fidzu : embedded

If you're developing C/C++ on embedded devices, you might already have stumbled upon a corrupt stacktrace like this when trying to debug with gdb:

(gdb) bt 
#0  0xb38e32c4 in pthread_getname_np () from /home/enrique/buildroot/output5/staging/lib/libpthread.so.0
#1  0xb38e103c in __lll_timedlock_wait () from /home/enrique/buildroot/output5/staging/lib/libpthread.so.0 
Backtrace stopped: previous frame identical to this frame (corrupt stack?)

In these cases I usually give up gdb and try to solve my problems by adding printf()s and resorting to other tools. However, there are times when you really really need to know what is in that cursed stack.

ARM devices subroutine calls work by setting the return address in the Link Register (LR), so the subroutine knows where to point the Program Counter (PC) register to. While not jumping into subroutines, the values of the LR register is saved in the stack (to be restored later, right before the current subroutine returns to the caller) and the register can be used for other tasks (LR is a "scratch register"). This means that the functions in the backtrace are actually there, in the stack, in the form of older saved LRs, waiting for us to get them.

So, the first step would be to dump the memory contents of the backtrace, starting from the address pointed by the Stack Pointer (SP). Let's print the first 256 32-bit words and save them as a file from gdb:

(gdb) set logging overwrite on
(gdb) set logging file /tmp/bt.txt
(gdb) set logging on
Copying output to /tmp/bt.txt.
(gdb) x/256wa $sp
0xbe9772b0:     0x821e  0xb38e103d   0x1aef48   0xb1973df0
0xbe9772c0:      0x73d  0xb38dc51f        0x0          0x1
0xbe9772d0:   0x191d58    0x191da4   0x19f200   0xb31ae5ed
...
0xbe977560: 0xb28c6000  0xbe9776b4        0x5      0x10871 <main(int, char**)>
0xbe977570: 0xb6f93000  0xaaaaaaab 0xaf85fd4a   0xa36dbc17
0xbe977580:      0x130         0x0    0x109b9 <__libc_csu_init> 0x0
...
0xbe977690:        0x0         0x0    0x108cd <_start>  0x0
0xbe9776a0:        0x0     0x108ed <_start+32>  0x10a19 <__libc_csu_fini> 0xb6f76969  
(gdb) set logging off
Done logging to /tmp/bt.txt.

Gdb already can name some of the functions (like main()), but not all of them. At least not the ones more interesting for our purpose. We'll have to look for them by hand.

We first get the memory page mapping from the process (WebKit's WebProcess in my case) looking in /proc/pid/maps. I'm retrieving it from the device (named metro) via ssh and saving it to a local file. I'm only interested in the code pages, those with executable ('x') permissions:

$ ssh metro 'cat /proc/$(ps axu | grep WebProcess | grep -v grep | { read _ P _ ; echo $P ; })/maps | grep " r.x. "' > /tmp/maps.txt

The file looks like this:

00010000-00011000 r-xp 00000000 103:04 2617      /usr/bin/WPEWebProcess
...
b54f2000-b6e1e000 r-xp 00000000 103:04 1963      /usr/lib/libWPEWebKit-0.1.so.2.2.1 
b6f6b000-b6f82000 r-xp 00000000 00:02 816        /lib/ld-2.24.so 
be957000-be978000 rwxp 00000000 00:00 0          [stack] 
be979000-be97a000 r-xp 00000000 00:00 0          [sigpage] 
be97b000-be97c000 r-xp 00000000 00:00 0          [vdso] 
ffff0000-ffff1000 r-xp 00000000 00:00 0          [vectors]

Now we process the backtrace to remove address markers and have one word per line:

$ cat /tmp/bt.txt | sed -e 's/^[^:]*://' -e 's/[<][^>]*[>]//g' | while read A B C D; do echo $A; echo $B; echo $C; echo $D; done | sed 's/^0x//' | while read P; do printf '%08x\n' "$((16#"$P"))"; done | sponge /tmp/bt.txt

Then merge and sort both files, so the addresses in the stack appear below their corresponding mappings:

$ cat /tmp/maps.txt /tmp/bt.txt | sort > /tmp/merged.txt

Now we process the resulting file to get each address in the stack with its corresponding mapping:

$ cat /tmp/merged.txt | while read LINE; do if [[ $LINE =~ - ]]; then MAPPING="$LINE"; else echo $LINE '-->' $MAPPING; fi; done | grep '/' | sed -E -e 's/([0-9a-f][0-9a-f]*)-([0-9a-f][0-9a-f]*)/\1 - \2/' > /tmp/mapped.txt

