Re: [Dorset] Using Flask to render a set of Buttons.
On Thursday, 21 January 2021 13:02:13 GMT Ralph Corderoy wrote: > How do they not meet your requirements? > That might give us a better idea of what to suggest. Well they don't do anything like the psuedo code that I mentioned. :-) Seriously, everything I've found so far has been oriented towards blogging and login pages. etc. One that I've found on YouTube shows how to get the content of a form and write the info to a database. I thought that might lead me by the nose, but I can't seem to see how to convert what they do to what I need. The official documentation for Flask only mentions buttons in around four five places and that's more of the same. I'm assuming that If I had a template with the buttons defined in it, I might be able to get the button press to invoke the python code somehow, but again I can't seem to see how to do that. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2021-02-02 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Using Flask to render a set of Buttons.
On Thursday, 21 January 2021 12:52:44 GMT Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty wrote: > I haven't looked at Flask in detail, but one way to do it would be to > use a GET or POST value when the button is submitted in the form, so it > eg redirects to /control.html?action=play. Thanks Hamish. I did wonder if that might be the only way, but it seemed a bit clunky and felt that there ought to be something more sophisticated that I've missed. One trouble that I've found with Flask is that on its own its fairly straightforward, but much of what is done is done my the loading of flask modules and other helper libraries. It isn't always obvious which of those module or libraries to study to find what I need. That's why I've been trying to find an example from someone who has done something similar. I've found a number of examples using javascript (I even used one myself for the original WMT Webserver), but they all simply redirect to another page. I need to execute a line of Python. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2021-02-02 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
[Dorset] Using Flask to render a set of Buttons.
Hi,
I'm building a Web page to allow users to monitor key status information on
one of the Pis at WMT. I also want to create a page where users can press a
button to carry out certain tasks, such as Start or Stop some music playing or
select a new Playlist. The Player is written in Python. Altogether, there are
around 10 or more control functions that I want to invoke.
I have the monitoring page working reasonably well using a suitable html
template and a Flask route which populates the status values on the rendered
page. However, the control side is making me think a bit. I've found quite a
lot of tutorials and text book examples that use forms and a 'Submit' button,
but so far nothing quite like what I want.
What I need is for the user to be presented with set of buttons that, when
pressed, cause a bit of Python code to be executed that communicates with the
Player program. On receipt of the message, the Player program will trigger a
set of functions to carry out the requested action. The communication side is
sorted; all I need is an example or a link to a suitable tutorial that
illustrates the Flask code that I need to make it happen and if necessary, the
associated template.
Here is a bit of pseudo code to illustrate what I'm trying to do:
@app.route('/control')
def control():
Add a Button called "Stop the Music"
ON click run:
socket.write("Stop the Music")
Add another button...
etc.
Can anyone help?
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Re: [Dorset] Raspberry Pi Pico
On Thursday, 21 January 2021 11:45:36 GMT PeterMerchant wrote:
> About the USB connections, I thought that the specified length for USB
> connections was 5 Metres? Are you going further than that at WMT?
No. The two Pis are in the same Equipment Case.
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Re: [Dorset] Raspberry Pi Pico
On Thursday, 21 January 2021 10:17:49 GMT Ralph Corderoy wrote: > > USB Networking works extremely well. > > ... > > > traffic has still to be carried over USB and then be converted to > > TCP/IP in the Adaptor. > > So to clarify, it isn't USB networking. It's wired Ethernet or Wi-Fi > networking with one of those network interface being connected to the Pi > locally over USB. > > USB networking would be USB all the way down. :-) > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_over_USB Ralph, You are guilty of selective quoting. :-) When I referred to USB Networking, I was talking about the technique described in your link. I have two Pis in the new Minster installation and they are connected together over USB without an Ethernet Adaptor at either end. Once configured at one end, both Pis gain a usb0 interface, which can be treated as a network interface. No WiFi, no Ethernet Adaptor. As it happens one of the Pis has a WiFi Adaptor to link to the WMT Network (which does not support USB networking and would need a very long USB cable if it did). In you second quote, I was simply comparing the (assumed) performance of USB Networking and Ethernet in that scenario. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2021-02-02 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Raspberry Pi Pico
On Thursday, 21 January 2021 09:55:45 GMT Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty wrote: > That's true, if USB is fairly functional that perhaps USB NICs could be > made to work. It will still need a TCP/IP stack though. Yes agreed, which is why I only said that I would 'seriously consider' this device. :-) > What would the Pico's be doing in that design? All the hardware-related > stuff like interfacing with probes? > > I realise this is very much a hypothetical discussion, but still > interested :). Does the USB Raspberry Pi networking work well for the > new Minster system? USB Networking works extremely well. Once configured it is pretty much seamless. The only change from the system viewpoint is that the Static IP Address on the Pi has to be assigned to usb0 instead of eth0. I should image that throughput would be limited only by the speed of the USB hardware and would probably be higher than if an Ethernet Adaptor is used because traffic has still to be carried over USB and then be converted to TCP/IP in the Adaptor. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2021-02-02 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Raspberry Pi Pico
On Thursday, 21 January 2021 09:25:02 GMT Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty wrote: > This is a very interesting product. That said, I agree with you Terry in > that I think it would have been hard to even get Ethernet to work with > something like this, let alone talking to a MySQL database - probably > unsuitable for the River System, or at least the direction it went in > given the hardware we had at the time. At the time, there was no thought of networking the devices; this was when I did the lighting controller. This would have been perfect for that because in the end I was unable to get PWM to work without flickering using Python because the GPIO Library didn't (doesn't?) support the hardware PWM on Pin 18. I got it working with WiringPi and C, although the C code is hardly rocket science with only around 160 lines of code around a third of which are comments. The train controllers would have been a perfect choice for this , but I couldn't have used it for any of the four audio players on the site. I agree with you that we certainly would have struggled to develop the software for the River System in its present form. From a hardware standpoint we would have been fine for any of the River System devices if USB networking could be made to work. If I were starting today, I would seriously consider using a Pi Zero at each location to do the grunt work, connected to the Pico's using USB Networking, like I've just done on the new Minster hardware. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2021-02-02 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Raspberry Pi Pico
On Thursday, 21 January 2021 07:59:12 GMT PeterMerchant wrote: > I notice that it doesn't have WiFi, and I wonder if it could be programmed > from the Arduino IDE as 'c' is mentioned. Perhaps that will come. I have Do you not compile the C code before uploading it to an Arduino or similar? I've never used an Arduino but have always assumed that the compiler was in the IDE not the device. > been using a Wemos D1 which has some of these features plus Wifi, and > programmed in c. That's an interesting device too, albeit a lot less capable than this latest offering. The microPython is the attractive thing. When i was evaluating the options at WMT in 2016, I plumped for the RPi Zero because it was half the price of the cheapest Arduino, but more importantly it supported Python. Since the WMT is largely maintained by volunteers, I didn't want to use a language that might be hard to use for novices. Since Python was going up the popularity charts even then, and is quite powerful, I felt it was the right choice. I still do. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2021-02-02 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
[Dorset] Raspberry Pi Pico
This is interesting:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-silicon-pico-now-on-sale/
It's selling for £3.60 in the UK and comes with analogue inputs and multiple
PWM outputs, so is ideal for the sort of physical computing that we've been
doing at Wimborne Model Town.
Having said that, it is a micro-controller rather that a micro-computer and
comes with a much slower clock and less memory, so it won't run the RPi OS.
It can be programmed with micrpython or C/C++.
At present, we certainly couldn't use these to replace the hardware at WMT
without a significant software re-write. However, the hardware costs would
have been roughly halved in may cases had it been available three to four
years ago.
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Re: [Dorset] OT: WiFi Device Generating Multiple DHCP Requests
On Tuesday, 12 January 2021 14:20:42 GMT Ralph Corderoy wrote: > Is there any chance you've a device which is using the same IP address > which the EV charger was being leased, perhaps because you've assigned a > static IP address in the past to some forgotten Pi, or because there's > an unwanted second DHCP server running? Unlikely unless there were several devices that happened to have the same IP Address as the Charger; it has been given at least four since this morning. The Router is a Netgear D7800 and only five static IPs have been set up. The Charger's IP Address is visible in the 'Attached Devices' list and there are no devices unaccounted for. None of the attached devices are running a DHCP Server; the Pi that did that is in the cupboard and it did it on another sub-net anyway. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2021-02-02 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] OT: WiFi Device Generating Multiple DHCP Requests
On Tuesday, 12 January 2021 13:38:38 GMT Ian Morris wrote: > We live, as you know, quite close by. We are probably far enough apart > to be on separate low voltage segments of the mains distribution system, > However as an additional data point, I am dubious about the "Brown out". > My UPS would have gone into boost mode (it's line interactive) had this > happened on my segment and there is no sign (so if there was such an > event, it was on your segment only)... There was not even a blip here > (which the UPS often detects and triggers battery backed more for a few > seconds before switching back.) I did wonder about the brown-out story because nothing else has registered any kind of problem. > Even if the voltage had dropped to 178v, I'd guess that the power supply > for logic is some switched mode device which would likely handle this > without issue anyhow. I would hope so, but if there was a spike that was too short for the Charger's voltage monitor to register, then that could explain it. The fault light was on after all. Again, nothing else seems to have had a problem. > Is there any way to tell whether the device is reconnecting to wifi > my guess is that it's dropping wifi and then when it re-connects it's > that which is then triggering the DHCP reuqests. Could be external wifi > interference ... could you do a wifi scan to see if there's anything new > locally that's on the same channel? It's connecting OK, although it wasn't on Saturday before I power cycled it. There is nothing on the same channel. In any case the signal strength at the charger location is pretty much at maximum; when I connect to the WiFi Extender there is just two courses of brick between it and the charger because it is plugged into a socket just the other side of the house wall (and the wall is dry). I get exactly the same problem if I connect directly to the router, which is on a different channel and three rooms away (It's still stronger than any of the other signals nearby because it has multiple antennas and a powerful RF Amp in it). I can see no co or adjacent channel signals that are anything like as strong as the Extender or the main router signals. I don't believe that this is a problem caused by noise or interference, unless the noise or interference occurs every five minutes exactly. Until a few minutes ago that is exactly what was happening, although the system has now started allocating a different IP Address to the Charger and updating much more often. This setup has worked perfectly for about 18 months now. I'm uncertain when this issue started, but it certainly hasn't been apparent when I've examined the logs previously. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2021-02-02 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
[Dorset] OT: WiFi Device Generating Multiple DHCP Requests
Hi,
Not strictly Linux, but I wonder if there are any network aware people out
there who can shed any light on my problem.
