Last night while I was soldering a TSSOP Package on a home-etched board, i found it really difficult to see the joints whether they had soldered fine or whether i had a healthy track? I used my eye-loupe to see up close.The idea of using eye-loupe was initially introduced to my while my time at CEPD,NSIT .Ah! That was a beautiful solder joint. Something worth saving and sharing. So, I just held the loupe in front of the phone to click a picture and save it. I figured this could be useful in taking macroshots too.
umm.. Like this bajra seed

Bajra Grain under my #MacroCase ! #Macro #Photography #Lumia #Nokia #DIY

A photo posted by Rohit Gupta (@rohit7gupta) on Feb 2, 2015 at 5:28am PST

or this brush

Results of my #own #Macro #Lens #Setup for #Phones ! These are bristles of a Brush ! #DIY #Optics #PhoneMods #Lumia

A photo posted by Rohit Gupta (@rohit7gupta) on Jan 26, 2015 at 1:02am PST

These instances started to occour more frequently. You know the feeling when you figure out that one Juggad has solved a problem and you keep on using it again and again. Sometimes, even when not quite necessary (But for fun!)

So, why not combine the phone and this eye-loupe (sadly but aptly broken due to its relocation from Delhi) and make something permanent and then the MACROCase was made and it gave purpose to that ready to throw back cover that i just made useful.

You wont need much stuff to make it, just almost everything in the picture below is enough.

Building is not very difficult (See this Instructable). I also added a LED to precisely illuminate the scene just in case we went up too close. An assorted SMD switch was added near the camera button (Yes some Lumias have it :P). The whole wiring was done using copper tape. One can also use the wires. I preffered them as they are just stick.

And there I have my own modded phone case that helps me take nice pictures of the smaller things in life and help me pick numbers of those small components like resistors and chips.

This is how a SOIC looks like:

Stay tuned for an upcoming tutorial series on umm.. Lets keep it a secret till then. ! Until next time, (as John Green says) , Dont Forget to be awesome!

Cheers,

Rohit

Next came the fever of converting them to funny formats like .mobi etc that made a nicely indented book look like a unorganised vomit of words.

I tried assiduously to somehow read and lost interest until I stumbled upon a slick python library pyPDF while solving a problem with printing PDFs.

Clip the borders and Light you shall see !

Kindle does automatically clip borders but it retains the primordial page number which limits the usability and since, it also indexes the page number anyway, even if I remove it using some python script it wont hurt.

So, This is what kindify does. Its a command line python utility that simply takes the pdf you intent to read and returns a PDF with the same name but -kindified appended to its file name to be read on the Kindle.

The only dependency is pyPDF .

Install PyPDF using pip :
pip install pypdf

Now clone the github repository:

git clone https://github.com/IndianTinker/kindify.git

Now, paste the PDF in the kindify directory and run the command:

python kindify.py yourPdfName.pdf

An interactive menu will pop up with list of some famous book houses that have predefined cropping parameters. You can always choose the custom one to suit your needs or edit the predefined ones to suit your needs.

Lets see the magic in this sample from Orielly.
Before the script the PDF renders as follows:

And after the script

There is a difference between the two images. Clearly the second one is a bit more clear.
So, yet again Python saves the day!

Cheers!

Rohit

I am writing is post mostly in a log format and will keep adding information as an when I get more.

If google sent you here, then probably you too are interested/moving to Pune soon.I hope you find the information useful. The post is divided into several important sections that will be updated from time to time. Lots of unorganized info to follow so lets get started:

