In early 2000 TiVo launched their revolutionary Linux based PVR in the UK in partnership with Sky TV and it soon picked up a loyal fanbase. Unfortunately due to a lack of marketing it never took off as it should have and TiVo pulled out of the UK in January 2003 and Sky later went on to develop their own PVR with Sky+ but it was a poor substitute for a TiVo. The UK TiVo, manufactured by Thomson was originally launched at £300 plus a monthly or lifetime subscription, I picked mine up in November 2002 for £99 as Curry’s were clearing the remaining stock out and went for the £199 lifetime subscription which turned out to be a good move saving me over £800 in the 8.5 years I’ve had it.
Late last year Virgin Media announced they would be partnering with TiVo for their new PVR, nice to have new TiVo hardware in the UK after all these years but not everyone wants or can get Virgin cable. Still, we had our old series 1 boxes still didn’t we… but not for much longer if TiVo had their way, in a spectacular show of disregard for their loyal fanbase they made the unfortunate decision to cut off all existing monthly and lifetime subscribers, rewarding them for their loyalty by effectively leaving them with a useless box.
The King is dead. Long live the King.
Step forward the AltEPG project. A team of people from the tivoland forum decided this wasn’t going to be the end of our beloved series 1 TiVo so they got together to set up their own EPG service, gathering data from free sources around the net and compiling it into a compatible format. Getting modified TiVo boxes to connect to the new service would be easy but what about all those unmodified boxes out there that could only dial up to the preconfigured TiVo number? Well fortunately the TiVo software allows the entry of a dial prefix, eg. a number the box might have to dial to get an outside line, this prefix will take enough digits to allow a full phone number to be entered, the TiVo then dials the prefix and connects to the new number with the original number being dialled afterwards but ignored by the phone system. A nice trick. With only one line available during testing it was hard to get connected but since then several individuals who run their own companies have stepped forward to provide lines for use with the AltEPG project with one recent number having 60 lines meaning you should no longer struggle to get a connection.
Build a computer from components in an afternoon? How could I resist?
Using only 3 chips and only 46 components in total, the FIGnition is a brand new 8-bit computer designed by Julian Skidmore that you can build yourself. It runs a variant of FIG-Forth and is based around the Atmel AVR microcontroller (an AtMega168), along with 8Kb of RAM and 384 Kb of flash storage and is controlled from an 8 key onboard keypad with video output by way of a PAL composite video output.
Despite its simple construction and minimal components the FIGnition is a fully functional computer, you can write programs on it in Forth using the onboard keypad and save them to its Flash chip; access the AVR’s hardware registers, video RAM, system clock and you can even define your own graphics characters. Thanks to the ability to upgrade the firmware over USB you can look forward to new features and performance improvements in the future and the entire hardware design, PCB layouts, firmware and documentation will all be release under an open source licence very soon.
FIGnition features:
A Boot-up time of <1s!
8Kb of RAM, enough for around 2000 lines of Forth code.
At least 384Kb of Storage. You can edit your programs and store them for later use, building up your own libraries of code.
User-defined graphics! – FIGnition is designed to be used practically (within its hardware limitations), it’s not a crippled machine designed to let you print “Hello World.” FIGnition allows you to write a variety of games using your own graphic designs.
Upgradeable firmware – simply download the latest firmware from the Fignition website and upload it on your FIGnition via USB and avrdude.
A fantastic 4 spare I/O ports for you to attach your own electronics! Control your own power station eh?
FIGnition is already 4x faster than the definitive Forth computer, the Jupiter-Ace (which routinely sells on eBay for hundreds of pounds) and seriously faster when running Forth than any early 80s home computer. It’s fast enough to run some classic games and it’s not even optimised yet!
Programmable in-situ using an efficient 8-key keypad!
FIGnition kits are currently available on eBay for £19.95 inc P&P but don’t hang around, the first batch sold out very quickly. The kit includes the PCB and all the components and is very easy to build using the online instructions, it took me just over an hour to finish the soldering and it worked first time. It’s always very satisfying to build something yourself and see it working and the FIGnition would be a great introduction to electronics for kids, I hope it is a great success and look forward to more interesting developments from Julian.
I’ve just received one of these wonderful little I/O boards for Android. The IOIO connects to an Android phone or tablet via USB allowing it to act on external inputs and control external devices, no modification of the Android device is required and no firmware programming is necessary, just ordinary Android application authoring with a very simple API for controlling the pins on the board. Optionally it can also provide power to charge the phone or even run some external devices such as small servos.
