Nick Taylors blog

I’m happy that I’ve managed to get my Icom IC-2820 radio and Kenwood RC-D710 TNC/data terminal to work together so I can now use the “left side” of the 2820 for APRS on 144.39 MHz and use the “right side” for D-STAR and conventional voice communications. This configuration passes GPS data from the GPS in the IC-2820 to the RC-D710 which in turn sends back APRS data which is transmitted by the 2820. I’ve also upgraded the GPS antenna to a waterproof active antenna from Gilsson (#MCX180) which has a straight through MCX connector and fits, with a little trimming.

To do this, you’ll need the following (if you’re not making your own cables):

• Icom IC-2820 D-STAR radio
• Kenwood RC-D710 TNC/data terminal/control panel
• Kenwood PG-5J interface kit for RC-D710
• Kenwood PG-5G programming cable (to connect to a PC running Windows)
• Kenwood MCP-2A, “Memory Control Program” software (a free download)
• A PC running Windows for the MCP-2A software
• 6-pin mini-DIN cable that comes with the PG-5J
• A data cable with 2 mini-stereo jack plugs (the RC-D710 came with such a cable, but with only one jack plug)

After the usual preparation (checking items, installing powerpole connectors on the power cable, etc.) I powered off the radio and TNC, and connected the 6-pin mini-DIN cable from the main unit of the 2820 to the “data” socket on the PG-5J interface unit. I then connected the RJ-45 cable between the PG-5J and the RC-D710 panel. Finally, I had to connect the mini-stereo jack cable from the RC-D710 panel to the main unit of the 2820. I assumed that there would be a mini-jack at each end of the cable, but, no! Fortunately, I had two of these cables and I chose to connect them together. It’s a very small cable, with what seems like 3 strands of very thin copper in 3 cores (it’s a stereo cable). My soldering ability wasn’t up to the job, so I gave up and used a terminal block, which works nicely for testing (I’ve ordered a 10ft ready-made cable from Monoprice).

Next, I connected the RC-D710 to my PC and upgraded the firmware (it was v1.x and v2.01 is current), and then used the MCP-2A software to read the default config. This software is the only way to change the configuration elements on the RC-D710. I upped the levels as described in this article, viewed the other configuration items and set my callsign info, as well as some custom messages, setup smartbeaconing, etc. and on the IC_2820 I made sure in the data function that “G-D” was on (this sends GPS data via the stereo data cable to the D710), and in the menus (GPS sentence) I set RMA and GGA to on. In the packet menu, I set the packet operation band to “left” so the APRS data will only transmit on the band I have set to 144.39 MHz.

I feel I’ve only just scratched the surface, and will experiment a little more to optimize the configuration, but my first impression is that this will prove to be a great setup.

24 hours after posting about my problems re-registering and updating maps on my Garmin StreetPilot 7500, they have fixed my problem, I confess I dug my heels in a bit, sending them an email reminding them how I use their products, how long I’ve used them for (since 1995), how much I’ve spend and how many times I’ve recommend people buy Garmin for their good quality products and great customer support.

Anyway, I got an email from them saying that they’ve registered the device for me and they also threw in a free upgrade to City Navigator North America NT 2010, which is great, and that’s what started this thing in the first place.

So, while a little slower than usual, Garmin support came through again. Thank-you Garmin, I shall continue to recommend your products!

I’m trying to spend some money with Garmin, but they won’t let me.

I’m a fan of Garmin GPS receivers, particularly devices like the GPSMap 478, a wonderful chart-plotting GPS. I also have a StreetPilot 7500, a nice large-screen GPS that I use in the truck. I’ve spend thousands on Garmin hardware and maps since my first Garmin device, a GPS 12, back in 1995. If you count the devices I’ve bought for others and my referrals that total is well north of $10,000.

A while ago, maybe in mid-late 2007, Garmin updated their internal systems at my.garmin.com. I had multiple GPSes registered with them, including the StreetPilot 7500. The old system was never brilliant, I blame the DRM they have around the mapping data, but that’s another subject…

Anyway, I want to upgrade the 7500 to the latest version of City Navigator North America NT, the 2009 update. To unlock the maps, you have to have a registered device. During Garmins update to my.garmin.com my previously registered 7500 disappeared. Now, when I try to register it again my.garmin.com rejects my serial number.

I’ve been extremely happy with Garmin support through the years, in fact they managed to next day me a replacement mapping CDROM when I was out of the country, starting trans-Sahara trip, to replace a damaged disk. They have been pretty responsive so far with my registration problem, until I received this today (the issue had been passed to their IT department)

We have contacted our IT department and requested another update. To answer your questions:

We have stressed the importance of getting this matter resolved and I am hopeful that we can get this matter resolved quickly. Thank you for your patience in this matter.

As this issue has been outstanding for 3 weeks, I’d love to know what the “IT Department” are doing. The very phrase makes my blood run cold, and I’m in IT guy! Some transparency would be greatly appreciated.

Ideally, I’d like to know what IT have done in the 2 weeks since they received this ticket from their support guys, what they are planning to do and why they can’t escalate it.

