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After getting my EasySync USB-Can Adapter it was time to resurrect the mChumby project.  The interface GUI design hasn’t changed much, namely because its been lying idle but I figured it is good enough to try putting it onto the car for a test run.

I didn’t want to fiddle around with getting power to the Chumby, so the test is simply using my trusty old laptop and the EasySync adapter.  Only the speedometer, the tachometer and the accelerator pedal position is attached because again I’m too lazy to fiddle with my cable layout and as such its connected to the Mazda HS-Can bus only rather than the MS-Can where the goodie trip computer information is contained.

Almost every concoction of technology is used ranging from CAN, USB, PHP, HTTP, Shared Memory, XML, Flash, to an obscure programming language called HaXe.  Here is the result :-

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Neat little package

The toys just keep coming in!  Another one of those wallet killing impulsive orders whilst I was sick in bed last week just arrived today, a USB-CAN bus converter module by EasySync that promises a great interface and should work in Linux!  This will give a little bump start to my Mazda CAN Bus / mChumby projects.

Note : EasySync UK’s online form doesn’t allow international shipping but a short E-mail or two managed that.  There is a US subsidiary with US and international shipping, but the international shipping rates on the US site is plain ridiculous [$68USD to ship a $88 device to Australia].

Note 2 : I hear the interface is mimicking the Lawicel CAN-USB interface…only hearsay…

Plugged it in – didn’t work.  Doh!  Took a peek at the manual and website, nothing on Linux other than “Linux drivers provided”… So much for the marketing material, guess I have to try make it work myself.  (Yes I got it working, read on for the quick run-down post aimed at helping others)

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I’ve finally made the jump and using the AMD64 version of Ubuntu as my primary installation.  There are a couple of tricky things to deal with, primarily with closed sourced applications such as Adobe Flash Plugin and Skype which are two applications I need to use.

How to install Adobe Flash Plugin 64 Bit for Ubuntu 9.04

A lot of the tutorials/guides online will tell you to use nspluginwrapper or similar.  Adobe has released an ‘alpha’ version of their 64 bit player which is pretty stable so far…

Download it from :-http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html

Unpack the archive and copy the only file to the Firefox plugins folder in ‘/usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins‘ :-

sudo cp libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins

How to install Skype 64 bit for Ubuntu 9.04

You would think you could just go to www.skype.com and ask for a download and it’ll be like the Adobe site detecting that you have a 64 bit system right?  Wrong (at time of writing).  Annoyingly that’ll just let you download an i386 package!

You could manually remedy this by downloading the AMD64 .deb package from :-
http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-linux-ubuntu-amd64

Everything else?

So far the respositories have been kind to me… but i’ll update if I run into any other troubles

Voila happy 64 bit Ubuntu’ing.

Yesterday I went and bought a laptop for my dad to learn how to use computers and the internet.  A base install of windows is not functional nor safe enough to let loose on the internet without some additional software.  Being an avid fan of things that are free, I went and downloaded the latest versions of free software that I thought would be essential for this new PC.

I hope this post is useful for other people, but its really a lazy way of me bookmarking everything in-case I have to do it again.

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The problem

I’ve recently signed up Ponoko’s Prime account and wanted to get something made.  I rather into a rather annoying problem, Alibre Xpress doesn’t have a SVG export.  I needed a way to design something and export it as SVG.

I’ll admit the long post title is a problem too

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Well this chronicles my first attempt at compiling a toolchain for programming ARM’s in ELF code.

Why do I need a toolchain for programming ARMs?

1. I found a LPC2378-STK development board in my room
2. I want to give ARM programming a try (PS WinAVR is great for programming AVRs)
3. I found I have some spare ARM7 LPC2378’s lying around (WTF?) and thought I’ll actually complete my Chumby Speedometer on my car project!

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Or more correctly, how to open Canon CR2 Raw Files for editing in Ubuntu using GIMP.  F-Spot the default image viewer in Ubuntu already allows you to open Canon CR2 Raw images for viewing.

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It started with a colleague walking by my desk today and asking me if I had ‘cowsays’ installed on my machine, never having heard of it before he dared me to just try run it.  A short command not found and a subsequent apt-get install later… I didn’t know whether to burst out laughing or slap my forehead.

 ________________________________________
/ This is a very very useful and         \
| productive program available in Ubuntu |
\ and other Debian distributions...      /
 ----------------------------------------
        \   ^__^
         \  (oo)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
                ||----w |
                ||     ||

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