Shelter

This section deals with housing related things

• If you are coming here for an IT company, most of them are concentrated in Hinjewadi and Wakad side of Pune, which geographically comes under Pimpri Chinchwad city of Pune Metropolitan Region. Then most popular housing locations will be Wakad, Hinjewadi, Vishal Nagar(Jagtap Dairy), Pimple Saudagar and Pimple Gurav.
• Before you hit the land, searching for houses/flats , take note of the relocation policy of your company and make sure brokerage is covered.
• Choose room-mates wisely. Initial judgements can be pretentious. You would certainly like to live with people on the same frequency as your’ s else, things could go wary.
• Prefer searching online on sites like Housing.com, MagicBricks etc first and prefer ones that are listed by Owners themselves to avoid steep brokerage , which is usually 1 month rent for 11 months agreement and 2 months rent for more than 11 months.
• Most societies have a board Beware of Dogs right below a board that says Bachelors Not Allowed that pretty much sets their priorities straight. Dont go looking for flats in them.
• Prefer on pakka agreement which requires you to go to the municipality office against a Notary Agreement. This depends on the landlord entirely. A pakka agreement is useful when you wish to own a vehicle in Pune where a notorized one bites the dust.
• In case you need furniture, the market has a rental based system. You can buy cheap and flimsy furniture and once you leave you can return it for 50-60% its value. Mattresses are also available for cheap.
• Some flats come with a furnished status but are usually 10k more than normal. If you plan to stay about 11 months then evaluate the economics. 10k* 11 = 1,11,000 INR. So, if the facilities are worth that even after depreciation. Go for it! else negotiate.
• Chalk out a Room Mate Agreement like Sheldon ! It helps in long run.
• D Mart is the best place to shop here.

Transportation

This section deals with Transportation related things

Expect Nothing

• The city’s transport is abysmal and has been so since ages. The Pune City is a bit better but PCMC is worse. Its like Noida of Pune. Auto walla’s make money on your sufferings.Prefer Ola Cabs !
• You wont get a direct bus quite often. That was pretty irritating initially until i met Mr. Chaturvedi on the Rakshak Chowk Bus Stop one day. He his golden words were: “Only a few buses go to your destination directly, but many go that way !” Saying so he boarded his bus to Vishrantwadi leaving me with ideas ! So, the trick is use Here Transit to find buses that go in the direction you want and board them and deboard at the point they divert from your path and then reboard. So, if you want to go to FC Road. Take a bus for PMC/Station and use the above algo.
• Get a 2 wheeler (I don’t have one though) ! OLX is great place to find or go to Rasta Peth for second hand stuff. Again you have to pay more to the brokers here, and a notorized agreement wont work !
• There is also a local train service in Pune but is not preferred unless you wish to travel out of the city like going to Lonavala or Malavali etc.
• If you wish to go to Mumbai ! Trust only Shivneri , Neeta has a terrible service everywhere and even to Ahemadabad (Been there Done that). You can also take shared cabs from Chinchwad Station. They charge about 200 – 250 bucks based on demand.

Food

This section deals with Food related things

• Everything is awesome! There are lot of options here. Dosa’s and Vada Pao’s are like staple street foods. The Standard Price for Vada Pao is 10 bucks and Dosa is 20- 30 bucks .
• There are lot of good places in the city. Try GoodLuck Cafe’s Fruit Fanny,La Plaisir Patisserie & Bistro’s Chesse Cake, Garden Vada Pao , Marz-o-rin’s Sandwiches, Durvankur’s Thali or Sabutdana Wadi at Shaniwar Wada. Check Zomato for more listings. There is a Burger King as well in Koregaon Park where you get gross burgers and the infamous German Bakery is there too, near Osho Ashram
• You can’t get on eating from these restaurants on daily basis so, for usual days you can either hire a cook. There is no dearth of them and they charge around 600-700 per head.
• If cook is too much of a pain, go get a dabbawalla . He serves hot food in a tiffin at a reasonable price. Do ping me in the comments if you need any contacts. I have tried about 4 of them

Internet

This section deals with Connectivity related things

• Internet Broadband service is a booming business here and there are tons and tons of them. To name a few Spectranet, iConnect, Reliance, Tikona, Tata Docomo, Airtel etc.
• Tikona is Ok and there are several breakdowns, but customer service is good.
• Docomo is great but limited to certain societies only.
• Reliance s*#ks as usual ! No support and useless Helplines, but its the cheapest.
• iConnect and Sprectranet are good too but again limited to some societies.
• As far as cellular connectivity is concerned. Voda>Idea>Airtel>Docomo

POIs

This section deals with Places to roam around

• Shaniwar Wada
• Dagdu Shet Ganpati Temple
• Raja Dinakar Museum
• Lonavala
• Karla Caves , Malavali
• Sinhagad Fort
• Bike ride through Pashan Area
• will add more as i visit

Hope people find this useful!