Like this (address in the stack, page start (or base), page end, page permissions, executable file load offset (base offset), etc.):

0001034c --> 00010000 - 00011000 r-xp 00000000 103:04 2617 /usr/bin/WPEWebProcess
...
b550bfa4 --> b54f2000 - b6e1e000 r-xp 00000000 103:04 1963 /usr/lib/libWPEWebKit-0.1.so.2.2.1 
b5937445 --> b54f2000 - b6e1e000 r-xp 00000000 103:04 1963 /usr/lib/libWPEWebKit-0.1.so.2.2.1 
b5fb0319 --> b54f2000 - b6e1e000 r-xp 00000000 103:04 1963 /usr/lib/libWPEWebKit-0.1.so.2.2.1
...

The addr2line tool can give us the exact function an address belongs to, or even the function and source code line if the code has been built with symbols. But the addresses addr2line understands are internal offsets, not absolute memory addresses. We can convert the addresses in the stack to offsets with this expression:

offset = address - page start + base offset

I'm using buildroot as my cross-build environment, so I need to pick the library files from the staging directory because those are the unstripped versions. The addr2line tool is the one from the buldroot cross compiling toolchain. Written as a script:

$ cat /tmp/mapped.txt | while read ADDR _ BASE _ END _ BASEOFFSET _ _ FILE; do OFFSET=$(printf "%08x\n" $((0x$ADDR - 0x$BASE + 0x$BASEOFFSET))); FILE=~/buildroot/output/staging/$FILE; if [[ -f $FILE ]]; then LINE=$(~/buildroot/output/host/usr/bin/arm-buildroot-linux-gnueabihf-addr2line -p -f -C -e $FILE $OFFSET); echo "$ADDR $LINE"; fi; done > /tmp/addr2line.txt

Finally, we filter out the useless [??] entries:

$ cat /tmp/bt.txt | while read DATA; do cat /tmp/addr2line.txt | grep "$DATA"; done | grep -v '[?][?]' > /tmp/fullbt.txt

What remains is something very similar to what the real backtrace should have been if everything had originally worked as it should in gdb:

b31ae5ed gst_pad_send_event_unchecked en /home/enrique/buildroot/output5/build/gstreamer1-1.10.4/gst/gstpad.c:5571 
b31a46c1 gst_debug_log en /home/enrique/buildroot/output5/build/gstreamer1-1.10.4/gst/gstinfo.c:444 
b31b7ead gst_pad_send_event en /home/enrique/buildroot/output5/build/gstreamer1-1.10.4/gst/gstpad.c:5775 
b666250d WebCore::AppendPipeline::injectProtectionEventIfPending() en /home/enrique/buildroot/output5/build/wpewebkit-custom/build-Release/../Source/WebCore/platform/graphics/gstreamer/mse/AppendPipeline.cpp:1360 
b657b411 WTF::GRefPtr<_GstEvent>::~GRefPtr() en /home/enrique/buildroot/output5/build/wpewebkit-custom/build-Release/DerivedSources/ForwardingHeaders/wtf/glib/GRefPtr.h:76 
b5fb0319 WebCore::HTMLMediaElement::pendingActionTimerFired() en /home/enrique/buildroot/output5/build/wpewebkit-custom/build-Release/../Source/WebCore/html/HTMLMediaElement.cpp:1179 
b61a524d WebCore::ThreadTimers::sharedTimerFiredInternal() en /home/enrique/buildroot/output5/build/wpewebkit-custom/build-Release/../Source/WebCore/platform/ThreadTimers.cpp:120 
b61a5291 WTF::Function<void ()>::CallableWrapper<WebCore::ThreadTimers::setSharedTimer(WebCore::SharedTimer*)::{lambda()#1}>::call() en /home/enrique/buildroot/output5/build/wpewebkit-custom/build-Release/DerivedSources/ForwardingHeaders/wtf/Function.h:101 
b6c809a3 operator() en /home/enrique/buildroot/output5/build/wpewebkit-custom/build-Release/../Source/WTF/wtf/glib/RunLoopGLib.cpp:171 
b6c80991 WTF::RunLoop::TimerBase::TimerBase(WTF::RunLoop&)::{lambda(void*)#1}::_FUN(void*) en /home/enrique/buildroot/output5/build/wpewebkit-custom/build-Release/../Source/WTF/wtf/glib/RunLoopGLib.cpp:164 
b6c80991 WTF::RunLoop::TimerBase::TimerBase(WTF::RunLoop&)::{lambda(void*)#1}::_FUN(void*) en /home/enrique/buildroot/output5/build/wpewebkit-custom/build-Release/../Source/WTF/wtf/glib/RunLoopGLib.cpp:164 
b2ad4223 g_main_context_dispatch en :? 
b6c80601 WTF::{lambda(_GSource*, int (*)(void*), void*)#1}::_FUN(_GSource*, int (*)(void*), void*) en /home/enrique/buildroot/output5/build/wpewebkit-custom/build-Release/../Source/WTF/wtf/glib/RunLoopGLib.cpp:40 
b6c80991 WTF::RunLoop::TimerBase::TimerBase(WTF::RunLoop&)::{lambda(void*)#1}::_FUN(void*) en /home/enrique/buildroot/output5/build/wpewebkit-custom/build-Release/../Source/WTF/wtf/glib/RunLoopGLib.cpp:164 
b6c80991 WTF::RunLoop::TimerBase::TimerBase(WTF::RunLoop&)::{lambda(void*)#1}::_FUN(void*) en /home/enrique/buildroot/output5/build/wpewebkit-custom/build-Release/../Source/WTF/wtf/glib/RunLoopGLib.cpp:164 
b2adfc49 g_poll en :? 
b2ad44b7 g_main_context_iterate.isra.29 en :? 
b2ad477d g_main_loop_run en :? 
b6c80de3 WTF::RunLoop::run() en /home/enrique/buildroot/output5/build/wpewebkit-custom/build-Release/../Source/WTF/wtf/glib/RunLoopGLib.cpp:97 
b6c654ed WTF::RunLoop::dispatch(WTF::Function<void ()>&&) en /home/enrique/buildroot/output5/build/wpewebkit-custom/build-Release/../Source/WTF/wtf/RunLoop.cpp:128 
b5937445 int WebKit::ChildProcessMain<WebKit::WebProcess, WebKit::WebProcessMain>(int, char**) en /home/enrique/buildroot/output5/build/wpewebkit-custom/build-Release/../Source/WebKit/Shared/unix/ChildProcessMain.h:64 
b27b2978 __bss_start en :?

