Introduction

Here is another arduino library that I have written.

As a desktop developer, I am not used to have memory (or even CPU) requirements as most developers will not look at memory consumption as an arduino developer would. Memory & CPU is cheap. If your application is struggling to run on today’s computer, it will run smoothly in 1-2 years.

As most arduino developers have faced, the amount of memory available on embedded devices is pretty limited. Having a way to save bits or our precious memory is interesting.

Introduction

The following article is about my first Arduino library that I have written. NonBlockingRTTTL is a non-blocking arduino library for playing RTTTL data.

EDIT: The NonBlockingRtttl arduino library is now moved to GitHub. Source code can be downloaded from the project’s GitHub page.

EDIT: NonBlockingRTTTL library is now available on the Arduino Library Manager.

Skip to the download section for quick download.

Purpose

Most code that can be found on the internet that allows you to “play” an RTTTL string is build the same way: sequential calls to the tone() function followed by a delay() function. This type of implementation might be good for robots but not for realtime application or projects that needs to monitor pins while the song is playing.

Introduction

If you look on the internet for “mixing”, you will usually find posts and articles of people asking for things like “what is the best mix I should use for this or that” which I think is not helpful. I think it is far more helpful to actually understand what mixing is and how it can help you improve your skills as a pilot. Lately I wanted to understand how mixing could help me in a personal project. I took this opportunity to learn something new and try to demystifying RC Transmitter Mixing.

This is an Excel worksheet I created based on the calculations I found for calculating most R/C Transmitter mixes. It is designed to help you identify the effective range of a mix (finding the low, medium and high values).

See my post on Demystifying RC Transmitter Mixing for more details.

Please note the following calculator is valid on Spektrum Transmitters. I did not verified it’s validity or accuracy on other transmitters.

This article is about how I did the maintenance on my Hobbico Torqmaster 90 deluxe which is a 12 Volt starter for remote controlled (RC) aircraft. I wanted to change the rubber nose to get a better grip on my Avistar Elite spinner. I ended up disassembling the whole unit before understanding what I should have done.

This guide documents the steps and tricks I used to reassemble the unit. I hope it may help someone that have the same issue. If not, then I shall use this article as a way for me to remember how I did the maintenance on the starter and which tool I used…

Introduction

This guide is a follow up to the post called How to remove ads from HDHomeRun recordings and still encode with Handbrake.

I record lots of TV shows using the HDHomeRun. I sometime want to keep recordings on a disk for archiving or to watch later. The following article explains how to remove ads from HDHomeRun recordings and encode the final video with Handbrake without quality loss. The whole process is executed using only FREE tools!

Introduction

I record lots of TV shows using the HDHomeRun. I sometime want to keep recordings on a disk for archiving or to watch later. The following article explains how to remove ads from HDHomeRun recordings and encode the final video with Handbrake without quality loss. The whole process is executed using only FREE tools!

With all TV shows comes a bunch of TV ads that I do not want to keep and waste time and disk space for. I encode all my videos using Handbrake because it supports quality based H264 encoding and 5.1 surround sounds but unfortunately, it does not support removing ads.

Je vous présente l’éclipse totale de lune ou plus communément appelée “lune de sang”.

Une photo d’une éclipse lunaire est très différent d’une photo traditionnelle de la lune. Il y a beaucoup moins de lumière disponible! Il faut donc compenser avec un temps d’exposition plus long et une sensibilité ISO beaucoup plus haute. Dans ce cas ci, 1.3 secondes et ISO 400. En conséquence, la photo est un peu plus flou et granuleuse qu’une photo traditionnelle.

Suite à ce vidéo, j’ai aussi fusionné (ou plutôt cumulé) toutes les images en une seule. Le résultat est ce que l’on appelle une image “Star Trails” (ou Filé d’étoiles en français).

Vous pouvez voir que les étoiles semblent tourner autour d’un même point. Il s’agit de l’étoile polaire. Cette étoile est fixe dans le ciel peut importe l’heure à laquelle vous regarder le ciel. C’est à dire qu’elle est parfaitement alignée avec l’axe de rotation de la terre. Donc pour obtenir ce type d’image, il suffit d’aligner la camera vers le Nord (polaire) et cadrer le tout pour obtenir un bel effet.

Je caresse depuis longtemps l’idée de faire des photos du ciel et des étoiles. J’ai récemment réussi à faire de bonnes photos du ciel de Mont-Tremblant. Par contre, je me suis vite rendu compte que la rotation de la terre était vraiment apparente dans chacune de mes photographies. Plutôt qu’essayer de la combattre, j’ai essayé de mieux la faire ressortir.

J’ai donc décidé de sortir en douce de la maison une fois de plus pour pouvoir aller prendre de bonnes photos. La pollution lumineuse des villes environnantes est très nuisible pour se type de projet. Par contre, j’ai réussi à trouver un endroit à Mirabel qui est suffisamment loin de St-Jérôme et de Blainville.