Sunday, February 25, 2018

IR is hard

I'm playing with a Broadlink RM3 Mini 3 (AKA the Blackbean). It's a WiFi IR transceiver, it can send and receive IR signals and relay that information, via WiFi, to listening applications. I found some Python software that allows me to send and learn IR from the Blackbean. I say learn rather than receive because it appears that the receive IR doesn't always match the initially received IR. This is the raw IR signal (undecoded). This makes sense as I've tried many remotes and the Blackbean records all of them. Since there are many different types of signals a raw signal makes a lot of sense. Of course, this makes comparisons hard since the same raw signal may not look the same twice. So far I've not had enough time to decode what was received into it's discrete signal. Once I do that I can use the Blackbean as gateway to my home automation. At the moment it's just learn the IR commands of various devices and send the captured IR when needed.

Monday, February 19, 2018

Looky at what I found ...

So Sunday I decided to dispose of a ton of useless books. Like Java (1.1, 1.2, 1.3 ... ) and older C++. Books that are now severely out of date (libraries don't want this stuff). Anyway, like many of us I also saved notes and print-outs in binders. A number of the binders contain class related things (Awk, Networking, etc.) all being recycled but that's when things start getting interesting. I found an unopened box of 3.5 HD DS diskettes and 8" SS (no density mentioned). I found a ton of older software on 5.25 and 3.5 diskettes. Most likely Atari 5.25, the 3.5 HD are a bit of a mystery. It might be OS9. There should be some 360, 1.2 and 1.44 diskettes for MS DOS. I also have a I'll probably need help with that. I found my notes on the PT68K (Microware OSK), the Sardis ST2900 (Microware OS9), an original Omnimon XL L + U manual (I think I have more than the Archive has). I found installation notes on installing Linux 0.92 . I'm pretty sure I have several Older SLS or Yggdrasill CDs. Finally I have some notes on the 7300/3B1.

I'll bring it to the next VCF workshop and get this stuff scanned. I've confirmed that my Omnimon XL manual has a lot more information than that of the Internet Archive. I'll add it to my Omnimon XL page and share with them. Hopefully the other documents will be helpful also. I don't recall seeing much on the web about the Sardis ST2900. I'll scan and save the documents so they'll be there. :-)