I hope you find this trick useful and the scripts handy in case you ever to resort to examining the raw stack to get a meaningful backtrace.

Happy debugging!

0 0

16 Oct 2020 7:07pm GMT

Xiaomi has recently released the new Mi Band 5. Since I have owned the each band starting with the Mi Band 2, I think it is time to look back and see where the Mi Band has gone in the recent years.

Actually, the Mi Band story started ahead of the Apple Watch in 2014 with the Mi Band 1, which was a pure fitness-tracking device without a display and even without a heart-beat sensor. This made the device not very appealing to me - even thought it already offered sleep monitoring.

It also already had that interchangeable wrist-bands that allow you to customize the look to your liking. The Mi Band 2 you see in the images uses a custom steel wrist-band as the original one broke after some years of usage.

Below you see a comparison of the Mi Bands, regarding the features that are most significant from my perspective

The first thing to note is probably that Xiaomi accelerated the release cycle from 2 years between the Bands 1, 2 and 3 to 1 year between Band 4 and 5. We will come back to this when talking about the Mi Band 5.

Screen legibility comparison

Lets start the comparison with the screen, which is the most obvious part and the one you will probably interact with the most.

Here, the most significant property is neither size nor resolution, but rather legibility in sunlight. For comparison, I set up a little benchmark as follows:

• set the Bands to maximal brightness (as applicable)
• legibility in direct sunlight on a bright sunny day as a worst-case
• legibility in shade/ with overcast condition as a more common scenario

You can find the results below. Also see the banner image for how the screens look indoors.

• bright sunlight
• shade/ overcast

First I should note that the camera does not do justice to the Mi Band 2 & 3 as their displays are scanline-based and the fast shutter can not capture the whole screen being lit at once. Therefore you only see the top part of the Mi Band 2 and the right part of the Mi Band 3 on the overcast picture.

Nevertheless, one actually cannot read the Mi Band 2 in direct sunlight and only can barely read it in the shade. The other Bands are well readable in the shade. However, I would say that only the MiBand 5 is well readable in direct sunlight.

Next, we will look at how the information is presented. The screen size continuously increased from 0.78″ on the Mi Band 3 to 0.95″ on the Mi Band 4 (+22%) to 1.1″ on the Mi Band 5 (+16%).
As you can read the time on all of them, we will look at an app to find out whether it makes any difference in practice. Here, I picked the weather app as it is probably useful to the majority of the readers.

