Development Dan's Blog

If you’re living in the US and thinking of switching to Verizon – think twice!  In what is probably the most frustrating conversation I’ve ever heard, this poor guy is trying to clear up a billing error where he’s been charged 0.002 dollars per KB rather than the 0.002 cents per KB he was quoted.  It’s got to be heard to be believed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gp0HyxQv97Q

Okay, I’ve gone three posts without mentioning Star Trek, which is certainly a disgraceful omission for a technology blog.  If you’re reading this far I’m guessing you’re already sitting comfortably in your replica Star Fleet Commander’s uniform, or busy gluing your forehead on…

So you’ve probably seen the various characters in the Star Trek universe interacting with the LCARS (Library Computer Access and Retrieval System) onboard computer, with it’s sleek “Okudagram” interface, and voice control.  Of course, it’ll likely be a few years away before we see anything quite as nifty as the LCARS system, however, we do have the beginnings of some of the technology today.

Speech Recognition is definitely becoming mainstream, especially now that it’s being included by default in Windows Vista.  Automation of various devices around the home is also becoming increasingly popular especially with prices coming down to sensible levels recently.

So what kind of system could we build with today’s hardware, and a bit of software development?  Bear in mind that I’m not trying to replicate the LCARS system.  My main aim is to build a system to control devices around the house through voice commands.  If the system happens to have a black screen and make chirping star trek noises, that’s a bonus!

For the hardware side, I started off with:

• A CM19U USB PC controller (sends and receives X10 radio signal commands using a PC)
• A TM13U Transceiver module (transmits signals through your house’s power lines to your X10 devices)
• Various lamp and appliance modules for controlling your actual devices.
• A Labtec USB microphone (for speech input)

These devices are all readily available and you should be able to get hold of them fairly cheaply on e-bay.

Tune in next time for details of the software side of things!

We’ve just released a beta version of our Windows based bakery control system netBake. Click here to get it while it’s hot!

Recently I built myself an ultra low powered machine to use as a media centre for the living room.  I wanted something low powered and completely silent, so I got myself one of VIA’s microscopic 12x12cm Nano-ITX boards:

Everything you need is built into the board – audio, network, TV out, etc. and the whole thing is cooled with a passive heatsink.  Perfect for what I needed and completely silent.  Except for one snag - the hard disk makes a hell of a noise when every other component is silent!

So back to the drawing board.  Eventually, I found a fantastic device:

A flash based IDE disk.  It plugs directly into your IDE socket and as far as your system is concerned, it appears as a normal hard disk.  As an added bonus, it uses a fraction of the power of a normal hard disk, and random access time is much faster.

There are a couple of drawback though.  The main problem is the limited number of write cycles of flash devices.  Normally this isn’t a problem if you’re using a flash disk for storing files, but if you’re running an operating system from one, then the number of writes to the disk increases dramatically.  So if you going to use a flash based disk, you’ve got to limit the number of writes, or your devices could become useless in a matter of months.  That’s when I found an excellent guide to write protecting your disk by Silvio Fiorito:

http://mason.gmu.edu/~sfiorito/eXPinstall.htm

It involves borrowing the Extended Write Filter driver from Windows XP Embedded, and installing it on your normal version of XP.  It’s quite a chore setting it all up – editing security permissions, adding registry keys, replacing files, etc.

I’ve created a small tool that should automate the installation and configuration process.  It’s a stand alone app, so no need to install, just unzip it to a folder on the machine that you want to configure and run it.

The driver only works on Windows XP Pro, XP Home, and Media Center 2005.  You can download it here but be aware that it is beta software, and I’ve only tested it on my machine, so use at your own risk!

Hello and welcome to my blog!  So what what sort of things can you expect to be posted here?  Mostly nonsense probably!

In between the frivolities, I’ll probably be posting about the projects I’m working on both at work and during my spare time (stay tuned for links!).

My favourite topic just now is speech and natural language technologies, so you can expect a fair bit on that.  I’m also playing about with the new speech stuff in Windows Vista quite a bit just now, so look out for info on that too.  Basically, anything techie or geekie is likely to find it’s way onto this blog so be forewarned!

Well that’s all for now, but I will leave you with a link to keep you amused till next time:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ganerer/List_of_computer_pranks