Capstone Project: Headtracking using Wiimote

I am creating a project similar to Johny Lee's headtracking project using the Nintendo Wii remote for my final year engineering design project. 1st step is ofcourse to get the remote up and running with the existing applications created by Mr Lee. The following steps are required:

1. Establish a bluetooth connection with the wiimote. Use the tutorial here to accomplish that. After you sync the Wiimote the lights on the remote will continue flashing as if its in sync mode, this is normal as the remote only syncs to controller 1 after the application interfaces with it.
2. Download and install the latest .NET version and the DirectX SDK for the application to run properly. I spent a lot of time figuring out why the application kept crashing upon startup and it turned out i needed the DirectX SDK and not just DirectX 9.0c .
3. Fire up the WiiDesktopVR.exe

The next few posts will include a dissection of the code in order to fully understand what is going on here.

Publishing .NET to an IIS server woes..

Been having trouble at work getting an ASP.NET project to publish on a local dedicated server but ive finally found the simplest method. here goes:

1. With ASP.NET 2.0 there are no precompiled assemblies and everything is runtime compiled so all one needs to do is copy the project folder across to the \intepub\wwwroot\ folder on the server.

2. Make sure >NET 2.0 has been installed and is linked to IIS. You will know its working when under the IIS manager>Web Service Extensions it shows ASP.NET v2.0 is allowed. If there is no green check mark then select and allow it.



3. Now comes the part where everyone screws up. The .aspx file is now accessible but will always return an error when accessed from the local server or elsewhere on the network. The reason is the virtual directory containing our project files on the server has to be configured as an application in the IIS in order for the ASP code to be compiled at runtime. You will see something like this :

Configuration Error

Description: An error occurred during the processing of a configuration file required to service this request. Please review the specific error details below and modify your configuration file appropriately.

Parser Error Message: It is an error to use a section registered as allowDefinition='MachineToApplication' beyond application level. This error can be caused by a virtual directory not being configured as an application in IIS.

Source Error:

Line 49: ...
Line 50: -->
Line 51:
Line 52:

To get around this simply right-click on the website folder under "Default Web Site" in the IIS manager and under the Directory tab under Application settings select create and this registers the application with the IIS.


The website should be up and running now. Hope this helps.

The hidden artistic side of technology

To most of us technology is something we come across everyday yet something so un-human if we take a moment to step aside and see how much we interact with it compared to humans we would truly be shocked.

Yet like most of human-kinds creations there is an artistic depth in technology as well. It is not just something cold or hard to the touch but there is so much happening in the background that we may not necessarily see or hear, I speak of forms of expression beyond our perceptions. Enter the IBM 1401 mainframe from the 60's. A scientist using them in Iceland saw that during the operation of the mainframe, memory leaks were causing signals to be broadcast on AM frequencies. Now with some modifications the result :

Xbox 360 Intercooler Mod

Been hearing a lot of negative stuff about the Nyko intercooler for the Xbox 360 and after doing some digging around i came to the conclusion that having a 3rd party hardware sucking up and disturbing the streamlined power being sent to the console using extremely powerful fans which might have variable power inputs depending on their quaity is good enough to ruin ones 360. But we still need the intercooler as Microsoft has pretty much abandoned us when it comes to cooling their monsters down.

Hence I modded my intercooler. Here are the steps I took :

First off i thought I would simply open the intercooler and disconnect its fans. With the help of an opening I brought the wires out and tried to feed them power via USB.



there was a black and brown wire that I cut and brought out through the opening. The connections inside looked solid ( for the remaining cables ) so i decided to leave everything intact. I closed the intercooler, powered up the USB and gave it a test.



It could have been a disaster, the USB was maxed out at 5V while the fans needed 12 volts at .13 amps each ( power hungry monsters, another reason i dont want them sucking off my 360's power ) and the USB couldnt supply them with enough. The 360 actually became hotter than 2 hrs of Gears of War while it was simply idling !!

I had no choice, i needed a stronger power supply. The sollution : a cheap 350W computer power supply. I rigged the thing to turn on when connected and attached the fans to them and boy was there some cooling to be seen !! An hour of Ghost Recon AW and the 360 felt cooler than it does when its on the dashboard doing nothing !!