• The info displayed on the weather screen

Looking at the Mi Band 4, it did not really take advantage of the larger screen-estate and shows virtually the same information as the Mi Band 3 - only adding the location info.
The Mi Band 5 on the other hand uses the extra space to show the rain probability. It generally displays more info like the wind strength and the current UV level - however you have scroll down for them.
The Mi Band 2 does not support weather and is thus turned off.

Apps/ on band Screens

Lets also briefly look at the other apps. The images were captured on the Mi Band 5 - however unless otherwise stated the look exactly the same on the Mi Band 4.

• The music control app
• Outdoor running workout app
• Configurable watch face (Mi Band 5 only)
• Cycles app (Mi Band 5 only)

Charging

The Mi Band 5 is the first band, with a magnetically attachable charger - hence you do not have to take the band out for charging. This convenience comes at the price of a reduced battery-life from about 20 days with the Mi Band 4 to only 14 days with the Mi Band 5.

As for compatibility, you can charge the Mi Band 2 with the Mi Band 3 charger - the other way round is not possible as the Mi Band 3 is too large for the older charger.

Even though, the Mi Band 4 & 5 have their charging pins at the same location, the chargers are not compatible as the Mi Band 4 lacks the magnetic hold and the Mi Band 5 is too large for the old charger.

The Mi-Fit app

For the Mi Band the accompanying app is quite important as it is the only way to view your sleep data and to monitor your weekly/ monthly stats.

First, lets take a look how you can customize the different Bands from the app. Here, we should note that all bands are still supported by the app.

• On the Mi Band 2 only the core options were available
• The screens on Mi Band 3 and newer are more customizable
• With the Mi Band 5, you can also select the side screens

With the Mi Band, there is only a predefined set of screens/ apps out of which you can pick the ones you want. This is probably the largest difference to a real smart-watch, where you can install additional apps from a store.

With the Mi Band 2, the whole set fits on half a screen and you can only enable/ disable the items.
With the other Bands you can additionally re-order the items, which is quite useful as it allows to choose which item appears first when you swipe up or down on the home screen.

On the Mi Band 5, you can additionally configure which app appears when you swipe left/ and right. This is hard-coded to Music Control (and Ali Pay on the CN version) with the Mi Band 4.

So the basic things work. Lets look at some peculiarities of Mi Fit next.

• The sports stats are quite useful - if only the measurement was correct
• Be prepared for in-app ads for Xiaomi products

First you see the workout view for outdoor running, which displays some useful stats like your pace per km and the continuously measured heart-beat rate over time.

What you do not immediately see is that the app only counted ~7.3 km, while my running distance is actually 10 km, which I have verified on google-maps.
One might now think that this is due to imprecise measuring of the band - however on the activity overview, where the daily steps are counted, the running activity is correctly accounted as 10.1 km - which is impressively accurate, given that it only counted the steps.

So the error is only present in the workout app, which is still quite annoying as it also provides the live view during a run.

If someone from Xiaomi is reading this: the error factor of ~0.73 is suspiciously close to the km to miles conversion factor of 0.625.
The error is present with both the Mi Band 4 and Mi Band 5, so I guess it is actually in the App, where I already reported it several times.
If you want happy customers, you better fix this. Many other reviews actually blame this on the band!

Addendum: with the firmware update to v1.0.1.32, the band now measures ~9km which reduces the error factor to 0.9. We are getting there.

So having talked about the bad, lets continue with the ugly. The second screenshot shows you an in-app ad for some obscure Xiaomi product on the home-screen.
These do not show up too often and currently only advertise their own products. However, this is definitely the wrong path you are on.

Ultimately, this leaves me with mixed feelings about Mi Fit. In the Mi Band 2 days it started as a slim and functional app. However, at some point they decided to re-write it with the cards-look and animations. This rewrite moved core views one level down in the menu hierarchy and the added animations actually make the app feel sluggish.

Now, with each Band generation new features appear and are integrated in some sub-menu of the app.
For instance, you get weather-alerts nowadays. However, they are not controlled in the general Band notification settings, but rather in the weather menu.
Therefore, I doubt I would discover them as easily if I would not have watched the app grow.

The good news is that due to the popularity of the Mi Band, there are several alternative apps to try, which I probably will do next.

Mi Band history

In the following, I give a quick outline of how the Mi Band evolved. If you only came here for the Mi Band 5 review, skip forward to the Mi Band 4 section.

