DIY is the way

WPA-WPS cracked!

2011-12-31T03:22:00.000-08:00

Yep... you heard the news.. WiFi networks with WPA2 and WPS enabled can be cracked...

I read the PDF/paper and tried the tool released a few days ago.. AND IT WORKED.

At about 7 seconds per attempt, my Devolo router was cracked open in 9.7 hours...

So, beware... long passphrases do not work anymore. You have to DISABLE WPS until it's fixed by a firmware upgrade! Plain WPA2 is still pretty secure with a big & hard-to-guess key.

Monitor temperatures in linux

2011-11-09T04:22:00.000-08:00

I usually don't want to know the temperature of my CPU etc, so I don't want an indicator applet.

But once a month (when I do video editing or calculate how much fuel my rocket will need to reach Mars) I would like to be able to see vital system temperatures.

The following simple command will do just that, provided that you have package "lm-sensors" installed:

watch "sensors | grep °C | grep -v '+0.0°C' "

Reading the command from left to right:

first we start "watch", which issues a command over and over again every two seconds
the command to run is "sensors"
we filter the command's output so that only temperatures are displayed (celcius for me ;) )
we filter out sensors that just show 0.0 degrees (grep -v option)

and it looks like this:

Neat, huh?

The thing is one of my sensors was appearing twice, so I had to add a final part to the command, just to take out one line:

"sensors | grep °C | grep -v '+0.0°C' | grep -v '(crit = +100.0°C)'"

Easy screencasting in Ubuntu 11.10

2011-11-03T04:30:00.000-07:00

I will use the tool called recordMyDesktop. Install it along with volume controller app:

#sudo apt-get install recordmydesktop gtk-recordmydesktop pavucontrol

Now run recordMyDesktop and start recording.

Also run pavucontrol, go to Recording tab, click the button and choose "Monitor of ..." (as shown above).

You can switch it back to "Internal Audio Analog Stereo" or whatever it was to record your microphone's input during recording..

Easy!

Dual USB cable

2011-10-03T13:27:00.001-07:00

Quickie DIY: USB cable to connect two devices: Micro-USB and/or Mini-USB. Compact to carry with me, yet compatible with most cell phones and other small devices!

Simple as hell, just cut a USB-mini-USB and a USB-micro-USB cable and connect the 4 little wires in each one of them with the corresponding wires from the others.

Offcourse both end connectors should not be used at the same time if the main device (USB plug) is providing more than power...

P.S.: Yep, new blog design!

Ubuntu 11.04 is simply a failure...

2011-06-13T12:08:00.000-07:00

Why is Ubuntu 11.04 so buggy? I am experiencing various severe bugs daily!

The following sample log is disappointing:

After a few days I just stopped logging.. I hope they get fixed soon... or I'll be looking for a new OS (maybe Ubuntu 10.10?).

E4rat on SSDs: Useless?

2011-04-09T03:01:00.000-07:00

After reading Lifehacker's post on e4rat (an app that's supposed to "seriously cut down on Linux Boot time" according to Lifehacker) I have a few notes to make:

1. It INCREASED my boot-time by 2-5 seconds! Yes, instead of decreasing it, it increased it.

The most probable reason is that I'm testing it on an SSD. Also, although some programs' startup times have decreased (OpenOffice.org), it did not affect Firefox/Chrome/Pidgin, so my overall "startup+start programs" time is actually longer than before!

Disabling e4rat (by removing the option at grub, undoing step3 in Lifehacker's guide) fortunately brings back original startup times, while OpenOffice.org still loads pretty fast.

2. there is no 64-bit deb available officially. Here's one I compiled. It works..

3. You should not edit /boot/grub/grub.cfg as the article proposes (It says so in the beginning of grub.cfg, Da!). Instead change /etc/default/grub and then do # update-grub.

Conclusions:

E4rat: nice concept, but probably useless for SSD users
Lifehacker almost deceived us by stating that it "Cuts Down on Linux Boot Time"
E4rat developer's claim "Improving Startup Times" is valid but does not guarantee System Startup Times Improvement!

Toggle start/stop chat programs!

2011-03-28T10:56:00.000-07:00

While trying to increase my productivity and intensify my focus, I figured I need to disconnect completely when trying to work (write, program, even plan big projects).

