Business As Usual At The Factory Of Idiot Dreams

Shock as I abandon Apple for Microsoft

2010-02-10T21:00:56Z

Yes, serious failings have led me to abandon Apple for Microsoft products nipple getting gunked up I finally gave up and bought a cheap Microsoft wireless mouse.

Why not the new Apple Magic Mouse?

i) Mixed reports on how good it is

ii) Price

iii) I use a Belkin KVM to switch my monitor between Mac Pro and Macbook so using a USB dongle based wireless mouse is simpler.

How's the Microsoft mouse? OK. Typical Microsoft that I had to reboot my whole computer after loading the driver. The driver creates a separate pref pane and the settings are split between this and the usual mouse settings. And the programmable buttons can't be set to show all Spaces, which is a bit weak, only Exposé views. The Scroll wheel has no friction at all which just feels a bit weird. It's ... OK.

I did look at Logitech mice, but didn't (easily) find a cheap wireless one that claimed Mac compatibility. Probably should have looked harder. Until the battery wore out I still think the Logitech Laser rechargeable one with docking cradle was probably the best mouse I've ever had.

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Halloween Macro

2009-11-27T00:02:19Z

OK, I know it's a bit late but I've been really busy ...

The first thing was to change the doorbell sound. I found a great archive of Addams Family .wav files which seemed quite appropriate. A bunch of sounds were installed and configured through the Sounds Behaviour dialog:

I then set the doorbell sounds as the Addams Family doorbell. I like this so much I've kept it:

Next I created a little macro:

The final step is to start the macro when the doorbell is rung by adding a connection to the doorbell:

So the end result is when anyone rings the doorbell the Addams Family gong is sounded. Then there is a loud ominous creaking as the front door is opened followed by Lurch's famous "You Rang". A little while after the door is closed again we get Lurch's groan. Quite appropriate for all those energy supplier hawkers we seem to get these days.

Next year I'll add some lighting effects. I think making sure the hall light goes off and triggering a strobe light ought to do the trick.

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M&S Plan A Fail

2009-11-23T20:04:47Z

Marks and Spencer have a high profile "Plan A" which, amongst other things, pledges to reduce waste:

We'll significantly reduce the amount of packaging and carrier bags that we use, and find new ways to recycle materials.

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It's that time of year again

2009-10-31T17:51:03Z

Yup, it's Halloween and yet again I'm expecting to be subjected to demands with menace.]]> Halloween treatment?

It seems I am not alone.

Mighty Mouse

2009-10-20T20:51:16Z

The Apple Mighty Mouse is pretty good as far as I am concerned, but it has one fatal flaw, the "nipple ball" collects gunk over time and despite all cleaning attempts, eventually it becomes unusable.
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Hold mouse firmly upside down and vigorously run the nipple on a lint free cloth, like your trouser leg.

Eventually this will be insufficient to budge the accumulated detritus* and you have to move to cleaning technique 2:

Drip IPA (not the beer) round the mouse, allow to soak and then apply technique 1.

Ultimately the gunk gets to the point where the small mechanism for the nipple ball is so choked up that these techniques will not shift it. I have read that there is a technique 3:

Acquire then flexible plastic band and insert round the ball and "floss" the mechanism.

Frankly, at the point that I have to floss my mouse's nipple I am giving up.

So I am really pleased to see that a new mouse has been announced. It does away with the nipple and uses touch sensitive techniques to provide the scroll ball facility. Ever since I got to the limits of technique 2 I have been waiting for touch techniques to be applied, it seems so obvious.

Watch the video to see how it works, contrary to some peoples' reports, you do not move the whole mouse for in-page scrolling, you just stroke the top surface.

On the Christmas list.

Apple Fan Boy?

2009-09-23T14:50:09Z

I've got a Mac Pro, the famously quiet workstation

OK, pop the side off and have a look: neat fan assembly, two screws, shouldn't be difficult. Even found the service manual on Scribd to check the instructions, yes it really is only two screws (after all, they do design these things for manufacture). OK, so just need a replacement part, machine is still under warranty and I've got AppleCare.

I'm within range of of an Apple service provider so should be an on-site visit. Ah, no, the service centre doesn't actually do repairs, they send it away, so no on-site repair and about a week turnaround.

OK, never mind, just send me the part, I'll fit it myself. Umm, no, not a user-serviceable part so can't do that. Why not take it to a Genius Bar?

Hmm, OK, that's Bristol, quite a long drive, I want to make sure I've got an appointment before travelling. Let's see, [clickity clack] Apple ... [clickity clack] Retail ... [clickity clack] Cabot Circus ... [clickity clack] Genius Bar ... [clickity clack] Make reservation. Looks promising.