The Mi Band 2 was released 2016, about a year after the first Apple Watch launched, which brought the wearable category to the mainstream.
At a price of less then 20€ the Mi Band offered most interesting wearable features to me, like heart-beat measurement, sleep monitoring, forwarding of smartphone notifications and ultimately, simply being a wristwatch.

Also it was an ideal way to try this new wearable thing without spending 350€, that Apple called out.

To my surprise the step-based distance estimation was already accurate back then - except for the actual workout mode, that is - as explained in the Mi Fit section.

Mi Band 3

The larger and brighter screen is the obvious advance of the Mi Band 3. However, the significant part is that it also became a touch-screen - whereas the Mi Band 2 only had the single touch-button. This allowed you swiping forth and back of the screens instead of just cycling through them and it also made virtual buttons possible. These are necessary for starting the stopwatch and timer, which are probably the most important additions for me with the Mi Band 3.

You could also start a selection workouts directly from the watch, instead of going though the app. However, this only included a treadmill mode, while I am interested in outdoor running - so I continued using the activity view for that.

More importantly, it added the weather app. If find this to be surprisingly useful. As with the time - even though you find the same info on your phone - having it at hand is better.

Mi Band 4

Again, the colored screen is the most obvious advance. It does not improve usability in any way though. It displays the same data as the monochrome screen of the Mi Band 3, which is probably more power-efficient. It adds a lot of bling though and is brighter and thus better legible in sunlight.

Speaking of bling, you can install third-party watch-faces now and there is a heap of faces to chose from. Take a look here to get an impression.

Turning to something useful, the touch sensor was noticeably improved. With the Mi Band 3 your swipes were sometimes confused with taps, which does not happen with the Mi Band 4 anymore.

The workout app, now finally included outdoor running, which is still broken though (see Mi App section). This makes the music control app the most important addition for me. At least on android, it works with any music player and allows skipping forward/ back and adjusting volume.
This is quite useful when you play music from your phone at a party or for controlling your Bluetooth headphones.

One can use the same wrist-bands as for the Mi Band 3. This made upgrading for me back then a no-brainer, but is also a strong reason to choose the Mi Band v4 over v5, today.

Mi Band 5

This time, there are no obvious advances and the update is rather evolutionary. It does not mean it is insignificant though as it improves the usability on many levels. If you are new to the Mi Bands, you should pick this one.

The most important one is probably the new magnetic charger. Previously you had to take the "watch" out of the wrist-band to charge, whereas you can simply attach the magnetic charger now.

Next, the screen is slightly brighter which makes a difference in direct sunlight though (see screen comparison section) and also boasts more information.

Finally, the software was also noticeably improved. The band displays generally became more configurable. E.g. the custom left/ right swipes which now give you 4 quick access screens instead of 2. Then, the built-in watch-faces now allow customizing the additional info they display. And it continues with the small things like the configurable alerts in the workouts (although the workout app itself still needs to be fixed).
Also, the selection of predefined watch-faces is vastly better then with the Mi Band 4. On the latter you have a hard time finding a watch-face that is simple and does not feature some animated comic figure screaming at you.
These changes could be provided as an update to the Mi Band 4 as well, but are - at the time of writing - exclusive to the Mi Band 5.

Disclaimer

The Mi Band 5 was provided to me free of charge by banggood.com. So if you liked this review and want to support me consider buying using the following affiliate links:

0 0

02 Aug 2020 1:37pm GMT

Having never skateboarded before, I saw the Archos SK8 electric skateboard for about 80€ at a sale and thought why not give it a try. This got me into this whole electric skateboarding thing.

Now that I have some more time at home during the summer, I upgraded to the Meepo Mini 2 and after having driven with it more than 100km, I thought I write down my experiences with the two boards and why I should have gotten the Meepo board from the start.

The competitors

The Meepo Mini 2 and the Archos SK8 are not really competing here, which should be clear looking at their price difference. But for completeness, also take a look at the specs of these two boards:

	Meepo Mini 2	Archos SK8
Max. speed	46 km/h	15 km/h
Max. range	18 km	7 km
Max. Weight	136 kg	80 kg
Motor	2 x 540 W	1 x 150 W
Battery	144 Wh	50.4 Wh
Weight	7.4 kg	3.9 kg

Specs comparison

Actually, you can swap the Archos SK8 by any of the unbranded "cheap" Chinese boards that share the same design as the ones sold by Oppikle and Hiriyt.

Here, you might wonder how many Watts you actually need. For this I direct you to the Wikpedia article on bicycle performance that contains some sample calculations (and the formulae) which should roughly hold for electric skateboards as well.

