Splents

So I finally crumbled. I had to try it and find out what this AdWords is all about.

Compromise my website ideals… check.
Make my own private site messier… check.
But with sometimes terabytes of monthly traffic… I’d be crazy not to try!

If Google is as good as it says it is, hopefully there’ll be good, relevant ads.
We’ll find out!

Sometimes manufactures supply their flashing software in 16bit executables, which is really unhelpful if your running 32bit or 64bit operating systems.

I wound up in a crazy but unsurprising situation where I needed to flash a BIOS. Problem was the manufacture supplied 16bit flashing software.
This wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the fact they supplied the software under the “Vista 64bit” download section.

Floppy drives are almost non-existent these days, and I had already decided I was not going to install one just so I could flash the BIOS (where would I find a floppy disk anyhow??)

You can make USB sticks bootable with MS-DOS, fortunately the tutorial had the links to the correct software required.

1. hpflash.zip and win98boot.zip.
I’ve uploaded the same files here for long jeopardy.
(hpflash1 and win98boot).

2. Install the HPFlash utility
3. Run the install utility, formatting a USB stick. I recommend doing a quick format. Make sure you select ‘Make Bootable’ and select the bootable files from the unpacked win98boot.zip
4. When you open your USB stick, it will appear empty – copy the flash files (or whatever executables you wanted to run in 16bit) to the stick.
5. Put into the computer you want to boot, make sure you check your BIOS settings enable booting off USB stick.

I did the modification for the AE72H / AE92H/ (U)BC72XLT / (U)BC92XLT as described at http://www.discriminator.nl/.
Everything went really well, thought I’d share a few notes about the modification.
I was lucky that I head a fresh and pointy solder tip that had been well looked after. When soldering LND7, you need to be super accurate.
Don’t bother doing the modification to your scanner unless you have reasonable soldering skills. You will cause damage otherwise.

I did the modification because I wanted to use PDW. Unfortunately I wasn’t having much more success at the end of the modification than I was before it… might have another play tonight.
The other important thing is that you DO use a 10k resistor. For giggles I took it out after a bit of a play with PDW, and the scanner turned off.
It didn’t break it, but I wouldn’t do it again.

If you are on this page because you want to know the channels the Victorian SMR network uses, scroll straight down to the text file. It should feed straight into the profile file.

This is what you ought to see when Trunkview is all working.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to trunk track the SMR network for a while.
Plenty of forum posts asking, but there seems to be a wide spread resistance on the forums to sharing information.
Its one of the few internet based cultures where exclusiveness seems to reign supreme. I could go on, but I’ll restrain myself.

Trunkview obviously follows the MPT1327 protocol, which is what is used by the Victorian SMR network.
Unfortunately (as in my previous post about Programming SMR Trunk Tracking Frequencies), you cannot program most scanners to follow this protocol. If you really want to follow conversations, you are better off just programming in the voice frequencies into a scan list.
These lists are published all over the web, readily accessible.

The really important thing about the SMR network and Trunkview is knowing:
Base frequency is 162.0500 MHz
The channels are [1 - 251],[301 - 364].
That last bit is really important. Trunkview generally wants to know a control channel, base freq and freq step. The SMR network doesn’t have channels [252 - 300].

********** TEXT FILE HERE ***********
In this file, SMR, is the channel list that Trunkview needs. But first I need to describe how to set Trunkview up to use it.

1. You need to scan for a strong Control Channel. A control channel sounds like this. (In case that doesn’t work, I’ve uploaded here for long jeopordy ). The site the file is from is http://www.kb9ukd.com/. I they don’t mind me linking them. No doubt they’ll let me know if it is.
In my experience Trunkview is fairly forgiving of noise on the control channel, but ultimately you would as clear as possible. In my examples, I’ll be using control channel 164.7375 MHz. This channel is very clear for me, but you may not even be able to receive it. For giggles, find your own.

2. You need to calculate the base frequency. I know I said it was 162.0500, but I could be wrong. Also the base channel would be different if your scanning higher frequency MPT networks. I can listen to a number of networks in the 400-500 MHz range.
The formula is

CCh – (Ch# * Step) = Base

CCh = Control Channel
Ch# = Channel Number
Step = Frequency Step

So for my situation, the working would be 164.7375 – (215*0.0125) = 162.0500
Notice the step frequency is 0.0125? Thats because you need to use the formula in the same units. We are using MHz frequencies, therefore we should show our step frequency in MHz.

3. Normally we would have enough information to just make Trunkview work, BUT because the SMR network is “missing” a number of channels, we need to use our custom channel list.
Hook your scanner up to your computer, preferably with a COM cable so it can control it. (I might make another post about troubleshooting that)
Turn the scanner onto the control channel, and admire the flashing output of “AHOY, ALOHA and BRDCST” in the bottom left. If your not getting this, check your volume is up, and that your mic/line in is working properly. Create a new site with this information. In the case of the Vic SMR network, I recommend naming it the same as its ID.