Hmm, am I a guest or a member?

Member of what? OK, I'll try my Apple login, yup, but now confirm my One-to-One membership? I don't have that, it's for training and I don't need that. Why do I need training to use the Genius Bar to get my under-warranty computer fixed? Let's try "Guest". OK, I need the Genius Bar ... and I'd like help with my Mac.

No reservations available.

Well how about telling me when some reservations might become available?

Let's try POTS*. Dum dee dum ... 3 for reservations ... oh, "go to the website to book a reservation".

OK, let's try again, after all they did say try again later. Wow, this time there are reservation slots available. Choose an available day, from a choice of one. And a time, ditto, and a slot. Not much choice going on here is there. Must be a cancellation.

Now, is it just me or does anyone else anticipate that I'll lug my Mac Pro 80 odd miles only to find they don't have the requisite part in stock and I'll have to come back another time?

At this point I am thinking about my brother's experience with Dell support, they may have been incompetent in shipping duplicate spare parts, but at least he got on-site service.

So perhaps I can take it somewhere else and actually talk to a human being? Back to the web and look up my local service provider. To cut a long story short, after discussing the problem and the part needed they told me that I was entitled to on-site service. And they turned up when promised, sorted the fan quickly and efficiently and disappeared.

So why did Apple's service process completely fail at several points to offer me the on-site service that I had paid for?

*Plain Old Telephony

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Dell Powerconnect 2716

2009-08-05T13:24:08Z

These are quite nice little switches for home networking purposes, gigabit capability with jumbo frames, 16 ports, no fan, 12W power conumption and a basic managed capability for the adventurous.

So here's my process:-

1. Factory reset the switch if not new:

Use paperclip to change to unmanaged mode then push the paperclip in and hold until all the lights flash once as the switch restarts (about 20 seconds).

2. Connect a convenient laptop and log in to default 192.168.2.1. The laptop has to be configured to an IP in the same range 192.168.128.xxx.

3. Set a password and log out, clear your caches then login with the new credentials to check they work. If you use Johnnycache on Firefox you can disable caching for particular patterns.

If your browser password manager offers to save the password then allow it, but then go into the password manager and edit the password back to the correct password. Each time you login in the password manager will offer to store or update the password - never allow this since it will store the new munge and forget your password.

4. Connect to your DHCP server, keeping the connection to you laptop, and then go to IP addressing. Enable DHCP. At this point it will fetch the DHCP address but will not switch to it yet. Check that the desired IP address is shown and then check the "Apply DHCP Address" tick box. Apply the changes and you will be asked for confirmation. This will now reboot the switch and you have to use the new IP address to get to the web panel. The good news is that having done this it will always use whatever DHCP address it is served.

5. Work through any other configuration changes you need, apply and reboot.

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DFP retro-fit to MFP position

2009-07-24T23:05:07Z

The new DFP is designed to fit over either a single box (if no mains connections used) or a dual-box, whereas the MFP mounts on a double box. As I discussed in my DFP post, the DFP mounting back plate is not compatible with a double box. So my DFP has remained deskbound for quite some time.]]>

My favoured design was to create a flat plate with requisite mounting holes and a cutout for the Idranet and relay connectors. Perhaps the cutout could be a fold to create a shield for about a third of the back box, maybe just enough to cram the relay box into. It all entailed quite a bit of metal bashing, and meanwhile, time marches on.

In the end good old bodging came to the rescue. I used a piece of aluminium right angle bracket, the idea being to get some stiffness so that the central mounting holes of the DFP back plate could be used to tension the plate into contact with the wall surface. I drilled and tapped two holes to allow the central mounting screws to fix into the bracket and through holes to mount the bracket to the backbox. The speaker aperture in the backplate is quite handy for access to the righthand screw. The lefthand screw fixes normally (I did not attempt to centre the DFP over the box horizontally).

The box is quite deep relative to the plaster surface and this played in my favour to create some clearance for parts of the DFP, like the speaker moulding which protrudes behind the mounting plate. I also had to cut an aperture for the Idranet connector. Finally, the angle of the aluminium bracket did make it quite tight to fit the relay unit in. Fortunately the relay unit is only connecting to the doorbell ringer circuit so no issues with main segregation.

It's a little tight as you can see, mainly because half the back box is taken up with through routed cabling. In another MFP scenario it would be easier to fit the relay box into the righthand side and notch the bracket a little to retain a shield. It takes a little care to mount the DFP on and get the Idranet cables to feed back through the aperture.

There we go. JD.

Too Darn Hot

2009-07-03T22:20:45Z

I built a new Node-0 cabinet to replace my metal wall cabinet type. The main reason was to get a bit more height and also some more depth at the bottom where it tucks under the roof apex so that I can fit some deeper server cases in there.

