Category: Computers

Hacking an AVR programmer II

USBasp v3.02 from eBay, top side. (photo Sven H)

This is a follow-up of my most popular post, Hacking an AVR programmer. MX USBasp v3.02 Recently there have been quite a few comments about a new version 3.02 layout of the USBasp programmer available from many Chinese ebay sellers, which appears to be incompatible with my previous hack. The problem is still that these… Continue reading Hacking an AVR programmer II

LaTeX: x11names resorted

I like the color palette which the xcolor package offers under the option x11names, but I find the list of colors in the xcolor manual a bit confusing. The colors are sorted by names and not shades – so today I made my own little table.

An USBasp in a new design II

View of the first soldered board.

Most of the time I design and debug my AVR projects on solderless breadboards nowadays. And for that I have been using some different types of programmers by now: starting with the good old STK500, to different versions of USBasp clones from Chinese sellers on eBay. In order to connect the programmers to the breadboard… Continue reading An USBasp in a new design II

An USBasp in a new design

Die fertige Platine aus China.

Just a small teaser: today I received my circuit boards from PCBgogo – a layout which I just had sent to the Chinese manufacturer last Sunday. It is a USBasp, which can be placed on a breadboard and at the same time supplies the power rails on the sides. More to come…

Nerd or not?

Today there was a geocaching event celebrating Nerd Day. I must admit that I wasn’t aware of the significance of today’s date, but I also knew that I can probably be considered being a nerd. In the early days of the internet, while still writing my master’s thesis in Kiel, I already scored high on… Continue reading Nerd or not?

Setting up webcam exposure under linux

I had some problems with fswebcam to set the automatic exposure. The exact way how to enter certain parameters is not clear from the lacking documentation, but it works fine if you set parameters through another command line tool. This is the script behind BirdCam: #!/bin/bash DATE=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d_%H%M") v4l2-ctl -c exposure_auto=1 v4l2-ctl -c gamma=5 v4l2-ctl… Continue reading Setting up webcam exposure under linux