One of the things I do is close all chat programs, so that I'm anavailable to chat. I mainly use two programs: skype and empathy. The latter includes my Gtalk, SIP, MSN, Facebook accounts...

Anyway, I wrote a little script to start/stop these programs easily. Then I mapped it to a keyboard shortcut.

If the programs are running, they're quit. If not, they're started. So it's pretty much a toggle switch for chat!

Here's the script:

#!/bin/bash
skyperunning=$(echo `ps -e |grep skype | awk '{print $1}'` )
empathyrunning=$(echo `ps -e |grep empathy | awk '{print $1}'` )

if [[ $skyperunning == "" && $empathyrunning == "" ]]; then
echo "Chats not running. Starting them..."
skype &
empathy &
else
echo "Some or all chats running. Quitting them all..."
if [[ $skyperunning != "" ]]; then
kill $skyperunning
fi
if [[ $empathyrunning != "" ]]; then
kill $empathyrunning
fi
fi

I guess it can work with pretty much any program on Linux

Future features: close/open Gmail and Calendar browser tabs, send command to silence Android phone...

Android app: Ski Record

2011-02-25T10:16:00.000-08:00

Although it's not a DIY mod, I'd like to post a little ad for my Android application "Ski Record" which allows a skier, snowboarder etc to record and listen to their speed while skiing.

More info & download here or just use the QR...

Swashplate leveler fix

2010-11-25T03:52:00.000-08:00

I've been building my new CopterX 450 Pro R/C helicopter, and needed to do some mod to a swashplate leveler I bought. Its "feet" were too short:

Here's my fix:

Some pics of the heli (cablework not final):

Talks that will change your life - #1

2010-05-30T21:08:00.000-07:00

I watched this one live, in Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) during my visit in Stanford University. Chris Messina is the "inventor" of hashtags in twitter ("#") and a board member of the OpenID Foundation. He currently works at Google and seems pretty concerned with privacy.

He talks about how users of various "simple" internet enabled devices are experiencing a simplified version of the web, and how this simplicity and lack of control can harm the new generation of coders. He then connects the trend above with the social web and problems emerge...

If you have one hour watch the full video. If you only want the bare minimum watch from 26:51 to 38:45:

http://www.parc.com/event/1121/future-of-the-social-web.html

Linux: Restoring Grub v2

2010-03-16T14:28:00.000-07:00

I needed to restore Grub on a friend's pc, but couldn't get it done using my previous guide... So I found the official grub2 steps, proposed in Ubuntu's wiki and I'm copying them here, more like a follow-up than an original post:

First, grab a copy of the latest Ubuntu LiveCD and boot it.
Open a terminal and type

$ sudo fdisk -l

Now, you need to remember which device listed is your linux distribution, for reference, /dev/sda1 will be used. Now we need to mount the filesystem to /mnt

$ sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt

If you have /boot on a separate partition, that need's to be mounted aswell. For reference, /dev/sda2 will be used.

$ sudo mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/boot Make sure you don't mix these up, pay attention to the output of FDISK

Now mount the rest of your devices

$ sudo mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev

Now chroot into your system

$ sudo chroot /mnt

You should be chroot'd into your system as root, you can now run commands as root, without the need for sudo.

Now you ΜΑΥ need to edit the /etc/default/grub file to fit your system

$ nano /etc/default/grub

When that is done you need to run update-grub to create the configuration file.

$ update-grub

To install GRUB 2 to the MBR, next you need to run grub-install /dev/sda

$ grub-install /dev/sda

If you encounter any errors, try grub-install --recheck /dev/sda

$ grub-install --recheck /dev/sda

Press Ctrl+D to exit out of the chroot.
Once you exit back to your regular console, undo all the mounting, first the /dev

$ sudo umount /mnt/dev

Now you can unmount the root system. (But if you have a separate boot partition which you mounted earlier, you have to unmount this first, or you will get a "device busy" error message.)

$ sudo umount /mnt

And you should be free to restart your system right into GRUB 2 and then into your system installation.

If you had alternate OS entries, update-grub might say "Cannot find list of partitions!". Ignore it and continue - once you can boot into your linux installation, do so and then rerunupdate-grub and grub-install /dev/sda as root.

The more SSDs the better!

2010-03-15T14:27:00.000-07:00

I finally got to buy an SSD for my desktop, and I'm now trying to optimize it under Ubuntu 9.10 (next to Windows 7).