Remember, all I want to do is give them about $100 for new maps. All I need is a valid serial number.

I hope I don’t have to start buying and recommending other brands if they can’t resolve this. If anyone from Garmin feels like helping, the case number is KMM12787676I15977L0KM. Thanks!

I recently bought a 5MP GoPro Hero Helmet Camera – Amazon had the best price at around $190. Loaded with a cheap 2Gb SD card, I was hoping to get some fun shots when I’m snowboarding, mountain biking or driving one of the Land Rovers somewhere interesting (unless anyone wants shots of I-25 every morning). 

Specs:

• Model Number: GHHW5170
• Resolution: 5 megapixel (2592×1944) photo, 512×384 video
• Sensor: CMOS
• Video Format: MJPEG, 30 fps, saved as .AVI file
• Optics: glass lens, f/2.8 aperture, with ultra-wide 170º angle of view
• Modes: video, standard photo, photo every 2 or 5 secs, 3x photo burst sequence, self timer, upside down photo/video flip
• Exposure Control: auto
• White Balance: auto
• Self Timer: 10 seconds
• Microphone: built-in with adjustable recording/input level
• Audio Format: 8kHz, mono
• Memory: 16 MB internal, expandable to 2GB with SD card (not included), expandable to 4GB with SDHC card (not included) via free software download from GoPro website—available soon
• Capacity: 56 minutes video (incl. audio) or 1,945 photos with optional 2GB SD card. 1hr 52min video (incl. audio) with optional 4GB SDHC card—available soon
• Power: 2x AAA batteries (not included), lithium batteries highly recommended. 3hrs. video recording with lithium, 2hrs. with NiMH
• TV Out (with RCA cable): NTSC or PAL
• PC Connection: USB + RCA combo cable
• PC Compatibility: Windows ME, 2000, XP, and Vista; Mac OS X 10.2 and later
• Waterproof: rated to 100 feet/30 meters
• Dimensions: 1.75″ x 2.30″ x 1.25″/4.45cm x 5.84cm x 3.18cm (H x W x D)
• Weight: 4.9 oz/139 g

I took it our for a test run today, I was snowboarding in Breckenridge. In summary, it’s an acceptable camera as long as you’re just after snapshots, or need a camera to go somewhere hazardous where you wouldn’t take your D-SLR, for example. I had to explain what it was and how it worked to about ten people today. GoPro should hang-out at the resorts, I think they’d sell a boatload. 

Pros:

• It’s cheap
• It’s small and lightweight
• It seems robust
• It takes a lot of images
• Once started, you can forget about it
• The images are acceptable for web use

Cons:

• The images are only acceptable for web use
• The sharpness of the lens isn’t great
• There’s no way to compensate for exposure (or, at least, I’ve not found a way)
• In video mode, the camera is hunting for the correct exposure continuously, which is very distracting to watch
• I find the interface a little non-intuitive, and it’s a pain to remember if it’s on or off

Here’s an example video I shot. Checkout the exposure which is all over the place. To be fair, most cameras have a problem exposing correctly for snow, but I though the hunting was a bit too much. 

GoPro Hero Helmet Camera Test from Nick Taylor on Vimeo.

I also uploaded some test images to flickr. Here are some of them (click on the image through to flickr). 

This image shows the detail around the clouds but also shows the underexposure because of the bright snow.

Here’s the same image, tweaked in Aperture to correct the exposure.

This next image shows the color definition (unretouched). It’s also a good example of how the lens falls off in sharpness at the edges, best viewed on the original image. 

Another example of the falloff in image clarity at the edges (best seen on the original image).

Finally, here’s another unretouched image showing how wide the 170 degreee lens is – the bar is the edge of the chairlift. 

I’ve reached the point where I’ve outgrown the Media Temple (referral link) (gs) gridservice offering and have migrated to a (dv) dedicated virtual plan. My primary reasons were increased scalability, performance and flexibility. I’ve read some negative comments about Media Temple, but I’ve been with them for 3 years and had no problems, other than the occasional slowness. Their customer service has always been responsive and helpful. 

I have a number of sites hosted on the (gs), including WordPress and MediaWiki sites with MySQL databases, some of them are mine and some below to third parties. 

(dv) comes with a Plesk front-end management tool, which is ok, but the first thing I did was enable ssh access as I prefer the extra flexibility that hands-on environment gives you. Though I did spend the afternoon familiarizing myself with the Plesk environment and I like it well enough.

There are a few caveats when moving WordPress to a new site. I also changed the domains, and that added some extra complexity. I moved:

• http://blog.exerro.com/ to http://exerro.com/
• http://blog.http://nickt.com/ to http://nickt.com/
• http://blog.nickt.com/ to http://nickt.com/
• and some other, minor, changes

I got rid of the leading hostnames mainly to simplify my environment and it also aids SEO. 