But whilst I was at it I changed my fan arrangement. Instead of trying to suck hot air out I now blow cooler air in. This means that in hot weather I am not sucking hot air from the roof void into the cabinet through any leaks. The air is blown in at the bottom rear corner and passes to the front through a plenum, since most equipment I have seems to suck in at the front.

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With the current weather the roof space and cabinet are getting pretty hot and it's a bit premature to cut the fan off at bedtime. I want the option of running the fan through the night if necessary, so I spent a couple of hours today crammed round the back to rig up an anti-vibration mount.

Apologies for the angle but I was rather jammed in. The large duct in the background is for the PIV fan, this pressurises the whole house to ensure fresh air in the winter. The mount seems to be quite effective.

I still need to pay some attention to the equipment inside the cabinet itself and also see if I can get some anti-vibration mounts to decouple the whole cabinet from the floorboards.

Special Day Today

2009-06-07T22:45:31Z

Today is a special day and so before it is out I thought I'd put up a post. amazing sister made this:

Which is stunningly accurate in the details. We actually revisited the scene of the crime today and we've had a lovely weekend remembering last year. Thanks everyone!

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More Mac only stuff

2009-05-28T23:33:20Z

One of the frustrations I have with accessing my Cortex computer remotely using RDC sessions from a Mac is the lack of a key mapping for \ (backslash). This can be infuriating when you want to enter a file path, for example.]]>

Anyway, I have found a solution: backslasher.

This might become a regular feature ...

2009-05-22T11:36:18Z

For Mac users

2009-05-21T23:16:30Z

I've been playing with the camera functions and particularly network streaming. But then I decided that rather than start up a video client, it would be quite nice to have the camera output embedded in the desktop background.

I've chosen every 10 seconds. Now although camera images can be shared using the web server, that requires a login and password, so for simplicity I have shared my camera folder on my network:

Next I downloaded geektool which can be used for embedding various kinds of information on a Mac desktop. This is then configured to add an image to the desktop. I use the file:// URI to pick up the network share and in particular the default camera snapshot.

And it's that simple. Here's a bit of my desktop with the camera images:

For Windows users there is a program similar to geektool called Samurize and for Linux users the equivalent is Conky.

Have fun.

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Virtual Objects

2009-05-21T19:21:05Z

In my previous post I talked about objects and categorised them as:

Network Objects - software and module functionality
Cortex Logic Objects - pure software
Device Objects - external hardware devices

Now there is actually a feature of some network objects that is quite nifty, but conflicts with the categorisation above.

]]> network objects as representing a combination of software functionality and Idranet module functions. However, it is also possible to use some network objects without having associated hardware modules.

For example, you can instantiate a light level module (ALS) from the Tools > Design Network > Add Cortex Logic Object > Light Level Module. I'm going to add this to my garden. Note that this is different to how we might normally add a module by physically connecting a real module to the Idranet and powering it up and allowing the auto-discovery to work it's magic.

I've given it an unused address and note that it is not network enabled. Now, here's the trick, if I go to the new object's connection dialog and scroll down to the bottom ...

you can see an input analogue connection called Alternative Light Level source. I can connect this to the light level output from a real light level sensor, my Garden Light Level object. The new object will now use the output from the real module as if it were it's own.

So we can open up the behaviour dialog for the new object and configure a different set of light and dark thresholds compared to the real garden light level object:

compared to:

Note that the light level graph is the same, except the new object has data gaps caused by me experimenting with something else that caused me to stop and start the network a lot. In other words, the network has to be running for the data transfer to take place.

What's the significance of this? For light level objects I think this can be very useful, because the dark and very bright thresholds have special significance in the light object. One way you might use this is to have a second object with a different set of thresholds influencing lights on a different side of your house, where perhaps the light is significantly different than where your outside sensor is positioned.

Temperature and humidity objects also have the alternate data source connection, so you can play the same trick with them. However, those objects don't have first level processing with special meaning and you can define an arbitrary number of thresholds in one object. Having said that, I'm sure I'll find a good reason to use it almost as soon as I post this.

I call these objects that are pretending to be physical modules virtual objects.

At this point you might be thinking, why isn't the software processing (thresholding logic) in a separate object from the physical module handling stuff, so that you don't need these "tricks", with the potential confusion of hardware related configuration in an object that has no hardware module associated with it? My guess is that the additional connection was added later on to allow the creation of these virtual objects for situations like the example I have given above. At that point there would have been the choice between implementing this scheme with alternate data sources or a new set of objects, with compatibility issues between databases and potential confusion for users.