The most important part (due to the fact that it cannot be easily changed after installation) is alignment. I will not explain this in depth, let's just say you need to let the OS know how big the drive's chunks (sectors) are.

Using the instructions from the OCZ forum, info from the Ubuntu forums and some experience I had, I followed these steps:

install windows 7 normally (it needed to create an additional 100mb partition in the beginning of the drive :( )
boot ubuntu live cd, use fdisk (in a terminal) with the special options: "$ sudo fdisk -H 32 -S 32 /dev/sda" (if sda is the SSD. Change accordingly if not)
create a partition using the "n" option, leaving a few GB of space in the end for swap (usually equal to your ram). Note that if the windows partition does not end exactly on a cylinder (fdisk will complain about that) you should leave one or two "units" after it.
create the swap partition using the same option
"$ sudo fdisk -lu /dev/sda" and divide every partition's start with 512. If the result is integer you're fine! My windows partitions seemed aligned, too!
Install Ubuntu using the default installation wizard, but without changing the partition table!

Next, we got some boot options that need to be changed. Based on estimations many review-site people did, and modern SSDs' TRIM capabilities, and my high hopes for this technology, I don't consider wear to be a problem, so I don't disable hibernation, logging, I don't use ramdisk etc.

What I did was what I got from here:

1. enable noatime in grub (kernel booting option) ($ sudo gedit /etc/fstab and change the the option “relatime” to “noatime” (or change "errors=remount-ro" to "noatime,errors=remount-ro")

2. use the noop scheduler

Now, the way to do this changed in Grub2, so here it is:

$ sudo gedit /etc/default/grub
find the line `GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"` and add `elevator=noop` inside the double quotes (without my single quotes, and along with a space, so that it becomes: `GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash elevator=noop"`)
$ sudo update-grub

Lastly, I installed the diskTRIM tool, which monitors disk writes and TRIMs the SSD accordingly.

Turned out to be not as easy as it sounds:

$ sudo apt-get install gawk
download disktrim
download the latest wiper.sh and hdparm from here and place wiper.sh in the directory shown by /etc/disktrim/wiper-location (if you have an intel SSD look for the patched wiper.sh (aka wiper-intel.sh)
untar the hdparm tools, open terminal, cd to the directory, type "make" then "sudo make install"
open disktrim, set up a new drive, and try manual trim. if it seems ok, use the commit option to do it for real... be sure to backup first!

Thinklight equivalent

2010-02-11T16:32:00.000-08:00

So, over the years I've been staring at the Thinkpad's thinklights and wondering why my Lenovo 3000 V100 doesn't have one.

While waiting for the x200s (Thinkpad that is) to get cheaper and within my price range, I added some of the missing functionality to my laptop.

After opening up the bezel, I'm looking at the webcam's usb connector and trying to solder a wire to it... No success. I can't get power from here.

The LCD's inverter is my next victim. I locate a 3.3V high connector and solder a wire to it:

Ok, now pick up a switch:

and solder it to a resistor (after calculating the correct value offcourse!):

Apply some isolation measures, route the cables and solder the power (+3.3V) to the resistor and switch:

Now, the switch's interface. I first made a big hole so that the blue part of the switch would be accessible, but that turned out to be stupid.

Adding a hot peace of metal did the job for the switch. I also set the led so that it glows towards the keyboard.

The led's ground is -almost- soldered to one of the boltholes which is grounded.

And voila, all these black pieces of tape are my achievement...

Finished product (almost; missing black tape over led):

This is after some black tape has been applied, so that light only goes towards keyboards and not the user's eyes.

And during the night:

Led & switch detail:

Linux: Restoring Grub

2009-05-01T19:27:00.000-07:00

EDIT: Read my most recent post here if you have Grub2

I bought an SSD disk for my laptop, and copied all of my files over from the old HDD. I just used the cp command, along with some options to copy the whole partition. I made some changes in Grub's menu and fstab, reinstalled Grub and Voila! My old configuration booted right away from the SSD! Boot time cut in half..

(guide for to-SSD transfer and tweaks will be posted later on..)

This is a guide/walkthrough I made by copying and pasting instructions intended to help you restore GRUB bootloader in case it became corrupted/deleted.