My EV Charger is generating multiple DHCP Requests. This was first noticed on
Saturday when my son checked the router log and saw that one device was being
allocated an IP Address every 5 minutes or so. I isolated the problem to the
charger by turning stuff off until the problem stopped. Normally the charger
is
connected to a WiFi Extender but I get the same problem when it is connected
directly to the Router.
When I went to turn off the charger its status light was red, signifying a
failure. I power cycled it and the repeated DHCP requests stopped - for a
while. Later I recycled both my router and my extender and the repeated DHCP
requests stopped again.
The Charger Supplier worked through the problem with me on Saturday and
informed me that there had been a brown-out on 4th Jan where the mains voltage
had dropped to 178 V (normally 230 V). He said that was what had caused the
red status light. He also said that he thought the problem was caused by that
and it should be OK. I last used the charger to charge my car on 1st Jan.
This morning I power cycled the charger again and the problem is still there
However, the repeated DHCP requests have since recurred. Are there any config
settings in my router that could cause this? Every other client works fine,
but I thought it worth checking. I get the problem whether I connect the
charger to the extender or to the main router, so I'm excluding the extender
from my diagnosis.
I suspect that the brown-out damaged the charger electronics, although why I'm
not sure. Of course the Supplier's monitoring wouldn't see high amplitude
narrow spikes, so the brown-out may have been preceded by a large spike
(nothing else failed though). The Charger is under Warranty, so I want to
marshal my facts before I call back.
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Re: [Dorset] Recommendations for webcam?
On Friday, 8 January 2021 15:27:55 GMT Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty wrote: > I imagine some of you probably use dedicated USB webcams, so perhaps you > could tell me which ones you're using? Mine's a Logitech Quickcam Deluxe S7500, which unfortunately is no longer available. This gives a good clear image and includes a built-in microphone. and a lens shutter I don't recall ever having any problems getting it to work; I just plugged it in and made it the default device for audio and camera inputs. Unfortunately, Logitech seem to have stopped making low(er) cost Webcams. On their site the cheapest don't have all the features that mine does unless you pay £80-£90. I'm sure I didn't pay that. There seem to be a few on eBay: https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html? _from=R40&_trksid=p2546172.m570.l1313&_nkw=Logitech+Quickcam+Deluxe+S7500&_sacat=0 -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2021-01-05 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Laptop cooling
On Friday, 8 January 2021 15:26:33 GMT Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty wrote:
> In case anyone's interested, replacing the heatpipe for my laptop did
> fix the issue, it runs much cooler and can now continually boost even
> when under full load for several minutes, rather than thermal throttling.
I wasn't aware that you had a cooling issue on your laptop; perhaps you raised
it after I went to bed on Tuesday?
Anyway, years ago I ran a project to develop a military test set based on a
rugged laptop. We replaced the heat pipes in that with longer ones and one of
the suppliers explained how they work. Apparently it is not uncommon for the
pipe to leak allowing the partial vacuum to fill and the vaporisation process
to stop.
Just in case you didn't know :-)
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Re: [Dorset] Old Books - Junk?
On Wednesday, 6 January 2021 10:55:39 GMT Victor Churchill wrote: > in Schlaer&Mellor's OO Systems Analysis or various other tech titles. I'm > not even sure that a charity shop would welcome them - especially now, of > course - but it seems a shame to just pulp them. I tried to get rid of some (originally) quite expensive but out of date text books some years ago. The charity shops didn't want them because they had more books than they could easily shift and those were novels etc. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2021-01-05 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
[Dorset] Next Meeting - Tonight at 8 pm
All, The next Online Meeting is tonight at 8 pm using Jitsi. Simply click on the following link and you will be taken to the Meeting using your default browser: https://meet.jit.si/dorset-lug Chrome or Chromium are probably better than Firefox for using Jitsi. An alternative to installing one of those two is to obtain it bundled especially for Jitsi from: https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet-electron/releases This should be as simple as wget -q https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet-electron/releases/download/ v2.4.2/jitsi-meet-x86_64.AppImage chmod +x jitsi-meet-x86_64.AppImage ./jitsi-meet-x86_64.AppImage and then entering ‘dorset-lug’ as the meeting ID. Hope to see you all this evening. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2021-01-05 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
[Dorset] Next Meeting - One Week Tonight
Hi, I trust that everyone is enjoying the seasonal break, at least as much as is possible at the moment. The next Meeting will be one week tonight 2021-01-05 at 2000 using Jitsi. Details are as for the previous meetings, but they will be re-posted on the day. Have a Happy New Year (and hopefully somewhat better than the last one). -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2021-01-05 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] No Response in alsamixer and Error from amixer
On Sunday, 20 December 2020 11:46:27 GMT Ralph Corderoy wrote: > Presumably, the double-reboot changes something about the Pi which isn't > stored on the SD Card so an identical copy of the SD Card in another Pi > which hasn't been modified in the same way doesn't function properly. I suspect you are right, but I can't think what that might be. > Finding out why the double reboot is required and duplicating that > action on the second Pi would be one way of testing if the cloned > SD Card then works in it. Another would be to put the cloned card into > the original Pi which has been double rebooted. That would certainly take me a bit further forward, but I'm not sure I have the time or the inclination to go that far. When I did the River System Pis, having a 'Base Image' was really useful because there will eventually be around 10 to 15 Pis in the system (8 so far). The Minster Music and Bells System will only ever have two Pis (which is one more than it was before). -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2021-01-05 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] No Response in alsamixer and Error from amixer
On Friday, 18 December 2020 12:41:27 GMT Terry Coles wrote:
> amixer: Invalid command!
>
> After this failure alsamixer has no control over the volume level. However,
> once the amixer command is working so is alsamixer.
I fixed this by re-installing everything from scratch instead of basing the
installation on a copy of the SD Card for the working music player. There is
a warning in the instructions for the Adafruit Bonnet that it is necessary to
reboot twice to get alsamixer to work, but that had been done when the music
player was set up, so why I had to do it again, I don't know.
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Re: [Dorset] No Response in alsamixer and Error from amixer
On Friday, 18 December 2020 14:12:00 GMT Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty wrote: > Print out the exact commandline of: > > ['amixer', '-c', '0', 'set', 'PCM', 'playback', nave_vol] This happens on the command line too if I issue: amixer -c 0 set PCM 70% (The var nave_vol contains 70%.) Also, I'm launching alsamixer from the command line. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-01-05 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
[Dorset] No Response in alsamixer and Error from amixer
Hi, Some of you are aware that I've been re-engineering the Minster Bells and Music Player at Wimborne Mode Town. Amongst other things I split the functionality into two Pis (the original Pi 3 and a Pi Zero); both are equipped with an Adafruit Stereo 3 W Amplifier Bonnet: https://thepihut.com/products/adafruit-i2s-3w-stereo-speaker-bonnet-for-raspberry-pi The Pi 3 takes care of the music that plays in the Nave and I configured that first and using a cut-down version of the original code, it has been running satisfactorily for a week or two. I then backed up its SD Card and created a new one using the Music Player image as a starting point. Again, using a cut-down version of the original code installed on the pi Zero, I have now got the bells to ring (almost) perfectly. The one problem that I have is the volume setting command. In both programs I have a line: subprocess.call(['amixer', '-c', '0', 'set', 'PCM', 'playback', nave_vol]) In the music program this works perfectly every time, but in the bells program it fails intermittently with: amixer: Invalid command! After this failure alsamixer has no control over the volume level. However, once the amixer command is working so is alsamixer. Any ideas on what I should check? AFAIK there is no difference between the two devices other than the underlying Pi type. I've tried all sorts of combinations of amixer command from the man page, but when it works it works and when it doesn't it seems to refuse to do anything. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-01-05 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Distributed computing for COVID
On Monday, 14 December 2020 09:50:36 GMT Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty wrote:
> I was wondering, now that there are multiple vaccines in development/in
> use, whether we still think it's worth doing distributed computing for
> COVID research.
I've already stopped doing Rosetta@Home using BOINC because the 2020.10 update
to Kubuntu broke it. Even back in October it looked as though work on COVID
had all but stopped on Rosetta, so I didn't expend too much energy trying to
fix the problem.
