Someone16

Hi, what do you think about HTML5's video and audio tag?

Present: Every video site (eg. YouTube) is using Flash player to play video. Almost every podcast site is using Flash player to play audio. Because of that (using Flash in ways in which it was never attended to use) your CPU is under too much load and because of that fans needs to spin faster and battery life is shorter.

Future: Every video/audio web site will be using video/audio tag and videos are going to be played with built-in player. CPU is under normal load and you can watch 1 more hour (approximately) of watching movie/vlog/...

For playing videos through Flash Player, it was necessary to convert it to .flv (Flash Video) file. Latest Flash Player version support .mp4 format (for HD videos). Sites like YouTube must pay companies who owns these formats certain amount of money for using it.

Video tag supports ogg, which is open source and free to use.

Pros and cons of using video tag over Flash Player:

+ less load on CPU (+ longer battery life, + less heat - fans are spinning slower)

+ native support by all operating systems/web browsers (Flash is not fully supported on Linux)

+ easier to create web page which contain video/audio

- no ads and menus (like you see on YouTube and other channels)

- player's design depends on used operating system - owner of site cannot create it's own design and cannot add special functions (you couldn't add links on video like you can now on YouTube)

My point of view: I hope that more and more web browsers will support HTML5 and that designers/programmers will prefer this over Flash Player

Hi all,

Yesterday I tried Windows 7 Release Candidate and I have no problems with it. It's good operating system, but I still prefer Mac OS. Microsoft did a good job with this Windows version and hopefully they will sell more copies of it than of Vista.

It would be great if all Windows XP users move to 7, because XP's are 8 years old and don't have support anymore. But this won't gonna happen. I really do not understand people who insist on using that old OS. Even Linux is better (not that I have anything against it).

AFAIK a lot of people moved to Mac/Linux because Vista is a little bit crappy. Windows 7 must make for all lost users because of Vista. Linux can't do much with it's less than 1% of all users. But there is a posibility of Google making OS. Google give away free services, people trust Google. I think it's only company which can overtake Microsoft's Windows market share.

But that is higly unlikely. I watched video on YouTube where they ask some people if they heart of Google Chrome ... 95% didn't even know what that is. So just because Google makes something doesn't mean, that everyone will use it. (They have some sucessfull projects like Google and Gmail).

So Microsoft has nothing to worry about ... at least for now.

A few days ago I did a Super PI test on my old laptop with Windows XP and Windows Vista.

System:
- 1.5 GHz Intel Celeron M

- 512 MB RAM

Both systems were fresh installed with all needed drivers.


Results:

Windows Vista Windows XP
+ 000h 00m 02s [ 64K] + 000h 00m 01s [ 64K]
+ 000h 00m 04s [ 128K] + 000h 00m 04s [ 128K]
+ 000h 00m 09s [ 256K] + 000h 00m 09s [ 256K]
+ 000h 00m 24s [ 512K] + 000h 00m 23s [ 512K]
+ 000h 00m 58s [ 1M] + 000h 00m 57s [ 1M]
+ 000h 02m 24s [ 2M] + 000h 02m 21s [ 2M]
+ 000h 05m 23s [ 4M] + 000h 05m 17s [ 4M]
+ 000h 12m 18s [ 8M] + 000h 11m 54s [ 8M]
+ 000h 25m 42s [ 16M] + 000h 25m 52s [ 16M]
+ 000h 53m 33s [ 32M] + 000h 56m 07s [ 32M]

Conclusion: Windows XP did better with small calculations, but Vista beats it at larger calculations (16M and 32M).

Installing AVR environment on Linux is very hard. Firstly you need to download source code of all the tools, then install additional necessary libraries and compile everything which can take a lot of time ...

On Ubuntu it's easy, you just need to install 3 programs with apt-get command.

1. Open Terminal

2. Copy-Paste into Terminal:

sudo apt-get install gcc-avr avr-libc avrdude

3. Type your root password

4. Press Enter and press "Y" a few times when it's required

Terminal commands for using this tools are the same as for Mac and even Windows if you are using Win-GCC port. More about that commands next time ...

Presentation about why Linux sucks: http://www.hardocp.com/news.html?news=MzkzMjUsLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdCwsLDE=

I mostly agree with him. But Linux is still cool and good operation system for using (excluding for electronics work, CAD, ...).

A few days ago a friend send me an old mobile phone for using in a project about weather information in a remote location.

On the internet I found which pins on telephone are TX, RX, GND. I simply connected them to USB -> RS232 cable, when I found out that I must destroyed it last time by shortcut between ground and 5V.

I remembered about a project in which author used V-USB firmware only implementation of USB fot AVR devices to create home made USB to RS232 converter. In a few minutes I had a working converter (Thanks toOsamu Tamura at Recursion Co., Ltd.)
I connected everything and result was ... garbage. On HyperTerminal I received only garbage. I remember about using MAX232 chip for converting TTL levels to computer levels and vice versa. Tried with this chip and the same thing, of course a little bit different garbage, but still garbage and nothing useful.
So I give up for today ... tomorrow is a new day and maybe I'll have more luck. I could try connecting AVR with code for serial communicating to see if there is a problem on converter/computer or somewhere else.

Today I decided to postpone my project (RC car controlled by laptop) for a while.

I lost interest in this. It something that I often do and then get back to the project in a month or two.

Now I will have more time to figure out what to do with RFM12 transceivers that I have lying around somewhere in my room. After quick research I found out that it is a real pain in the ass. Anyway, I hope I'll learn how to use it because they weren't cheap enough to throw it away.

I haven't decided yet what wireless connection I am going to use to connect car to laptop.

I have a lot of options but every option have some advantages and disadvantages.


a) using old HP laptop - good options, i can connect webcam, additional hardware without a problem. Cons: battery has bad autonomy (about 20 minutes), weight, WLAN connection (as far as I know PCMCIA connector doesn't work, so I need to buy USB WLAN module
New battery is at least 100€ and USB WLAN module is 40€.

b) using RFM10 wireless transceiver - i have 2 transceivers at home but they are in SMD and they can be connected to microcontroller only by SPI interface which is really hard to write a firmware code for

c) using XBee - great range, a lot of resources for it but a little higher price (20€ a piece and I need two of them)

I'll probably use XBee modules but they are just too expensive. My goal is to build a car controlled by laptop for under 100€. Cost of these modules is a real set back for this project.

For a couple of days I was building a robot ... not really a robot, just a simple car, that I could controll by my laptop.

Today I got the wheels spinning, but only in one direction. I intended to use H-bridge but I didn't have both types of transistors (PNP and NPN) so I try to make a H-bridge with just 4 NPN transistor.

I learned, that you need to use electronic components as intended. You cannot use NPN transistors where you need PNP. Lesson learned for next time. ;-)

I'm back to start of the project ... Tomorrow I'll buy a cheap RC car and of course some NPN transistors or maybe MOSFETs.

I heard about DC motor driver (i think it's L293 or so) ... dunno what to buy.