Another piece of contract work completed: this one involved solar power panels and inverters from Austrian manufacturer Fronius. Developed a generic, object oriented data fetching backend and set it up to transmit the data to a database over a HTTP tunnel. One visible outcome of the project can be found here: VS Seeham.
Enjoyed working with the guys responsible for the project and the web frontend development, here’s hoping we will have some future projects together.
Yet another fine update by Peter, you can now grab the latest file from the Downloads section.
Work on the Canon camera is finished by now, with all features seemingly working. As an added bonus, due to a recent update, exposure times can now exceed 64 seconds. If you own a Ixus 970 and want to enhance your camera functionality, pay a visit to the CHDK Downloads page and give it a try.
Back to .NET: amazing what you stumble across when writing software. Assume you have 2 arrays and want to compare them:
byte[] array1 = new byte[] { 1, 2, 3 };
byte[] array2 = new byte[] { 1, 2, 3 };
array1.Equals(array2);
All you want to do is determine if the two arrays contain the same elements. The problem with above pseudo-code: it returns “false” as result! The arrays are considered to be different instances of the same data – and thus not equal.
Quick and dirty workaround for small arrays: convert both arrays to a Base64 string and compare their values.
What if you are a sworn in C and C#/VB.NET coder working mostly on x86/x64 architectures who is looking for a past time occupation? Of course, you go with ARM CPUs, assembly language, and intercepting functions of an embedded system’s innards!
The target of choice: the Canon Ixus 970 digital camera. As mentioned in the article Fiddling with an Ixus, it’s firmware was dumped to contribute it to the community. However, no volunteer stepped forth to port the Canon Hackers Development Kit over. Consequently, the port has been started and shows some success, a beta version is already available for download. Some technical info and the download can be obtained at the CHDK Wiki.
Part Time Assembly Read More »
We have been moving vware to a new host: conova communications GmbH, our favorite local IT company. Good to be back home in good old Austria.
Two rather annoying problems in the previous FileIndexer have been discovered, hence a new version is now available. A dodgy problem where some zeros were missing in MD5 hashes has been solved, as well as an application exception when locked files were being accessed. Also, SHA1 hashes can now be generated in addition to CRC32 and MD5. The file is available in the Misc section.
FileIndexer 2.1.3257 Read More »
Following the release of WinUAE 1.5.3, the help file is now also up to date and available for download. Of course, the online version already offers the new content as well. Kudos to Peter Hutchinson for contributing the lion’s share of this update.
In the best spirit of looking beyond Windows/Linux development, the recently acquired digicam Canon DIGITAL IXUS 970 IS seemed to be a good target for some practicing. They sport ARM based processors, which we gathered some experience on when working on dumping tools for the Dreamcast.
The main goal is to help the CHDK community to port their enhancements over to the Ixus 970. Obviously the first step in doing so is to dump the original firmware, and it seems there was no dump of a PAL device with version GM1.00C available yet. Things have changed, and the firmware has been made available to the public by vware!
Fiddling with an Ixus Read More »
A long term friend and source of inspriation started a gaming related community site named own3d some years ago. With a recent development towards video hosting, the need for a simple to use video transcoding tool was born.
Presenting our first cooperation after a long break, we would like to hint you at the little x264 video converter tool which is available for site subscribers. Hopefully a lot of users will find it easy enough to create and share their videos! The video site is currently in beta and can be checked out here: beta.own3d.at