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Re: [Dorset] Issues with mpg321 / mpg123 - Part 1
On Saturday, 5 December 2020 14:26:38 GMT Ralph Corderoy wrote: > speakerbonnet is mentioned in the /etc/asound.conf the above shell > script installs so perhaps you've already followed those instructions? Yes I did the Quick Install and everything works as advertised including the Raspberry Pi Test: mpg123 http://ice1.somafm.com/u80s-128-mp3 It's only when I substitute mpg321 for mpg123 that I get the error. I have asked this question on the RPi Forums and if the cause is not identified before Monday, I'll write to the Support Team at The Pi Hut (they won't be there until Monday). I've pretty much decided in any case to stick with mpg321 because running the loop in Python would consume a fair bit of processing power, but more importantly it would mean that it might temporarily block the interrupts from the apscheduler jobs. You may recall that this code was written so that the program spends the bulk of it's time in the delay: while 1: # Idle until Opening Hours is true and an event occurs. time.sleep(2**31-1) which if I recall correctly was suggested by you :-) -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-01-05 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Issues with mpg321 / mpg123 - Part 2
On Saturday, 5 December 2020 14:19:11 GMT Keith Edmunds wrote: > Terry, I'm not looking for fight. Sorry if I offended. It wasn't so much that you offended; it was just the assumption that anyone could do this regardless of ability. The apology wasn't needed but I accept it anyway and hope that I didn't offend you by being so defensive. If I did, then I apologise too. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-01-05 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Issues with mpg321 / mpg123 - Part 1
On Saturday, 5 December 2020 12:22:05 GMT Ralph Corderoy wrote: > As it says, is the device in use? Is there anything else running which > would decide to use the default audio device? If there is, I didn't start it. A thought has just occurred to me. I'm wondering if the Adafruit Bonnet grabs the interface as soon as the system boots and hangs on to it after that. It would make sense because the speakers sometimes click part way through the boot sequence. If that is the case it would explain why I can't grab it any other way. > Are you aware of > https://learn.adafruit.com/usb-audio-cards-with-a-raspberry-pi/instructions > ? I don't know if it's applicable to your AdaFruit device. I don't think it is because the Bonnet interfaces to the Pi via I2C not USB. Thanks for pointing it out. > Also, have you edited /usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf? Does it still contain > ‘pcm.front cards.pcm.front’? Does the error stop appearing if you Yes it does. > change that to ‘pcm.front cards.pcm.default’? The error changes to: ALSA lib pcm.c:2565:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.front.default :-) > BTW, ‘aplay -L’ will list the PCMs, and This gives me: pi@minster-music:~/Music/Playlist1 $ aplay -L null Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture) speakerbonnet dmixer softvol default sysdefault:CARD=sndrpihifiberry snd_rpi_hifiberry_dac, HifiBerry DAC HiFi pcm5102a-hifi-0 Default Audio Device dmix:CARD=sndrpihifiberry,DEV=0 snd_rpi_hifiberry_dac, HifiBerry DAC HiFi pcm5102a-hifi-0 Direct sample mixing device dsnoop:CARD=sndrpihifiberry,DEV=0 snd_rpi_hifiberry_dac, HifiBerry DAC HiFi pcm5102a-hifi-0 Direct sample snooping device hw:CARD=sndrpihifiberry,DEV=0 snd_rpi_hifiberry_dac, HifiBerry DAC HiFi pcm5102a-hifi-0 Direct hardware device without any conversions plughw:CARD=sndrpihifiberry,DEV=0 snd_rpi_hifiberry_dac, HifiBerry DAC HiFi pcm5102a-hifi-0 Hardware device with all software conversions > https://www.alsa-project.org/wiki/Asoundrc#Global_view_of_ALSA_config_file_f > ramework.2C_executive_summary describes how the configuration files tie > together. Thanks. I'll have a look at that. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-01-05 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Issues with mpg321 / mpg123 - Part 2
On Saturday, 5 December 2020 11:59:16 GMT Keith Edmunds wrote: > Ah, the standard response to the joys of Open Source software. > > You might not want to fix it, but you almost certainly could. It would > take time, effort, maybe tears, - like most things in life worth > achieving - but you could do it. I think that is unworthy of you. I could fix it if I paid someone to do it for me. I certainly couldn't fix it myself, no matter how much time I took or how many tears I shed. What you have accused me of is similar to saying that I could score a goal in a professional football match if I tried hard enough. Clearly I couldn't; my skill set is completely different and I have never been a skilled programmer so it would be pretty much impossible for me to fix this to the satisfaction of the original author. > At least be honest and say you don't want to fix it badly enough to > actually do it. I would agree with your last statement up to a point. If there is an alternative, why would I want to fix it? However, I still say that I would have fixed it if I could. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-01-05 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Issues with mpg321 / mpg123 - Part 2
On Saturday, 5 December 2020 11:33:47 GMT Keith Edmunds wrote: > Millions of people can't understand why anyone would want to run Linux on > their everyday PC. Does that make them right? I think that's a non sequitur. Millions of people don't understand software or operating systems at all, but they do understand how to play their music on their MP3 Players. I repeat that I doubt that many would want to loop a single track for long. > It's Open Source software. If it doesn't scratch your itch, fix it. Well maybe I would if I could. I have said before on this list that I am not a software developer; I spent most of my life as a Systems Engineer. This means that I specified what a product should do but not actually do it. In this instance I suspect I will either live with the error message or do the looping in Python. However, I'd still be interested to hear if anyone can shed any light on the original issue with mpg321 in my other post, since it is clearly a better solution to my requirement. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-01-05 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Issues with mpg321 / mpg123 - Part 2
On Saturday, 5 December 2020 10:44:34 GMT Ralph Corderoy wrote: > If you use ‘--loop 2’ then it will play AABBCC... > It can't be told to play ABCABC... I can't see why anyone would want to do that. > Which is similar to what the author suggests at > https://sourceforge.net/p/mpg123/bugs/198/#9153 Hmmm. So the author thinks legions of people will want to play the individual tracks multiple times but not loop the entire playlist like every MP3 Player I've ever used. I can't see why anyone wouldn't want to do that. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-01-05 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Issues with mpg321 / mpg123 - Part 1
On Saturday, 5 December 2020 10:49:05 GMT Ralph Corderoy wrote: > But with the ‘-a hw:1,0’, as shown above, there's no error and it plays > okay? No. It doesn't work at all for all and every combination of -a hw:*,* (see below). > What? I get the impression you've fixed it by using ‘-a’. I never actually said that. With the Arduino 'Bonnet' there is only one sound card installed, so that's the default: pi@minster-music:~/Music/Playlist1 $ aplay -l List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices card 0: sndrpihifiberry [snd_rpi_hifiberry_dac], device 0: HifiBerry DAC HiFi pcm5102a-hifi-0 [HifiBerry DAC HiFi pcm5102a-hifi-0] Subdevices: 0/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 When I was doing this with the USB Adaptor, I determined the values for hw:*,* by trial and error because I failed to spot the logic. My reading of the above is that by any interpretation hw:0,0 should work but it gives: pi@minster-music:~/Music/Playlist1 $ mpg321 -m -a hw:0,0 01\ Marche\ Episcopale.mp3 High Performance MPEG 1.0/2.0/2.5 Audio Player for Layer 1, 2, and 3. Version 0.3.2-1 (2012/03/25). Written and copyrights by Joe Drew, now maintained by Nanakos Chrysostomos and others. Uses code from various people. See 'README' for more! THIS SOFTWARE COMES WITH ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY! USE AT YOUR OWN RISK! Title : Marche Episcopale Artist : Louis Vierne Album : Pieces D'orgue Pour Des Mariag Year: Comment : 0 Genre : Classical Playing MPEG stream from 01 Marche Episcopale.mp3 ... MPEG 1.0 layer III, 160 kbit/s, 44100 Hz joint-stereo Can't open libao driver with device hw:0,0 (is device in use?) -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-01-05 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Issues with mpg321 / mpg123 - Part 2
On Saturday, 5 December 2020 10:10:51 GMT Keith Edmunds wrote:
> How about:
>
> while :;do
> mpg123 -m --list playlist1.txt
> done
Keith,
Yes. I realise that I can do the looping in other ways, eg in the main Python
code or within a bash script as I presume the above is. (I'm running it now
to see what happens.)
However mpg 123 is supposed to do this itself (as mpg321 does) and I feel that
it has to be simpler and use less resources to use the functionality provided.
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[Dorset] Issues with mpg321 / mpg123 - Part 2
Hi,
To understand the context of this query please read my previous message.
The instructions on the Pi Hut Website specify mpg123 instead of mpg321, so I
used that in a simple command line invocation and was able to play the audio
without the ALSA error mentioned in the previous message. The problem here is
that I've been unable to get the Playlist to loop. From my reading of the man
page, the following should work, but it doesn't:
mpg123 -m --list playlist1.txt --loop -1
where playlist1.txt contains a list of the files. If I remove the ' --loop -1'
It will play all the files, but (obviously) does not loop. If I include the
looping switches, it loops round the first file in the playlist and not the
playlist. Can anyone shed light on what I've done wrong?
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[Dorset] Issues with mpg321 / mpg123 - Part 1
Hi,
I'm sure that many of you will remember that back in 2016/17 I produced a
program to play organ music in the Nave of the Model Minster at Wimborne Model
Town. With a lot of help from members of this list, I used mpg321 to play
music in directories using code running on a Pi 3 with a USB / Audio
Converter. (The standard output at the Jack played the chimes in the tower.)
Here is snippet of the original code to illustrate what I did and what I want
to replicate:
mpg321 -l -m -a hw:1,0
The list of files was produced using glob and command was invoked using
subprocess.Popen(args) with the args built up in earlier lines. It worked
extremely well except that the audio quality was awful. This Winter I have
been re-engineering the Minster hardware to use an Arduino 3 W Stereo Bonnet
(https://thepihut.com/products/adafruit-i2s-3w-stereo-speaker-bonnet-for-raspberry-pi)
which produces excellent audio. A second Pi and Bonnet will
produce the chimes.
The problem is that the original code (without the 'hw:1,0') produces the
following error:
ALSA lib pcm.c:2565:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.front
although the music seems to play OK.
I could of course ignore that error since it seems to have no effect, but I am
reluctant to do that because a future WMT Volunteer may well waste time trying
to find out the cause (and with my memory that could be me).
Does anyone know how to diagnose this. I've Googled the error (and snippets
of the error) but have been unable to shed any light on the problem.
Part 2 of this description will detail an Issue that arose when I tried to use
mpg123 instead of mpg321 (since that is what is recommended).
