Monday, February 01, 2010

IPad, ZWave, OpenWRT and stuff

Okay so I'm a little late with the IPad jokes but I was going to skip them anyway. The IPad seems to be a pretty good size. I see the point with everyone point out the lack of a web camera (as opposed to a phone/camera). It would have been nice to have the ability to video conferencing with the device. I actually seeing it being a very useful device for home automation (of course). Perfect size, it's not a PC (netbook/laptop/whatever) and it's the standard touch interface. I really don't understand these folks who think it will replace the PC. The lack of a keyboard makes it difficult to use for such things. I also don't see this becoming the central controller of the home. It's too woefully underpowered. I do like the fact that we're also seeing competitors (HP and a few others) and we're seeing a less expensive Android equivalent. While the Touchbook has a chance I think it will need to pick up the development speed as competitors are beginning to come out of the woodwork.

For the last week and a half I've had nearly 50 tabs open on my browser (I've even gone as far as to bookmark things so I can reference them for my blogs and web pages). I'm woefully behind (1.5 months at least) on technical matters (studies, IPv6, router upgrades, electronics, web pages and blogs). I guess it didn't help that I finally got my doctors (and appointments) all in a row (no I'm not sick, just general checkups). So tonight I finally managed to get much of the ZWave information posted to my ZWave page. I really need some time to play with the code (Perl) and my ZWave equipment. With my Trenton Computer Festival presentation (and my Automated Doll House) and me being the Longest Day chairperson. I don't see me getting any time soon.

Last week some time I was offered a trade of services (upgrading some routers to OpenWRT) for equipment (WGT634U routers). I've just spent the weekend upgrading to OpenWRT Kamikaze 8.09.2. The routers were a bit of a mess (used in a class) and needed various settings and firmware changes to make them behave. I still have a bunch of work to finalize everything (still need to install some packages) but the work went well. When done I'll have a bunch of working routers and the owner will have a bunch of working routers. I also received a Netgear WNR1000 V2 which has OpenWRT V2 from the factory (nice job Netgear). It may be running Kamikaze 7.09 but it's still OpenWRT and very flexible. With all this OpenWRT available to me I hope to finally get my IPv6 tunnel up and running. The WRT54Gs I have are a little tight on RAM with everything I'm running on them.

Speaking of IPv6, Comcast announced trials for some of it's customers. I've signed up and I'm hoping I can be involved. I'm looking forward to learning more about IPv6. I've gone as far as putting a Home IPv6 page together. It's a notes page and it tends to contain the equivalent of scribblings. I'm not sure it's totally coherent and I'm certain I have to correct some of the information but I find it useful.

Finally, I managed to get in my electronic orders. I've picked up a few Audrino Pro boards, a couple of Kill-a-watts, a couple of XBee interfaces, XBee to RS232 carrier boards, XBee to USB carrier boards, XBee to direct IO carrier boards, Polar Heart rate monitor boards, a AVR Terminal (RS232, LCD, IO, etc), ARV programming dongle and a couple of SD carrier cards. I've got a lot of projects using this stuff so don't ask what it's all for. I'll just create a few pages for each project. :-)

Well I think that's all for tonight. I think I'll now relax by playing with my Violin (I'm learning the Violin). Yeah, I know way too much but it keeps an ADD mind busy. :-)

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