Category Archives: Computer

HuskyLens Test

I’ve bought a Husky lens recently. It was very cheap for what you get.
(50 Euro’s)
The first tests are promising.

Nice little, but powerful gadget.
https://wiki.dfrobot.com/HUSKYLENS_V1.0_SKU_SEN0305_SEN0336

Cables to connect Rpi or Arduino, mounts, Huskylens and Protectioncover (sold separately)
  • face recognition
  • object tracking
  • object recognition
  • line tracking
  • color recognition
  • tag recognition
  • object classification

Communication can be done via I2C and Uart.
Uses a sdcard to store learning data.
Has white leds for object lighting.

Build-in objects which are recognised out of the box. (Others can be learned by the device)

aeroplane, bicycle, bird, boat, bottle, bus, car, cat, chair, cow, dining-table, dog, horse, motorbike, person, potted plant, sheep, sofa, train, TV

Photo manager addition using ML!

A few years ago i wrote a photo manager .. again .. ( see post about my first previous photo manager )
It is a web gui to find photos in my huge photo archive.
I manually added 190k tags to 120k photos in 20+ years.

I thought wouldn’t it be nice if i can generate additional metadata using Machine Learning. A few years ago i did some testing and followed a podcast and free course about machine learning.

So today i started to implement a addition to my gui. Machine recognition tags!

It already kinda works.

Things to do :

  • Make it a background job, my fileserver doesn’t run Tensorflow on a GPU, so it is slooow
  • Embed in existing GUI and stats
  • Design a editor to remove wrong tags

Below a part of ML images

Command to get a thumbnail sheet with only directory names:

montage -verbose -units PixelsPerInch -density 300 -tile 7x6 -label "%d" -font Arial -pointsize 6 -background "#FFFFFF" -fill "black" -define jpeg:size=253x154 -geometry 253x154+2+2 -auto-orient */*.JPG -title "ML Thumbs" thumbsheet.jpg

Maybe, i can use debug output like below.

['lakeside, lakeshore (score = 0.47934)', 'seashore, coast, seacoast, sea-coast (score = 0.11385)', 'sandbar, sand bar (score = 0.08822)', 'breakwater, groin, groyne, mole, bulwark, seawall, jetty (score = 0.06281)', 'valley, vale (score = 0.01790)', '']

Scraping podcast which uses a javascript to obfuscate mp3 links

wget-ting the page only gave me flat html, but no readable links.

We need the rendered version, phantomjs wil help

wget https://bitbucket.org/ariya/phantomjs/downloads/phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2

printsource.js

var system = require('system');
var page   = require('webpage').create();
var url    = system.args[1];
page.open(url, function () {
  console.log(page.content);
  phantom.exit();
});

Run phantomjs

phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64/bin/phantomjs printsource.js  https://xxxxxxxx/show/xxxx > out

So now i got the rendered page, get mp3’s and titles, for this example

cat out | sed 'N;s/\n/,/' | cut -f2,7 -d\" | while read line ; do
mp3=$( echo $line | cut -f1 -d\")
title=$( echo $line | cut -f3 -d\> | tr -d '/<>[]]\!,;' | tr -d "'" | sed s/CDATA//g | sed s#title##g | sed s/:/-/g )
echo "$mp3 $title"
wget $mp3 -O "$title.mp3"
done

bash downloadscript
done

Portable Logitech Media Server again

See post: https://www.henriaanstoot.nl/2014/04/10/portable-squeeze-server/

In the past i’ve used a home build Logitech Squeezebox server (as it was called then), Picore player and tried volumio.
Picore player has been sitting in my livingroom for ages, but was converted to a Node-Red Dashboard and recently Home Assistant Dashboard. (Has been a dasticz daskboard also)

Today i build another version, smaller and with a screen.
Why? .. because of being ‘offline’ or ‘offgrid’ on our holidays.
The car we are driving only has a Aux input.

Most of the installation is as mentioned on:
https://docs.picoreplayer.org/projects/add-a-display/

I edited  /opt/bootsync.sh
to get /dev/sda1 mounted persistent
use pcp br after editing.

Default user/pass : tc piCore

Controlling the thing is via touch or a app on my phone using wifi hotspot.

