If you like microcontrollers, you’re gonna love this…
Feel free to see this as blatant advertising, but you should really check out Texas Instrument's MSP430 LaunchPad. For the ridiciulously low price of $4.30 (shipping included) you get a complete microcontroller SDK with USB connectivity and JTAG debugging! The fully assembled circuit-board has generic I/O pins and peripherals; one switch and two LEDs. Two microcontrollers (one with I2C support!) and an USB cable are included in the package.
One of the best things about it is the software development enviroment; Code Composer Studio, which should reach version 5.1 by now. Built on vanilla Eclipse it allows for easy development and debugging. The sample projects are quite good at showing you how micro-controllers should be programmed if you are more familiar with CPU's like on desktops. A cool feature is called Grace which allows n00bs like me to set up a software design skeleton.
I almost forgot to mention it has complete Linux support. That is an excellent move on Texas Instruments's behalf. Mad props to them for bringing such a mutual beneficial product!
Project refresh!
Many of my projects were in a state of disarray. Each one was compiled for a different C++ runtime or .NET framework. I've fixed this. Now every project also contains both the compiled binary and the source in a separate directory.
foo_amBX and amBXLib are still 32 bit only because of SDK limitations. The former is also compiled against the older SDK to retain foobar2000 1.0 support. QuickCamLib is provided with both 32 bit and 64 bit binaries.
The targeted .NET runtime for amBXLib and QuickCamLib is now .NET 2.0 and upwards. Visual Studio 2008 projects have been included in the 'source' directory of each project. The 'binary' directory also contains the PDB (for debugging), although these are optional when redistributing.
Without much further ado;
amBXLib 1.12
foo_amBX 0.81
QuickCamLib 1.26
Runtimes required: Visual C++ 2008 SP1 (32 bit or 64 bit). If you're using Vista or Windows 7 you probably have these.
Enjoy 
Configuring your Huawei K3765
When installing the device in either Linux or Windows you get three new COM ports. The first is the 'modem port'; it accepts AT commands such as 'dial'. The second one is the 'application port'. When in voice mode for example this will spew out the decrypted audio packets. At last there is the 'UI port' which outputs some diagnostic information now and then, such as connection speed or radio quality.
Using those COM ports allows you to do a lot more with your modem.
Open source HTML5 media wrangling
As seen in my previous post HTML5 finally allows plugin-less playing of media. The new WebM container allows for seeking and streaming over vanilla HTTP. It restricts the use of codecs because of IP issues, so at the moment only VP8 and Vorbis are allowed.
To start transcoding your own videos I wrote a small tutorial. Enjoy.
FFmpeg presets for VP8
I couldn't find them anywhere else other than inside of a patch, so here they are. They should work with the FFmpeg win32 builds.
libvpx-360p.ffpreset
libvpx-720p.ffpreset
libvpx-720p50_60.ffpreset
libvpx-1080p.ffpreset
libvpx-1080p50_60.ffpreset
If FFmpeg can't find the presets when using '-vpre 720p' (for example) you should set your environmental variable HOME to a place where the '.ffmpeg' directory containing the presets can be found.
All original files can be downloaded from The WebM Project website. Also, don't forget to check out the mkclean tool.