By allowing you to use all the computing power and connectivity of an Android device along with its built in sensors and devices such as the display, camera, GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi, gyroscope, accelerometer etc. for interfacing with external peripherals the IOIO opens up a whole world of possibilities. I don’t have any specific use in mind for mine at the moment, I’ll just be experimenting for now but there is obviously huge potential there.
IOIO Main Features:
48 I/O pins – all of which can function as digital inputs and outputs
Up to 16 analogue inputs (10-bit)
Up to 9 PWM outputs
Up to 4 UART channels
Up to 3 SPI channels
Up to 3 TWI (I²C-compatible) channels
On-board switch-mode regulator providing up to 1.5A of 5V supply.
Can charge the Android device as well as power a couple of small motors
Bootloader on the board pulls firmware off phone, enabling OTA firmware upgrades and application-specific firmware.
Pulse-width measurement, capacitance sensing and more (will be pushed with first OTA firmware upgrade)
The Android Open Accessory Development Kit (ADK) recently announced at Google I/O has some similarities but for the hobbyist the IOIO has some major benefits compared to the ADK as it currently stands. The IOIO is a lot cheaper for starters (50USD v 400USD) and is easier to use since you only will need to write code for your app, no embedded programming in C++ is needed and whereas the ADK requires Android 2.3.4 or higher the IOIO will work on 1.5 or above so recycling old handsets for use in a project is possible. It is hoped that the ADK protocol can be added to the IOIO in future.
The Advent Vega is a £250 Android tablet from the DSG group which has been hotly anticipated since its announcement a couple of months ago. The specification is high for the price point with a 10.1″ widescreen LCD with capacitive touchscreen, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, front facing camera, HDMI output, USB port and Micro SD slot. The processor is a dual core Nvidia Tegra T20 running at 1 GHz and the custom Android 2.2 (Froyo) install runs brilliantly on it as you would expect.
Hardware Battery life is great with a claimed 6.5 hours of HD video playback and early testing seems to back that up. Build quality is very good and the 10.1″ LCD is bright with vivid colours and a 16:9 aspect ratio making it ideal for video, it is only let down slightly by the viewing angle which isn’t great in the vertical plane but is still perfectly acceptable. Unlike most tablets in this price range the touchscreen is capacitive, supports multitouch and responds very well. There is no oleophobic coating so it can be a bit of a fingerprint magnet.
Unusually for Android hardware there are no hardware home or menu buttons, just a back button on the top right hand edge next to the orientation lock and power button, instead the home, menu and another back button are on the customised notification bar at the top of the touchscreen. Additionally, a long press of the hardware back button also functions as menu and a long press of the power button brings up the shutdown menu which also includes a home option. Holding the power button for 6 seconds or show shuts the unit off straight away.
The lack of dedicated buttons is a strange design decision and possibly a sign that the hardware wasn’t originally designed with Android in mind. I would certainly have preferred the three standard hardware buttons but it is something I was aware of and can live with. To the left of the power button is the built in microphone which I’ve tried with the Skype test call feature and it seems to be quite decent.
I’ve had my eye out for a compact digital camera for a while and after a lot of research I finally bought the 12 mega pixel Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS15 from Amazon a couple of weeks ago. It has a great feature set, the price was right and virtually all the reviews said it was a good choice. They were right.
I was after a compact camera and that’s certainly what this is, and lightweight too, 138g with battery and SD card. The build quality is excellent, it feels very solid and well made and the brushed metal casing looks great. I went for the black one but it is also available in blue and silver for around £10-£15 more.
It’s incredibly quick to start up from power on to being ready to take the first picture and produces some fantastic results, with strong vibrant colours and excellent detail plus very good low light performance. It’s a great all-rounder and has really exceeded my expectations.
The great results will be in no small part due to the superb 29mm Leica DC Vario-Elmar lens which has a 5x optical zoom (equivalent to 29-145mm on a 35mm film camera). These Leica lenses are renowned for their quality and it is a big plus point for this camera.
For point and shoot photography it has a fully automated “Intelligent Auto” mode that works really well, detecting if you are shooting scenery, faces, close up macro etc. but it also has a range of preset scene modes and control of ISO modes and exposure. Other features include macro zoom, burst mode, image stabilisation, face detection, red-eye reduction and AF Tracking to keep a moving subject in focus.
It can also record video at 30 fps in motion jpeg format in 4:3 or 16:9 up to a resolution of 848 x 480. The quality isn’t bad but there are a couple of downsides, namely the maximum amount of time you can record a single video is 15 minutes and once you have started recording you can’t zoom in or out. It’s a nice bonus feature to have on what is really a still camera though.