These are some of the things you should watch for:

• The backup and restore of the database didn’t work well and I didn’t have much confidence in it. (mt) have a KnowledgeBase article on the subject. I used the command line to backup the databases like this:
  • $ mysqldump --add-drop-table -u Username -p dbname > dbname.sql
• And restored them like this:
  • $ mysql -u Username -p dbname < dbname.sql
• As I’ve moved domains, the databases needed some work to fix links. I found an article that was of help, but what you basically do is
  • update the wp_options table with:
    • UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = replace(option_value, 'http://OLDURL', 'http://NEWURL') WHERE option_name = 'home' OR option_name = 'siteurl';
  • update the references to absolute URLs:
    • UPDATE wp_posts SET guid = replace(guid, 'http://OLDURL','http://NEWURL');
  • update the posts that reference other posts on the site:
    • UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = replace(post_content, 'http://OLDURL', 'http://NEWURL');
• As I changed domain names, the permalinks broke. Make the .htaccess file writeable and in wp-admin/settings/permalinks hit “save changes” to regenerate the permalinks. If you have a problem here, it’ll probably be down to the .htaccess file either not existing or not being writable. 
• WordPress on (dv) requires the permissions on the wp-content/uploads directory to be 777, or you have problems adding to your media library. There may be a better way of doing this, but after spending a couple of hours I decided it was good enough. You also have to either edit the wp_options table in the database or simply change the settings/misc uploads setting in WordPress admin to be “wp-content/uploads” (note there’s no leading “/”). There are a lot of threads on the (mt) forums discussing this, this is the most relevant one. The WordPress forums also discuss this problem. 
• Also to allow successful uploads to your media library, PHP safe-mode has to be “off” as the httpd server and filesystem permissions are different. The easiest way to change this setting is via the Plesk control panel, but you can also edit /etc/php.ini. 
• I had some non-WordPress files, mostly images, on the old sites, so I used .htaccess to redirect to the new locations, specifically for links to files and images I’ve been posting to forums for years, and didn’t want them to break. For example, http://nickt.com/landrovers redirects to http://exerro.com/oldsites/2009/http://nickt.com/landrovers/.
• I use the WordPress Database Backup plugin, and it needed a new backup directory to be created in wp-content and made writable. 
• I noticed that the WordPress Automatic Upgrade and the automatic plugin upgrades now require an ftp username and password. 
• I setup MediaWiki to use short URLs, like Wikipedia, (aka removing “index.php” from the URL) in line with best practices for forming URLs using this method. 
• Also for the “codex exerro“, I only allowed authorized users to read pages using this method. 
• I temporarily disabled account creation by adding “$wgGroupPermissions['*']['createaccount'] = false;” to  LocalSettings.php

I’m still wondering whether or not to use Drupal instead of MediaWiki for both the “codex exerro” and a private wiki I’m building. Drupal has more flexibility in terms of user rights management (or is at least simpler than MediaWiki) and managing content (unsurprisingly as it is a Content Management System), but doesn’t look as good out of the box and is more complex to setup and maintain.

Anyway, it took around a day to migrate half a dozen sites and databases. I’m looking forward to pushing (dv) to see what it’s got!

ZFS will come of age in 2009.

In 2008, I had to explain what ZFS was and why it’s different to the existing volume/filesystem model. By the end of 2009, IT Pros will all be aware of it, what it does and will likely have at least a little of it in their production infrastructure. Sun has already started that ball rolling.

Heck, with full-blown support of ZFS likely to be in OSX 10.6, “Snow Leopard”, it’ll even make in-roads to the home-market. Or course, if Apple announce a ZFS-based upgraded Time Capsule/Home Server at MacWorld ExPo tomorrow that’ll happen sooner.

From a capacity perspective, with 2TB or greater drives being the de-facto standard capacity by the end of 2009 (compared with 1TB today), the growth of all types of media; including photographs, personal video and the increasing availability of internet-distributed hi-def content, coupled with the pack-rat nature of most of us (me included), demand for storage capacity has never been higher. It’ll also push the more mainstream storage user towards the 10-12TB Unrecoverable Read Error issue , aka known as the death of RAID5. 

To deal with increasing capacity and the straight line graph of bit-error rates, drive manufacturers keep making their drives smarter to handle errors and attempt to minimize data loss. This is the wrong approach, but it’s unavoidable as otherwise they commoditize themselves further. Drives should be stupid and let something further up the stack manage this. That something is ZFS.

Of course, this mostly applies to cheaper SATA drives. The more expensive UltraSCSI and SAS commanded a premium for performance and reliability. Move reliability into the filesystem and you’re just paying a premium for performance. Obviously, some need the performance which is why these drives and ancillary equipment and technologies like Fibre Channel will stay around, but I think it’s worth considering if you really need that CLARiiON or Symmetrix…

Living in the US coupled with never watching ads (commercials for US readers) on TV means I’ve not seen a PG Tips advert for years. I’ve been known for taking my tea seriously, but I’ve never taken it this far. Not yet anyway, though I see eBay does have some tea-monkeys available…

So allow me to share this with you, it’s over a minute long, so go and put the kettle on before you play it!

PG Tips Advert from Nick Taylor on Vimeo.