http://robotics.youngester.com/2008/11/robotics-software.html

In this “Sneakey” Computer Vision project, features of the key is extracted from the photograph and accordingly a duplicate of the key is produced. Most importantly, photos can be taken even 200 feet away from keys without the owners knowledge.

So it is time to blur out the your keys in the photograph, like you did for number plates, credit card numbers before publishing to facebook, flickr etc. )

For more information have a look at here

Artificial Eyeball

Extracted from the Article:
Mimicking the curves of a human retina has enabled a digital image sensor to take wide-angle pictures without distortion. This is possible thanks to an improved method of transferring silicon sensors onto a curved surface.

They built their hemispherical electronic eye by first using conventional photolithography to build silicon photodiodes 500 micrometers square and 1 micrometer thick. These were then wired into a flexible 16-by-16 array using chromium and gold.

Separately, they created a 1-cm-wide hemisphere out of a stretchy plastic, and stretched it into a flat surface. That stretched surface, or “drumhead”, was then pressed against the photodiode array.

The silicon squares stuck to the stretched plastic thanks to van der Waals forces, which was then allowed to spring back to its original hemispherical shape. As the array took its new form, the photodiodes packed together tightly and the connecting wires arced away from the surface, but the array was undamaged.

The reformed array was then glued to a curved glass surface, and a conventional lens attached. It now resembled a human eye in construction, with light entering the lens from the front, and passing to the curved “retina” containing the matrix of photodiodes behind.

[1] http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn14477

Okay, that is how the fun began! .

First, I wanted to use the layout I used back in 2004. Second, I wanted to make it a WordPress theme.

After extensive work with Photoshop, theme was okay to proceed to CSS design level. I found Guides and Slice Tools really useful in Photoshop. After playing with CSS a bit, the theme was ready to upload. There are few glitches here and there, but decided to deal with them later. The theme was tested in Firefox, Chrome and IE.

[1] and [2] tutorials made my life so easy. However, M$ Internet Exploder gave me enough trouble. Specially with the Sidebar. If I make a small change in a width of a DIV tag, the sidebar goes and sits right at the bottom of the screen.

[1] A CSS Layout with 2 columns
[2] So you want to create WordPress themes huh?

http://www.adarobotics.com/main/technology/soa-robotics.html

adarobotics discusses about the SOA nature of its robotics implementation.

It seems the following is the result of their implementation.

I’ve been using my N95 8GB / Mobitel Broadband (3.5G HSPA) to connect to internet for a while now. But I was limited to Windows platform only. Today, I wanted to access internet using my linux partition too. This time google came to rescue.

This is how to do it…

Connect your phone via data cable, open terminal & type

lsusb

now you will get the following output

janapriya@ace-laptop:~$ lsusb
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 0421:0070 Nokia Mobile Phones
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 0b97:7761 O2 Micro, Inc.
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 0b97:7762 O2 Micro, Inc. Oz776 SmartCard Reader
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 004 Device 002: ID 04b3:310b IBM Corp. Red Wheel Mouse
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 413c:a005 Dell Computer Corp.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

janapriya@ace-laptop:~$

Please note that above is for my laptop. Yours might be different.

Now note the line in which Nokia Mobile Phones is written. It has two number one is 0421 & other is 0070

we’ll take these numbers as 0×421 & 0×0070

0421 is the Vendor ID & 0070 is the Product ID

Now enter this comand.

sudo /sbin/modprobe usbserial vendor=0x(vid) product=0x(pid)

eg, in my case::: sudo /sbin/modprobe usbserial vendor=0×0421 product=0×0070

Now enter this command

wvdialconf create

You’ll get a long output which will be like

Scanning your serial ports for a modem.

Port Scan: S0 S1 S2 S3
WvModem: Cannot get information for serial port.
ttyACM0: ATQ0 V1 E1 — OK
ttyACM0: ATQ0 V1 E1 Z — OK
ttyACM0: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 — OK
ttyACM0: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 — OK
ttyACM0: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 — OK
ttyACM0: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0 — OK
ttyACM0: Modem Identifier: ATI — Nokia
ttyACM0: Speed 4800: AT — OK
ttyACM0: Speed 9600: AT — OK
ttyACM0: Speed 19200: AT — OK
ttyACM0: Speed 38400: AT — OK
ttyACM0: Speed 57600: AT — OK
ttyACM0: Speed 115200: AT — OK
ttyACM0: Speed 230400: AT — OK
ttyACM0: Speed 460800: AT — OK
ttyACM0: Max speed is 460800; that should be safe.
ttyACM0: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0 — OK

Found an USB modem on /dev/ttyACM0.

Modem configuration written to create.

ttyACM0: Speed 460800; init “ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0?

Now.. notice the output says that there is a modem at /dev/ttyACM0 & max speed is 460800

now enter this command

sudo vi /etc/wvdial.conf

A file will open in vi editor. Now delete everything in that file & paste the following there

[Dialer Defaults]
Modem = /dev/ttyACM0

Baud = 460800

Init1 = ATZ

Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0

ISDN = 0

Modem Type = Analog Mode

OK AT+CGDCONT=1,”IP”,”mobitel3g”

Phone = *99***1#

Username = “mobitel3g”

Password = “mobitel3g”

Stupid Mode = 1

save the file & you are done

Now whenever you need to connect, open terminal & type wvdial. Wait till some sort of IP adress is displayed like

pppd: ?[06][06][08]` [06][08]

primary DNS address 218.248.240.135

pppd: ?[06][06][08]` [06][08]

secondary DNS address 218.248.240.79

pppd: ?[06][06][08]` [06][08]

Now you are connected. Later hit ctrl+c to disconnect.

Have a look here to see all the images tagged as panorama in my gallery.

Things I had to do to make this possible

• Modify .htaccess files with some mod_rewrite rules in order to fake PTViewer that images are from my domain.

• Code changes to detect images tagged with “Panorama”, and show them using PTViewer.

Now i need an ADSL connection to upload my images to flickr. I don’t want Mobitel 3.5G to charge me for my image uploads.

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