ZWO is launching USB3 based ASI120 cameras
ZWO just sent first ASI120 cameras based on USB3 to first testers around the world. The new faster USB interface gives almost double the speed of current USB2 cameras (60 FPS versus 35 FPS with USB2).
Improving Celeron J1900 gaming performance by connecting external graphics card to PCIe x1 2.0 slot
Low power Bay Trail, Celeron or AMD APU Athlons, Semprons are storming the market allowing users to create quiet or even fanless PCs for multimedia or daily home use. Most of motherboards offer PCIe connect, but as a limited to x4 (AMD) or x1 (Intel) version. We can connect a USB3 or Firewire 800 PCIe controller to it, but can we use an external graphics card to improve the gaming performance of such low power quiet PCs? Can PCIe x1 2.0 can provide enough bandwidth for the GPU to perform at a good or acceptable level? Or maybe can it give some extra features like CUDA cores or multiple display support that can be used to some specific tasks?
In this article I'll test and compare three basic and cheap graphics cards I got from local bidding site quite cheap. Will Celeron J1900 be able to run games faster and what will be the difference between x1 and x16 on a classical motherboard?
Controlling keyboard-emulating devices with pyusb
There is a lot of USB devices that emulate a keyboard while they are bar code, magnetic cards, RFID readers and alike. You connect it to a PC, focus on a text editor or web form field, scan a code and the read value will be printed. You can write an application that will handle such device, but the focus must be kept on the field and so one. pyusb library may help by taking control of such device and receive data from it.
In this article I'll show you how to handle such USB-keyboard-alike devices with pyusb - to take control of them, read data and decode it.
Monitoring AMD, Intel and NVIDIA graphics card usage under Linux
Graphics card resource usage monitoring is quite rare. Most desktop widgets and applications will just show CPU and RAM usage. There are however tools that can be used to monitor AMD, NVIDIA and Intel graphics cards under Linux. It can be used for fancy graphics or to locate the weakest chain in the GPU rendering process when trying to determine why some tasks are so slow.
Profiling Django apps and Python scripts with cProfile and Kcachegrind
Some time ago I wrote about profiling Django with hotshot with mod_python that is now dead. To profile execution time of Python scripts as well as Django views, tests, or management commands we use cProfile and its wrappers. There are also converters that provide data for KCachegrind. Let us see what we have available to use.
Benchmarking Celeron J1900 on Xubuntu Linux
After building a PC with Celeron J1900 it's time to run some benchmarks. Aside of other Intel CPUs there are AMD competitors like new Sempron and Athlon 25W CPUs with good graphics or the old E-350 still available on the market. Most of them are similarly priced.
To run benchmarks I've used phoronix benchmark tool, as well some bootchart for system boot up time charts and power usage monitor to check how much power the PC is taking.
Building a Linux PC using low power quad core Celeron J1900
Asrock Q1900B-ITX is a Mini ITX motherboard equipped with a quad core Celeron J1900 low power processor. The motherboard and the Intel Celeron are designed for home multimedia and general work PCs. Not for demanding gamers, but for entertainment (videos, music etc.), less demanding games and work of various sorts. As a low power processor a computer may be build without any fan making it completely silent, which is quite important if you want to hear the music and not the fans ;)
In this article I'll present the Asrock motherboard, as well as Celeron J1900 in general - it capabilities, features. I'll also build a fanless mini PC that later on will be deeply tested on Xubuntu Linux (but you can install Windows on that too).
Stacking and sharpening planetary images in practice
I've already wrote about sharpening of planetary stacks as well as about stacking in AS2. In this article I'll write more about my processing chain of stacks - how to stack and how to sharpen them efficiently using AstraImage, Autostakkert and Castrator.
Switching buttons in electronic devices using electronic swtiches and microcontrollers
Many electronic devices have buttons that are used to control them. Such buttons are intended to be operated by humans. They can't be pressed digitally
, but we can hack them so that a microcontroller or GPIO from a mini computer can press them
using electronic switches.
In this article I'll show how to modify a key chain camera so that a PyMCU microcontroller can turn the camera on and take pictures, record video clips.
Using IR remotes for controlling microcontrollers and computers
TV remotes have a LED that glows in the infrared. The TV has a light detector that detects this light and decodes a signal embedded in it. The LED doesn't just glow but pulses (PWM) at a fixed rate, usually 38KHz. The receiver has a demodulator that will react only to light pulsing at such frequency. Within such modulated light some data can be transferred allowing TV to recognize signals to change volume, pick channel etc.
IR transmitters and receivers can be used in our project - to control a computer or a robot with a microcontroller and more. You just need some code and those two parts connected to GPIO. In this article I'll show a basic setup for PyMCU.
