shotgunefx's blog

My Front-end (in progress)

shotgunefx — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 02:36:39 -0400

Been real busy but have made a lot of headway. Got my Holux GR213 GPS. Works great. I've also started up my own front-end. Coming along very nicely.

KDE losing resolution on reboot, finally figured it out. About damn time...

shotgunefx — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 02:39:22 -0400

Been busy with lot's of stuff, but finally nailed one issue that's been driving me mad.

My resolution in X should be 800x600, but after the graphical login, it keeps dumping me back to 640x480. I can go into KDE Control Center and set it correctly (though for some reason, there are tons of resolutions not specified in xorg.conf listed)

If I reboot, it just keeps reverting back to 640x480 after the login.

So it initially hits 800x600, and it can change to it without problem, so what the hell is going on here? Hours and hours of googling and tweaking yielded squat.

I thought maybe it was because I have dual (non-twinview) heads set up. I try changing the second monitor's resolution to no avail. Still dumps me into 640x480. I was close to the solution though.

Config update and other stuff

shotgunefx — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 00:17:30 -0400

Busy busy, a short update.

I now know why people just post working configs of linux stuff instead of the actual steps. I had spent dozens of hours trying to get everything right. Got dual heads working on the laptop and a million other little details that I've already forgotten. Still haven't gotten the udev rules to work right though.

Also on the HUD front, decided to try something different from the projection. I had a busted camcorder and I stole the CRT seeing it's almost the same size as common CCD cameras and therefor, lot's of lenses Here's how I got it to work. Warning! High voltage in the CRT!

Haven't gotten around to testing projecting it yet.

Linux - Love & Hate

shotgunefx — Sun, 28 May 2006 13:17:12 -0400

I really do love Linux, but God damn, I hate it too.

Finalizing my install and taking care of all the little odds and ends and it's driving me nuts.

First off. My Lilliput goes bonkers when X starts. Cycling the power button fixes it, but hey, I'm lazy.

So a little googling and I came up with this script (called togglemonitor) which I call from my Xstart file.

#!/bin/sh
/usr/X11R6/bin/xset dpms force off
/usr/X11R6/bin/xset dpms force on

Works like a charm. Monitor turns off and back on and everything's dandy. This would be one of those things I love.

Getting the touchscreen set up on the new laptop, would be one of those things I hate. I'd really like to get udev working so it doesn't screw everything up when i add devices. Docs suck. My rules appear to be correct but don't work.

Cameras, Mount etc...

shotgunefx — Sun, 14 May 2006 04:45:32 -0400

Been busy. Mostly with trying to overcome various issues with the Nitevision/HUD project.
One being projection of the HUD, the other main challenge, glare issues with the car cameras. Waiting now on an auto-iris lense to mate to the CCD.

New laptop, and Dell sucks.

shotgunefx — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 05:41:52 -0400

So I barter with my brother for his Dell Inspirion 8600.

So now my audio problem is solved. Much better/faster machine, even dual heads!

So I order a new dock and stand. Everything looks great and plug it in and....

It doesnt' work. Gives me an error saying that the AC adapter isn't big enough. Apparently it communicates on a 3rd pin.

This is pretty annoying. I don't mind so much picking up the bigger AC adapter, but unless I can extract one of those chips out of an adapter and can get it to work, using a Carnetix (Which I've been thinking a lot about) is out.

There's a setting to ignore those problems in the BIOS, but it doesn't have any effect.

Always something stupid tripping me up.

Driver and Sound Frustration.

shotgunefx — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 13:55:21 -0400

Nothing is going easy lately.

After about twenty hours, finally got the lilliput's touchscreen working basically following the directions here using the evtouch drivers.

Unfortunately before finding this and struggling with the tkusb drivers, I had to upgrade to a 2.6 kernel. What a PITA.

It took me hours of tweaking the config to get it to work, mainly as I had X tying it to the wrong input event. Oddly enough, it still worked, just not right.

So I think I'm good and hit a huge problem. My audio out on my laptop is broken. No left channel. Tried for hours to find out what's wrong and fix it to no avail.

LCD in with flexible privacy screen

shotgunefx — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 20:48:54 -0500

Well I polished it up a little bit. Not perfect but looks pretty good.

Got screwed on the flexible privacy screen. It was damaged. Haven't yet heard back from the seller. I was hoping to make 4 out of it ,but due to the giant crease, only got one.
I'm close enough to center that I can see the display pretty well. It's just the tiniest bit fuzzy (text). I might end up taking out the lcd panel and tilting it about 5 degrees towards me, then it will be crystal clear.

Making the lcd pretty and misc

shotgunefx — Sun, 26 Mar 2006 23:01:38 -0500

Still haven't attacked the line-out problem, so I've got to fight with that, headphone jack works but is MONO? WTF?

I ordered a flexible version of the privacy screen, hopefully the touchscreen will work through it, but don't know how the glare will be affected.

So in the meanwhile, I'm fixing up the lcd.

Started polishing up the lcd console.

First, I taped off all the areas I didn't want to smooth out in case I slipped with the power sander.

Almost gave up....

shotgunefx — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 21:31:41 -0500

So after spending my week freezing my can off in below freezing temperatures, I just about quit.

I spent some time this weekend tieing up some loose ends.

I made a nice LDO regulator for my lilliput as I was getting noise on the screen. I also added the amp turnon lead and wrapped it up with molex connectors so I could easily remove it as needed.

I test it out and... nothing. After hours of fighting with it, I realize the problem. The only thing that doesn't work with linux on my laptop is the audio outputs. GRRRRRRRRRRR