  • Audio cable 3.5mm
  • Raspberry 3
  • Large usb thumbdrive
  • 3.5inch RPi Display – 480×320 Pixel – XPT2046 Touch Controller
  • car cigarette lighter adapter for power

PiCore uses below alliases

ceChange directory to /mnt/mmcblk0p2/tce
ceoChange directory to /mnt/mmcblk0p2/tce/optional
m1Mount the boot partition /mnt/mmcblk0p1
m2Mount the second partition /mnt/mmcblk0p2
c1Change directory to /mnt/mmcblk0p1
c2Change directory to /mnt/mmcblk0p2
vicfgEdit configuration file config.txt using vi
vicmdEdit boot file cmdline.txt using vi
u1Unmount the boot partition /mnt/mmcblk0p1
u2Unmount the second partition /mnt/mmcblk0p2

Shutting down piCore is done by cutting the power, due to everything being mounted readonly. EXEPT
When you are using LMS server installation, which uses a database.
But there is a tweak for a shutdown button.

I’m using GPIO 16 because i’ve got a screen connected.
Active LOW, means you have to connect a pushbutton/switch between GND and GPIO pin. (nearest Vcc OR Gnd)

Table lamp hack

Added: ino file 20220525

Bought a cheap table lamp a few weeks ago.
Runs on batteries and when you flip it over, it turns on or off.

I thought, when i strip this thing of its internals. I can make a wifi/mqtt enabled one.


Opening it up today, i saw a minimalistic print and a battery holder. There was a tilt switch like

Which i wanted to replace by a mercury one i bought in a bunch of sensors a few years ago.

So why go though all the trouble stripping and replacing .. so i didnt

GND and 5v to the batteries, and D4 to the tilt switch. (Measure which side you have to take!) .. I used a pull down of 3k3 ohms

Esp was flashed in the past with Easy ESP .. well lets keep that one for now.

INO version

#include <ESP8266WiFi.h>
#include <PubSubClient.h>
#include <Wire.h>
#include <Ethernet.h>

const char* ssid = "SSID";
const char* password = "PASSWORD";
const char* mqtt_server = "mqttserver";
const char* mqtt_username = "";
const char* mqtt_password = "";
const char* clientID = "wankel";

const int tiltPin = 4;
int tiltState = 0;    
int previousState = 0;    
WiFiClient espClient;

PubSubClient client(espClient);

void reconnect() {
  while (!client.connected()) {
    if (client.connect(clientID, mqtt_username, mqtt_password)) {
    } else {
      delay(2000);
    }
  }
}

void setup()
{
  {
    client.setServer(mqtt_server, 1883);
    pinMode(tiltPin, INPUT);
  }
}
void loop() {
  tiltState = digitalRead(tiltPin);
  if (tiltState != previousState) {
    if (tiltState == HIGH) {
      client.publish("onoff-wankel/wankel/State", "0"); //
    } else {
      client.publish("onoff-wankel/wankel/State", "1"); //
    }
    delay(100);
  }
  previousState = tiltState;

  {
    if (!client.connected()) {
      reconnect();
    }
    client.loop();
  }
}
Node red + led server

Example is using my ledserver, see other post, but i intent to made a easy to configure node red panel where the to be controlled devices are preconfigured.

