hardware

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Cyclabile, a labile bike lane

by ao2, August 26, 2018

Cyclabile is an experiment about showing a moving bike lane on the road: the image moves according to the bike movement, producing the effect of riding on an actual bike lane, even when there isn't one.

The effectiveness of projecting an image on the paving instead of using a traditional light can be argued, of course.

For now the project purpose is more about having some fun and making a statement (there should be more bike lanes) rather than building an actual usable product.

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Linux Device-Tree and gpio-keys driver on BeagleBone Black

by ao2, July 13, 2018

I had to wire up a simple navigation keypad to a BeagleBone Black for a prototype, and I used the gpio-keys driver configured via a device tree overlay.

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Low-cost and precise rotary encoder with magnetic spheres

by ao2, May 31, 2018

You know what they say that constraints drive creativity, I think this post is just another little example of that.

Usually I do not put time constraints to my hobby projects, but I make sure to have some other kind of constraints, like keeping the cost low and trying to reuse stuff that I already have.

In this case I needed a way to measure the angle and speed of a rotating object for some of my projects, and I wanted a rotary encoder that was inexpensive, but precise enough to work at very low speeds.

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Little hacks for a GoPro Hero 3 White

by ao2, March 28, 2018

Someone came to me with a broken GoPro Hero 3 White which wasn't turning on anymore, asking if there was a cheap way to fix it.

After tearing it down, a quick inspection revealed that the two flat-flex cables (the Shutter button one and the Power/Mode+LCD one) were both damaged, so neither the buttons or the LCD were working.

However, making contacts on the PCB traces of the Power button resulted in some reaction from the camera, so I knew there was still a chance.

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Linux KMS driver for Acer C120

by ao2, July 8, 2015

Hans de Goede informs me that he has been working on gm12u320-kms: a new linux kernel driver for the Acer C120 mini projector, and possibly other devices based on the Grain Media GM12U320 USB3 bridge chip.

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Teclast X98 Air 3G: unbricking a Bay Trail tablet

by ao2, December 30, 2014

While I was trying to boot a vanilla linux kernel on the Teclast X98 Air 3G I messed up a bit with the UEFI firmware settings: the battery was not recognized anymore, the tablet was rebooting right after showing the UEFI firmware boot screen, and USB-host was not working either; so no keyboard for accessing the firmware menu to restore the default settings, and no ADB for running flashrom or the Intel FPT to reflash the firmware with.

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Teclast X98 Air 3G: cheap Intel Bay Trail tablet, getting acquainted

by ao2, November 21, 2014

I got a Teclast X98 Air 3G tablet from Aliexpress, it costed 168 € ( with free shipping) and has a high-definition screen and it's an Intel Bay Trail device; so Android, x86 architecture, 2GiB of RAM and 32 GiB of storage on EMMC.