Cheers !!

Rohit

I had this Nokia LCD i picked up a while back. It is perfect when you want to play with graphics on a tiny lcd that comes from the good old days of Nokia’s Monochome days. Several might have spent days playing space invaders/snakes etc.

Zu ZU ZU ZU ZU UUUU ..BR.BR.CHIK Thats how my old ‘Phillips All in One’ failed a couple of weeks back. It was a pretty archaic piece. All it could do was play Cassettes, Do Radio, Had an Aux In and offcourse the marketed CD Player with a segmented Display. But today most of the music is digital and hence Upgrade was necessary.

I have moved to pune for work now and exploring the city has always been on my top agenda.  Pune has always been a happening city of makers. Mumbai is close-by and easily commutable. There are a lot of DIY/Maker start-ups here too and who doesnt know about IOTPune/DooThings. [A more detailed city review sometime later]

Bored one night,thinking how to spend the weekend more constructively, i started to scroll through the meetups around my place on weekend. The main priority was “Distance” . People living in Pune can relate. The city transportation is awful and a thread is always running in mind querying, “Dude! Will be able to walk back? ”

Thankfully, I noticed Mozilla is organizing a big event near my place and there is no better way to spend the weekend. After visiting, MakerFest last year, I have really started to like these events.Anool(Sir) from MakersAsylum/Wyolum was coming with his team and so was IOTPune and so was Mark Surman from Mozilla and so were many others.

I stared to plan how to go at Symbiosis Centre for Computer Research, Here Transit comes to the rescue and i boarded the bus and got down at a nearby bus stop. Initial (rather first day) experience has taught me that we should have “Say No to Autos” banner erected everywhere in the city. This is more important than Polybag Awareness etc. if thought in a more citizen centric way. [Weekly, Auto Rant Ends.Stay tuned for more]. I walked another 800m and there i was at the venue.

I entered the gate of the college. I was asked my credentials to check, if i registered. I had , so i went to see the workshops as they were listed on the website. I carried my OpenBadge [A no brains LED Matrix badge that i made for MakerFest but could’nt debug it completely] and some other projects too just in case someone like-minded crossed. Swag!

I went straight to the main hall and found it jam packed. So, i gave it a pass and went on visiting the booths. There were pretty interesting things showcased. Let start the Booth WATCH:

Makers Asylum was present with all guns blazing.

The Word Clock was at display.

Samarth from Melting Mints who works with the Makers Asylum showed some mind blowing applications of 3D Printing. This is a human skull printed from a scan.

A 3D Printed Jet Engine for educative purposes.

A 3D printed Music Instrument and a Car that is so awesomely finished.

When asked if he can print custom parts and more specifically 3D Printer parts. He said, Why not? Plus he does it economically too for students willing to start printing.

The Pipe Lamp

They also had a few 3D pens for visitors to play with.

I managed to build this cube. Tch!

In the next booth, An interesting thing was up for display. A Smartphone and a DSLR ? Connect the dots and you get the triggertrap.
It translates the audio out from a SmartPhone into DSLR jack signals to do interesting stuff. Intervalometers, Event activated clicks.. You say it and app does it all.

I even saw a PrintrBot METAL at Maker Party by Reed Robotics. It was smoooooth.

Ant Farm Robotics showcased their tiny WSN nodes that last for months on 2 AAs. The tiny ATTinY Runs a full blown RTOS and uses a TI Radio (RF2500/CC1100) to do the wireless part.

Navstick were showcasing their next generation Autonomous navigation systems that can be used in Quads, RC Planes and IGVs etc.

A Quad with Navstick installed.

A RTF Bixler that too supports NavStick

They use a GoPro for Aerial Photography. Kewl!

A part of Navstick Hardware Family. Built in India

On the way to the second floor, I met Nishant Modak of IOT Pune.He too is(was) suffering from HP Laptop Syndrome and we talked a bit about his Makerspace in Pune called DoThings. He is doing a Pan America trip visiting MakerFaires with his team.

