Month: May 2019

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Programming a Pi to Deter Cats: Part 2

Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today, I am moving along towards a feline safety program for my Raspberry Pi. Let’s get started!

For starters, I was even having doubts if my Pi was even powerful enough for computer vision applications. A quick search gives plenty of harry tutorials on how to install it. I’m following one here: LINK. I’m on the Raspberry Pi 3B+, and word has it the Pi 2 was pioneering the field for its kin.

I also watched some tutorials to get an idea of how OpenCV works, and I think it should track the cabinets and counter. If it tracks something moving on the counter and there is no occlusion (nothing is blocking) of the cabinets, register a hit. On a hit, save a picture for future evaluation, and sound the alarm to get the cat off the counter if it’s a strong enough hit.

I started installing OpenCV, but I ran into some issues. First of all, I am very glad I went it to that workshop I’ve mentioned before, because the tutorial just gives me wall of text. It helps to have someone knowledgeable to take a look at things when they stop working. It also would have helped if I had seen the troubleshooting section before I went and searched for one particular error I came across and ended up on another tutorial for the same thing.

Conditions were challenging. the mouse was crazy sensitive, and if I didn’t select and copy with the mouse, I ran the risk of typos in the keyboard. In the end, I believe I got a virtual box for Python 3 to run computer vision, but I ran out of time there.

At the beginning of my post, I mentioned feline safety. It turns out, my father spotted him walking on the stove top, and I really don’t want him getting burned, let alone the health risk.

Final Question: Have you ever used automated deterrents on animals?

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When Not to Fully Backup a Device

Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today, I was going to do an image of my phone without using Root and voiding the warranty, but things have changed, and I want to go into why. Let’s get started!

Modern Smartphones are essentially pocket computers powerful enough to run a program pretending to be a state-of-the-art desktop from around 15-20 years ago. It used to be you had full access to everything when you tethered a device to a Desktop. I used that once to backup my first ever tablet and restore it after some work. Much to the annoyance of more than a few power users, around 7-10 years ago, it became standard practice to lock end-users out of the admin level actions under pain of voiding the warranty or even breaking the law, depending on the device and year.

I sort of understand the reasoning, but I wouldn’t mind a future where I cannot have warranty work done when anything I’ve ever done on the software side of would logically have had no affect on the intended work: for example, if I crack a screen (I tend to end up with the no-ask warranty policy), they would be well within their rights to take it in, plug in their diagnostic equipment, and leisurely return my phone if it tells them it’s ever been rooted.

I’ve had my Galaxy S7 Edge for a while now, and shortly after I got it, it developed a narrow, pink stripe down the right side of the screen. From my experiences and research back then, between a third and half of similar phones have this defect. As I understand it, the warranty was written in a way that encouraged you to keep the phone for a while before doing anything, so it’s been a couple years. This week, I decided I had had enough.

As a side note, since I’ve gotten my tablet, I haven’t been playing games on my phone as much. The one I’m still playing, though, recently got an update, where they started up what look like weekly events with grand prizes if you complete enough challenges. The first event, I played that event a lot. I put more time than I think was reasonable, and I still only got half way up the progressively longer ranks, just short of most of the prizes that are actually worth it. Of course, I could always spend the special currency linked to real money, but that trickles in way too slowly for normal gameplay, and I have zero cash for f2p games, lest I open Pandora’s box. In short, I lost interest because I felt cheated by a disguised pay to win system.

A couple weeks ago, that game would have been enough to give me the drive to make an image of my phone. According to my research, it would have taken a Desktop debugger and some other low-level commands, but there does not seem to exist a currently maintained GUI for what I wanted to do. Now? Now I’ll be happy just grabbing what I can and abandoning my game files hidden behind a wall of admin access.

Final Question: What laws about technology would you change if you had the opportunity?

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Programming a Pi to Deter Cats: Part 1

Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today, and likely for the next couple weeks, I am studying up on how computer vision software works so I can get started on the software to convey a message to my feline friend about venturing in places he isn’t welcome. Let’s get Started!

I decided a long time ago that I wanted to explore the free and open source option OpenCV for this project. From what I can tell, I will need to play around with OpenCV on my desktop first to get a feel of how to use it.

As of the time of writing, I believe my workflow will start with getting OpenCV onto a Linux desktop. After I’m comfortable with how it works, I can try running it on the Pi. Depending on how well the Pi takes it, I will develop the actual program on either my PacMan Ghost case, Blinkie Pie, or my Ubuntu server tower, Derpy Chips. A period of testing will involve Blinkie watching the forbidden area and logging suspicious activity: basically anything that moves, and narrow that down to naughty cat behavior. While that’s happening, I need to develop an audio turret.

My mother actually found a dog training device that emits high frequencies, and the cats aren’t too fond of it either. I’ve already tried taking it apart, and it’s so cheap, getting into the case for tinkering will mean a new case. My goal for this phase is to get the Blinkie to turn the nasty sounds on from a remote desktop.

Once I have my cat identification program working reliably, I can connect it to the frequency generator and set it loose. For the first few days and weeks, I’ll want to monitor it and evaluate its results by looking at pictures from suspect incidents. I’m looking forward to obedient cats.

Final Question: Have you worked with Neural Nets on Computer Vision problems before?

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Operation: Relocate Desktop

Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today, I am more than a tidbit ticked at Windows’ built in remote desktop. Let’s get started!

I’d like to start by saying that Windows Remote Desktop isn’t deserving of a 100% scathing review. It has its purpose. I have concluded it was designed with the tech-savvy Joe who is remoting into his work computer from home or wherever else. As long as you are just surfing the web or using office-type programs, you should be fine.

But as soon as I tried launching Minecraft (I did not test with any other games), the launcher spat out a warning. For context, Minecraft 1.14 was recently released, and I believed they had finally stopped supporting the old launcher and were forcing people to update. The new launcher also crashed the game while trying to launch it, so I spent a day looking into it and getting discouraged over not finding much of anything. I stopped short of updating my video card drivers manually without supervision.

My father finally got the drivers updating, computer glitched, and after several failed attempts, I eventually hooked a monitor back up to it. I was pretty mad when Minecraft launched right away. I pieced together from a few places that 1: Windows Remote Desktop doesn’t use the host’s graphics card like I thought; it loads a basic graphics driver that runs on the CPU. And 2: This graphics driver doesn’t support OpenGL, a library Minecraft needs to run.

Sister suggested moving the whole tower during bedtime worship. I really wanted to fix the solution I was already working on, but it would have been more expensive in terms of time, hassle, and frustration.

Windows Remote Desktop is not a bad piece of software. It was just designed with different goals in mind than I was after.

Final Question: Have you ever had a sure fire project get canceled after it was all done and set up?

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