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!

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

Using those COM ports allows you to do a lot more with your modem.

Other devices on the Huawei dongles are (smart)card readers and NAND flash in CD-ROM emulation (with Mobile Connect installer). These can all be enabled and disabled at will. For a complete reference check this site. From now on I'll focus on my favorite, the K3765. Check the previous link if the commands I'll be discussing apply to your model.

Modem commands to use (mind the cAsE!) :

AT^U2DIAG=0 will disable all subsystems except the com ports
AT^U2DIAG=276 will reset to factory defaults and restore all subsystems.

Other useful commands:

AT+CFUN=1,1 will reset the modem which can help when you try to capture the USB device with VirtualBox for example
AT^SYSCFG=13,1,3FFFFFFF,2,4 switch to GPRS only
AT^SYSCFG=14,2,3FFFFFFF,2,4 switch to 3G only

AT^SYSCFG is a complex beast of which there is a complete reference here. Just for backup purposes, not to take credit;

AT^SYSCFG=mode, order, band, roaming, domain
Mode:
2=Automatic search
13=2G only
14=3G ONLY
16=No change
Order:
0=Automatic search
1=2G first, then 3G
2=3G first, then 2G
3=No change
Band:
80=GSM DCS systems
100=Extended GSM 900
200=Primary GSM 900
200000=GSM PCS
400000=WCDMA IMT 2000
3FFFFFFF=Any band
40000000=No change of band
Roaming:
0=Not supported
1=Roaming is supported
2=No change
Domain:
0=CS_ONLY
1=PS_ONLY
2=CS_PS
3=ANY
4=No change

Coming up; more nerd uses for UMTS dongles Stay tuned!

To start transcoding your own videos I wrote a small tutorial. Enjoy.

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.

This effectively disabled 3D Vision which was a bit of a let down to say the least. I was forced to connect the Acer directly to the PC and use an S/PDIF cable to carry the audio to the receiver. This unfortunately disabled HD audio (such as DTS-MA and Dolby TrueHD) and multi-channel audio for my games.

Well, it took me half a year to figure it out, but I finally found a solution

Download Entech Taiwan's excellent Monitor Asset Manager. This will allow you to capture the EDID data of any display device.

First you need to directly connect the 3D Vision Ready display device to your PC. Run the utility and select the entry with the [Real-time name] suffix in the list of Display ID's. In the right panel (Asset Information) you'll find all information about the connected display device. Go to the File menu and select 'Create INF...'. Save this file to your desktop (for convenience) and call it 'display.inf'.

After that you can unplug and connect your AV receiver with the 3D Vision Ready display device in its active HDMI input. Press F5 in (or restart) the Monitor Asset Manager. Make sure the [Real-time name] entry is selected. You'll see information about your AV receiver under 'Asset Information'.

Here my trusty NVIDIA GT240 got in a bit of trouble. I was only getting the first 128 bytes of the EDID Raw Data. You can check if you're in a similar situation when under 'Asset Information' you'll find;

Extension blocs.......... 1, 0x00

I was fortunate in that my motherboard contained an integrated ATI display controller. When I used that to read the EDID data I got;

Extension blocs.......... 1, CEA-EXT, DID-EXT, etc.

Make sure you get the latter extension block. If you do, select the File menu again, 'Create INF...' and save the file as 'receiver.inf'.

Now we get to the magic; open up both files in a text editor. In both files locate the [OVERRIDDEN-EDID_AddReg] section. Now copy the entire line that starts with HKR,EDID_OVERRIDE,"1" from 'receiver.inf' and append it under the HKR,EDID_OVERRIDE,"0" line of 'display.inf' and save the file.

With a Acer H5360 connected through the Onkyo TX-308 you should now have the following in the 'display.inf' file;

[OVERRIDDEN-EDID_AddReg]
;Base EDID
HKR,EDID_OVERRIDE,"0",etc...
;Extension bloc #1, e.g., CEA-EXT, DID-EXT, etc. (this line was copied from receiver.inf)
HKR,EDID_OVERRIDE,"1",etc...