First try the easy method:
In terminal type:
sudo grub
then
find /boot/grub/stage1

According to the output, type:
root (hd0,0)
then:
setup (hd0)
or maybe (hd0,0)

If that failed, do this:
(source)

sudo grub-install --root-directory=/media/disk/ /dev/sda

(if the file system to-repair is mounted on "disk", and the disk to boot is "sda")

If it fails too (grub can't find stage1 or hd0), try:
(source)

You have to mount your root partition using the livecd:

Code:

sudo mkdir /mnt/root

Code:

sudo mount -t ext3 /dev/sda6 /mnt/root

Then you have to mount the proc subsystem and udev inside /mnt/root also:

Code:

sudo mount -t proc none /mnt/root/proc

Code:

sudo mount -o bind /dev /mnt/root/dev

Doing this allows grub to discover your drives. Next you have to chroot:

Code:

sudo chroot /mnt/root /bin/bash

Now that you're chrooted into your drive as root everything should work.

Code:

sudo grub

Code:

grub> find /boot/grub/stage1

It found mine on (hd0,0). Your configuration may vary. Alter the following command according to your system!

Code:

grub> root (hd0,0)

It successfully scanned the partition and recognized the filesystem-type

Code:

grub> setup (hd0)

That was it. It installed and on reboot I was thrown back into Ubuntu.

Finally, if the previous didn't work, either, try installing Ubuntu in a new partition (as small as possible, 4GB) Hopefully the newly installed GRUB will work and recognize the old installation.
If you want to keep this config you might be able to do so by deleting all files in the secondary installation, except the /boot directory. Then shrink the partition to minimum and edit /boot/grub/menu.lst to only list valid kernels. I haven't tried this but it might work as a last resort solution.

2009-04-26T04:00:00.000-07:00

Ok, here are some mini DIYs I did over the past months, in order to provide solutions to common everyday problems.

1. Extended life for an MP3 player:
Needed the Creative MuVo (256mb) to be able to record the full 2 hour broadcast of mine (there's actually three of use, doing a radio show in Greek: 69tigers.wordpress.com) but an alkaline AAA bat wasn't enough.

So, add two AA NiMh batteries (2600mAh) and it lasts forever!
(charging on-board, with a nice charger)

2. Funny looking air humidifier:
Really draft constraction... Needed something cheap and fast (couldn't wait for HongKong post).
So, one bowl with water, one fan to blow air towards it (the big, horizontal one) and another fan with a metal attached to disturb the water.

It works OK but makes the surrounding space really wet...
I'll try again next winter. (hot-air-conditioning dries the air up)

3. Modding my previous USB Controlled Power Strip project: My laptop computer supplies 1.2V even when powered off. This caused the strip to not work properly. (the relay's minimum OFF voltage is above that)

I added a Diode on one end of the relay's coil, so that voltage drops by 0.7V, allowing the strip to switch off when computer enters stand-by!

Rooting a German T-mobile G1

2009-04-22T03:49:00.000-07:00

Today someone pm'ed me and said they had a German G1 that couldn't be rooted. With the phone in hand, I searched for 30' and found out that the activation process was a little different from what I was familiar with.

It took me another 2.5 hours to get it done, so I gathered all the knowledge in a log/guide, which I'm posting here. I used another G1 for the first 3 steps, but it should be the same on a linux computer with card reader. (although some people report that card readers supply false codes in step 3) If you only have Windows installed on your pc, you may want to download and boot Ubuntu linux without installing it. (although I strongly encourage you to)

Side note: I really didn't like the backlight of the keyboard in this white G1. It made seeing the keys impossible under normal light conditions. I don't think I would be able to live like this. Thank god mine's black :P

insert Transcend 8GB sd card into G1 (sandisk may not work. Lower capacities will work and may even be better. Other makes will also work)
download Terminal Emulator from the market and open it on G1
type “cat /sys/class/mmc_host/mmc1/mmc1:*/cid” (without the quotes), and keep the code given (something like 1c5356555344202010041c71f0008c5e)
Reverse the code byte-wise ( my 1c 53 56 55 53 44 20 20 10 04 1c 71 f0 00 8c 5e became 5e8c00f0711c0410202044535556531c)
Overwrite first two digits with 00s: 008c00f0711c0410202044535556531c
On your pc browser, go to http://revskills.de/pages/goldcard.html, paste your code and email address and hit continue (while thinking “thank you viperbjk” or donating some money)