Similarities

Before we dig into the differences, lets first note the similarities aka. the choices I made when picking these specific boards in the first place:

First, both boards are hub-motor driven. I made this choice on purpose, as electric skateboards are not road-legal where I live and hub motors are barely noticeable to the non-practiced eye. This reduces my risk of getting fined for riding one.
However, I would probably generally recommend hub-motors over belt-driven motors nowadays as they require less maintenance (no moving parts), while offering a larger range and allowing pushing the board (belt driven block due to the gear ratio). The latter is especially nice, when you have run out of battery or if you do not want to draw any attention.
When electric skateboards were first introduced by boosted, hub-motors were vastly inferior power-wise but that has changed now.

Next, both boards are of so-called "cruiser-style". This is a size in between a regular skateboard and a long-board. They share a stiff deck and a kicktail with the former, while the use the wheels of the latter.
At this point I should note that I mainly use the boards for leisure instead of a daily commute. This means that I value versatility of the board over comfort of ride.
Here, having a kicktail is a must and rules out long-boards. It allows doing sharp turn, "wheelies" and you are more agile with the short board.
However, you do notice the quality of the pavement very clearly in your feet and being out of the skating age my ankle did hurt the first couple of rides before it got used to it.
So if you want to commute large distances, you should probably get a long-board with a flexi-deck that can cushion away most of the bumps.

Differences

Both boards are of similar length, however the Meepo Mini 2 is considerable wider and heavier. It also has a larger wheel-base.

• 
• 

This results in a better grip and you also feel much more stable on the board. Flipping the board around, you see that the SK8 only uses a single-hub motor while the Mini 2 has two and each of them offers more than 3x the power.

If you do not expect the power or if you enable the pro-mode without being one, the Mini 2 can easily throw you off the board when accelerating or breaking. You can tame it though by using the beginner riding mode if you need to learn how to skate first. You can set the modes for acceleration and breaking separately and I would recommend always using at least the pro mode for breaking and learning to deal with it. In case of an emergency you want to be able to stop in time.

Turning to the SK8, the acceleration is.. meh and so are the breaks - in both of the two riding-modes. The difference between them is merely that the top speed is capped at 10km/h in the low-mode.
But I must say that if you are a beginner this is sufficent; if you do not know how to ride being able to get going and to break are your two primary concerns and the SK8 does deliver here. The main drawback of the Archos SK8 is its tiny battery.

Aside: Li-Ion batteries

At this point we should probably briefly discuss Li-Ion battery technology. Mainly, the following two properties:

• As you discharge the battery its Voltage drops, which is related to power (the Watts number) as P = V \cdot I, where I is the current in amps.
  So the more you discharge the battery, the fewer Watts you get out of your motors.
• A full discharge (down to 0%) of the battery severely reduces its live-span. For maximal durability, you should always keep its charge between 40%-80%. Typically, the displayed range is clipped by the controller to help here.

So where does this leave us with the SK8? I did about 7 rides, fully-discharging the board (you do not want to stop after 10min, right?). And now the second riding-mode is essentially gone: when I try to accelerate the motors draw so much current, that the voltage drops below a critical level and the board turns off. Depending on what state the controller was in, I have to pair the remote again afterwards.
But it also shows in the first mode: while the board initially could get me up a slight slope, it now immediately starts beeping due to critical voltage - again the motors need more voltage then the already worn down battery can give.

Remotes & charging indicators

Having covered the drive train, lets turn to the remotes. Both Archos and Meepo use a similar pistol-grip like design, where you control the motors with the thumb switch.

• 
• 
• 

As one would expect, the Meepo remote is more sophisticated and offers detailed telemetry data on a nicely readable LCD display. There you find your current speed, drive mode and board charging level as well as the max. speed of the current ride.

On the Archos remote you only find 4 LEDs. Those are used quite well though: when you turn on the remote, they show the remote charging level. As soon as the board is connected, they indicate the board charging level, which is actually the most important information you need while riding.

Similarly to the remotes, there are only 4 LEDs on the Archos Battery for the charging level, while you find a numeric LED-display on the Meepo board.

An actually noticeable feature on the Meepo Mini 2 is push-to-start; that is, you only have to push the board to turn it on - no need to bend down for flipping a switch.

