Samsung Laptop with Synaptics touchpad in Windows 10

I have struggeled with the synaptics touchpad in my Samsung SF311 laptop since I installed Windows 10 on it. Samsung seems to abandon old hardware with no updated drivers to show for. 

The drivers from synaptics website did show a old style scroll icon as mouse pointer when attempting a scroll but Edge and Explorer windows would not respond.

Having read some attempts that seemed to work on HP laptops with Lenovo drivers I tried to install the Lenovo drivers on my Samsung SF311. The Lenovo drivers works, scrolling and everything! The only culprit now is that it is scrolling the "wrong" direction (up is down and down is up). But this is probably done on purpose to "drag" the page, not a wheel. It actually starts to feel normal.

The drivers I used:
http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/downloads/ds032247
They probably also work on SF411 and SF511 as I guess they share touchpad.

Update: It is possible to reverse direction of scrolling.
Start->Type "Mouse & Touchpad settings"
Device Settings->settings

Raspberry PI camera as telecine sensor for digitizing super 8mm?

I found this describing how to modify the camera on the raspberry pi
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/4279

I figured it might be a candidate for camera for transferrig Super 8mm to HD and decided to try how good the macro was.

I tried the rubber-eraser trick mentioned mentioned on the site and saw i could easely unscrew the lens with my fingers. It was not that hard. about 2 turn out and the lens come loose.

I ran this command on the pi using putty to grab an image:
raspistill -o kodak.jpg
There is a small preview window on the display on the pi that made it easy to find focus distace of approx 2-3cm.

Transferred the image to my computer using WinSCP and checked out the result:

The image quality seems good enough but seems like i only will get 814x 524 of video resolution out of this. Not enought for now so more drastic measures are needed to get the lens further out to make it fill more of the sensor.

I tried reversing the lens but then was not able to focus even with the film toutching the lens.

Then i tried to jam a bit of tape in the hole to make the lens stay longer out in the fixture

This is the result:



Paint tells me it possible to get 1080p height from one Super 8mm frame height. Exactly what I am after. Never mind the white balance. The red LED from the camera module is causing weird lighting. That will need to be covered or removed. But this looks promising.

HT Projector ground loop isolator

Once I got a projector (Epson EH-TW3200) connected to my surround amplifier I had a problem with hum in the speakers, and some nasty flickers because of bad HDMI signal quality. While connecting the HDMI between the surround amplifier and the projector I noticed a small spark when the metal on the HDMI cable connector came in contact with the metal on the receiver.

The setup with hum:

Projector (Epson EH-TW3200): Grounded
15M HDMI Cable
Surround amp: Not grounded (double isolated)
Media PC: Grounded
Sub: Grounded

I live in a pretty new house with 400V TN (terra neutral) grid. This is common in europe, but not so common in historically in norway.

I tried a small hack with tape on the safety ground on the wall power plug to the projector. Then the problems with flicker and hum went away. But I dont like having disconnected ground for safety reasons so i thought up this ground isolator:

It is pretty ugly, but it will connect the ground during a failure and trigger the earthfault circuit braker in my house. It is basically the same as a Zink Saver used for boats, but they have much more powerful diodes.



Disclaimer, this is most likely a bad idea and will probably kill you and your stereo, but if done correctly it should be better than to disconnect the safety ground completely.

What causes the groundloop in the first place?

The Surround amp/ Sub and PC is sharing the same wall outlet. 

The projetor have another wall outlet with another route to the house star ground point.

The chassi ground of the surround amp and the projector is connected together causing a triangle loop. When there is a potential difference of say 50mV between the ground in the two sockets there will flow current in the screen of the HDMI. I assume the resistance in the HDMI screen to be 0.1 Ohm. Then there will be 50mV/0.1Ohm = 500mA current flowing in the HDMI screen and into the surround receiver and adding noise to all analog logic referenced to this ground (like my Sub)

Adding the isolator the grounds must be more than 1-1.2V appart before there can be flowing any current in the HDMI cable. This will cover most noise and fields the groundloop can be subjected to.

Mounting a micro switch in the Eumig Mark 610D for synced telecine.

This is just a small followup of this post: http://oysteineliassen.blogspot.no/2012/09/diy-synced-telecine-with-eumig-mark.html

Someone on vimeo asked where I mounted the micro switch inside the 610D projector. 

Here are some pictures :-)

First off, i kept the big ALU part that locks the gear mechanism. It is held at fixed position (6 fps) with some pressure from the steel plate in the top of the first picture. I just rotate this plate to press inn the big alu gear part.

