In 2007 the 100th IWM will be held!
| Subject | Done | Done | Subject |
|---|---|---|---|
| Electrolytical capacitor dimensioning |  |
 |
LED blinkers |
| Voice over IP | |
|
Apple One |
| Turboprop and Easyprop | |
|
Successor to MWS2 |
| Klaus' automilker | |
|
pSam and Parilux |
| Fonero and derivatives | |
|
Worstenbroodjes and beers |
| Railway safety systems | |
|
Automagic bird cage feeder |
| 1000 reasons for NOT making a website | |
|
BAScom for dummies |
| Making .deb packages | |
|
Set up a video link |
| Make VOIP calls to New Zealand | |
|
Barbequing techniques |
So all in all we covered quite some topics. Plus more since subgroups formed and we did NOT want to have
written reports from each interest group.
All in all a reasonable amount of solid and liquid food was consumed by all participants. There were two
children around who had the time of their life. No spanish campingsite for them, but the being around of a
lot of people that were not hostile against the ignorant. The urby and speaking tux attracted a lot of
attention, yet fully complied with the WISclub ideas.
| Name | AKA | Friday | Saturday | Sunday | Arrived |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan V | Brilsmurf | |
|
|
24/3 |
| Jan W | Lolsmurf | |
|
|
Friday 6:30 PM |
| Maarten B | TI smurf | |
|
|
Friday 6:30 PM |
| Ben Z | Websmurf | |
|
|
Friday 7:45 PM |
| San B | Cartoonsmurf | |
|
|
Friday 6:20 PM |
| Jan de B | Soldeersmurf | |
|
 |
Friday 8:30 PM |
| Dirk P | Doceersmurf | |
|
|
Saturday 10:30 AM |
| FP V | Krulsmurf | |
|
|
Saturday 1 PM |
| Jan H | Turbosmurf | |
|
|
Saturday 11 AM |
| Franz A | Tijgersmurf | |
|
|
Saturday 12 AM |
| Klaus de J | Bromsmurf | |
|
|
Saturday 3:20 PM |
| Ronald A | U smurf | |
|
|
N/A |
| Bart B | Embedded smurf | |
|
|
N/A |
| Robert D | Punksmurf | |
|
|
Friday 10:30 PM |
We have pictures online in an album, like the one to the right:
See them online at http://www.mijnalbum.nl/Album=HIYYZONO and in the online album made with HiRes digital cameras: http://www.mijnalbum.nl/Album=XNYZQS8K.
The screenshots were made KSnapshot from a screen in Mozilla browser 1.7.2. The images came from an IP camera from the brand AXIS. The camera was fixed (to a beercan) and stood on top of a wooden fence. It took three images per second. Colour as long as there was enough light and in the twilight zone it took black and white images.
No sound recordings were made. For two reasons:
- The language was dutch, so only few people could understand it
- this was already eating up a lot of bandwidth
| Kans op perioden met zonneschijn | Chance of sunny spells | 30% | ||
| Kans op regen | Chance of rainfall | 20% | ||
| Neerslaghoeveelheid | Quantity of rain | 0 mm | ||
| Minimum temperatuur | Minimum temperature | 12-14 °C | ||
| Middag temperatuur | Afternoon temperature | 20-23 °C | ||
| Windrichting | Wind direction | NW | ||
| Windsnelheid | Windspeed | 3 Bft |
It's now Saturday 10:30 AM. There's a watery sun shining. We have the AP400 setup in the garden and an IP
camera is online. Weatherforecast from NOW: 20-23 C, mild wind, some clouds, no rain. See how far we're
going come today.
At the end of the day it has been above 22° C. Noty a single drop of rain has fallen. A mild wind from
the NorthWest. This has been a perfect day!
The IP address of the camera used to be: 84.24.138.208:80 but it is now offline again.
To the right we see a small and simple circuit: One bicolour LED (or two single colour LED's connected in
anti-parallel) plus a resistor of 4k7 are connected to pins 3 and 4 of a DB 9 COM port connector. The
original design used a 2k2 resistor but that proved to be too troublesome for some UART drivers.