They have developed an awesome BLE Arduino Board that does great things. Its called Tah! They also have a campaign running on crowd supply. Get yours now!

He accompanied me to their booth where Anuj was giving a talk about Tah!

They do great things at their MakerSpace which is verrrrry far from my place(Remember the thread). I saw an Intel Galileo which they had brought.

It was time to go. As i traveled back, I thought of various things like Autowalas, 3D Printing , Makerfaires and of course Food.

Cheers!
Rohit

Due the schedule , i could only get a day (rather a combination of one evening and one morning ) to explore  the Nawabi city. Thankfully, the city has an awesome public transportation system with buses and feeders plying to every nook and corner of the city. On the iteneary, we planned to visit Golconda Fort, Hussain Sagar, Char Minar and adjoining area and Banjara Hills.

Luckily, we were based around Medhipatnam area, which provided easy access to most of the above places.

The weather here was a bit cooler and moist than my home Delhi, which was literally breaking all time temperature records. Hyderabad is a densely populated city. Unlike most south indian cities, due to the large Muslim population who speak Urdu, there is no problem for a Hindi speaking tourist here. The state predominantly speaks Telugu and has some “super-awesome-Newton-defying” movies,some of which i watched during the bus route from Chennai to Hyderabad.

Since, Golconda was nearest , we boarded the bus that dropped us at the gate of Golconda Fort. The Fort seemed massive. It seemed to have some features of both Hindu and Muslim architectural elements which confused me about its origins.At the entry, there is an interesting demonstration, that a couple of guides will give you like a “30- Day Anti virus Trial” . In the middle of section after the entry, when you clap , a lot of beats are generated that can be heard at different strategic parts of the Fort that were used as a signal. But when you move a few steps away from the centre, no beats are heard.

Some pretty cool sound engineering from the past. These are generated due to these structures on the roof above.

We bought a paper guide and started following the tour it promised. As we moved we saw this place where soldiers used to rest and take positions.Quite a popular picture spot it seems.

As we moved on, we approached a point where we had to start our journey of 350 stairs to reach to the top of the fort.

I saw some interesting thing on the stairs. There were marks on the stairs with a yellow background and red finger marks on all of them.

When asked from a passer-by he explained that this is a part of ritual performed here as there is a temple on the top.

As we climbed, the air started to get a bit cooler and fresher. We could see the Fort is mostly in ruins and most of the things that it presumably had are only in books or in the guides like the one i had in my hand.

As we moved up stairs, we saw a mosque which was closed to visitors. There was also a jail which has an interesting story. It is said that, there the Munshi ( The Head of Accounts) of the king was once held there because he paid from the coffers to help build a temple without the kings permission. Then after several years, God came in king’s dream and asked him to free him. He was freed that very night. There is a temple there now.

Next, we moved to the top most point we could see the bigger picture. Most structures were in shambles. Here is the panorama from the top most point .

From the top, we could see the entire city of hyderabad. We caught a person vandalising the walls and asked him to stop. He ran away, but as we were decending we saw him writing with a charcoal on the walls of the place where the king’s Darbar meetings were held.

As we descended, we could see ruined arches and rooms that once housed the dignitaries of the king.

Below, is the room where the queen(S) used to live.

Next we moved to the place where artillery was stored. These large iron balls were propelled by cannons apart from the famous hot oil protection scheme to save the fort. I remember, the hot oil was also used to protect Kangra Fort, in Himachal Pradesh.

After this fort walk, we exited the complex and moved to the Bus Stand and sipped a couple of tender coconuts while we waited for the bus.

Next we moved to the Hussain Sagar Lake, Again we got a direct bus leading to the lake’s gate. Like the fort, the lake was huge. So, huge that there were ferries running in the lake to take visitors to the large statue of Lord Buddha. There is a small amusement park that has been set up for kids.

The sunset near the boarding point.

The ferries take 5-10min and drop you at the Statue where you can stay as long as you want and catch any ferry back. The statue is decorated with beautiful lights.

After spending some time there, we made a quick exit and caught the next bus to the Epic Charminar. With thoughts of Biriyani for which i have been running almost empty stomach  i boarded the bus.It took us about 30 minutes to reach. A couple of minutes of walk, an there stood the Charminar.