All was good but there was still a problem. The power input for the 360 was still comming through the intercooler and i wasnt too happy with this. Given that the cases where the intercooler fries the 360 its power plug leaves a burn mark on the 360 that voids the warranty I decided to get rid of it.

So with the aid of a saw from the dollar store i started off. I cut off the following portion...



.....and was left with....



this way the 360's power cable goes in directly and surprisingly the intercooler seems to be able to balance without its plug going into the 360.



Conclusion : the system is much cooler now and in multiplayer i have actually seen a performance difference ( Played Ghost Recon AW and some huge explosions caused everyones 360 to lag for a second, even the hosts but mine barely stuttered :) Also this allows me to run the fan for a few minutes after i turn off the 360 so that the heat does not stay inside when the internal fans turn off.

Let me know what you guys think.

Xbox 360 with VGA out

I recently tried out my Xbox 360 with the monster VGA cables on a 22" LG LCD monitor. I have heard several people complaining about the washed out look the VGA cable provides but I have come to realize that it is the LCD monitor that makes the difference. The below pics are of what gaming looks like in the LCD :



Honestly Gears of War looked great. The last level especially was the best test to see if the colors in the sky look rich and vibrant and I would place them around 80% as good as what I have seen on a Samsung 40" LCD tv. The LG lcd ( L204WT ) has a dynamic contrast ratio of 3000:1 and the dark colors look great in comparison to samsung LCD ( 225BW ) but the main thing is the f-engine which increases the richness of the color and makes the experience more HDTV like.

I also tested a DVD on the monitor. Not sure if its true but the 360 upscales a DVD when using the VGA cable. In effect i get a 720p HDTV upscaled output from a 480p dvd. the following screens are from Star Trek Voyager :



The aspect ratio was fullscreen so i used the 360 to soom in to fill my screen and i could not make out any artifacts at all, its was purely amazing !!!

Configuring A Network Bridge for the XBox 360 using a Laptop

Here is an amazing way to get your Xbox360 hooked up to your home wireless withoug having to bother about the overpriced M$ wireless connector ( USD $99 approximately )

Will try is ASAP

AIGLX and Beryl on my humble laptop

cd /etc/yum.repos.d/
wget http://wilsonet.com/packages/beryl/beryl.repo
yum -y install beryl-gnome beryl-kde

beryl-manager

XGL and Beryl on my humble laptop

Finally ditched compiz and installed the latest beryl using the help of this how-to and I am at a loss to explain the beauty i see in front of me !!

the effects are way beter than what compiz had to offer and there are some practicle ones as well such as the ability to select any open window from any desktop with just a single click of the mouse. beryl also comes with the eerald window theme manager which has some exelent themes available to choose from in the default package. have not tried to install new themes yet though.

Pictures cannot do justice to the hard work that has gone into this so heres a movie straight off my desktop



Note : for those installing beryl after trying out compiz like myself you need to remove compiz and xgl completely. i used the package manager and uninstalled them before proceeding with the how-to.

Compaq Presario V3000 with Ubuntu 6.06

Got a new laptop last month. The specs are AMD Turion 64 X2 DUal-core processor with a Nvidia 6150 graphics card, 512 MB DR2 533MGHz Ram and a NForce4 chipset motherboard with inbuilt wireless and a 100GB SATA hard disk. Screen is a nice HP 14.1" widescreen Organic LCD display and its truly the best LCD screen i have seen around.

I tried installing FC5 onto it but there were complications as several modules such as the ethernet, sound etc dint work. so i decided to foray into uncharted waters and tried out Ubuntu 6.06. these were the installation steps i followed:

download the ubuntu amd64 generic cd and instal.
update the system
install the nvidia drivers and restart X

wireless is a problem and took me a while to figure out but its simple really. i had a lot of problems because i was using 32 bit driver instead of the 64 bit required.

• .install all the development packages ( linux-kernel-devel & linx headers )
• download the latest ndiswrapper source and extract it.
• go into the extracted directory and do
• make & sudo make install

• . get the wireless drivers from Compaq's website as the ones on the windows partition are 32 bit ones and linux needs the compaq 64-bit versions to work. Get cabextract and get it to extract the compaq drivers exe file using the command
• cabextract sp33008.exe
  

• . there will be a bcmwl5.inf and a bcmwl5.sys file in the current foder. run the command
• sudo ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf

• this will install the drivers and doing
• ndiswrapper -l shows
• Installed drivers:
• bcmwl5 driver installed, hardware present
  

• Now run
• sudo ndiswrapper -m
  

• Reboot the laptop.