Open up the Device Manager of Windows and locate the 'Generic PnP Monitor' under 'Monitors'. Right click it and select 'Update Driver Software...'. Select 'Browse my computer for driver software' and after that 'Let me pick from a list of a device drivers on my computer'. Now click 'Have Disk...' and 'Browse...' to the desktop folder. Open 'display.inf'. Click OK and then uncheck 'Show compatible hardware' in the list of devices.

Make sure you select the 3D Vision device, 'Acer H5360 (EDID Override)' in my case. Next, allow the unsigned driver, Finish and you're done Don't forget to configure the HD sound device through the Control Panel to match your speaker setup (5.1, 7.1, etc). Enjoy!

The ingredients: Arch Linux, kernel 2.6.33 (and pppd), Huawei K3765 and Vodafone Mobile Connect.

The following is more of a overview of all the configuration files involved and the expected values by Vodafone in The Netherlands. If the files already exist on your system please make sure these additions are correctly added. Also, your AP (office.vodafone.nl in my example) may be different.

Configure the hardware;
modprobe usbserial vendor=0x12d1 product=0x1465
You can add the previous command to /etc/rc.local or use a better solution to survive reboots. Check out the output of dmesg, it should read something like;

usbcore: registered new interface driver usbserial
USB Serial support registered for generic
usb 1-1: generic converter now attached to ttyUSB0

After that we need to make sure we have all the necessary software;
pacman -Sy pppd

We have a lot of files to configure, let's go:
/etc/ppp/chap-secrets
vodafone * vodafone *
/etc/chatscripts/vodafone.chat
TIMEOUT 3
ABORT "BUSY"
ABORT DELAYED
"" ATZ
OK AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","office.vodafone.nl"
OK ATD*99#
CONNECT ""
/etc/ppp/peers/vodafone
connect "/usr/sbin/chat -v -f /etc/chatscripts/vodafone.chat"
noauth
noipdefault
user vodafone
defaultroute
usepeerdns
/etc/ppp/ip-up.d/vodafone.sh (optional)
#!/bin/sh
echo `date +%s` vodafone UP >> /var/log/vodafone.log
/etc/ppp/ip-down.d/vodafone.sh (optional)
#!/bin/sh
echo `date +%s` vodafone DOWN time: $CONNECT_TIME recv: $BYTES_RCVD sent: $BYTES_SENT >> /var/log/vodafone.log
If you decide to use these script make sure both are executable;
chmod +x /etc/ppp/ip-up.d/vodafone.sh /etc/ppp/ip-down.d/vodafone.sh
We're done! To start your connection;
pppd /dev/ttyUSB0 460800 call vodafone
after that /var/log/everything.log should contain something like;

pppd: Serial connection established.
pppd: Using interface ppp0
pppd: Connect: ppp0 < --> /dev/ttyUSB0
pppd: CHAP authentication succeeded

To close the connection;
poff
If you chose to use the up & down scripts check out /var/log/vodafone.log. In this file you'll find UNIX timestamps plus any information related to the event.

On my TODO list for the coming months:

• Blogging about the Dingoo A320 portable gaming console. At about $80/€60 this is an absolute steal. 360mhz MIPS32 processor with SIMD extensions, 32 MB DDR RAM and 4GB of NAND flash storage. It has a true-color 320x240 TFT display and a rechargeable battery via USB. It emulates all kinds of hardware (GBA, Neo Geo, etc) and it can run Linux (imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!). Mysterious Chinese origins but has a complete toolchain and SDK available. Starting to see why I am interested?
• How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the iPhone. Some Objective-C, Cocoa, the Cores and UIKit.
• Publishing my work-in-progress software 3D engine (ah, the good old days).
• Incorporating AngelScript in said engine.
• Getting my hands dirty with OpenGL ES 2.0, which rocks because of programmable shader support.

So much to do, so little time Stay tuned!

I moved this blog from my own server to the Rackspace Cloud. It's a great service. I noticed the load on my server was getting too high; three clicks and 5 minutes later this server was upgraded. Excellent. Give them a try.