The mounting bracket for the switch is made of some black metal piece i did not need joned to strip of aluminium by a M3 screw and nut and then bent into position. Some double sided tape on the sidewall of the micro switch is securing it to the aluminium.

 The aluminium is bent into position so that the actuator of the micro switch is touching the metal flap that i noticed was "coming out" at each frame advance.

As for the reliability i managed to transfer 2 reels of 100 meters  and about 12 reels of 15 meters without breakdown of the micro switch.

Hope this is of some use to someone. 

XFX GeForce 9300 Mainboard Hdmi LPCM Channel mapping

Just wanted to mention a channel mapping issue i had while i was uprgading my XBMCbuntu 12 box with a XFX Geforce 9300 mainboard.

I always set XBMC to resample audio and sync video to soundcard, that way i get flickerfree movies.
This means i need to use LPCM for sound to my surround. And here is where the problem started.

My center channel was moved to Rear Right. :-(

While xbmc is running but movie is stopped i can do the following from an putty SSH session.

xbmc@KANON:~$ speaker-test -D hdmi -c 6

I hear that the mainboard clearly mapped the channels wrong.

While it is playing this

>  0 - Front Left
>  4 - Center
>  1 - Front Right
>  3 - Rear Right
>  2 - Rear Left
>  5 - LFE
i hear the real order as:

Front Left
Rear Left
Front Right
LFE
Center
Rear Right


Editing the alsa userconfig with
xbmc@KANON:~$ nano .asoundrc

and put the following in the empty file:
pcm.hdmi-remap{
        type route
        slave.pcm hdmi
        ttable.0.0 1
        ttable.1.1 1
        ttable.2.4 1
        ttable.3.5 1
        ttable.4.2 1
        ttable.5.3 1
}


testrun:
xbmc@KANON:~$ speaker-test -D hdmi-remap -c 6
works butiful :-)

Rebooted XBMC machine and now i have a new device in the audiosettings:

After a quic test in a movie i finally have my center in the center speaker :-)

IR encoder from a ball mouse

I was a bit curious to see how an old mouse worked to be able to use the phototransistors in there for other DIY purposes. This video is shot with an old sony DV camcorder and shows how the IR shadows penetrate the receiver phototransistors.

Here is the video:

The quaderature signal output from the two phototransistors is then something like this:

A: __|--|__|--|__|- 
B: _|--|__|--|__|--



The direction of rotation is determined by the phase difference of the pulses. This would then be the other direction:

A: _|--|__|--|__|--
B: __|--|__|--|__|- 

 Hope this is useful for someone, i have used the phototransistors for this energymeter interface. 

Arduino Energy Meter Interface

I like to measure stuff. I also like to trend my energy use in the hoouse. I have been thinkin about an interface to my house's energy meter for some time, and how to read it. I also have an Arduino Uno in my drawer that i never have powered up. So this is actually my first Arduino project :-)

Here is my energy meter:

On the left side it says 1000imp/kWh. So i looked at the Infra Red LED in the metal ring using the camera of my phone:



It turns out that in the magnet cicle ther is an IR LED that emit one pulse for each Wh or 1000 pulses per kWh. Of course i must try to read these pulses and calculate the Power :-)

Inside and old ball type computer mouse i found an IR phototransistor:

The photo transistor is the black one reading the rotary encoder pulses. It is a dual device to read quaderature signals so i only need to use the middel one wich is the collector and one of the sides that is an emitter. I noticed that the middle pin of the IR transistors was connected to + on the Electrolytic capacitor and assumed it was Vcc. The other two pins went to the IC in the mouse.

I connected it up with a 5V from the Arduino on the collector and 100k pulldown on the emitter to ground. Used an old USB wire and placed the transistor on the meter:

 

Here is the schematic:

  

And the real world :)

  Then measured the emitter to ground using my prehistoric oscilloscope:

Scope is set at 1ms/div so the pulse is about 1.5ms long.

Actually it seems pretty imune to the other light sources around.. except remote controls :-o


Calculation:
The energy consumed between each blink is 1[Wh] = 3600 [J] = 3600[Ws]
The power is then P[W]= 3600[J] / t[s]


So i only need to measure the time and then calulate power.

Here is the quick and dirty Arduino sketch to measure time using timer:

I really like the Arduino platform. It really can not be easier.

Result from the in the IDEs built in serial console:

Playing with some halogen lamps and it looks good :)


Next i might try to collect the data some how.