• Upon startup run
• sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
  

• the wireless modles are now working. run iwconfig and there should be a wlan0 with wireless extensions. yu can now connect to a network using
• sudo iwconfig wlan0 essid name-of-essid
• dhclient wlan0

Sound gave a little trouble. Apparently there a bug in ALSA ( pre 1.0.13 versions ) which cause trouble with the headphone jack. The 1.0.13 version fixes this problem though and can be downloaded from here. Compile and install it and it creats a "sound" script in the /etc/modprobe.d folder. Open this file and add :
options snd-hda-intel index=0 disable_msi=1

Failure to add this results in the sound playing for half a second and getting stuck in an infinite loop. Well now the headphone jack works, its just wierd that the laptop speakers and headphone jack dont have the same control but different controls. Also the laptop speakers dont shut off when one plugs in a headphone, since their volumes are independent.

Now for the 64-bit issue. A lot of problems arise out of using a 64-bit kernel which basically highlight how behind the world still is in 64-bit computing.

For starters i had a bad time trying to find a video player as the 32-bit codecs for wmv, mov and others dont work here with any midea player ( Xine, Mplayer, Vlc, etc ). The sollution was this : I installed that cool software called Automatix. I dont remember how I got it but just google it I guess ( If you try it and get it working please send me a msg and I will edit this post ). In Automatix there is an option for a 32-bit Mplayer and its codecs, install it and your video should work.

Then I also was unable to view flash media on firefox. The solution, install a 32-bit version of Swiftfox and flash as well. This can also be done through Automatix.

Aside from this I have not really come up against any hurdels on accound of using a 64 bit kernel. Again let me know if any other problem arises.

EDIT : this stuff on XGL/Compiz is old now, my next post has some goddies on XGL/Beryl.

Have XGL running on it now with tons of effects. The matrix screensaver is running as a background pic almost and these streams of matrix code beautifully flow over everything. The last 2 pics are of the multiple desktops in action in XGL using the inside walls of the cube and the outer walls of the cubes ( watching a movie on 1 desktop and browsing files on the other ).

The ultimate gaming experience.........with 24 LCD monitors !!!!

Seeing is believing and what beter way to believe that games can be fun until one can see them properly. Enter Andrew Sabri whose research focuses on display wall user interfaces at the Center for Human-Computer Interaction at Virginia Tech. Using 12 Linux servers and a Multi-Head implementation of the X-Server along with a linux implementation of Chromium which enables them to distribute the OpenGL rendering from the head node to all of the servers - the result, Quake3 running at 10,240x3,072 resolution.



Now thats the kind of research i wanna be in :)
this was submitted to me by Thushan
Website of the project is : http://www.plastk.net/

Fedora Core 5 - Nvidia drivers and XGL

Of all the Fedora distros FC5 i rekon got the most attention. was it because of the sleek elegant look ? the official Fedora logo appearing for the 1st time or the fact that it is filled with bugs ? not sure what the answer is but one thing is for sure, there is a lot of potential here !

Coupled with Xorg 7.0 FC5 is a perfect distro to run XGL on 24x7 like I do. there were several roadbocks though, especially since i was previously unable to install the Nvidia proprietry drivers and had to rely on the lesser versions from Livna. the problem is that FC5 has more security features. 2 cases where this shows - manually adding new lines to the fstab file to include more devices at bootup would usualy fail and the proper nvidia driver modules and the GLX extensions never loaded upon bootup. i have fixed that fro now by dissabling SELinux but a proper fix is available at Nvidia's forums. installing XGL is easy to install, its all at fedoraforums .

Overall FC5 has been a rough ride till now but ive finally setelled in. I must have been the first person at my Uni to install it ( had installed it on my 5-yr old P3 laptop without a CD/DVD drive :s ) and now there are 3 computers running FC5 at my place. all i can say is "keep it up" !! and I look forward to FC6.

