December 2011 - OZ9AEC Website

Daily Gpredict builds for Ubuntu

December 29, 2011 by Alexandru Csete

Thanks to Jan Simon, DL2ZXA, we now have daily builds of Gpredict for Ubuntu 10.04 – 12.04, both 32 and 64 bit. Jan’s recipe fetches the code imported from SourceForge, merges it with the translations done in the Launchpad, then builds the packages and puts them in the Gpredict teams Daily builds PPA. You can … Read more

Unity, Gnome 3 and my way out of this madness

December 28, 2011 by Alexandru Csete

I will remember 2011 as the year when the Linux desktop took a huge step backwards. After decades of evolution we finally had a nice Gnome 2 based desktop providing a clean and efficient environment where one could focus on getting the work done. Even the Ubuntu variant with their this-makes-me-wanna-puke-brown and purple theme was okay, because it took only a few mouse clicks to switch back to something more pleasant looking, e.g. the Clearlooks theme. All this is gone now as the majority of Linux desktops come with either Gnome 3 or Unity – two equally useless and pathetic attempts at making the Linux desktop look like a cellphone.

eCAM32 camera mounted on the Overo

December 19, 2011 by Alexandru Csete

A few closeup photos showing the eCAM32 3.2 megapixel camera mounted on top of the Gumstix Overo Water, mounted on the Tobi expansion board.

Gumstix Overo Water + eCAM32 camera demo

August 23, 2016December 12, 2011 by Alexandru Csete

As promised in my last post, here is a quick demo of the eCAM32 3.2 megapixel camera connected to the Gumstix Overo Water. I am presenting two videos, one showing the setup where the eCAM32 camera board is mounted on top of the Gumstix Overo Water, the other one being a screen cast demonstrating some of the most common settings of the camera. I am using the Tobi expansion board because it has Ethernet interface allowing me to stream H.264 encoded video to a host PC running linux.

Butternut HF2V on 10 and 15 meters

August 22, 2016December 4, 2011 by Alexandru Csete

Two recordings I made during the 2011 CQ WW CW contest showing how well the Butternut HF2V receives on the 21 and 28 MHz bands. The videos were recorded using the Funcube Dongle equipped with the HF converter kit and my GNU Radio based software defined radio receiver, GQRX.

Butternut HF2V check 2011

December 4, 2011 by Alexandru Csete

I usually check my Butternut HF2V vertical antenna every spring to see how much it has suffered during the winter. The winters in Denmark can be very windy and wet, which is not very good for an antenna. This spring I was rather busy and I postponed the annual check until now. I haven’t used the antenna for a long time, so I didn’t know what to expect. Physically, the antenna is still standing and only one of the four guy ropes needed to be repaired since the last check more than 1.5 year ago.