Verdict

So why do I say you should go straight with the Meepo Mini 2 even as a beginner? On paper the Archos SK8 has everything it takes to be a nice beginner board.
It is really the battery that kills it. With only 5-10 rides it is simply not worth the money, no matter how cheap it is.
Looking at the price difference between the Meepo Mini 2 and the ER version that solely differ in the battery, you grasp that the battery is the crucial part in an electric skateboard. And the Archos SK8 is cheap, precisely because of the bad battery.

With the Meepo Mini 2 on the other hand you get a board that can "grow with you": as you get more confident you can bump up the riding mode to get more power. Even if you decide that skateboarding is not for you, you can sell the Mini 2 as it will retain lots of its value - in contrast to just producing electric waste with the Archos SK8.

Riding the Meepo Mini 2

The Meepo Mini 2 is specified to go up to 46 km/h. Whether you can go that fast depends on your weight, the wind and the slope (see the Wikipedia link, mentioned above). In case you are fat and/ or there are lots of slopes where you live, you might also consider the ER version of the Mini 2, which comes with doubled battery capacity. As mentioned above this not only means that you can get further, but also that you have more power in the mid-range.

How fast can you go?

Having only previous experience on a Snowboard, I am a rather cautious rider. So far my max. speed (according to the remote) was 30 km/ h which I did uphill - in hope that stopping is easier that way.
Going downhill (only using the motors for breaking), I feel comfortable until around 22 km/ h.
I typically ride for about 30-45 min and the lowest the battery got was 40%, which means it should last for quite some time.
Note, that I do not go straight uphill for 30min and that I usually push to get rolling, as this is where most energy is used.

A suitable helmet

When lifting the board, the remote showed that the ESC only limits the speed at 50 km/h. When riding a skateboard at anything above 10 km/h without a cushion-zone and no nothing, I would highly recommend you to at least wear a helmet.
However, you should consider that a "normal" skate helmet is only specified (EN1078) up to 19.5 km/h impact speed - if you ride faster it does not guarantee protection.

Fortunately, one does not have to resort to heavy motorcycle helmets (ECE2205) as there is a specification (NTA8776), which was designed with e-bikes in mind. It is designed with an impact speed of 23.4 km/h and requires a much better coverage of your head.

0 0

19 Jul 2020 8:58pm GMT

Shopping for 3D TV (again), few findings:

• There are no non-LED 3D TVs for sale in this part of world anymore (in particular, my older favorite, LE40C750 is no longer available)
• Samsung D6xxx series (the cheapest) were caught red-handed not providing FullHD resolution in 3D: via Samygo. (Note from myself: Samsung was caught because lots of people actually buy their stuff, what one can think about other vendors?)
• LG goes out of line of vendors with 3D shutter glasses technology with their FPR ("Cinema 3D" in marketing speak) technology. It uses passive (no power needed) polarized glasses, like RealD cimenas. Announced April (on these longitudes), already in local shops at not-so-indecent prices. FPR is Film Patterned Retarder, and I hope the last word is spelled right, because I have high hopes for this tech. It shares the same issue as Samsung D6xxx: there won't FullHD here for sure, but at least it's official and there're other benefits.

12 Nov 2011 6:55pm GMT

I finally going to get Arduino, and while I'm choosing flavor and waiting for it, I can't help but disassembling all devices I have at home, each time speaking: "This must have Arduino inside!" (meaning of course that I expect it to be based on general-purpose MCU). Gosh, I usually get "blob chip" (uncased chip with blob of epoxy on top).

Well, I finally had my expectations fulfilled - Luxeon SP-1 voltage stabilizer/cutter features ATMEGA48V-10PU (Flash: 4k, EEPROM: 256, RAM:512). Not only that, it is installed in DIP socket! Buy from Luxeon, they're hacker-friendly ;-).

I bought the device actually for a wattmeter it features (which fact is hard to figure out from common specs found in the shops, I accidentally read somebody mentioning it on a forum). The wattmeter is of course not bright - for a lamp rated 100W it shows 88W, and for more powerful equipment (like perforator) understates wattage even more (maybe it's difference between real and apparent power factor).

Still, for $17 you get Arudino-alike with voltage/current sensor and hacking possibility. Woot!