Wine Beta Testing - Palm Desktop

well, ive always wanted to try out the palm desktop program in linux and the linux variants like gpilot/kpilot have always had some defficiency or the other. for my palm zire 31 there are several features such as mp3 and video playback and over the last year i still havnt figured out how to dump such files onto the palmtop in linux. as a last resort i tried out the palm desktop with wine and the results are not good :( .

running the autorun file : running the singlelaunch file : running the /palm desktop/setup file

as one can see palm doesnt seem to concenterate at all on other plaforms apart from windows as this shows. sadly we are just going to have to wait in the dark till they realise their that Posix and Mac OSX also has some following with palmtops.

Star Trek Voyager : Elite Force - Wine Top 10 Platinum list !!!!

finally the verdict has arrived and the statistics show, Elite Force is in the top 10 platinum list for programs under wine in Linux. once again, hats off to I.D. soft for the awsome Quake3 engine and to Raeven soft for making this amazing game. Link

Wine Beta testing - Star Trek Elite Force - Expansion Pack

finished beta testing the expansion back and everything seems to be in perfect order. ive completed most of the single player stuff in the expansion plus spent quiet some time trying out multiplayer with wiki's and ranjan's help. the end result is that elite force completely is an excelent game for linux. few problems exist, ones which i cant put my thumb on :
1) cant connect to multiplayer servers hosted by windows computers. they however can connect to my linux hosted server via LAN.
2) multiplayer doesnt display new modes ( dissentegration, hero, class-based, borg, etc ) for the expansion pack however this problem is not secluded to linux as the windows based test computers also dint show these options. i am at a loss why my linux installation and the 2 windows installations dont show these features.
never the less, ive given the game a rating of Platinum at the WineHQ database. it is perfectly stable and a solid game, something i hope other linux users will enjoy as much as i have.

Wine Beta testing - Star Trek Elite Force

As the Maintainer of this software at the wineHQ i am pleased to announce that i now have star trek - elite force ( version 1.0 ), the quake3 based FPS game fully running on wine under linux fedora core 5 and wine 0.9.12. i have hereby given it the ranking of platinum at the wine website.

Remotely controling a Windows server with RDesktop in Linux

was checking up on the terminal services offered by win2000 and stumbled accross rdesktop. with a simple install i was able to log into the server as a proper user and the speed of the terminal os much beter that VNC as it is a proper terminal ( VNC was just taking snapshots of the desktop and sending them accross )

while its fast and doesnt require me to have a keyboard attached to the server everytime i restart, there are 2 problems. i cant increase rez ( its 800x600 ) and sound doesnt seem to work. since its a terminal i think its supposed to send the sound through the network even :s i have to figure out a way for it to use the sound card of the server itself.

Xorg TV-out configuration utility

work continues, after a 1 month break :s
i have now implemented a checking header that checks the scanned xorg.conf file for the presence of propietry drivers. seems small but it took hours !

Xorg TV-out configuration utility

:Originally Published Wed 17 May 2006 03:32 AM EDT:

work is progressing slowly. just figured out how to read the xorg.conf file in parts. next objective : store these sections into temporary files where they can be modified.

Remotely controling a server with VNC

Just bought a cheap P2 server today and have windows2000 server running off it. in order to control it i have to change my lcd screen to its input and use a seperate mouse/keyboard but not any longer. i installed "TightVNC" on the server and now i can control the server from FC5. on FC5 i installed the X Viewer, opened it, entered the i.p add of the server and the password which i installed the vnc server and connected :

still have to conduct experiments whether this can hold if i restart the server. its been a long way since Radmin though.

Wine Beta Testing - Bryce 5.5

Well, another reason not to boot up in windows now !! :-D i managed to get Bryce 5.5 running in wine 9.15 under FC5 with XGL running :

Am going to try out some modeling on it soon but there are several problems. some of the menus crash when clicked with the left key and the network rendering engine is inoperative. the network rendering was a priority for me as i do most of my designing on my laptop that has XP also. looks like i will use my linux desktop for the designing now and will then use a group of networked windows powered computers to do network rendering.
note : the setup required a msvcirt.dll file to be placed in the win32 directory in order to run. apart from that theres nothing special required for installation/running.