https://minimal.org.uk/categories/hardware/ Recent content in hardware on minimal.org.uk Hugo -- gohugo.io en-gb ian Mon, 07 Jul 2014 09:17:24 +0000 https://minimal.org.uk/2014/07/07/lasers-and-midi-and-software-oh-my/ Mon, 07 Jul 2014 09:17:24 +0000 https://minimal.org.uk/2014/07/07/lasers-and-midi-and-software-oh-my/ Photo of Jean-Michelle Jarre performing in Helsinki in 2009 © Miemo Penttinen What happens when a music teacher suggests instrument variety is a driving force behind a child enjoying music, the child says “anything unusual” is good, the other child wants a techie project and the father has far too much 80’s electronica ? We decide to get a laser harp, of course ! 🙂 And there’s no way at all this could have been due to my obsessive saving of paper-round money to buy Jarre albums on tape to listen to on my Walkman (with Dolby-B, I’ll have you know – quality antiquity ! https://minimal.org.uk/2013/08/18/led-cycle-lights/ Sun, 18 Aug 2013 14:52:08 +0000 https://minimal.org.uk/2013/08/18/led-cycle-lights/ First pass 12V lighting system for my bike: front is a 15W 3 LED DRL cluster, and the rear is four strips of silicon dipped 12V LED’s with a common 12V 3Ah battery pack under the saddle. Things still to do: improve the wiring so it’s waterproof (!) and also find out how long the battery pack lasts, as well as investigating the white LED strips for front running lights (town visibility, rather than out-of-town road coverage). https://minimal.org.uk/2011/09/04/pogoplug-and-pkgsrc-mysql-server/ Sun, 04 Sep 2011 21:00:27 +0000 https://minimal.org.uk/2011/09/04/pogoplug-and-pkgsrc-mysql-server/ For the most part, I’ve had no real issues building pkgsrc on my PogoPlug, but all three variants of MySQL server failed to build due to a conflicting type declaration error. For the 2011Q2 branch of pkgsrc and the mysql55-server package, simply comment out the offending line 169 in sql/mysqld.cc so that it reads: <br></br>#ifdef HAVE_FP_EXCEPT // Fix type conflict<br></br>//typedef fp_except fp_except_t;<br></br>#endif<br></br> https://minimal.org.uk/2011/08/25/pogoplug-freebsd-kirkwood-and-pkgsrc/ Thu, 25 Aug 2011 19:49:53 +0000 https://minimal.org.uk/2011/08/25/pogoplug-freebsd-kirkwood-and-pkgsrc/ Having bought an end-of-line v2 (pink) PogoPlug, I ignored all the setup guides (of course !) and reflashed the stock u-Boot image with Jeff Doozan’s version. After the obligatory messing with Linux (both ArchLinux and Debian) and discovering that the all-singing, all-dancing setups simply don’t work at all for me (the multi-hundred line shell script for debootstrap simply can’t cope with armel as both host and target), I switched to a real OS and had fun with a CF card and Nicole’s Kirkwood FreeBSD pages. https://minimal.org.uk/2011/01/01/buffalo-linkstation-cheap-serial-port/ Sat, 01 Jan 2011 17:07:40 +0000 https://minimal.org.uk/2011/01/01/buffalo-linkstation-cheap-serial-port/ After plenty of frustration trying to upgrade my LinkStation box to a newer version of Debian, I gave up and tried Gentoo as per the nas-central guide, and discovered just how friendly and cuddly apt-get can be… Whilst I have used Gentoo from source on my Qube, trying to do anything with pre-built stage3 tarballs is a royal PITA when the portage EAPI has changed. As all I wanted was a simple ARM box, I decided it was time for something less complex: Linux from Scratch, but to avoid having to pull the hard drive each time I made a boot config error, I though it would be useful to add a serial port using another nas-central guide and a Nokia 7250i DKU-5 USB data cable from eBay, for a whopping £1.