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[Dorset] Online Meeting Tonight at 8 pm
All, The next Online Meeting is tonight at 8 pm using Jitsi. Simply click on the following link and you will be taken to the Meeting using your default browser: https://meet.jit.si/dorset-lug Chrome or Chromium are probably better than Firefox for using Jitsi. An alternative to installing one of those two is to obtain it bundled especially for Jitsi from: https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet-electron/releases This should be as simple as wget -q https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet-electron/releases/download/ v2.4.2/jitsi-meet-x86_64.AppImage chmod +x jitsi-meet-x86_64.AppImage ./jitsi-meet-x86_64.AppImage and then entering ‘dorset-lug’ as the meeting ID. Hope to see you all this evening. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-12-01 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
[Dorset] Next Meeting - One Week Tonight
Hi, The next Meeting will be one week tonight 2020-12-01 at 2000 using Jitsi. Details are as for the previous meetings, but they will be re-posted on the day. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-12-01 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] funny in python software
On Thursday, 12 November 2020 15:14:23 GMT Keith Edmunds wrote: > I've never used Kate (vim for me), but it sounds as if it is > syntax-highlighting 'connect' in one file and not the other. That suggests > either something else has changed so that 'connect' doesn't make sense, or > there may be some non-visual problem with 'connect' (eg, an 8bit char in > there or - silly examples - you've put "Connect" or "c0nnect" or something > like that). Kate does do syntax highlighting but it seems to base its decision on the file extension rather than the shebang (which I note in the snippet is in line 3 and not the first line as it usually is). > Do you know / can you find out what blue highlighting means? Or - shudder > - can you open the file in (g)vim and see if it looks OK there? Peter had renamed his file to 'subscriber.py.2' and Kate didn't know what to do with a .2 file. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-12-01 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Waveshare 1.5 inch OLED Display
On Sunday, 8 November 2020 16:27:38 GMT Ralph Corderoy wrote:
> long time. Out of curiosity, try
>
> sudo apt-show-versions -a netpbm
> sudo apt-show-versions -a netpbm-free
terry@OptiPlex:~$ sudo apt-show-versions -a netpbm
netpbm:amd64 2:10.90.00-ppa install ok installed
netpbm:amd64 2:10.0-15.3build1 groovy gb.archive.ubuntu.com
netpbm:amd64 2:10.90.00-ppa newer than version in archive
netpbm:i386 2:10.0-15.3build1 groovy gb.archive.ubuntu.com
netpbm:i386 not installed
terry@OptiPlex:~$ sudo apt-show-versions -a netpbm-free
netpbm-free not installed (not available)
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Re: [Dorset] Waveshare 1.5 inch OLED Display
On Sunday, 8 November 2020 15:54:01 GMT Ralph Corderoy wrote: > and see if they list the PPA's version No they don't: terry@OptiPlex:~$ apt-show-versions netpbm netpbm:amd64/groovy 2:10.0-15.3build1 uptodate netpbm:i386 not installed terry@OptiPlex:~$ apt-show-versions netpbm-free netpbm-free not installed (not available) > Picking a package from > https://launchpad.net/~darkdragon-001/+archive/ubuntu/ppa/+packages > shows the underlying deb files, though I prefer to use a package > manager. I installed libnetpbm11_10.90.00-ppa_amd64.deb followed by netpbm_10.90.00- ppa_amd64.deb and it worked! What's more the resulting image loaded on the Tiny-TV screen properly :-) Tomorrow, I'll modify the script to fetch a directory full of images and spit them all out as png files. Thanks Ralph. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-12-01 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Waveshare 1.5 inch OLED Display
On Sunday, 8 November 2020 15:08:48 GMT Ralph Corderoy wrote: > One of the people commenting in that bug report has made a PPA available > with a more modern netpbm package. > https://launchpad.net/~darkdragon-001/+archive/ubuntu/ppa > It's been a long time since I've tried PPAs on Ubuntu but that might I've successfully installed PPAs on Kubuntu on a number of occasions, but I can't get that one to work. I run the commands listed at the site and the PPAs duly appear in the list of software sources, but all I get is the default Version 2:10.0-15.3build1 and not the latest version listed at the site (2:10.90.00). > allow you to install a half-decent version. If so, I'd revert your > change away from pamscale(1) too in case there's some subtle difference > with pnmscale. I would if I could. > If you still have trouble getting hold of netpbm then I can probably > provide the equivalent pipeline as a gmic(1) command. :-) It may come to that if I can't work out what is going on with the PPA. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-12-01 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Waveshare 1.5 inch OLED Display
On Wednesday, 5 August 2020 16:08:13 GMT Ralph Corderoy wrote: > Whilst all this clicking means you're learning Gimp, and it could > instead be coded in Python using the Python Imaging Library we keep > referring to, there's also Netpbm from the shell. > > wget -q -O lenna.png \ > https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7d/ Lenna_%28test_image%29.png > > w=128 h=128 # Desired size. > pngtopnm lenna.png | > pamscale -xyfit $w $h | > pnmpad -w $w -h $h | > pnmremap -mapfile=<(pamseq 1 15) | > pnmtopng >lenna-grey.png Ralph, I've been having a few problems reproducing my early success using The Gimp to convert my images (I did document it, but I must have left something out). Anyway, I thought I would give your bash code a try. I found and fixed an error; pamscale doesn't exist, but pnmscale does but I still can't make it work. When execution reaches the penultimate line I get the error: ./scale: line 5: pamseq: command not found followed by a couple of EOF errors that I assume are caused by the pnmremap failure. I've had a good rummage and can't find a package that provides pamseq. Can you tell me how to fix this? Also. I assume that 'pamseq 1 15' is telling pnmremap to change the image colormap to 16 levels. I would have expected the numbers to be 0 & 15 or 1 & 16. Any reason why 1 & 15 are used? -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-12-01 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
[Dorset] Raspberry Pi 400 Design
Apropos our discussion at the online Meeting last night, The Rapberry Pi
Foundation have released this:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/designing-raspberry-pi-400/
The big question that it answers for me is the thermal management issue.
Early versions of the Pi 4 were subject to some major overheating problems.
These were mitigated by firmware updates (presumably more throttling). The Pi
400 uses a big heat spreader to dissipate the heat and allow the standard
clock speed to be increased from 1.5 GHz to 1.8 GHz.
As I said last night, at £67 for the basic version and £95 for the kit it
seems to be a pretty good buy for someone who hasn't much prior knowledge of
computing in general and physical computing in particular.
(I am a bit of an RPi fan BTW.)
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[Dorset] Online Meeting Tonight at 8 pm
All, The next Online Meeting is tonight at 8 pm using Jitsi. Simply click on the following link and you will be taken to the Meeting using your default browser: https://meet.jit.si/dorset-lug Chrome or Chromium are probably better than Firefox for using Jitsi. An alternative to installing one of those two is to obtain it bundled especially for Jitsi from: https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet-electron/releases This should be as simple as wget -q https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet-electron/releases/download/ v2.4.2/jitsi-meet-x86_64.AppImage chmod +x jitsi-meet-x86_64.AppImage ./jitsi-meet-x86_64.AppImage and then entering ‘dorset-lug’ as the meeting ID. Hope to see you all this evening. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-11-03 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Next Online Meeting - One Week Tonight
On Tuesday, 27 October 2020 16:26:45 GMT Ralph Corderoy wrote: > An alternative is for someone with an Internet server and time on their > hands to play around with running their open-source server software. > I've heard it's not too hard to get going. Many years ago (when my hosting provider was One and One) I was sure that it was possible to manage my server directly and therefore install stuff yourself. Quite recently I've seen a Page to allow the installation of phpBB. Now however One and One has become Ionos and there seems to be a very limited number of 'features' available, so it seems that I can't do it no matter how little time it might take. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-11-03 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
[Dorset] Next Online Meeting - One Week Tonight
Hi, The next Meeting will be one week tonight 2020-11-03 at 2000 using Jitsi. Details are as for the previous meetings, but they will be re-posted on the day. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-11-03 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] KDE - How to Disable Plasma Widgets
On Friday, 23 October 2020 14:43:49 BST Ralph Corderoy wrote:
> Why are you double-clicking Button2 at all, let alone accidentally in
> the wrong place? And why do you do this often enough outside of any
> window so it's a problem? Is it a dodgy mouse bouncing the button?
I'm not. I press the middle mouse button once to simulate a double click in
editors and some games.
It seems that the middle mouse behaviour setting on the desktop is different to
the middle mouse behaviour setting in the KDE Settings module. I'm not sure
why that difference is needed andI never picked up on that until Patrick said
that it was different for him.
Anyway. Thanks for the help.
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Re: [Dorset] KDE - How to Disable Plasma Widgets
On Friday, 23 October 2020 14:39:53 BST Patrick Wigmore wrote: > For me, removing the middle-click action from the Desktop Settings > only seems to affect this exact feature; the pasting of new notes, > where the note didn't exist until the paste occurred. You are right. I don't remember setting the middle mouse button in the Desktop Settings, but I suppose I must have done in the dim distant past before 'Lock Widgets' Functionality was removed. > I found a discussion which seems to confirm that there is no longer a > "lock widgets" in 5.18. It mentions the accidental pasting of notes as > one of the disadvantages: > > https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/ez4s32/how_to_lock_widgets_in_plasma_5 > 18_beta/ > > I'm surprised nobody foresaw the downsides to removing this > functionality, but I suppose it might result in fewer bugs in the > long-run, if nobody can work around them by locking widgets. Perhaps the developers don't use the middle mouse button to simulate a double click. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-11-03 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] KDE - How to Disable Plasma Widgets
On Friday, 23 October 2020 13:28:23 BST Ralph Corderoy wrote: > Your original forum post said you used middle button (Button2) as a > replacement for double-clicking Button1, but those links including > removing the use of Button2 as a paste. I'm surprised it's doing both > and that you can't lose the paste? I *want* the paste; I probably use that more often than right-click. > Also, they talk of configuring the Desktop, since that's where you're > clicking, rather than Notes. I'm assuming they're using Desktop to mean > the bulk of the screen background which has no apparent windows on it. > How Button2 is handled by the Desktop as opposed to LibreOffice, > Firefox, a terminal, or xev(1)'s window is up to the Desktop? I believe so. I've only ever set the middle-mouse button behaviour once. > You can mark the packages plasma-widgets-addons pulls in as manually > installed so removing it shouldn't remove anything else. Then you can > cherrypick what else to remove. Starting an install of > plasma-widgets-addons after that, before abandoning it, will show what > extra things have been added to it since it was last installed, as well > as what you've deleted. > https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/533523/remove-components-from-stand > ard-installation-of-kde-plasma-on-debian-10 I'm finding the info in there a bit heavy weather; not least because there seem to be several opinions on what needs to be done. In summary however, my takeaway is that I need to install aptitude. This will allow me to mark the plasma-widgets-addons as manually installed and i then need to remove it and re-install each wanted package manually. (These may be a dozen or more; I can't quite tell because some may be needed in the tray etc. It all seems to be a bit of a faff, when all I really want to do is prevent the Notes popping up if I accidentally double click the desktop. There is also some ambiguity in the link that you posted, because at least one response talks about the plasma-widgets-addons package being a meta-package. It is not, it appears to have all of the widgets encapsulated in one file which installs around 375 component files. My best bet seems to be pursuing the 'Lock Widgets' functionality mentioned by Patrick which seems to have been removed from this version. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-11-03 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] KDE - How to Disable Plasma Widgets
On Friday, 23 October 2020 12:32:39 BST Patrick Wigmore wrote: > I constantly use middle click to paste things, but it never would have > occurred to me that pasting text onto the desktop might have this > effect. It never used to. > It turns out that this note-pasting "feature" is present in (four- > year-old) plasmashell 5.5.5, but only when I have my widgets unlocked. > If the widgets are locked, then it doesn't create the new notes > widget. I suppose that makes some sense, because you can't normally > add or remove a widget when the widgets are locked, so it would be odd > to make an exception for post-it notes. I'm running Kubuntu 20.04 which installs 5.18.5. > I never encountered the note-pasting feature before, because I leave > the widgets locked after I have got them set up the way I like. Unfortunately, the widgets lock functionality seems to have been removed in 5.18.5. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-11-03 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] KDE - How to Disable Plasma Widgets
On Friday, 23 October 2020 10:09:00 BST Ralph Corderoy wrote: > I've obviously no idea what any of that is, but Google came up with > links like these which look helpful. > > > https://superuser.com/questions/1116231/completely-disable-desktop-notes-kd > e-plasma-5 > https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/cpmhns/how_to_uninstall_kde_notes/ > https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=123508 Unfortunately, these just confirm what I already knew; you can get rid of Notes if you disable the middle mouse click behaviour (which I use all the time) or uninstall the plasma-widgets-addons Package which gets rid of a lot of stuff that I do use. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-11-03 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
[Dorset] KDE - How to Disable Plasma Widgets
Hi,
Recently I posted to the Ubuntu Forums regarding a Plasma Widget (Notes) that
randomly drops Post-its on my desktop:
https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2452181
After four days, there has been no reply (there has been only one View and I
suspect that's me).
I'm sure in earlier iterations of KDE, Widgets could be disabled, but now it
seems that all I can do is to uninstall the package that contains that Widget
(and about a dozen others that I do use).
Has anyone any insights?