The object of the contest is to make the LED(s) produce their colours under user control. The LED must be able to cycle through the following states, in any order:
- red
- green
- dark
All in all, five contenders produced a LED blinker:
| Smurf | Solution |
|---|---|
| Funsmurf | Jan produced a speaking penguin doll who managed to blink a set of bright blue LED's under Linux keybored control. It was not as defined in the contest, but the look at his 'pinking LED' was so charming that we all forgot about that! Remember: the wisclub is a set of anarchists! |
| Bromsmurf | Klaus out-engineered the lot of us. He made the hardware as described in the first version of the contest and issued commands from the Windows DOSbox prompt. He could control the colour of the LED under keybored command. He even made the LED flicker by sending a '0x55' pattern at 110 baud out through the COM port! Very ingenious. |
| Curlysmurf | FP out-OSsed us by making a graphical application written with the Oberon compiler running Oberon on his laptop! The LED occupied a breadboard the size of a bible but it blinked under user control! And with a safe language! |
| Brilsmurf |
I stuck to the latest version of my challenge: the LED blinker connected between pins 3 and 4 of a DB9
connector: DTR and TxD. I managed to make it work under Linux using two small I/O programs written with
Mocka and a user interface written in Tcl/Tk.
Unfortunately my COM port stopped working because the 2k2 current limiter resistor was too small. The RS232 driver went into short circuit protection mode. With a 4k7 resistor everything worked fine. |
| TI smurf | Maarten made a LED blinker in the highest class league: each time when his IP camera made a picture a set of green LED's blinked. A good find! |
My solution in Tcl/Tk:
#!/usr/bin/wish
set RxD 0
set DTR 0
proc sync {} \
{
global RxD DTR
set val [exec IOrd2 3FB]
set RxD [expr (($val / 64) % 2)]
set val [exec IOrd2 3FC]
set DTR [expr $val % 2]
}
proc goRxD {} \
{
global RxD
set val [exec IOrd2 3FB]
set val [expr $val ^ 64]
exec IOwr2 3FB $val
}
proc goDTR {} \
{
global DTR
set val [exec IOrd2 3FC]
set val [expr $val ^ 1]
exec IOwr2 3FC $val
}
frame .frm1 -relief groove
frame .frm2 -relief groove
button .rxd -text "RXD" -command { set RxD [expr !$RxD]; goRxD }
button .dtr -text "DTR" -command { set DTR [expr !$DTR]; goDTR }
button .sync -text "Sync" -command { sync }
button .quit -text "Quit" -command { destroy .}
checkbutton .rxdc -text "Level" -variable RxD
checkbutton .dtrc -text "Level" -variable DTR
pack .rxd .rxdc -in .frm1 -side top -padx 2m -pady 2m -ipadx 20m
pack .dtr .dtrc -in .frm2 -side top -padx 2m -pady 2m -ipadx 20m
sync
pack .quit .sync -side bottom -padx 2m -pady 2m -ipadx 20m
pack .frm1 .frm2 -side left -fill x
Jan promised to pick up Maarten in Kontich railway station from 15:30 and stay there until he saw Maarten
come round the bend. And of course there was some trouble. When Maarten was at Gent railway station a high
voltage transformer blew and ONLY the tracks leading to Antwerp were harmed... That took an hour extra.
So Maarten joined Jan at 16:38. In the mean time, Jan discovered that Kontich railway station neither has an
open network active nor a Fonera. When they left for Breda things looked to go fine, until they met the
first (of several) traffic jams. The jams ate up another extra half hour....
The estimated time of arrival used to be around 5 PM but our travellers reached Tilburg not before 6:30! At
that time San and Ben also arrived at the HQ, so the party could begin. This year, the weather was
reasonably fair (i.e. no rainstorms and no subzero temperatures) so we decided to fire up the Weber BabyQ
barbeque.
Later on, Jan and Corne de Beer and San's wife Aimee joined us as well. We sampled the first bottles of
belgian beer around 9 PM. Much better than the dutch brews. Around 11 PM, Robert came round the back as well
because his network was out. He borrowed an RJ45 cable, did his thing and emptied a bottle with us.
We made some appointments for the coming event and went our ways. At midnight the garden was empty and the airbeds were being inflated. A short night ahead!
Day 2: The main event!
We all were awake around 8 AM. After some food and drinks I went into the garden to set up the equipment.
The parasol was opened, the power grid was laid out and the network was installed. On tha table we had 6
power outlets and a 4+1 port switch active.
The computer equipment was an old Compaq AP400 dual P-II system with a 15" TFT, 3 button mouse and 104 key
keyboard connected to it via a four port KVM switch. Unfortunately noone else used the 3 remaining tentacles
of the KVM. Next year... Extra tables were erected and the stools were placed. Just before 10 AM the setup
was complete. The guests were allowed to arrive.