format sd card to fat32 (may be good to rewrite partition table)
download RC7 from http://koushikdutta.blurryfox.com/G1/DREAMIMG-RC7.zip and extract
download goldcard from your email address (goldcard.img, less than 440 bytes)
copy DREAIMG.nbh to SD card (CASE sensitive! Filename very important)
unmount /dev/sdb1
type in terminal: “sudo dd if=goldcard.img of=/dev/sdd” (result: 0+1 records in, 0+1 records out, 384 bytes (384 B) copied) (assuming your sd is in /dev/sdd)
pull out sd card (now goldcard!) and insert into g1
hold camera button and press power button once
wait until the bootloader finds the rom and push power button when prompted. (if you do not see this instruction, you have done something wrong)
Continue with flashing recovery, HardSPL, RC8 etc...

Sources:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=442480

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=485364

http://android-dls.com/wiki/index.php?title=Root_for_RC8

Electronically controlled coffee machine

2009-04-21T02:11:00.000-07:00

So, I needed to control my filter coffee machine with the Arduino for a new project of mine (will be posted later on. Coffee-making/carrying robot/alarm clock etc...).

The installation is pretty simple, it's just a relay connected parallel to the coffee machine's on/off switch.

When 5V is applied to the relay's coil the coffee machine operates. If the (human) user switches the machine on manually (via the traditional switch) it operates normally.

Maybe I should add some fuses on the cable arriving to the coil, though.

Finished product, the cyber-coffee machine:

Blue cable is relay-coil control.

Thermosmart (Smart Thermostat)

2009-03-09T15:10:00.000-07:00

So, this is a little project I did almost in the middle of my exam period, which finished a week ago. It is basically a substitution of a thermostat, regulating heating appliances in an apartment. It is web controlled and monitored, and works in auto and manual mode.

It consists of an Arduino (Duemilanove), an Arduino Ethernet Shield, a temperature sensor, a relay and a few other electronic components. (transistor, resistors, diodes etc)

Via the web "interface" (pretty draft actually) one can be informed over local network or internet, of the current temperature, heating status and threshold levels. Heating can be remotely set to ON(1), OFF(0) or AUTO(0) mode, and the min and max thresholds for AUTO mode can also be set.

Here's the live status of my house right now:

Technical Description

I started with interfacing the existing thermostat. I didn't substitute it, I just bypassed it.
A JS-1 relay was used to close the appropriate connections in order to get the heating started. When 5V is applied to the relay's coil, heating is on. Also added a LED and the LM35 temperature sensor so that it can get accurate readings.

These go through a UTP cable to the arduino. The relay needs a 2N2222 transistor and a 1N4004 diode to be controlled, and the LED needs a resistor in series.

The LM35 sensor outputs mV according to temperature in its middle foot. The problem is I needed more precision (something like 22.3, not 22) so I used an alternative way of connection, utilizing two diodes and a 18K resistor to get my decimals.

Because of the strange way of connection of the temperature sensor, I needed to get both (+) and (-) of its reading to the Arduino, so that it can subtract them.

Testing the installation (the lovely Linksys WRT54G is serving as a network bridge to reach the rest of the internet-enabled network):

This is the final version, with the RJ-45 outlet mounted and connected:

This is the project at its current state, hidden in a closet along with other electronics:

The code is very messy and uses up every bit of the 14kB of Arduino's memory but can easily be corrected and works pretty good. I'm not proud of it, it's not in a final state, and I'll get back to it when I install one of these in friends' houses.

Possible future improvements:

Code
RJ-45 outlet on connection with original thermostat
Alternative way of communication (GPRS over GSM or just an XBee with a server PC)
Power-persistent memory (when power goes down, saved min/max thresholds are lost. Easily fixed if saved to EEPROM)
Beeper to indicate heater ON/OFF or just changes in MODE
Making the thermostat smart is all that counts. With a nicely written algorithm and patterns (no heating at night) one can save lots of money in heating. To get the heating even smarter one could use motion sensors, bluetooth of phones, or even a gps enabled Android phone to determine if heating is needed or not.

If you have any questions or suggestions please email me.

Special thanks to Miltos Allamanis and Harilaos Volanis for their help and support throughout this project.

Thanks for reading!

