Today started the preordering phase of the amazing Raspberry Pi!

As amazing as this news is, i have to say I could not be more pissed.

First off the pages allegedly taking preorders are slow, 50% of the time show weird error messages and show no information about the order process at all.

Second there is no ordering button on those pages. And if by any coincidence there is one, you can not order from Germany! Either there is a page to select your country of origin but Germany is missing, or you can select Germany but will be redirected to a page without an order button at all.

For an hour now i stumble from page to page and from forum to forum but by this far was not able to order one or get ANY information about whether one is able to order from Germany! NOTHING!

In my opinion the launch of the Raspberry Pi is a total failure.

To be perfectly clear here: I am not pissed because i can not buy it, but because there is NO information at all regarding ordering. If the page would simply state “Sorry, it is sold out, check back in a couple of weeks” i would be satisfied. Not happy, but satisfied.

I really have to ask: How can the makers of Raspberry Pi afford to ignore one of the most important markets in Europe?

Update:
Heise.de has reported that both distributors sell only to companies in Germany. WTF. Again i have to ask: How can the makers of Raspberry Pi afford to ignore one of the most important markets in Europe?

Arduino has a nice convenience Class: String.
Although it wraps nicely Chars in Arduino, it misses one really important aspect, it can’t handle Float. I really don’t get it why they didn’t add this, it is so essential in handling strings and it is really a pain in the ass to cover it for yourself since the AVR methods for converting Floats need buffer variables.

So i patched the class for myself, which was much more easy than I thought. Without any deep knowledge in C or C++ I added float and double functionality to the class and I do not understand why it wasn’t done until now. I can now do String to Float and Float to String conversions without any hassle.

If you want to use it, follow these steps:

1. Download this Zip.
2. Backup your “WString.h” and “WString.cpp” files from the folder \Arduino\hardware\arduino\cores\arduino\
3. Unzip the downloaded file to your \Arduino\hardware\arduino\cores\arduino\ folder overwriting the old files
4. Restart your Arduino IDE

Please note: Changing a core class is a BAD idea. Why? Because every time you update the IDE you WILL loose the patch you added. Also future changes in the Class could break the compatibility to your patch. So please consider not using my patch. I know it sounds silly. ;o)

Here are some examples for the new abilities of the String Class:

String example1 = String(1.852); // Equals: "1.852000"
String example1 = String(1.852, 2); // Equals: "1.85"
String example2 = String(example1.toFloat() * 1.784561, 4); // Equals: "3.3014"
String example1 = example2 + 1.58356; // Equals: "3.30141.583560", since the example2 variable is of type String the number gets converted into String and concatinated.

The default precision i chose is 6 decimal places, but you can specify any number of decimal places as a second parameter in String(num, decimalPlaces).

I hope the guys behind Arduino fix this soon.

At the moment i am working on my Geiger-counter which is based on this hardware, but has many more features added to it (GPS, SD-Card and Buttons). I will post more information as soon as i managed to fixate the last piece of hardware in the case.

While working on it i wanted to have a luminous LCD display and stumbled over a very nice piece of hardware: OLED displays from Electronic Assembly.

OLED displays have many advantages over classical LCD displays:
- Low power consumption
- Perfect contrast
- No viewing angle
- Bright
- Background is really Black

But after ordering a 2×16 OLED display for round about 30 euros from Reichelt i was not able to correctly use it with the Arduino LiquidCrystal library, it showed most the time pixel garbage.
At first i thought the display was broken, but as i was digging deeper into the matter i found that this display is only HD44780 controller “compatible”. What that means depends on the manufacturer.

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There are 3 issues i REALLY hate about the new Google search page:

1. The search is way too fuzzy, often i get results for an keyword only related to the keyword i entered
2. While i am typing the results page is refreshing, which results in an “optical flickering” of the whole page
3. After reloading (and other events i didn’t identify till now) the script sets the cursor on a more or less random point of the search string (or even rearranges the keywords), which results in me typing on places in the search string i didn’t want to

All those points combined compelled me to eliminate those issues with the tools i had at hand: The Opera browser.

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TimeWaster’s Geiger Counter v1.1

This software is designed to work with the Arduino Uno and the Radiation Sensor Board for Arduino from Cooking Hacks, but should also work with your own hardware design if you adapt either your hardware or the software.
I suggest to take a look at the documentation of the Radiation Sensor Board, it gives a good summary on radiation detection and the hardware used (Especially the geiger-mueller-tube).

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Erdbeben in Japan und ich komme nicht von den Online-Streams los:

Anklicken für ein größeres Bild

Ich wollte schon immer mal etwas mit Microcontrollern machen, aber erst jetzt, als bei uns in der Firma unter einigen Mitarbeitern das Modellbaufieber ausgebrochen ist habe ich wirklich damit angefangen.

Ich habe mich dazu entschlossen einen Micro-Quadcopter (Quadrocopter) zu bauen, da ich sowieso schon immer alles was fliegt geliebt habe.

Mein Zielvorgaben sind:

• Möglichst klein
• Möglichst leicht
• Ohne reflow Komponenten (soll einfach lötbar sein)
• Möglichst wenig eigene Beschaltung

Nach viel lesen und suchen habe ich mich nun für die folgenden Komponenten entschieden (warum steht immer unter den Bildern):

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Sommernacht. Der Schweiß rinnt. Mein Ventilator brummt monoton vor sich hin.
Mein Gehirn ist schon vor Tagen geschmolzen und wabert seitdem als rote Grütze durch meine Gehirnschale auf der suche nach der Form die es einmal hatte.

Meine Gedanken suchen verzweifelt nach halt, ohne Erfolg. Was wollte ich nochmal? Ach ja, etwas zu trinken!
Aber wie komme ich da heran ohne mich bewegen zu müssen? Alleine der Gedanke an Bewegung erzeugt auf meiner Haut einen Schweißausbruch. Ich stelle den Ventilator höher.

Von draußen dringt Gelächter durch die weit geöffneten Fenster herein, es klingt wie eine gute Party.
Ich überlege kurz ob eine Party jetzt nicht schön wäre, aber Sekunden später habe ich schon wieder vergessen woran ich gerade gedacht habe.

Diese verdammte Hitze.

Mein Computer spielt das Hörbuch “Per Anhalter durch die Galaxis” ab, ich lausche gebannt. Das Brummen und Schnarren meines Ventilators bemerke ich schon gar nicht mehr.
Mein Gehör hat sich so daran gewöhnt, es reagiert schon wie ein natürlicher Vuvuzela Filter. Fantastisch was das Gehirn so kann, selbst wenn es nur noch aus roter Grütze besteht.

Meine Augen folgen ununterbrochen der Fortschrittsanzeige von VLC. Fortschrittsanzeigen mochte ich schon immer.
Es gibt nichts entspannenderes als einem Download beim downloaden zuzuschauen und dabei an rein gar nichts zu denken.
Das ist perfektes Zen. wieder bin ich Nirvana einen schritt näher. Mein Gehirn ist leer. Total leer.

In diesem Sinne: Frohes schwitzen.

Foreword: I write this article especially with two projects in mind: “Eventscripts” and “Truecrypt”. Come and get me.

The species called “Programmer” seem to be a bit thin-skinned when it comes to issues only “related” to their work.

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I admit it: I’m a fanboy. A big fanboy. I LOVE Opera since 8 years now. AND NO, i don’t mean an Opera, i mean the Opera Web Browser.

And to make it worse i do care about other browser companies insulting my beloved browser with statements about loading speed:

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