When the first diehard IWM guests arrived, Maarten installed the IP camera he brought along. They taped the
camera to a virgin half liter beercan and put it on top of the fence. The camera supplied frames to the
world, be it silent frames.
Around noon, most guests were here and most flocked together around the central table where the leaders
decided to install Kubuntu on the AP400. After several attempts (in 5 hours) they had Kubuntu stable, but it
ran like a turd in a funnel. Not recommendable. Ubuntu is a specal distribution. If it works first time,
don't change it but use it. If it doesn't install, just throw the disks away and try Slackware, Open SuSE or
Debian.
Around 3 PM all members were present and the mob started to split up. Interest groups started to assemble. I
had hoped on this to happen some time sooner, but this is a group process. The bottles of beer were cooled
in the freezer and the fire of the BabyQ was lit again. Franz showed his Propellor boards. FP showed his
progress with Oberon and the LED contest. Klaus showed his milkometer. Jan showed his speaking Tux. Maarten
showed his skills as system manager. And all the others interacted.
Then I lost track. It's not easy to be in charge of the organisation, take pictures, monitor the food supply
AND get involved in EVERYTHING. So I went in autistic mode and did my things with the people I liked at that
moment.
When most people were filled with food and drinks, the fire of the BBQ was extinguished and the first guests
left for home. FP travelled by train so he had to catch the 21:55 train to Utrecht. Dirk was so good to
bring him to the railway station.
Franz and Klaus also left since they had a long journey (with some detours) ahead. Which left the diehards
sitting around the fires, drinking the remains of the beer supplies. We got some live comments from
international members. They could see us through the IP camera images. This was a fine feedback. We managed
to make the IWM truly international. Now the southern hemisphere members could at least have a look at what
we did!
Punksmurf joined in around 11:15 PM and after some talks, stories and drinks we decided to call it a day. Which was just in time since the network cable was destroyed by people sitting on it (with their chairs). Next time we will only have overhead powerline and network cables. Much safer and easier.
Day 3: Departure
The sunday we decided to sleep a little bit late. After our version of breakfast we evaluated the saturday.
Until one of the members not present asked for the IP camera to be online again! That triggered the WISclub
activities once more! Around 11 AM the De Beer family joined us and we exchanged the first sets of digital
pictures.
Around 1 PM, Jan and Maarten decided to call it a day. Jan still had a 1 hour and Maarten a 4 hour trip
ahead. So by leaving now, they could escape traffic jams and still be home in time (for dinner).
The end of IWM 2007. Yet another good meeting with nice events, talks, beers, people. And fine weather. Around 5 PM the first clouds started to reassemble and the first showers fell down. IWM has so many nice people attending that their combined aura's make a high pressure bubble over the country, keeping rain and storm far away!
If you can make the Parilux do more: fine! We're very interested! Blinking the LED's is the goal. Any own
initiative is highly appreciated.
I donated bags with components to the people with 'hungry' junkboxes. So in principle everyone can make his
own Parilux device. For more information about Parilux see
Fruttenboel.
If people from outside the WISclub want to take part in the challenge: just order a kit or a ready made
board for € 19 plus € 3 for worldwide first class shipment. If you cannot join us physically, join
us via the Parilux device!
This year two children attended: ages 13 and 8. For them this event is great. In this company of engineers, nerds and clowns (in short: people who refused to grow up and be assimilated by the world of adults) the kids feel at home. There are both complex and simple toys around, ONLY interested and friendly people. The foolish men (foolish in the sense that they are not in it for money). Their spouses (which must be equally foolish). People spending time for eachother. Them being around in a confined place makes them even better company than in daily life.
I know from both kids that they yearn for the IWM. I know from most adults that they have the same feelings. The IWM fills a void in this 21st century world in which the PDA rules about sensible people's minds.
And then the question comes: what does it cost?
What does it cost to put a smile on a childs face?
What does it cost to have a nice day among fellow men?
What does it cost to eat simple food under sober conditions?
What does it cost to have fun?
It's not about "cost" for me. It's about willingness to help. Dirk offering chairs for the saturday. San offering equipment. Jan and Maarten bringing beers. The children with the happy faces. I cannot put a price tag on this all. I am too uncommon to do so. I am a fool (see above). I only like to see people being happy.
If we go to an amusement park, you loose € 80 just for entering. For food and drinks: add another
€ 40. One such day easily costs € 125. And when the day is over, you only have sore feet and some
digital images.
For the same amount of money we had a 48 hour event with food and drinks for 20 odd people who had the day
of their life. But I do it for the kids.
Page created 11 August 2007,