Oliver's Homepage

Projects from the past: LocalLink Controller

admin — Sat, 05 May 2012 13:19:41 +0000

The LocalLink controller was my first and only chip design project. It was part of my studies at the ETH Zürich, done in collaboration with my colleague Alex Hueber.

The chip implemented the LocaLink protocol for AppleTalk networks. It was used to connect PC printers to the AppleTalk WAN. A total of 10 chips were fabricated in a CMOS 1.2µm process.

ELV 4x4x4 Led Cube

admin — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 10:08:00 +0000

I’ve created a 4x4x4 LED cube from a ELV kit. It’s pretty easy to build, but the software for the animations is quite tedious to use.

New Theme for homepage

admin — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 10:40:08 +0000

I’ve decided to update the theme on the homepage to a more minimalistic design. Also, I wanted a responsive design, so I wouldn’t have to use a separate plugin for mobile devices or tablets. I found all of this in the Yoko design by the nice guys of Elmastudio.

PixCompare 3.62 released

admin — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 08:47:03 +0000

I’ve fixed several memory leak bugs, also I moved to SDK 10.7 so it should work nicely on Lion. And, also for Lion, I’ve created a high-res icon for the application.

Go to the PixCompare page.

PixCompare Terminal command

admin — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 14:37:22 +0000

The is the first release of the PixCompare engine for command line use. It takes 2 jpeg files and returns a similarity value.

I have several Axis webcams in use, and sometimes their built-in motion recognition just runs amok – it saves a picture every second even though there is no motion at all. Therefore, before copying the pictures away, I use this command to compare the current picture with the last picture taken. If it is different enough, it gets saved.

Download pixo_cmd

Usage:
% pixo_cmd picture1.jpg picture2.jpg

It returns a float value 0 or higher, where

0.00 – 2.00 very similar or identical
2.00 – 10.00 pretty similar
10.00 – 20.00 somewhat similar, e.g. some colors are the same
> 20.00 different

Carousel barrel organ and Blue Mikey iPhone Microphone

admin — Sat, 29 May 2010 13:36:52 +0000

I bought a Blue Mikey microphone for iPhone/iPod to do recordings of concerts and other events. To test it out, I went to a local carousel and made a recording of the barrel organ. I used the free Blue Fire software and started recording. I’m pretty impressed by the sound quality. There was quite some wind and a lot of noise from the people around.

I used Audacity the reduce the rumbling noise from the wind – other than that, it’s the original recording. Check it out (mp3)

The next time I’m going to visit the Musikautomaten Museum in Seewen, I’ll also bring this along and do a couple of recordings.

PixCompare 3.6 released

admin — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 10:20:14 +0000

And another new version of PixCompare. Various bug fixes and speed improvements but no major new feature.

New version of PixCompare released

admin — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:42:47 +0000

I finally had some time to work on PixCompare. Instead of moving the project to Cocoa, I decided to stick with carbon for now. Carbon is still well supported in Leopard and beyond. I updated all deprecated APIs, converted all Quickdraw code to Quartz, and rewrote the whole printing section. I also fixed a few bugs related to scanning.

Painting of Stüber barrel organ finished

admin — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 15:25:51 +0000

We finally finished painting the Stüber barrel organ. We used the Bauernmalerei style which is popular in Switzerland for all kind of wooden objects.

Reuge 36 tone music box

admin — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 14:33:37 +0000

I found this new music box on ricardo, a local auction platform in Switerland. It’s built by a hobbyist, but uses a Reuge mechanic. It’s a nice wooden box, music stops automatically when both songs are finished. It features 2 Strauss songs, each about 15 seconds.

Listen to songs. (mp3)

These boxes sell for about half to price of an official Reuge box, so quite a bargain. Check out the current listings.