Slashdot Mirror
X10 Xmas Light Control with Pan and Zoom
zzxc writes "Last year, slashdot mentioned Alek Komarnitsky's 2002 Christmas Light display with the ability to turn ON and OFF each zone of lights. This year, he has added the ability to pan and zoom the camera in the web control, which works from 5-12 MST. You can select zoom from 1-5x, pan horizontally and vertically by selecting the angle, as well as turn each zone of lights ON or OFF. He also has sensors that tell you the current temperature, humidity, if it detects stars (vs clouds), and more. However after last year's 22,000 web controlled lights, he's "burnt out", putting up less than 4,000 lights. Last year, his lights pulled 78.6 amps of current. This year, he is only pulling about 14.7 amps. Also, last year his home T1 line was completely saturated by all the press attention. This year, he's ready. (Note that this is not referring to X10 wireless video cameras, but to power control devices using the x10 protocol.)"
"Why I changed to OpenBSD"
or...
"Why I spent the last four days drinking Red Bull, swearing at my laptop and pulling my hair out"
Right, so, I've got this Compaq Evo N600c Laptop right? Yes. Now, I thought, hmmm, wouldn't it be nice to run Linux on my laptop? Yes. So, off I went, happily researching, downloading, reading docs, reading more docs, browsing newsgroups and forums, making notes of conflicting opinions regarding APIC, ACPI etc etc
It comes to crunch time. Let's get ready to install Linux! Bear in mind that I already use Gentoo 1.4 on my A7N8X-DLX (NForce2) board, I was all set to run it on my laptop too. (I'm not even going to go there with the problems I had with that one).
So off I go and install Gentoo on my laptop. No problems. ReiserFS, freshest Kernel 2.6.0 straight off of kernel.org - all is well. Then I get to X. I want to use either the nipple mouse and/or synaptics touchpad. NOT A CHANCE. After fucking about with boot options, BIOS settings, compiling the kernel with the necessary support enabled, downloading/compiling/installing the Synaptics stuff from that telia.com site, 60 million different XF86Configs and reading nearly every single gentoo forum posting about "synaptics", I'm pissed off. No, seriously fucking annoyed.
Linux is great. Don't get me wrong. But why oh fucking why is there so much effort put into supporting archaic Gravis Gamepads, outdated SCSI boards and shit like that when a common, modern laptop accessory takes a Herculean feat of brain power and mental strain to get working? X works, the mouse doesn't. Yippie Kai Ay.
So, I thought to myself "I use OpenBSD on the Mini-ITX firewall, I'll give that a go. Never used it as a desktop, but WTF. It deserves a shot". So, a nice breezy install of OpenBSD 3.4 later, and I "startx". Jesus. Holy Crap. THE TOUCHPAD WOKRS!!!!! For all the "emerge"ing, fiddling and reading that I did, it is all blown away with a wonderous result on OpenBSD.
So, to sum up, my experience with installing OSS on laptops has been this: "If you don't want to frustrate yourself into an early grave, boot> OpenBSD"
*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_ _ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
g_______________________________________________g
o_/_____\_____________\____________/____\_______o
a|_______|_____________\__________|______|______a
t|_______`._____________|_________|_______:_____t
s`________|_____________|________\|_______|_____s
e_\_______|_/_______/__\\\___--___\\_______:____e
x__\______\/____--~~__________~--__|_\_____|____x
*___\______\_-~____________________~-_\____|____*
g____\______\_________.--------.______\|___|____g
o______\_____\______//_________(_(__>__\___|____o
a_______\___.__C____)_________(_(____>__|__/____a
t_______/\_|___C_____)/______\_(_____>__|_/_____t
s______/_/\|___C_____)_______|__(___>___/__\____s
e_____|___(____C_____)\______/__//__/_/_____\___e
x_____|____\__|_____\\_________//_(__/_______|__x
*____|_\____\____)___`----___--'_____________|__*
g____|__\______________\_______/____________/_|_g
o___|______________/____|_____|__\____________|_o
a___|_____________|____/_______\__\___________|_a
t___|__________/_/____|_________|__\___________|t
s___|_________/_/______\__/\___/____|__________|s
e__|_________/_/________|____|_______|_________|e
x__|__________|_________|____|_______|_________|x
*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*
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a LOT.
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