EDIT: Posted on hackaday!
Thanks for the comments guys, both here and there..

LM-35 temperature sensor wiring:
To get full precision of the sensor, one should connect it like this:

The problem for me was to find the -Vs voltage, so I tried the alternative way:

I am not quite sure it is working correctly. It does give out decimals, but very rarely.

Anyway, I've found out that to get a temperature of 21 degrees, I have to set the thresholds 20.5 and 21.5 and it works just fine. More research is required to be sure and make this more scientific. I will get back to it at some point.. (probably on October, when heating is needed again)

Extreme Synergy - Multiple screens (6)

2009-02-02T07:45:00.000-08:00

This is a very simple application of the program called Synergy (and the Quicksynergy interface).

While a few friends were visiting my house, we set up a draft synergy connection just for the fun...

Just one wireless keyboard and mouse controls all computers.
(3 laptops+one monitor, 1 desktop PC, 1 tablet PC, all running Ubuntu Linux)

American Dream Vol.2

2008-12-05T14:24:00.000-08:00

Activating the G1, without a sim card or a valid GPRS connection.

Ok, after unlocking it, you need to activate it. That is, connect it to your google account (or create one if you don't already have one). This step is nessecairy and cannot be skipped.

If you have a valid GPRS connection (with correct APN settings) this should be no problem.
But if, for any reason, you can't establish a connection (of if you have your phone still locked), you can do it over WiFi.

So, I inserted the "blank", unactivated T-mobile card that came with the phone (no unlock needed) and:

1. Downloaded and extracted Android's SDK.
2. (optional) Fixed the tools directory as shown here (copied from link above):

On Linux, edit your ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bashrc file. Look for a line that sets the PATH environment variable and add the full path to the tools/ directory to it. If you don't see a line setting the path, you can add one:

export PATH=${PATH}:/tools

On a Mac, look in your home directory for .bash_profile and proceed as for Linux. You can create the .bash_profile, if you haven't already set one up on your machine.
On Windows, right click on My Computer, and select Properties. Under the Advanced tab, hit the Environment Variables button, and in the dialog that comes up, double-click on Path under System Variables. Add the full path to the tools/ directory to the path.

3a. Windows: Installed the correct driver
3b. MacOS: it just works (as always?)
3c. Ubuntu Linux:

In terminal, enter (without the quotes): "sudo gedit /etc/udev/rules.d/50-android.rules"
Paste this in the file:
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="0bb4", MODE="0666"
Close gedit
Now execute in terminal:
"sudo chmod a+rx /etc/udev/rules.d/50-android.rules"

(source)

4. If you skipped 2, in a terminal navigate to the folder "tools" inside the SDK's folder.

5. Connect the phone to the USB cable and turn it on (blank sim card, or unlocked sim card inside)

6. While “touch here to begin” is displayed, type on cell's keyboard (no quotes): " setprop persist.service.adb.enable 1" and hit enter (you won't see anything, just type it in and hit ENTER)

7. In your computer's terminal, type "adb devices" (or "./adb devices" for linux) and your device should appear there. If it says "no devices found" try running the command as root (add "sudo" before the "adb devices" command). If it doesn't work either, you've done something wrong. Turn off the device and go again from step 4.

8. Assuming your computer can see your device, type (in your terminal): "adb shell" (or "./adb shell") and ENTER

9. Now type: " am start -a android.intent.action.MAIN -n com.android.settings/.Settings" and ENTER

10. The settings should pop up in your devices screen! Set up your WiFi's info and go back. Now you can complete the activation through wifi!

(My guide was this one, in which you will find more info and support. You'll also find instructions on how to do this without even a sim card!)

Warning! Now that you've started using your G1, there is the chance that a new update will be offered. This update (RC30) removes the "superuser flaw" or security hole. If you apply the updated, you won't be able to issue commands as a superuser any more.

In order to block your G1 from getting updates you might not want to, you'll have to reflash it with a modified RC30 rom. See here for more. (we've heard stories like "my wife pressed YES on the update question and now my phone's root access is gone!". You can't revert this, once you have officila RC30 installed. (yet))

American Dream Vol.1

2008-12-01T11:36:00.000-08:00

So I finally moved out of windows, completely.
That is, I tossed my Windows mobile phone.

I got a T-mobile G1, running Google's android. (AKA: HTC Dream)

(mine's black)

I'll post a few tricks/guides here...