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Re: [Dorset] Windows-based solar panel-related software
On Wednesday, 7 October 2020 21:36:43 BST Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty wrote: > I believe you said during the call that you keep a Windows VM around > just to occasionally run a piece of software that talks to your solar > panel energy output monitor/similar? I'm sure you probably looked into > this, and I think you said you don't use it much, but have you tried > running it in WINE? Hamish, I've used wine for over 10 years now since I bought a copy of Memory Map and found that it (mostly) worked with wine. I don't use Memory Map any more (arthritic joints preclude hill walking) but I generally try any Windows software on it before resorting to a Virtualised copy of Windows. I did try my Mio Satnav and my efergy Energy Monitor software on wine, but neither worked; hence the need for a copy of Windows. As I said, I no longer use the Satnav, because my newest car has it built-in, or the efregy software because I don't really need to download results any more. The bottom line is that I have little use for either wine or Windows these days. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-11-03 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
[Dorset] Next Online Meeting - Tonight at 8pm
All, The next Online Meeting is tonight at 8 pm using Jitsi. Simply click on the following link and you will be taken to the Meeting using your default browser: https://meet.jit.si/dorset-lug Chrome or Chromium are probably better than Firefox for using Jitsi. An alternative to installing one of those two is to obtain it bundled especially for Jitsi from: https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet-electron/releases This should be as simple as wget -q https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet-electron/releases/download/ v2.4.1/jitsi-meet-x86_64.AppImage chmod +x jitsi-meet-x86_64.AppImage ./jitsi-meet-x86_64.AppImage and then entering ‘dorset-lug’ as the meeting ID. Hope to see you all this evening. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-10-06 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
[Dorset] Next Online Meeting - One Week Tonight
Hi, The next Meeting will be one week tonight 2020-10-06 at 2000 using Jitsi. Details are as for the previous meetings, but they will be re-posted on the day. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-10-06 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Loss of OS during upgrade
On Sunday, 27 September 2020 11:16:57 BST Terry Coles wrote:
> On Sunday, 27 September 2020 11:12:38 BST Ralph Corderoy wrote:
> > - An error copying it onto the bootable media. Didn't common distros
> >
> > add some option soon after the media boots to check the rest of the
> > media, e.g. read the DVD all the way through to the end of the image?
> > Does anyone here know? I haven't booted installation media in years.
> > I'd expect Mint to have it as a descendant of Debian.
>
> That's my recollection.
I had a thought. This is the last entry in grub.cfg on the Kubuntu 18.10
installation CD, which is the last one I downloaded.
}
menuentry "Check disc for defects" {
set gfxpayload=keep
linux /casper/vmlinuz integrity-check quiet splash ---
initrd /casper/initrd
}
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Re: [Dorset] Loss of OS during upgrade
On Sunday, 27 September 2020 11:12:38 BST Ralph Corderoy wrote: > - An error copying it onto the bootable media. Didn't common distros > add some option soon after the media boots to check the rest of the > media, e.g. read the DVD all the way through to the end of the image? > Does anyone here know? I haven't booted installation media in years. > I'd expect Mint to have it as a descendant of Debian. That's my recollection. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-10-06 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Very high memory usage (ignoring cache) after being powered on for days
On Thursday, 10 September 2020 12:59:49 BST Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty wrote: > "free" should report physical "real" memory usage right? If I'm mistaken > there it could explain the numbers. The NAS box had only 14M or 256M > free earlier despite showing no process using that much memory. It > usually only uses about 50M if memory serves. Don't forget that the memory under cache is not really in use as such; it is simply memory containing parked data from earlier processes. The OS will free that if it needs it. My machine has 8G of physical memory and free -h gives: terry@OptiPlex:~$ free -h totalusedfree shared buff/cache available Mem: 7.7Gi 6.2Gi 175Mi73Mi 1.4Gi 1.2Gi Swap: 15Gi 1.4Gi14Gi Viewing the memory in the graphical KDE System Monitor gives a totally different answer with 6G used and no indication of cache. Even so, I find it interesting that you are using 21G out of 31, but presumably you are running lots of stuff. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-10-06 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Filesystem in a LUKS volume unmounts randomly on Raspberry Pi
On Wednesday, 9 September 2020 14:15:08 BST Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty wrote:
> Perhaps this explains some of our issues with the network in previous
> years at the model town, Terry? It might be worth me making a note on
> the forum about it. I'm currently trying a different overlay which is
> supposed to fix the problem at the expense of a little bit of USB
> throughput.
It's certainly worth thinking about.
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[Dorset] Next Online Meeting - Tonight at 8pm
All, The next Online Meeting is tonight at 8 pm using Jitsi. For those who missed it earlier; here are the Instructions for joining: Simply click on the following link and you will be taken to the Meeting using your default browser: https://meet.jit.si/dorset-lug Chrome or Chromium are probably better than Firefox for using Jitsi. An alternative to installing one of those two is to obtain it bundled especially for Jitsi from: https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet-electron/releases This should be as simple as wget -q https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet-electron/releases/download/ v2.3.1/jitsi-meet-x86_64.AppImage chmod +x jitsi-meet-x86_64.AppImage ./jitsi-meet-x86_64.AppImage and then entering ‘dorset-lug’ as the meeting ID. Hope to see you all this evening. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-09-01 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Understanding EXT4 disk options
On Thursday, 27 August 2020 13:09:15 BST Keith Edmunds wrote:
> It's not clear to me what role D-Link plays in this. Why is a script from
> a proprietary company mounting your partitions? Does the usual /etc/fstab
> not come into play?
D-Link is the manufacturer of the NAS Box.
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[Dorset] Next Online Meeting - One Week Tonight
Hi,
OK. So the pubs and clubs are now open, but we'd still have to sit 2 m apart;
not very practical. So unless someone has a better idea, the next meeting
will have to be online again.
The next Meeting therefore will be one week tonight 2020-09-01 at 2000 using
Jitsi. Details are as for the previous meetings, but they will be re-posted
on the day.
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Re: [Dorset] Tracking Down Where Python Modules Come From
On Sunday, 16 August 2020 12:46:53 BST Ralph Corderoy wrote: > https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/spi/README.md > says > > The Raspberry Pi is equipped with one SPI bus that has 2 chip > selects. > > so I'm assuming there's not another SPI bus which isn't normally enabled > or allocated pins. > > But that seems to contradict with https://pinout.xyz/pinout/spi which > shows > > SPI0: SCLK MOSI MISO CE0 CE1 > SPI1: SCLK MOSI MISO CE0 CE1 CE2 Ralph, I raised all this on the Raspbery Pi Forum. The discussion is still ongoing, but I think I have a handle on the situation, at a high level at least. Out-of-the-Box the generic RPi has no SPI Buses, all of the Pins are used for power, ground and GPIO functions. Other interfaces, such as I2C, 1-Wire and SPI have to be enabled. This is achieved by editing a file in the /boot partition to include overlays (these overlays cover everything from Real Time Clock support to interfaces, including a lot of third-party add-ons, including HATS). There are up to six SPI Busses, but availability depends on which RPi you have (the jury's still out on which Pi has what). However, there is another way to enable a limited number of interfaces. A utility called raspi-config allows the SPI Bus to be enabled; this simply edits the file in /boot on your behalf. It only offers one SPI Bus. We are using a Rasperry Pi Zero for this application. This uses a pretty recent Broadcom chip, but not as recent as the Raspberry Pi 4 (which it is alleged supports all six busses). The Pi Zero can have two busses with two chip selects on the default SPI0 and three on SPI1. However, although this could allow us to do everything we want, I've seen enough plaintive postings on the web about enabling these additional buses to be a bit wary of going down that path. On top of that the driver would need to be enhanced. As delivered I believe it only supports SPI0 and one chip select, so I would have to add code to support this plus code for SPI1 and three chip selects. I fear that this would be a lot of work and may well be a hiding to nothing (bearing in mind that my forte is not software development). I have therefore all but decided to follow Ralph's suggestion to use hardware to multiplex the chip selects to the different displays. I need to establish whether buffering will be needed on the main bus lines too or if the fanout of the Broadcom chip can cope with up to four or five devices connected. As I understand it, the spec on GPIO pins is up to 16 mA per pin, with a maximum of 50 mA on all pins, so it will depend on the input current of the SPI Bus chip on the display devices. Thanks for your help. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-09-01 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Tracking Down Where Python Modules Come From
On Sunday, 16 August 2020 17:33:52 BST Bob Dunlop wrote: > A 16:1 fanout would raise alarm bells in most hardware engineers minds I > think. Remember the SCLK and MOSI lines would each be driving 16 devices > in parallel, and each peripheral MISO line would have top drive 15 of it's > tristated companions. I suspect a few buffers would be required. We won't need 16 devices; it's more likely to be three or maybe four. We have three shop fronts at WMT (one each for Currys, Holmans and Dacombe ) and we currently have 7 Display modules. In the end, real estate will probably dictate how many Tiny-TVs we have in each shop window. In any case, I doubt that any TV shop would have that many TVs to display in 1951 :-) > Some SPI controllers even support this style of operation. I think it was > the Atmel SAMA5D3 series gave you the choice of three separate chip selects > for three devices, or three lines working in concert to drive an external > 8:1 mux for eight. No idea if the RPI controllers would do this, it would > be deep is the SoC manual, but I doubt it. I've been looking at a few devices. Apart from that, we may not need any multiplexing if we limit the number of TVs to two in each shop front (which would leave us with one spare). I'd like to find out why the SPI Bus on RPis is arranged as it is. The documentation clearly says one SPI Bus, but two complete sets of control/data lines are provided. It might be simply for ease of connection. I'll be looking into all this over the coming week, because my co-volunteer will be away on holiday. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-09-01 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Tracking Down Where Python Modules Come From
