was very faint so I also added the -v flag to adjust the volume of the input. BE CAREFUL with the -v flag… the number value is a FACTOR, not the actual volume level! 8 bumps up the volume quite a bit.

^?View Code BASH

#!/bin/sh
tvtime &
t=`pidof tvtime`
sleep 5
sox -c 2 -v 8 -r 32000 -w -t alsa hw:1,0 -t alsa hw:0,0 &
wait $t
killall -9 sox
exit 0

PHP cURL

admin — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 18:45:12 +0000

A useful PHP snippit – cURL is a multi-protocol server communication library. The code below grabs the data of a url and stores each line in an array.

^?View Code PHP

$url = "http://google.com";
$ch = curl_init();
$timeout = 60; // set to zero for no timeout
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, $timeout);
$rawdata= explode("\n", curl_exec($ch));
curl_close($ch);
unset($ch);

Export MySQL Data to CSV File

admin — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:49:36 +0000

Just an example of using INTO OUTFILE for dumping sql data directly to a CSV file including column labels as the first row. Because I tend to forget these things over time, I’m posting this for future reference.

^?View Code SQL

SELECT 'Firstname', 'Lastname', 'Email', 'Company', 'Title',
'Address1', 'Address2', 'City', 'State', 'Zip', 'Phone1'
UNION
SELECT users.firstname, users.lastname, users.email, users.company, users.title,
users.address1, users.address2, users.city, users.state, users.zip, users.phone1
INTO OUTFILE '/tmp/dump_users.csv'
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' ENCLOSED BY '"' ESCAPED BY ''
LINES TERMINATED BY '\r\n'
FROM users;

MyTV

admin — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 08:44:37 +0000

Below is a shell script I wrote to watch tvtime with synchronized audio on SAA7133 / SAA7134 chipsets and linux distros that don’t take care of it automatically. As of this writing, I’m still using Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty awaiting the Intrepid release in a matter of days; unfortunately, feisty had not included support for tv hardware so syncing audio with a little help from sox was necessary.

^?View Code BASH

#!/bin/sh
tvtime &;
t=`pidof tvtime`;
sleep 5;
sox -c 2 -r 32000 -t ossdsp /dev/dsp1 -c 2 -r 32000 -t ossdsp /dev/dsp &;
wait $t
killall -9 sox;
exit 0;

Vintage Computer Pictorial

admin — Mon, 19 May 2008 18:41:08 +0000

* Photo Credits to: Computer History Museum and Wikipedia: IBM 360

1939 - Atanosoff Berry Computer - ABC

1941 - Konrad Zuse's Z3

1943 - Whirlwind at MIT

1944 - Colossus Mark II

1944 - Harvard Mark I

1946 - Argonne Version of the Institute's Digital Automatic Computer - AVIDAC

1946 - Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer - ENIAC

1948 - IBM Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator - SSEC

1951 - Leo I

1951 - UNIVAC I

1951 - Whirlwind at MIT Complete

1952 - Grace Hopper with UNIVAC I

1956 - ElectroData 1

1956 - RAMAC (first moving-head magnetic hard disk)

1964 - IBM 360

1964 - IBM 360 Controller

1965 - UNIVAC

webclip.us

admin — Mon, 19 May 2008 18:28:50 +0000

VIEW PROJECT

This site allows visitors to create custom webclips for their iPhone and iPod touch home screen. Webclips are icons that appear on the home screen of the iPhone or iPod touch and link to websites. By default, if a site doesn’t specify an image to use as the icon, a screenshot of the site is used which usually doesn’t look good at all. webclip.us allows users to upload their own icons to use for linking to any website or url.

Swellcast

admin — Mon, 19 May 2008 18:25:23 +0000

VIEW PROJECT

Swellcast was a fun and challenging personal project. The purpose of the site is to monitor oceanic swells and data for predicting the best time to go out and surf. The global and regional maps are generated by the most advanced prediction models available to the US Navy; the regional charts graph real-time data collected directly from anchored buoys off the coast. There are only a few other websites that offer similar services, but are often bloated with ads and cluttered with needless information. The goal of many web sites is to keep the visitor occupied for as long as possible; Swellcast is just the opposite — if the waves are good, get out and surf!

Technologies used: PHP, MySQL, XML, RSS, Javascript

Delocator.net

admin — Mon, 19 May 2008 18:20:44 +0000

“‘Delocate’ is a semantic play on the online store locator function which appears on many retail chain web sites. Instead of using the online store locator (for instance on the Starbucks web site), use the Delocator to find independent businesses.” – Hanson, Delocator.net

Xtine Hanson ( http://missconceptions.net ) introduced this concept in early 2005 to support independent cafes around the country. Since then, the site has expanded to include movie theatres and bookstores. A mobile version of the site is accessible by internet-enabled cell phones, and a deviation of the concept has lead to a google maps version in which users can also add and retrieve locations via SMS or text messaging.

LAUNCH DELOCATOR

Technologies used: PHP, MySQL, IMAP, Javascript, Mobile XHTML / CSS