Volume 1 - The Unlocking

Intro:
So, I live in Greece. At the time there is no T-mobile here. Also, the G1 phone is not available in Europe.

A friend of mine, Christine was visiting the States, and brought the phone back for me.
It was locked. (This means it does not accept any non-T-Mobile sim card).

In order to unlock it, you need to be T-Mobile's customer for at least 3 months. It doesn't matter if you use your G1 or even if you have a G1, you just need to be their customer for that long.

A secondary method is to pay a website (there are plenty of them, I think the htccode.com but I haven't tried it) to unlock it for you. It costs something between 13 and 40 euros. It can take from 2 minutes to 8 days to email you the unlock code.

Actual Proccess:
Anyway, my favorite option is the free one. If you're a customer it's no problem. If not, there is a proccess you have to follow:

You need to have the retail receipt (mine was from BestBuy) proving that you paid full price for your product.

You need to fax this receipt to 1-813-353-6557 (add "00" in the beginning if faxing from Greece) along with some text explaining your situation, including your phone's IMEI code and your email address.
(you can find your IMEI code written under the G1's pack or by typing *#06# in your phone's dialer)

I received an email ~25 hours later (Saturday mornin in the US) that contained the magic code!
Thanks T-mobile!

That's about it. I'll post about my activation-without-sim-card experience later on.
(Activation is the proccess that connects your g-phone to your google account. It is normally done after unlocking the phone (if needed) and you cannot use the G1 AT ALL before activating it. By default, the gprs connection is used, but it can be bypassed. In the post to come!)

USB controlled power strip

2008-09-17T08:32:00.000-07:00

So, basically it's a normal 230V power strip, but it's controlled by a computer. No fancy usb interface and software, just a simple relay, keeps the outlets powered when computer is ON.

That's all. If you shut down the computer, peripherials shut down too, saving you from "stand-by power consumption".

The procedure:
I used the new IKEA cheap strip:

Since it uses special screws, I had to file down one of my screwdriver tips:

Inside the strip: Cut usb cable is inserted, along with main power cable. 5-volt relay used can be seen too (orange one. 2 euros at local electronics shop).

Fuses to make sure that 230V isn't going to fry my computer's motherboard via USB, if anything goes wrong.

Soldering the relay...

Whole assembly out of the strip.

Assembly fitted in the power strip.

Finished product:

Works as expected!
Only problem is that the relay can't hold more than 120 Watts, so it's useless for my Laser printer.
I'll make a new one with a better relay.

Thanks for reading!

Lenovo V100 Webcam replaced

2008-09-07T00:06:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I have this nice Lenovo laptop for two years, running Ubuntu Linux on it. Many devices where not supported, but got drivers in the meantime.

One of the hardest-to-get-to-work device is the embedded USB Webcam. It is a BisonCam (chipset: ALi M5603C) usb camera.

It's recognized as "ID 0402:5602 ALi Corp." (using lsusb command in linux) but there's no driver for it, no support, and no other way to get it to work in Linux. It seems that noone in the world has done it.

Here's a place where we talk about it and hopefully wait for a solution.

Anyway, using Lenovo's maintainance manual, I took the camera out of my computer and will try to add a new one, with good Linux support.

So, first I need to find what this connector is (is it just usb? that would be nice)
Then I need to find a camera that fits the limited space over the lcd panel.

Any suggestions on possible camera-matches, or additional info about this chip is appreciated.

More info on the chip:
56.18012.001
BN2WH-1300-48-D
0621K

The metal part reads:
60.4F823.001 A01
HON-WIN2006/5/18

Why DIY? - Intro

2008-09-06T23:53:00.001-07:00

DIY (Do-It-Yourself) solutions are usually cheaper, more flexible and of higher quality than commercial ones. The only downside is time needed, but the feeling of creation works pretty good as a payoff.

I'll use this blog to present and discuss my DIY projects (or the ones of friends of mine) to/with the Greek or/and International community.

DIY is not very popular in Greece, where everybody prefers to just pay for something they could easily make themselves. This is partially a reason for life being so expensive in my country. (Actually it's the attitude and philosophy underlying below this action that's causing the problem)

Anyway, I'll try to keep descriptions short, add plenty pictures and videos, and stick to the essentials of every project.

Thanks for reading!

Chris