I’m normally only mildly interested in what comes out of MacWorld, but this time around I’m pretty gripped. I’m now running out of reasons NOT to buy an iPod Touch, thanks to the missing apps from the iPhone now being available through a software update for the iPod Touch. The only reason I have left is that I only bought my first and only iPod about 5 months ago.

The other thing I’m waiting for is an announcement of the release of the SDK for the iPod Touch. This will allow me to develop the iPod Touch remote control as a native application. I’m not sure of the release date of this yet, and I’ve not seen it mentioned in any articles about MacWorld so far. Here’s hoping for it to come soon!

At the end of last year I tested the prototype of the matrix audio switcher, in the process blowing up part of the amplifier that powers the speakers in the living room. After investigating the damage, I found a great site to buy the replacement parts from. They arrived before Christmas, but I didn’t get around to installing them until recently.

The new transistors are exactly the same as the dead ones, so it was just a matter of unsoldering the old ones and replacing them. The nice chunky pads (compared to all the SMD boards I’m used to handling as computer parts) were lovely to work with, and the work was done in a matter of minutes. Minutes + £6 of parts = one big saving over a new amplifier and a lot of waste electronics. If only all devices were this easy to fault-find and fix.

With a fire extinguisher at the ready and my adrenaline gland just waiting to explode, I switched on the repaired circuit and ….. near silence, just the sound of the fan - it worked! Now that both channels are actually wired to something rather than one of them shorting out, the sound coming out is pretty good. In a few months the whole system should be up and running.

A couple of months ago I bought Crysis for my PC. My PC has a reasonable spec, with a dual core processor, as much RAM as 32bit Windows can support without crashing and a mid-range graphics card (X1950 Pro). However, Crysis could barely run with this spec even on the lowest settings. Setting up Crossfire should approximately double performance.

When I last upgraded my computer, I spent quite a bit of time researching motherboards, looking for ones with Crossfire support in particular. Crossfire motherboards have 2 of the larger PCI-X slots, though they don’t necessarily both run at x16 speeds. The X1950 Pro card that I already had supports Crossfire mode without having to purchase a special master card - all that is needed are two identical cards.

The card I already owned had just 256MB RAM, but when I purchased it’s companion card there were only 512MB versions available. It was a bit of a gamble, since the configurations weren’t identical, but fortunately Crossfire mode worked beautifully. When in Crossfire mode, the cards appear as one single card to Windows with 256MB RAM, but with a significant performance gain.

I’m not going to bother with taking benchmarks, but I can confirm that Crossfire did help run Crysis on low settings. I think to run it on highest settings I’d probably have to spend quite a chunk of cash, which I can’t really justify at the moment.

This test of Crossfire was only a temporary setup because the new card is really noisy and I had to borrow a more powerful power supply from another computer - Crossfire mode requires a PSU that can supply at least 550W. So until I can afford to buy another power supply, the second card is sitting on the floor underneath my desk.

The Homebrew Challenge gave me a reason to progress my projects, but over Christmas things have slowed down. Winning the competition has given me some money from the sale of my old car, so it seems fitting that the money is put towards finishing the current projects. This is my plan for the projects over the next 2 years.

I have purchased the 2 amplifiers for this month from eBay, but haven’t got around to the ventilation improvements as yet.

Boron has been running Fedora since it was intitally built several years ago. It has suffered from frequent problems all the time it has been in use, and recently I gave up and have gone for something more solid and stable - Ubuntu.

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After finding out that the two tuner cards I already have are too large to fit in the new Camulus case of the new MythTV master backend (aka sodium), I ordered a Nova-T 500 dual-tuner PCI card. This was a little risky because Hauppauge produced a limited run of cards for the UK that are not compatible with linux. These cards are normally identified by their model number and certain stickers on the box.

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Whilst pondering over what sensors I could put around the house, I ventured upon the idea of having a ’sensor box’ per room. This would be based upon something like the Netiom xAP, which would connect various sensors to the house’s IP network. Some of the sensors in each room would be different. Here are some examples of the sensors that would be common to all of the rooms:

• Temperature
• PIR (motion detector)
• Door contact
• Window contacts
• Light

Room specific sensors could be:

Entrance hall:

• Current meter
• Intruder alarm status (triggered/armed)
• Door bell

Kitchen:

• Back door bolt contact
• Oven/hob state

Each of these nodes can then be queried, via the xAP protocol in this case. Temperature could be recorded, although at present our combi-boiler would probably not allow for remote control. Motion detection and door contacts can be used to determine which rooms are occupied, and along with the window sensors could be used as a secondary security system. The light sensors would be used to control the house lights.

Having one single ‘node’ to talk to would do away with having lots of independent sensors that would probably all communicate differently. Thanks to having picture rail throughout most of the house, there won’t be a problem with hiding the wiring. I’m not sure how big the boxes would be, but I dont think they would be massive. I just need to find the money to build a prototype.

Here’s a video I’ve put together about some of my projects. Sorry about the wobblyness and wonkyness - I’m not sure where I’ve put my tripod.

Today I took a look at the damage caused by last weekend’s test of the matrix switcher prototype. I suspect that the cause of the bangs was actually a short because in my haste to test I’d only connected one channel to a speaker and left the other with bare ends - oops!

Removing the case revealed that the damage appears to be limited to two transistors on one of the channels. I’m not the only person who’s tried to fix this model of amplifier so a quick search for the numbers written on the remaining transistors revealed the information I needed to order some replacements. The parts have been ordered, so will hopefuly arrive before Christmas, although delivery times recently seem really slow.

Now I just need to remember where I left my soldering iron…

In the same way that the saying “you’ve got to spend money to make money” works, sometimes it’s also necessary to spend energy to save energy. An automated home may have more gadgetry than normal homes, but if set up correctly these little power-consumers can help to save energy. While the debate about whether the apparent global warming trend is the result of our actions, it can’t hurt to try to reduce energy use (or rather, conversion) as much as possible.

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