BOM:
High-power board:

• Relay: Coil: 24VDC, 5A/240VAC
• 7805
• Coil transformer LR-019B

MCU board:

• ATMEGA48V-10PU
• 2 buttons
• 2 LEDs (red & green)
• 3-digit 7-segment LED indicator

12 Nov 2011 5:58pm GMT

Kindle:

• Amazon Kindle official GPL source code
• Kindle keyboard shortcuts and other reference
• Latest jailbreak appears to be one from NiLuJe (forum). It's known to work with firmware 3.3. Hacks/updates should be copied to Kindle USB drive root.
• SirAlex's page
• Intro for writing kindlets
  

Linux kernel module tricks:

• How to bind Linux driver to device whose IDs it doesn't know (yet), without recompiling
• Building a kernel module separately
• (build module from a kernel source tarball using currently installed kernel config)

10 Nov 2011 3:21pm GMT

In Debian Unstable the transition to Gnome 3 is taking place; when Gnome 3.0 firstly came out some unnamed geeky users complained loudly about the design decisions of the development team to push strongly towards gnome-shell as a new default UI; gnome-shell was designed focusing on usability (usability is a metric relative to a certain target audience BTW) and simplicity, hiding a lot of details from the users. Obviously you can never make everyone happy so some of us simply happened to be "out of target": you know us computer people (*cough cough*), we like to be in charge and control The Machine... I must admit I still don't have a definitive opinion about the gnome-shell concept, for now I just know that it does not suit me; I am going to try it eventually, maybe I'll get used to it, but in the mean time I need my desktop back just like I shaped it through the years; can this be done without loosing all the good Gnome technologies (Empathy over all of them)?

To be completely fair I have to say that there is little to complain about with Gnome developers, we can still get our good old GNOME desktop fully back by using the fall-back mode based on gnome-panel and live happily ever after, let's take a look at how this can be accomplished.

NOTE: GNOME people state that the fall-back mode is meant for systems with older graphic cards which cannot run gnome-shell, however it can very well be seen as a good opportunity for those who do not want to run gnome-shell just yet.

Getting back to the topic: some minor touches are needed to make the panel look more like what we are used to, maybe some of these settings could even become default for fall-back mode, we'll see.

First, enable fall-back mode (on Debian there is a dedicated session you can choose from the Log-in Manager for that) and change some desktop settings, in a terminal type:

$ gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.session session-name 'gnome-fallback'
$ gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface 'menus-have-icons' true
$ gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface 'buttons-have-icons' true
$ gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background 'show-desktop-icons' true

gnome-tweak-tool can be used for some of these settings like shown in the attached images.

Then rearrange the applets on the panel as you please (use Alt-RightClick to access the panel properties), and fix the theming using this patch to have a light panel again (against gnome-themes-standard=3.0.2-1):

$ mkdir $HOME/.themes
$ cd $HOME/.themes
$ cp -r /usr/share/themes/Adwaita Adwaita-fallback
$ cd Adwaita-fallback
$ patch -p1 < $HOME/adwaita-fallback-panel-theme.patch
$ gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface 'gtk-theme' 'Adwaita-fallback'

Some final touches for the Metacity window manager and to the clock applet, and we are all set:

$ gconftool-2 --type string --set /apps/metacity/general/focus_mode mouse
$ gconftool-2 --type boolean --set /apps/metacity/general/compositing_manager true
$ gconftool-2 --type string --set /apps/panel3-applets/clock/custom_format '<span color="#333">%a %d %b</span> <b>%H:%M</b>'
$ gconftool-2 --type string --set /apps/panel3-applets/clock/format custom

Ah, in the new gnome-panel based on Gtk3 there are still some details to take care of, I hope issues like that will be addressed and that the panel will be supported for quite some time.

19 Oct 2011 9:37pm GMT

After letting us wait for a bit longer than scheduled (13 days), the hospital initiated the contractions. For the first couple of hours, everything went just perfect, but then the little one got stuck on the way and we had to resort to a cesarean section. Lara Marie Lauer was born 8th of June at 04:41 (AM) with 3460 gramms and 49 cm.

Mummy was still on intensive care and so they gave her to me. I can't express the feelings I had in this very moment. I'm still kind of overwhelmed every time I see her. Thanks for all of you who waited anxiously with me and those who prayed for us. The most important tasks for the near future is getting Mummy to recover and Lara Marie to become accustomed to us and the rest of the outside world.

Please bear with me if in the next time I'm not as responsive as usually

09 Jun 2011 4:06pm GMT

And now for something completely different… while we are all waiting for my baby to arrive (who was scheduled for 25th of May), she just received her first greeting card - together with a personalized bib and a towel (with integrated hood - pretty fancy!) from my good friends at #openmoko-cdevel.

Guys, seeing this card was very heartwarming - it means a lot to me that you share my anticipation, thanks a lot! And I'm 100% sure she will appreciate her gifts… now let's cross fingers it won't take much longer… waiting is the hardest part of it

Yours,

Mickey.

30 May 2011 8:54am GMT