Blogging with N810

Testing.. looks like even image fromcamera works. I'm at a football game so there's time to test things..

Gliding at Teisko

Today was finally nice weather and i decided to go gliding at Teisko airfield. I got an
ASW-24 to fly and flew 1h 45 minuties in initially good but degrading weather.
Highlights of the flight were flying with a large flock of cranes and a hawk. Unfortunately i didn't have camera with me. Btw cranes fly inside clouds. I didn't know birds do that, but they rised into the cloud in thermals.

Ok back to subject. I logged the flight with Nokia N810 and Maemo Mapper software. Unfortunately N810's GPS sucks, and the track has some missing fixes.
I found nice service called EveryTrail which can display a GPX track on Google Maps.
It even integrates to Facebook.

Check it out:

http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=42521

I noticed that it's not a good idea to fly with motorcycling jacket on. Mine has so thick padding at elbows that i was unable to raise the landing gear in cramped cockpit.

Simpit running X-Plane & IL2FB

I carried gaming PC and controllers downstairs and tested thee simpit finally wiith X-Plane and IL2FB. I'm not happy with image quality- it's got way too little contrast. Sky looks bright, but ground looks very dark on standard settings. I adjusted the image with nvidia-settings, and with some brutal brightness/contrast/gamma adjustment i got it to look decent.
But i'm still not too happy with it. Looks like i'll have to lend a real projector from work some weekend and see how the image looks with it. If anyone has a old projector for sale (say, <300€) in Finland let me know.

Oh, i forgot to mention that current projector is made of TFT panel and old overhead projector.

Sergei gunsight

Sometime this summer i bought a WW2 style reflector gunsight from russian 23mm anti-aircraft gun "sergei". It cost something like 25€ or so, and i decided it's cool for some reason. I might use it in my simpit project later. I managed to get IL2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles running perfectly on wine. Possibly i could fly IL2 in fullscreen mode and use the hardware gunsight.. that would be cool :)

The gunsight is missing a light source to light up the reticle. It is visible if the sight is pointed to light but i want to add a real lightbulb so that it's bright always. I just noticed, that the cap on Pisang Ambon bottle fits the lamp socket perfectly.. I'll have to drink it away and mount the lamp in the cap. I'll post more when there is progress.

Gunsight reticle with Maglite as light source.

Simpit building

I spent few hours on simpit v2 today. As a introduction, it is a home simulator cockpit, something better than just throttle, keyboard and stick. I'm using a 52" rear projection screen for out-of-window visual and a 15" TFT for instrument panel. The software i run is X-Plane 9. There are 2 pc's running the simulator - one "master" machine for oow visual and simulation, and one for instrument panel. There are panels with buttons & switches on both sides of instrument display.

Today i mounted the seat on old plastic box and modified the panel from old simpit to stand against the projection screen. Now it starts to look like it's going to be finished soon. I was so excited, that when i went upstairs to get joystick & pedals i forgot the keys to hobby room inside and locked myself outside.. I'll have to call the door opening service tomorrow, and pay 15€ for service >:-P

My old simpit (v1):
http://www.modeemi.fi/~cosmo/projects/simpit/

First post

Hello

I decided to start a blog about my various hacking projects. I think it would be more practical than explaining the same things to everyone on irc & real life. This is strictly a "nerd" blog, so i won't tell any personal stuff here. I may start another blog for them later ;)

My current active projects are

• simpit v2 (simulator cockpit)
• a demo for stream demoparty
• web forum reader gui
• adding lamp to a "sergei" AA gun's gunsight
• .. and a lot of smaller projects