On Sunday, 16 August 2020 12:46:53 BST Ralph Corderoy wrote: > I'd assume reset and data/command are gated as inputs to each SPI device > on the bus by the chip-select line so D/C doesn't need switching to each > device, just CS. But I'd examine the data-sheet of the SPI device in > question to seek confirmation. Yes. I'm looking in to this. > https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/spi/README.md > says > > The Raspberry Pi is equipped with one SPI bus that has 2 chip > selects. > > so I'm assuming there's not another SPI bus which isn't normally enabled > or allocated pins. > > But that seems to contradict with https://pinout.xyz/pinout/spi which > shows > > SPI0: SCLK MOSI MISO CE0 CE1 > SPI1: SCLK MOSI MISO CE0 CE1 CE2 > > as if there's two buses with three chip-select lines on the second one. > Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the diagram. If you are, then it's the same misunderstanding that I had. > Could you demux outputs from the Pi to give more chip-selects lines, > e.g. four GPIOs could drive one of 2⁴=16 CS lines. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demux#Digital_demultiplexers > It's the demux's outputs which fan off as CS to each SPI device. > Meanwhile, they all get SCLK, MOSI, RST and D/C straight from the Pi. > You could leave the software thinking there was only one SPI device and > drive the demuxer yourself just before each run of SPI-writing for a > device. If they were different speed devices then you'd have to change > the bus speed too. That's a very good idea (now why did I not think of that? :-) ). I'll look into it. We can easily do that on a piece of Veroboard and it has the advantage that the standard library will still work; I just have to assert the extra GPIO pin to toggelt the right CS pin. > No idea if it would work. This is a hardware problem. :-) I'm pretty sure it would. I'll pass it on to my co-volunteer who asked me to look into this. He was a hardware engineer before he became a company director. > It seems it is possible. > https://forum.pjrc.com/threads/34666-16-SPI-devices-Is-it-possible > An I²C port expander to drive 16 CS is an alternative to the 4-to-16 > demux. I'll see what the expert thinks :-) -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-09-01 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Tracking Down Where Python Modules Come From
On Sunday, 16 August 2020 10:35:08 BST Ralph Corderoy wrote: > Does it find it? I thought the Waveshare software was obtained through > 1.5inch_OLED_Moudle.7z [sic]. Doh! As you no doubt are well aware by now, my memory doesn't serve me well these days. I had forgotten about that. > DEV_Config.py includes > > OLED_RST_PIN = 25 > OLED_DC_PIN = 24 > OLED_CS_PIN = 8 It's the OLED_CS_PIN (and possibly the OLED_DC_PIN) that I will probably want to manage. > SPI = spidev.SpiDev(0, 0) > SPI.max_speed_hz = 2000 > SPI.mode = 0b00 > > https://luma-oled.readthedocs.io/en/latest/hardware.html#spi > details pins used and it tallies with the above. It also says > > Because CS is connected to CE0, the display is available on SPI > port 0. You can connect it to CE1 to have it available on port 1. > If so, pass port=1 in your serial interface create call. > > And I would guess it's referring to those ‘0, 0’ passed to > spidev.SpiDev() above which probably arrive at > https://github.com/doceme/py-spidev#methods open(): > > Connects to the specified SPI device, opening > /dev/spidev. I had misunderstood that when I looked at this previously and assumed that SPI0 and SPI1 on the Pi GPIO Pins referred to two discrete buses which could then have 1 to n devices attached and selected by the CS lines. I can see that I can obviously have two devices attached, based on the above, but more than two might mean a bit more hoop-jumping, assuming it's available at all. More research needed here I think. Thanks for your help Ralph. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-09-01 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
[Dorset] Tracking Down Where Python Modules Come From
Hi, Apropos my earlier posts about the 1.5" OLED Display, I've been trying to track down the documentation for the OLED_Driver Python Module, but so far without success. I know that the device uses that driver because the (rather poorly written) example code provided by the manufacturers imports it. I went to https://pypi.org/ and entered the search term 'OLED_Driver', but got no direct hits. The nearest that I got to it is the Luma.OLED (https:// pypi.org/project/luma.oled/). This leads me to the question; when I type 'sudo pip3 install OLED_Driver', how does PIP find the module requested? Is there a more comprehensive repository of Python Modules somewhere or does OLED_Driver somehow get translated to Luma.OLED when the module is fetched? The reason for this query is that we are trying to find a way to drive more than one 1.5" Display from a single Pi. The display type that we have defaults to SPI, which makes it easy (in theory) to address the required device, because SPI uses a 'chip select' technique driven from the GPIO pins. The trouble is that without documentation I cannot see how to change the identity of the GPIO pins to be used to address each device. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-09-01 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Waveshare 1.5 inch OLED Display
On Wednesday, 5 August 2020 16:08:13 BST Ralph Corderoy wrote:
> Whilst all this clicking means you're learning Gimp, and it could
> instead be coded in Python using the Python Imaging Library we keep
> referring to, there's also Netpbm from the shell.
I haven't abandoned the idea of doing this programatically, I just wanted to
be sure we had at least one solution today so we knew we could move forward.
At the end of the day, there will probably never be more than a dozen or so
images to display and others who have an interest at WMT may prefer the Gimp
(or Photoshop) approach.
Having said that, if the programmatic solution is up and running, all they
would need to do is grab the files and upload them to the designated directory
on the Pi. I envisage the display routine cycling through the contents of a
directory, just like we did with audio files for the MP3 player in the Minster.
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Re: [Dorset] Waveshare 1.5 inch OLED Display
On Wednesday, 5 August 2020 15:58:13 BST Ralph Corderoy wrote:
> > What have I missed?
>
> Tim pointing you yesterday to
OK. I misunderstood. I thought you were saying that I should select a
palette that was nearest to the one in the spec, not first manufacture one that
is nearest to the one in the spec. :-)
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Re: [Dorset] Waveshare 1.5 inch OLED Display
On Wednesday, 5 August 2020 15:22:04 BST Ralph Corderoy wrote: > When using Image → Mode → Indexed... to change the image to indexed, > select ‘Use custom palette’ in the ‘Colourmap’ section, and pick the > palette which matches the LUT which the SSD1327 is using. That's > probably the default one detailed on page page 33 of > SSD1327-datasheet.pdf, i.e. you want black to white with fourteen greys > in between. Unfortunately, my copy of The Gimp doesn't seem to include a palette that comes anywhere near anything on Page 33 of the spec. The only palette with 16 levels is the Paint one which is not grey. The only grey palette has 32 levels. What have I missed? -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-09-01 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Waveshare 1.5 inch OLED Display
On Wednesday, 5 August 2020 13:43:29 BST Terry Coles wrote: > I forgot to mention that it is also necessary to create a suitable palette > of 16 colours between black and white. Thi may then be applied to the > image. I was just trying to document what I had done and discovered that palettes aren't really used directly in Indexed images. Instead a Colormap is used: https://docs.gimp.org/2.8/en_GB/gimp-indexed-palette-dialog.html It seems that rather than creating a palette with 16 equally spaced grey scales between black and white, the Colormap is created by The Gimp using mapping to the colours found in the image when the image is processed using Mode - Indexed. According to this: https://docs.gimp.org/2.8/en_GB/script-fu-set-cmap.html This colormap can be set to the 'FG to BG' Palette that we created last night using 'Colors - Map - Set Colormap' However, when I try to do it I get: 'Plug-in "script-fu" (/usr/lib/gimp/2.0/plug-ins/script-fu/script-fu) attempted to install procedure "temp-procedure-number-5" with invalid parameter name "num colors".' The image that I created this morning seemed to work OK, but it would be nice to understand this final part. My searches for the error yielded nothing. Any ideas? -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-09-01 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Waveshare 1.5 inch OLED Display
On Wednesday, 5 August 2020 13:24:51 BST Terry Coles wrote:
> et al last night. This uses The Gimp to scale the image to the right size
> (maintaining the aspect ratio), index the image to 16 colour levels and
> place it on a black background created by sizing the canvas to 128 x 128
> pixels.
I forgot to mention that it is also necessary to create a suitable palette of
16 colours between black and white. Thi may then be applied to the image.
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Re: [Dorset] Waveshare 1.5 inch OLED Display
On Tuesday, 4 August 2020 21:15:01 BST Terry Coles wrote:
> See https://www.waveshare.com/wiki/1.5inch_OLED_Module
>
> This page contains everything available about the device.
As Ralph mentioned last night, we spent much of the evening discussing how to
get this device to display a picture of Andy Pandy or the 1950 BBC Test Card!
The discussion covered two aspects; pre-processing the images using The Gimp
or similar to make them compatible with the device and secondly, doing the
above in the Driver.
This morning, I've managed to successfully display the Andy Pandy image, the
right size and without distortion, by using the process demonstrated by Tim et
al last night. This uses The Gimp to scale the image to the right size
(maintaining the aspect ratio), index the image to 16 colour levels and place
it on a black background created by sizing the canvas to 128 x 128 pixels.
Thanks for the help!
I just have to get my head round the programmatic way of doing it now.
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Re: [Dorset] Waveshare 1.5 inch OLED Display
On Wednesday, 5 August 2020 12:52:51 BST Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty wrote:
> looks like you've got it covered. I'm sure you told me, but what's the
> screen going to be used for?
Television sets in the Window of Holmans.
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Re: [Dorset] Waveshare 1.5 inch OLED Display
On Wednesday, 5 August 2020 10:00:31 BST Ralph Corderoy wrote: Ralph, You've been busy :-) Thanks for all your hard work. > > See https://www.waveshare.com/wiki/1.5inch_OLED_Module > > This page contains everything available about the device. I hadn't analysed the content there to the depth that you have. > There's a lot of good information there, and a bit of bad written by > Waveshare. That's what I thought. I intend to share this with the volunteer who originally bought the display, He was / is a hardware engineer before he retired, so we might be able to get quite a bit out of this between us. Hamish has been busy on the River System project so hasn't really been involved in this, but he's welcome to join in if he has time :-) -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-09-01 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
[Dorset] Waveshare 1.5 inch OLED Display
See https://www.waveshare.com/wiki/1.5inch_OLED_Module This page contains everything available about the device. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-08-04 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
[Dorset] Ceramic Caps
https://kitronik.co.uk/blogs/resources/understanding-ceramic-disc-capacitor-values#:~:text=The%20first%20two%20digits%2C%20in,in%20pico%20Farads%20or%20pF. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-08-04 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
[Dorset] Next Online Meeting - Tonight
All, The next Online Meeting is tonight at 8 pm using Jitsi. For those who missed it earlier; here are the Instructions for joining: Simply click on the following link and you will be taken to the Meeting using your default browser: https://meet.jit.si/dorset-lug *However*: Ralph has suggested that Chrome or Chromium probably fare better than Firefox and that an alternative to installing one of those two is to obtain it bundled especially for Jitsi from: https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet-electron/releases This should be as simple as wget -q https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet-electron/releases/download/ v2.3.1/jitsi-meet-x86_64.AppImage chmod +x jitsi-meet-x86_64.AppImage ./jitsi-meet-x86_64.AppImage and then entering ‘dorset-lug’ as the meeting ID. Hope to see you all this evening. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-08-04 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Problem Displaying image in 1.5 inch OLED Display
On Monday, 3 August 2020 17:14:36 BST Ralph Corderoy wrote:
> I'm assuming you're using PIL, or something similar.
Yes. As you suggested, I temporarily changed the value of OLED_Y_MAXPIXEL in
OLED_Driver.py and the image now renders without any errors.