4. The finishing parts of fairly intuitive, albeit you might have to search around a bit. I’m going to breeze over, and just give an overview.
5. Create a new profile, it needs to be the same as your site name (for vic smr), because otherwise trunkview will make channel decisions which do not follow your custom channel list.
6. Find the profile file in the \Trunkview\Profile\ folder
7. Open in wordpad, and dump in the channel list provided earlier. Save it.
8. Go back into Trunkview. When you get it all up and running, the profile and site information should automatically fill out correctly

That should be enough starter information… I think I’ll update the post when I’m feeling more focussed on describing the detail. Maybe some screen shots.
Have fun, and pop me an email if you have any trouble or success!

I’ve had the frustrating experience of ghosting in my videos before.
This time I was editing GoPro footage, and, after solving my first problem with importing the video I was now finding the video was ghosting and jolty after exporting.

Whilst editing, the picture was fine. In fact, it was exactly what I wanted. In the video I was doing a lot of slow motion, sometimes at high frame rates, other times at 25-30 fps.

It didn’t matter what options I selected in export, the video was always jolty with ghosting. The solution was to deinterlace. The problem was finding out how to do this is Adobe Premiere CS4, because to me, it wasn’t obvious.

1. Highlight all the clips in the sequence, Clip > Video Options > Frame Blend (Off)
2. Select each clip individually, right-click > Frame Hold > Deinterlace (On)
3. Export!

*UPDATE*
I found by changing the extension from .mp4 to .mov was enough to allow me to edit with them. This saved making new sequence presets.
——————————-

I recently had to edit some GoPro footage for a customer in Adobe Premiere.
I ran into a few problems.
You can import the .mp4 no problems, but then you can only edit with the first file. The rest of the videos are almost unreadable, and come up as a green frame in the preview window.
It is almost like Premiere freezes.

I found a post “Importing GoPro HD footage in Adobe Premiere Pro CS4” which somewhat resolved this (even though the solution feels unsatisfactory, it does work).

The crux of the problem apparently lies in the frame size that the GoPro films in by default. (1280×960). This resolution/ratio retains a lot more vertical picture than many other HD formats.
In the post, you’re told to create a new sequence template and then entering in the resolutions you want to work in.

The second part addresses the format problem. You need to change the container that the videos are stored in – otherwise, Premiere will try and encode each file on the fly as you edit. This results in VERY laggy editing.

You can either change the extension from .mp4 to .mov, or use the free tool he suggests MPEG Streamclip. It doesn’t have an installer (which is good), it is simple, fairly ad free and *just works*. It has a batch mode, and seems to be a good tool to have in your belt for other projects. THE IMPORTANT PART is to “Save As .mov” not “Export”. If you export you are doing the same thing Premiere is trying to do, and it will take ages – if you “Save As”, it simply moves the file into a new container and takes seconds to do a whole sequence of files.

Import the .mov files into your new project and your up and running.

I could have just about died when I couldn’t get into the admin panel on my brand-new-second-hand Toshiba eStudio 3510c.
Fortunately the blessed souls at fixya had a solution to reset the admin password and get in.

The default password is “123456″, however, the sort of company that has these kind of copiers will most likely have some kind of password policy for these devices.

To reset:
1. Put into diagnostic mode. Shut down the machine, then, while holding “0″ + “8″ turn the machine back on.
2. The machine will display test mode.
3. Type “263″, Press Start (Big Green Button!)
4. What you currently see written is the password. Clear it, and enter the password you want.
5. It will ask you to reset the machine. Switch off and on again.

If you have been bought to this page, I presume you are wanting to program the Victorian SMR frequencies into a trunk tracking scanner like the BearCat.
Its something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, especially to get away from just scanning the output frequencies of the towers.
Unfortunately, the SMR network uses the MPT1327 protocol – which is not the kind of trunk decoding the bearcat scanners track.
Best bet is to use the free application “Trunkview” to get it happening. Worked a charm for me.

I’ve been developing my remote security cameras for a few months now, although progress has been quite fast in the last week.
I’m getting the prototype PCB’s made up, hopefully these will allow me to put my first camera into production.

The main goals of these cameras is long duration event triggered surveillance.
Current systems that are supposed to achieve this are aimed at the hunting market, where visual size and start-up time are not an issue.
In remote human surveillance, the demographics of the target make development of these devices difficult.
In catching poachers, vandals and trespassers – capturing photos and video that allow for facial recognition is the main goal.

The security system runs on 12v power, which means any solar panel, car battery, and other power generating paraphernalia can help sustain the unit for months.
The sensors are completely removable and customisable. The sensor design is open, so that anyone can add-on pressure sensors, infra-red sensors, noise sensors etc.

Will have some photos of development soon.

Backtrack 4 supports the use of the ZTE MF626 out of the box.
While there are plenty of tutorials on how to connect the device, it took me a while to figure out why I could not see the device /dev/ttyUSB0.

When you plug the internet stick into a Windows based operating system, a virtual cd-rom is created. Once the software is installed, inserting the device runs the autorun.exe.
Obviously linux can’t use the system libraries in order to perform the same action, so what you will need to do is eject the cd-rom in linux.
The easiest way in backtrack 4 is to pop open the Konqurer->Storage Devices, hit refresh and you’ll see the cd-rom. Right click and eject.
Now, if you head to your console and type lsusb you will note that you have the correct drivers loaded, and /dev/ttyUSB0 will be available for your choosen modem dialer to use!