[
    {
        "id": "9ec21acaec91aecc",
        "type": "mqtt in",
        "z": "54f3b5b461471f2c",
        "name": "",
        "topic": "onoff-wankel/wankel/State",
        "qos": "2",
        "datatype": "auto",
        "broker": "8c74c5f6.9a7a48",
        "nl": false,
        "rap": true,
        "rh": 0,
        "inputs": 0,
        "x": 400,
        "y": 260,
        "wires": [
            [
                "0fe77b535517f818"
            ]
        ]
    },
    {
        "id": "159f65f444a0d7c2",
        "type": "http request",
        "z": "54f3b5b461471f2c",
        "name": "1 - 30 red",
        "method": "GET",
        "ret": "txt",
        "paytoqs": "ignore",
        "url": "http://ledserver:8080/range/01/30/ff0000",
        "tls": "",
        "persist": false,
        "proxy": "",
        "authType": "",
        "senderr": false,
        "credentials": {},
        "x": 900,
        "y": 280,
        "wires": [
            []
        ]
    },
    {
        "id": "5806fbfd0e99daab",
        "type": "http request",
        "z": "54f3b5b461471f2c",
        "name": "1 - 30 black",
        "method": "GET",
        "ret": "txt",
        "paytoqs": "ignore",
        "url": "http://ledserver:8080/range/01/30/000000",
        "tls": "",
        "persist": false,
        "proxy": "",
        "authType": "",
        "senderr": false,
        "credentials": {
            "user": "",
            "password": ""
        },
        "x": 910,
        "y": 220,
        "wires": [
            []
        ]
    },
    {
        "id": "0fe77b535517f818",
        "type": "switch",
        "z": "54f3b5b461471f2c",
        "name": "",
        "property": "payload",
        "propertyType": "msg",
        "rules": [
            {
                "t": "eq",
                "v": "0",
                "vt": "str"
            },
            {
                "t": "eq",
                "v": "1",
                "vt": "str"
            }
        ],
        "checkall": "true",
        "repair": false,
        "outputs": 2,
        "x": 660,
        "y": 260,
        "wires": [
            [
                "5806fbfd0e99daab"
            ],
            [
                "159f65f444a0d7c2"
            ]
        ]
    },
    {
        "id": "8c74c5f6.9a7a48",
        "type": "mqtt-broker",
        "name": "mqttserver",
        "broker": "mqttserver",
        "port": "1883",
        "clientid": "",
        "usetls": false,
        "compatmode": true,
        "keepalive": "15",
        "cleansession": true,
        "birthTopic": "",
        "birthQos": "0",
        "birthPayload": "",
        "closeTopic": "",
        "closePayload": "",
        "willTopic": "",
        "willQos": "0",
        "willPayload": ""
    }
]

ZFS replace disk

I’m using ZFS for my main fileserver, this pool was created over 10 years ago.
Meanwhile i’ve: Swapped broken disks, switched disks for bigger ones and effectively resized my storage 2 or 3 times. Never had any corruption.

Yesterday i say a warning that one of the disks in the pool was OFFLINE.
Today i replaced it using below command’s

  • Put the disk in OFFLINE mode (if needed, mine was already offline)
    • zpool offline tank sdb
  • Remove disk from system
    • echo 1 | sudo tee /sys/block/sdb/device/delete
  • Remove the disk physically
  • Insert the replacement disk. And copy headers/structure from another disk
    • sgdisk –replicate=/dev/sdb /dev/sda
    • sgdisk –randomize-guids /dev/sdb
  • Run the zpool replace command. 
    • zpool replace tank /dev/sdb
  • Use online command to activate disk (no needed in my case, it already did that)
Tips:

# My labels with serials fell off :(
dd if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/null -> blinky led .. 

# What is the serial?
sudo hdparm -i /dev/sdb | grep Serial

Output

root@latex:~# sgdisk --replicate=/dev/sdb /dev/sda
The operation has completed successfully.
root@latex:~# sgdisk --randomize-guids /dev/sdb
The operation has completed successfully.
root@latex:~# zpool replace tank /dev/sdb
root@latex:~# zpool status
  pool: tank
 state: DEGRADED
status: One or more devices is currently being resilvered.  The pool will
        continue to function, possibly in a degraded state.
action: Wait for the resilver to complete.
  scan: resilver in progress since Wed May 18 11:31:21 2022
    5.64T scanned out of 14.4T at 331M/s, 7h42m to go
    1.88T resilvered, 39.16% done
config:

        NAME             STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
        tank             DEGRADED     0     0     0
          raidz1-0       DEGRADED     0     0     0
            sda          ONLINE       0     0     0
            replacing-1  REMOVED      0     0     0
              old        REMOVED      0     0     0
              sdb        ONLINE       0     0     0  (resilvering)
            sdc          ONLINE       0     0     0

errors: No known data errors

Gotek stuff

Recently back to old skool retro!

As posted https://www.henriaanstoot.nl/2022/05/03/c64-and-sd2iec/

Wellll, i bought some goodies from gotek.nl

A new SUB-D(23) to scart video cable for amiga.

A 9pindin mouse to PS/2 convertor

My tank mouse died .. beyond repair. Blue 9pins to ps2 works great!

A switchless (using key combination) diskdrive switcher df0<>df1

I used to make a floppy switch myself in the past, i used a wirewrap socket, and a cross switch. Made a hole in the back, with the little switch.
This one does not need a hole in your case for the switch.

Own floppy switch

Gotek Floppydrive Emulator with Rotary Encoder

This drive supports a lot of disk formats and systems, i will have to look into that ..
https://github.com/keirf/FlashFloppy/wiki/Host-Platforms