However, I think it has too many grey levels because I get a very washed out
picture with the odd line on it. The spec says 16 bit, but I think they mean
16 levels (needless to say the device came from China). I'm going to have to
look into all this tomorrow because I'm going to be busy this evening.
> load() returns an object which supports two-dimensional indexing to
> retrieve pixel values; see
> http://effbot.org/imagingbook/image.htm#tag-Image.Image.load
>
> If it's not PIL, it may be Pillow, a later fork.
>
> I think it's the implementation of the 2D indexing which is giving you
> the ‘image index out of range’ exception string. It's not referring to
> a variable called ‘image’.
>
> Another option is to use your image-loading library to manipulate the
> loaded image to fit within 128×128 rather than mess with Gimp, which is
> presumably GUI clicking.
>
> Something like
>
> pic = Image.open('big.png')
> pic.thumbnail((128, 128), Image.ANTIALIAS)
> tv = pic.convert('P', palette=ADAPTIVE, colors=16)
>
> Then try passsing tv to OLED_ShowImage(). Hopefully, its tv.load() will
> be a no-op as nothing needs loading.
I'll look into this tomorrow too.
Thanks for your help.
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Re: [Dorset] Problem Displaying image in 1.5 inch OLED Display
On Monday, 3 August 2020 16:47:53 BST Ralph Corderoy wrote: > I think your image will have to be 128×128 pixels. > > Deleting the commented out or boring lines from the code you gave leaves > > >284 def OLED_ShowImage(self, Image, Xstart, Ystart): > >288 self.OLED_SetWindows ( Xstart, Ystart, self.OLED_Dis_Column , > >self.OLED_Dis_Page) 289 Pixels = Image.load() > >290 for j in range(0, self.OLED_Dis_Page): > >291 for i in range(0, int(self.OLED_Dis_Column / 2)): > >294 Pixels_Color = ((Pixels[2*i, j] & 0xf) << 4) | > >(Pixels[2*i+1, j] & 0xf) 296 > >self.OLED_WriteData(Pixels_Color) > > You could do with finding out if OLED_Dis_Column and OLED_Dis_Page are > 128, and whether there's the option of altering it for your 95 rows > instead. So if I've understood what you are saying correctly, it's the for loop that's out of range and not the image (as such). It simply keeps looping round until it gets to 128 and if there are no more pixels after 95 it barfs? I'll look into that. Thanks. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-08-04 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
[Dorset] Problem Displaying image in 1.5 inch OLED Display
Hi, We want to make some model TV Sets for the windows of the Radio Shops in Wimborne Model Town and have obtained a 1.5 inch OLED Display. This is a general OLED display module, 1.5inch diagonal, 128*128 pixels, 16-bit grey level, with embedded controller, communicating via SPI or I2C interface. Using the supplied example code it works quite well, but when I try to display an image that I've produced I'm getting the following error: Traceback (most recent call last): File "display_tv_screensv02.py", line 87, in main() File "display_tv_screensv02.py", line 80, in main display_image() File "display_tv_screensv02.py", line 63, in display_image OLED.OLED_ShowImage(image,0,0) File "/home/pi/TV_SW/OLED_Driver.py", line 294, in OLED_ShowImage Pixels_Color = ((Pixels[2*i, j]&0x0f)<<4) | ((Pixels[2*i+1, j]&0x0f)) IndexError: image index out of range The supplied image has the following properties (as provided by The Gimp: Size in Pixels: 128 x 128 Print size: 45.2 × 45.2 millimeters Resolution: 71.9836 × 71.9836 ppi Color space: Indexed color (16 colors) Precision: 8-bit gamma integer File Type: Windows BMP image Number of pixels: 16384 My image has these properties (I've tweaked it in The Gimp to get as close a match as possible: Size in Pixels: 128 x 95 Print size: 45.2 x 33.5 millimeters Resolution: 71.9328 × 72.0299 ppi Color space: Grayscale Precision: 8-bit gamma integer File Type: Windows BMP image Number of pixels: 12160 Could the problem be something to do with the aspect ratio? Will my image always have to be square? Any ideas would be welcomed. Here is the corresponding code from the supplied Python Module (line 294 is the one containing: Line 294 is the one containing: Pixels_Color = ((Pixels[2*i, j]&0x0f)<<4) | ((Pixels[2*i+1, j]&0x0f)) def OLED_ShowImage(self, Image, Xstart, Ystart): if (Image == None): return #self.OLED_Clear(0x00) self.OLED_SetWindows ( Xstart, Ystart, self.OLED_Dis_Column , self.OLED_Dis_Page) Pixels = Image.load() for j in range(0, self.OLED_Dis_Page): for i in range(0, int(self.OLED_Dis_Column/2)): #print '0 = ',Pixels[2 * i, j] & 0x0f #print '1 = ',Pixels[2 * i + 1, j] Pixels_Color = ((Pixels[2*i, j]&0x0f)<<4) | ((Pixels[2*i+1, j]&0x0f)) #print 'Pixels_Color',Pixels_Color self.OLED_WriteData(Pixels_Color) ''' Pixels_Color1 = (Pixels[2 * i, j][0] + Pixels[2 * i, j][1] + Pixels[2 * i, j][2])/3#RGB Data Pixels_Color2 = (Pixels[2 * i + 1, j][0] + Pixels[2 * i + 1, j][1] + Pixels[2 * i + 1, j][2] )/3#RGB Data Pixels_Color8b24b1 = Pixels_Color1 * 15 /255 Pixels_Color8b24b2 = Pixels_Color2 * 15 /255 Pixels_Color = Pixels_Color8b24b1 | (Pixels_Color8b24b2 << 4) print 'Pixels_Color[1, j]',Pixels_Color self.OLED_WriteData(Pixels_Color) #self.OLED_SetColor(Pixels_Color , 1, 1) ''' -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-08-04 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
[Dorset] Next Meeting - One Week Tonight
Hi,
OK. So the pubs and clubs are now open, but we'd all have to site 2 m apart;
not very practical. So unless someone has a better idea, the next meeting
will have to be online again.
The next Meeting therefore will be one week tonight 2020-08-04 at 2000 using
Jitsi. Details are as for the previous meetings, but they will be re-posted
on the day.
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Re: [Dorset] BOINC and Folding on Ubuntu 20.04 and derivatives
On Thursday, 23 July 2020 17:29:45 BST Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty wrote: > I was wondering if any of you have run BOINC and/or Folding on Ubuntu > 20.04 or a derivative. I'm thinking of Upgrading my desktop from Mint > 19.3 to 20 soon, and it'd be good to know if I'm likely to experience > problems with these first :) I'm running BOINC on Kubuntu 20.04. The client runs well, but I had problems with BOINC Manager because it occasionally refused to load after a reboot. I fixed it by adding a '-a' switch to the launcher in Plasma: boincmgr -a According to the man page, this tells the BOINC Manager that it was started by the operating system automatically. On odd occasions, I have found that I had to start the Manager with sudo, to start another instance. Closing it again seems to allow me to launch in the normal way. As a precaution, I usually close the BOINC Manager before shutting down. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-08-04 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Determining which revision of code was downloaded from GitLab.
On Monday, 20 July 2020 13:55:14 BST Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty wrote: > No, I think we absolutely could do that, and it would be a good > solution, though perhaps a little tricky for future maintainers. If you > think we should do that then I'm happy to write us such a script. I think that it should be OK for future maintainers, providing that we document the purpose of the script in some prominent place. > However, I was looking to a solution to the existing problem of not > knowing exactly what revision/commit we have deployed :) I think that horse has probably already bolted. If lockdown hadn't occurred, we wouldn't have ended up forgetting where we were (that is no way intended to be an excuse for what happened). Still it has happened and we have established, by looking at the code, that one particular release had made it into the deployed code. We should be able to get pretty close by a combination of examining the diffs in Gitlab and looking at the commentary on the Forum. I don't think we ever deployed any software without some kind of discussion beforehand. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-08-04 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Determining which revision of code was downloaded from GitLab.
On Monday, 20 July 2020 13:35:19 BST Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty wrote: > Sadly, seeing as this is Python software, we don't have a makefile. I > know there are a variety of ways to solve this going forwards, including > even just noting what the commit was at the time of deployment on our > forum or something like that, but this is more about how to solve the > present issue. Sadly, I think the tarball might just not include any > revision details. > > Whatever we do, it needs to be as simple as possible to ease the life of > future maintainers - things like Makefiles and symlinks are probably not > ideal, but thanks for the ideas :) Presumably, when the makefile described by Ralph processes this, it creates this zip through some kind of script. Couldn't we just create a 'Release' script that works on a text file containing the full list of files in the system (as a makefile does) fetches them from GitLab, zips them up and names the resulting archive with the Revision Number? In other words a makefile, but without the compilation stage. Have I missed something? -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-08-04 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Making iptables Entries Persistent
On Monday, 20 July 2020 09:28:12 BST Ralph Corderoy wrote: > ping(8) sends an ICMP ECHO packet. ssh(1) establishes a TCP connection. > They're both network protocols, but different ones; see /etc/protocols > for their numbers. > > Something was hindering the ECHO packet round trip. I think we knew what that something was, but I didn't know exactly why, The device that wouldn't accept the ping is the Webserver running the nodogsplash Captive Portal software, which installs a couple of screenfulls of iptables rules. The conclusion was that it was one or more of these rules that were preventing the pings from responding. As I said, I don't think that being unable to ping that device is too much of a hardship if everything else works. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-08-04 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Making iptables Entries Persistent
On Monday, 20 July 2020 09:05:31 BST Ralph Corderoy wrote: > > Is there a right way? > > Go with what's simplest which is correct and suffices. :-) Thanks for all the responses; I've learned a lot. As it happens, this query has now been overtaken by events. The solution was put forward to allow a particular device to be pinged when logged into the network using the VPN solution. For some reason it refuses pings even though it can be accessed using ssh once the VPN connection has been made. Adding this particular iptables rule allowed the ping to work but unfortunately prevented login to some other devices ;-( Since the system works OK apart from this one issue, I decided the 'good enough is good enough' and decided to save what little grey hair I have left by living with it. I'll have to document the drop-off somehow, so that it doesn't confuse someone in the future, but I feel that is the best way forward. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-08-04 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
[Dorset] Making iptables Entries Persistent
Hi, It has been suggested that I add an iptables rule into some devices and make it persistent by adding the rule to /etc/rc.local. I naively thought that iptables rules were persistent, but a quick google throws up the idea of using iptables-save/iptables-restore but also iptables- persistent. Is there a right way? -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-08-04 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Help restoring MicroSD card
On Saturday, 18 July 2020 09:40:55 BST PeterMerchant wrote:
> No Joy. USB connection on front of computer. Have tried both USB to SD
> adapters and three different MicroSD adapters.