This was not the correct time to visit the place. It was jam packed. The streets has shops selling pearls, fruits, clothes and bakery items. We moved closer.

The crowd density increased. We could now see the Char minar a bit clearly, The site was highly polluted. The vehicles were running too close to the monument and the pollutants were quite evidently damaging the monument.

We say an interesting site that depicted, the diversity in our country. A Temple inside a Char Minar. #ProudIndian

The issue was Biriyani. We searched the famous shops but none of them served Vegetarian Biriyani. One person suggested us, to go to a shop down the lane and supposedly the only one to serve veg biriyani. Ah! Delighted

Biriyani is like pulao but with an overdose of clove, cinammon and some secret ingredients . After having this delicious Biriyani, we started our way back to the Hotel. On the way we stopped at Banjara Hills, Its the CP of Hyderabad, picked up a Sundae and headed back.

If you visit the CharMinar area and Banjara Hills in the order, you would see how the country is moving forward, Preserving the culture and the soul of its existence as well as We are going in hand with the more developed outlook and are leading the world in some things!

Cheers

Rohit

1. Ability to measure current on the fly without messing( Ah! Argentina..:/ ) with  whats connected to the supply.
2. Provided some pads on which you can use a multimeter to set voltage without poking into the breadboard.

Here is the final board and the kit-assembly sequence.

Kit Contents

A diode on the bottom! Do’nt worry it sticks out and doesnt hinder!

Pads to measure output voltage!
The Headers poke into the power rail on the breadboard!

Supports standard DC jack with polarity protection

The pink jumper can actually be removed and an ammeter can be connected to measure current!

The completed board

Aligning the regulator with the silkscreen

Heat Sink

Heat Sink Compound

Just in-case anyone is interested ! I am providing a DIY kit around it that is available here. Free Shipping(India Only)Yeah! Only additional tools required are just nippers( micro-shear)/cutters and soldering iron+solder. Cheers, Rohit

Duh!

So, I found out a better way to make breadboards compatible with DC jacks and polarity issues. This is small board with headers that plug into the breadboard. It has a diode to make sure nothing flows reverse and a small 0.1uF cap to provide some rudimentary decoupling.

I quickly designed the board,etched it and filed it to shape.

Board design

Schematic

Before the bath

On the breadboard

And Tada! I have one little board that has ‘inherited’ two worries ! Two things of the “To-Worry-about” list
Cheers!

I have a Nokia Lumia 520 device that fails to enumerate as a USB Storage on my Ubuntu 12.04 LTS desktop. Things are not as plug and play it seems. I have been using the skydrive( *cough* OneDrive ) route to access media for a few weeks until today i sat down to fight the issue Running..

lsusb

shows:

This means the Linux knows that we have a nokia mobile phone! But it doesnt provide a file access to it.

A little dig shows that ‘modern’ ‘smartphones’ use MTP (Media Transfer Protocol) to transfer data ! Its a modified Picture Transfer Protocol.. Ubuntu 12.04 has no ‘native’ support but Ubuntu 13.04 does have it.

So, 2 options :

1. Install 13.04 (rather upgrade)
2. Find a work around

Well it turns out there is a PPA called GVFS (Genome Virtual File system)-MTP( Media Transfer Protocol) that can be installed to help nautilus get the device! This surfaced when some android devs were getting issues working with MTP on Android 4.0+ .(Does anyone care about WP8 anyway? )

The commands/steps are:

1. sudo add-apt-repository ppa:langdalepl/gvfs-mtp
2. sudo apt-get update
3. Run the update manager and install update
4. Restart
5. Plug the Lumia
6. It must show!

So, i followed the above link and after a bit of restarting the device finally showed up!

But i was not quite able to access it as it failed to mount the device repeatedly. I replugged it a couple of times and went to Terminal and typed natilus and then it got mounted! I was able to access the SD Card and phone memory without issues.

The read(copy from device) and write( paste to device) both operations worked!

But there was no thumbnail preview ! If you want to view an image just copy paste it somewhere outside the device to view it.

Hope this helps the small niche of people who have a WP8 based phone and have an Ubuntu System !

Cheers!