In use it’s very user friendly, the controls and on screen menus are intuitive and the 2.7″ screen is exceptionally bright and clear and the rechargeable lithium-ion battery gives you over 300 images per charge.
Mine also came with a free Lowepro Apex 5 AW case which is also of very good quality, very rugged, well padded and a nice snug fit for the FS15. It took a couple of days to discover there was also an integrated waterproof cover hidden in a flap at the bottom!
Although I suppose this camera is really intended for point and shoot it is capable of quite a bit more and overall it is a very impressive bit of kit for the size and cost. Check out the Flickr page for some sample images.
I’ve been quite enamoured with my iPhone, personally I don’t think any other smartphone comes close at the moment but I’m no Apple fan boy, just a pragmatist. If something better comes along I’ll be onto it. Unfortunately, I and many many others have been experiencing unpredictable lock ups since the 3.1 OS update. It didn’t manifest itself immediately after the update but once it started I was getting it once a day, Turning 3G and wifi off stopped it for me but some people were getting it much more often and for a lot it seemed that nothing they tried helped other than downgrading to 3.0.1 – not something Apple sanctioned or made easy. When the iPhone coma (as it came to be known) occurred incoming calls just rang out, they didn’t go to voicemail and sometimes the lockup was accompanied by the battery being completely flattened and the phone becoming very hot. Good for it I’m sure!
Shit happens of course, bugs often don’t show themselves until something is made live and used in the real world, you deal with it. What is unforgivable is Apple’s silence on the issue, some acknowledgement of the problem and a statement to the effect of “we’re working on it” would have been much more preferable to the deadly silence we got. There were over 2000 posts in this single thread on the Apple forum alone yet not a single word from Apple on the issue anywhere. The 3.1.2 update doesn’t specifically mention the locking up problem but does say it “Resolves sporadic issue that may cause iPhone not to wake from sleep” and early indications are it does fix the coma bug.
So that’s soured my “Apple experience” somewhat, phone, 3G and wifi are core features after all. Here’s hoping 3.1.2 does fix the problem, so far so good. I can’t see that it can make matters worse.
It is certainly the last update I will be rushing into.
Sadly it looks like I might have another poor customer service tale to tell soon, involving a dead monitor, a 3 year on site warranty and a manufacturer that doesn’t seem to like returning calls or emails. Hopefully they can yet redeem themselves as I’ve had excellent customer service from them on the one occassion I previously had need for it. I’ll let you know how I get on.
After much umming and ahhing I finally decided to get an iPhone 3G 16GB and wow, what a fantastic bit of kit. Feels so good in the hand (you’d have to try it to understand) and the OS is the slickest mobile OS I’ve seen by a good margin. Definitely the best thing I have bought in a long while!
If I had a complaint, and obviously I was aware of this beforehand, it is that it needs iTunes for syncing etc… I don’t have any recent macs here, I’m a long term Linux guy as you know but I do have a couple of XP boxes around so that’s not the problem, it’s just that iTunes always seems so laggy and unresponsive on windows. Might be getting a Mac Mini before too long though as I want to have a look into iPhone app development.
Managed to drive over my xda on Thursday when leaving work… it faired better than you would think, still turns on and makes noise, syncs with pc etc but the screen is smashed, case a bit battered and the phone part no longer works… tits… and guess who never took insurance out (cos I’ve never broke a bit of kit in my life )
Tried household insurance but… I also didn’t take out “cover for personal possessions outside the home” (cos I’ve never broke….. grr)
So wayed up all options and o2 were cheapest at £279 for a replacement. Oh well, probably saved that in not having the insurance over the years??
Expanding my bread machine horizons with the aid of this great book I was given. Have got chilli bread on the go. http://t.co/rJNDg0qWabout 14 hours ago
In early 2000 TiVo launched their revolutionary Linux based PVR in the UK in partnership with Sky TV and it soon picked up a loyal fanbase. Unfortunately due to a lack of marketing it never took off as it should have and TiVo pulled out of the UK in January 2003 and Sky later went on to develop their own PVR with Sky+ but it was a poor substitute for a TiVo. The UK TiVo, manufactured by Thomson was originally launched at £300 plus a monthly or lifetime subscription, I picked mine up in November 2002 for £99 as Curry’s were clearing the remaining stock out and went for the £199 lifetime subscription which turned out to be a good move saving me over £800 in the 8.5 years I’ve had it.
Build a computer from components in an afternoon? How could I resist?
I’ve had my eye out for a compact digital camera for a while and after a lot of research I finally bought the 12 mega pixel Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS15 
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