It sounds like it's b*d,
> I think we had a discussion on this same topic many moons ago.
Do you still shutdown the Pi by switching off the power?
We had a discussion about that many moons ago :-)
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Re: [Dorset] Next Online Meeting Tonight
On Tuesday, 7 July 2020 12:48:04 BST Ralph Corderoy wrote:
> I see 2.3.0 is now available on that page.
Ralph,
I seem to remember that you said that last time ;-(
I must try to remember to put the latest info in the message next time.
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[Dorset] Next Online Meeting Tonight
All, The next Online Meeting is tonight at 8 pm using Jitsi. For those who missed it earlier; here are the Instructions for joining: Simply click on the following link and you will be taken to the Meeting using your default browser: https://meet.jit.si/dorset-lug *However*: Ralph has suggested that Chrome or Chromium probably fare better than Firefox and that an alternative to installing one of those two is to obtain it bundled especially for Jitsi from: https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet-electron/releases This should be as simple as wget -q https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet-electron/releases/download/ v1.1.1/jitsi-meet-x86_64.AppImage chmod +x jitsi-meet-x86_64.AppImage ./jitsi-meet-x86_64.AppImage and then entering ‘dorset-lug’ as the meeting ID. Hope to see you all this evening. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-07-07 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
[Dorset] Next Online Meeting One Week Tonight
Hi, It looks like the lock-down is due to continue for a while (at least for pubs and clubs), so the next meeting will also have to be online. The next Meeting therefore will be one week tonight 2020-07-07 at 2000 using Jitsi. Details are as for the previous meetings, but they will be re-posted on the day. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-07-07 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] New BOINC project that does computing for COVID-19
On Tuesday, 30 June 2020 09:45:00 BST Tim Waugh wrote:
> Just spotted this: update on which existing drugs have come out on top
> so far, and an end date for the project (end of July).
Although they indicate that they have reached their conclusions, but
volunteers may continue to participate until then.
I assume the tasks being issued at the moment are more about confirming what
won't work and reinforcing what will.
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Re: [Dorset] Internet Access Using Tethering
On Sunday, 21 June 2020 10:25:47 BST Keith Edmunds wrote: > I know there are challenges, but being able to directly ssh to your RPis > from the outside, ideally filtered by source IP, would be considerably > simple. I know you said that network is owned by people who don't > understand it and so won't allow it - which is perverse logic. They don't understand either SSH or VPN but they've heard about VPN. These are Trustees; none of them are technical, but many of them have worked in Offices. If they used VPN in their Office then that is all the understanding needed. I suspect that applies to many senior managers. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-07-07 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Internet Access Using Tethering
On Sunday, 21 June 2020 09:55:51 BST Keith Edmunds wrote: > I'm pleased you got it working, but...it sounds like a nightmare to > support and maintain. Very hacky, undocumented, alpha software, multi-hoop > jumping. Yes and no. It isn't entirely undocumented just somewhat inadequately undocumented. I agree that it is a very early version of the software and I haven't gained any impression that anyone else has used it yet apart from the developer. In any case, unless someone can suggest a viable alternative to this software (which they couldn't when I asked a week or so ago), it's this or nothing. If you recall I had installed PiVPN (which installs OpenVPN on a Pi), but that conflicted with the Captive Portal Software nodogsplash. Ralph suggested wireguard, but no-one was able to help me get it installed; this still in the early stages of support on Raspberry Pi. Then the developer popped up on the Raspberry Pi Forums and offered to help me install PiStrong so I gave it a go. If I had known then what I know now I'd have saved myself two weeks of work and installed the VPN server on a separate Pi and used PiVPN, but I didn't so I tried this tool. Putting in another Pi is far from ideal since we are still in lockdown (and we wouldn't have needed any of this if we weren't). > Do you have a clear understanding of how it works, what components do > what, why each is there, and a network diagram marked with subnet > addresses? If not, I'd suggest you get all of those or - my real > suggestion - make it orders of magnitude less complex. If I had a clear understanding of how this or any other software worked you'd hear a lot less from me on this list. ;-) I'm not sure what you mean by 'make it orders of magnitude less complex'. Do you mean PiStrong or the network at WMT? Clearly I have no control over the complexity of PiStrong (still less over the strongSwan software that it installs), so there's nothing I can do about that (other than stop using it). The network at WMT is fully documented in both specifications and diagrams - I published a link to a partial diagram showing the basic architecture in an earlier thread. Again, the WMT network is what it is and I don't really see how we could make it simpler. There is one subnet in the private network and one in the Office network. All the Pis are connected to the private network and there is a simple Ethernet cable between the two networks as shown in the diagram, The private network is firewalled from the Office network except for routes set up by nodogsplash and PiStrong. Am I missing the point? -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-07-07 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Internet Access Using Tethering
On Saturday, 20 June 2020 18:17:20 BST Patrick Wigmore wrote: > doesn't complete after 64 hops, but > > $ traceroute -I > > completes after 18 hops. The -I option is to 'Use ICMP ECHO as probe.' I tried that, but it didn't complete with the -I switch either. :-) So I was mulling over this last night and suddenly remembered one of the (numerous) times I'd been told by the developer of PiStrong to hack one or other of the Cert Config files to make it work. On Tuesday, I got it working by hacking the client Cert Config, but I had forgotten that particular fix. When I added it just now it worked! Don't ask me why traceroute -I doesn't work with my Router, but the Router's log shows my connection being made and I was able to log into a Pi on the private network. :-) I now need to roll it out to the users, but I may wait a day or two to see if the developer's promised update fixes all the issues. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-07-07 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Internet Access Using Tethering
On Saturday, 20 June 2020 17:21:04 BST Patrick Wigmore wrote:
> You could use Python 3's http.server module, which you probably
> already have installed.
I asked for simple and that's what you gave me.
I'll give it a go tomorrow (I have things to do this evening).
The developer of PiStrong has come back to me in the last hour with a promise
of an update to his code by Monday. If I can prove the hotspot is working or
otherwise by then I would feel a bit more confident that this might work
eventually.
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Re: [Dorset] Internet Access Using Tethering
On Saturday, 20 June 2020 15:21:40 BST Terry Coles wrote: > What's the minimum needed to get something up on the Internet that would > respond to a query of some kind? I've looked at various Tutorials and they > all seem to be a fair bit of work. I have another Pi which could be used in > place of the one running the two servers, so is there something quick and > dirty just to do this test? I just tried traceroute to see if the Home Router could be reached. It does look as if using my phone's hotspot could be the problem because although traceroute 8.8.8.8 completed in 14 hops after ~68 ms, traceroute never completed after 64 hops. There was a lot of stuff happening between hops 11 and 17 with multiple IP Addresses being listed, but no sign of my Router's address. Have I interpreted this correctly? It would appear to me that the packets never arrive for some reason. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-07-07 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Internet Access Using Tethering
On Saturday, 20 June 2020 15:21:40 BST Terry Coles wrote:
> What's the minimum needed to get something up on the Internet that would
> respond to a query of some kind? I've looked at various Tutorials and they
> all seem to be a fair bit of work. I have another Pi which could be used in
> place of the one running the two servers, so is there something quick and
> dirty just to do this test?
Also. If I make a mistake installing this, I could end up with a double
whammy. ;-)
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Re: [Dorset] Internet Access Using Tethering
On Saturday, 20 June 2020 14:48:50 BST Patrick Wigmore wrote: > Could you elaborate on what you mean by the Cert settings? Is that > something to do with the VPN software? Which VPN software did you end > up choosing anyway?! I don't remember you saying. :) Yes. The VPN Tools create a Cert Package which users then install on their device. I decided to go with PiStrong (https://github.com/gitbls/pistrong) because PiVPN (a Pi installer for OpenVPN stopped the Captive Portal working. I'm beginning to regret this decision because it would appear that I have become the Beta Tester for the tool. The developer is very kindly helping me, but he doesn't appear to have tested installing it on a machine that has no Domain name. So I'm the guinea pig for all potential users who want to connect via their Router's WAN Address. > I've heard of mobile networks faking ping responses for whatever > reason. Maybe in hotspot mode it disables that "feature", or enables > one that blocks all pings. Either way, I wouldn't trust the mobile > network not to be tricking you with regard to pings. I can ping everything else, just not my Howe Router. > Personally my next step would be to temporarily stick some relatively > easy-to-configure server of some kind online via the home router. E.g. > a web server serving a unique web page, and then try to connect to > that via the phone hotspot. That would at least prove whether you can > connect to the home router from the Hotspot, which seems to be your > aim with pinging it. I could try that, although I could end up doing a lot of work only to learn that there's nothing wrong. I already have the Pi running the VPN Server and nginx, but the webserver is only accessible from the internal (private) network. What's the minimum needed to get something up on the Internet that would respond to a query of some kind? I've looked at various Tutorials and they all seem to be a fair bit of work. I have another Pi which could be used in place of the one running the two servers, so is there something quick and dirty just to do this test? -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-07-07 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Internet Access Using Tethering
On Saturday, 20 June 2020 13:49:10 BST Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty wrote: > The only thing I know related to this is that Android devices sometimes > have a bug where you have to run a shell command on them to get > tethering working (I did on mine), but clearly that's not the problem > you're having seeing as general internet access is working. I don't have a problem with normal internetty things. > Ignoring the ping, can you connect to the VPN server through the router? How would I do that? At the moment, I have no certainty that the generation of the Cert pack is working correctly and the WAN Address of the Home Router is wrapped up in that. I have set up Port Forwarding on the Router with the specified ports but nothing shows up in the log when I try to connect. However. I have seen entries being forwarded to the VPN Server's IP Address when I wasn't actually trying to connect. I'm assuming that they came from some kind of port scanner that knows which ports to look out for. It wouldn't have done them any good, because the server wasn't running at the time. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2020-07-07 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Internet Access Using Tethering
On Saturday, 20 June 2020 13:12:42 BST PeterMerchant wrote:
> I don't know who 8.8.8.8 is,
That is one of Google's DNS Servers.
> but can you 'ping google.com' or nasa.com?
Yes and yes. Actually pinging the Fully Qualified Domain name of the site,
simply shows that the DNS Server is accessible as well as the IP Address that
it resolves to.
Pinging 8.8.8.8 directly cuts out the middle man.
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Re: [Dorset] Internet Access Using Tethering
On Saturday, 20 June 2020 11:04:30 BST Terry Coles wrote:
> I don't know why but I can no longer ping the Home Router from my Android
> Phone. I was sure that it had worked earlier, but must have been mistaken.
Ignore this. I had still got tethering enabled.
If I disable tethering, but don't connect to my home WiFi, I can ping my Home
Router's WAN Address.
So why can't I do it from the tethered laptop?
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