But there is also the possibility that the configuration information in the behaviour panel for an object with an associated module may one day be used for automatic creation of Reflex programs, as has been introduced with Light objects. With another layer of hierarchy you could imagine a database with one sensor module object feeding a hundred thresholding objects, somethign that might be completely legitimate in the context of a Cortex program, but would, however, exceed the number of thresholds that can be represented in a reflex program. There would then need to be a method to indicate which configurations to "favour" for Reflex generation.

DFP

2009-05-11T18:34:18Z

The DFP has been around for a while now but I haven't got round to writing much about it.

The DFP is constructed from a white plastic with a slight texturing. As well as curving round the case at the top and bottom there is a slight chamfer on the vertical edges. Visible on the bottom edge is an aperture for the temperature sensor, there are also two small push buttons.

This view more clearly shows the front panel design, with apertures for the speaker and microphone, buttons, screen and windows for the IR functions. There are also moulded tramlines tip and bottom. I have to ask myself whether the DFP would have looked "cleaner" without them. Whilst still quite utilitarian, it is a great advance on the MFP aesthetics.

Despite looking a bit like rubber "jelly" buttons, the buttons are actually a hard translucent material and there is a nice definite action on them with acceptable travel and a decent click. This is improved over the MFP where the button travel was poor and it was very easy to "bounce" the buttons.

This shows the rear of the DFP. You can see the metal mounting plate that is intended to screw over your back box and the various connectors protruding through - Idranet connector, 2 relay module connectors (each module contains 2 C/O relays) and connector for the 2 digital inputs. So the unit offers an upgraded relay support over the old MFP.

In the box you also get the connectors, screws, a nice hex key for the retaining screws that secure the DFP to the backplate, some mounting shims and wiring instructions. Also shown here is one of the relay modules - these are purchased as an optional extra.

The DFP is intended to mount over a dual-gang box as shown above. The mains cabling and relays would be in the right hand side and the low voltage connections in the left, neatly segregating the wiring. You would need to route the relay module cable from one side to the other, most boxes have punchouts to allow this.

So here's how the backplate would offer up to the wall box. You can also see Eurobox punchouts on the backplate, but I don't have a Eurobox to show this. The mounting shims are provided to allow the DFP to mount securely over metal backboxes that do not have the protruding flange of drywall boxes.

The DFP can obviously be mounted onto a single gang wallbox as well, with some compromises over mains connections. The DFP will be offset in this case, which may limit it's placement in some situations, like retrofitting to wall switches adjacent to door frames. By my measurements you would need 103mm clearance from the right-hand mounting screw in the wall box to the rightmost edge of the DFP. In case you are wondering, it is not possible to offset the panel to the other side unless you mount it upside down!

One of my first thoughts was to wonder whether I could squeeze mains connections into the lefthand box as well. Since segregation would be required I have shown the relay module stacked with the normal Idratek segregation moulding against a 47mm wall box. You can see that they don't quite fit, and in any case it would be very tight to route solid copper mains cables round the relay module. Perhaps a bezel could be improvised to gain a little extra depth if this was unavoidable.

One of my particular concerns is how to mount the DFP onto a double box, so that I can replace my MFPs. Depending on the box depth there is space to fit at least one relay module in (remembering that segregation requires the insulating moulding to be used). However, you can see that the right hand box screw position falls under the speaker aperture on the wall plate. For this I am going to have to fashion some kind of mounting adaptor myself.

The DFP offers all the functionality of the MFP, audio, temperature and humidity, IR transmit and receive, PIR and light level as well as more buttons. These functions work in the same way as the MFP and other modules, so I'm not going to delve into them now.

The major change is obviously the LCD display and also the newer buttons with backlighting and imprinted logos. Of course, this being Idratek, the button functions are completely assignable, the logos are present to allow typical functions to be assigned to buttons without having to remember which is which. The logos are clear and, I think, a good match for the functions you would access via the panel. Of course, in some applications other logos might have been preferred and removable button caps will be suggested, but at this price point I cannot argue with the decision to cover the majority case.

The buttons can be backlit in red or blue with controllable illumination level. Cortex provides a wealth of options to set different levels for different reasons, whether it's due to time of day or state of interaction with the panel. In the above picture the buttons are probably at full brightness, they can be set at a much lower level to give a quite subtle effect that is rather pleasing. I believe that the illumination level is set across all buttons, but the red or blue colour is controlled at an individual button level. This means that during interaction the panel can flag the active buttons by swapping the colour.

The LCD display has a controllable RGB backlight which can be set to a variety of colours and again Cortex allows this to be set according to all kinds of different situations. Already I am thinking this will be really nice for indicating alarm status.

Well, that's all for today, I'll get into controlling the display in another post.

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