Aero India 2009

Aero India, Asia's premier air show and very much awaited event in Bengaluru concluded on 15th February 2009. I've been going to this event since 2001 and this was my fifth time.
Though the spirit levels and enthusiasm in me was a bit debilitated,this time I did manage to go there , that too on time!
Now that the new airport is ready, the road to the IAF station in Yelahanka (where the event takes place) is excellent.

Aero India 2005
(the Surya Kiran team doing the Heart maneuver)

After seeing the show I noticed that this time the Air show did lack some caliber. Unlike earlier versions the number of Jets flying were less and the sorties they did were also less.
The reasons , I inferred was that mainly the interest of Indian Government towards Defense purchases. In 2007 the Govt expressed their desire to purchase few crafts so almost every Aerospace giant thronged to cash in the situation. But when nothing really happened every body seem to have lost interest. This reflected on the Airshow this year. This time the only majors luring the IAF were the Lockheed Martin with their F-16 and F-18 and the Euro fighter Typhoon. These three Jets were the only interested people in selling the crafts, so were very invigorated with their flights.

Aero India 2007(MiG 35)

The rest like Mikoyan-Gurevich(MiG) and Sukhoi weren't all that impressive unlike the earlier versions.
The absence of SAAB's Gripen, BAE's Hawk/Sea harrier made the show a lacsture performance.
The Surya Kiran team- the show stealers every time didn't manage to do it this time because of the ailing team who were mourning the loss of one of the team member who died in an accident while training in Bidar,Karnataka.

Aero India 2009(Su-30 MKI)

But the trade exhibition didn't let my hopes down as it was very good, with the German airforce-Luftwaffe participating in huge number for the very first time in Aero India impressed me.

Although all these factors did hinder the show's attraction it did impress freaks like me.
I have put up some photos here and some videos here. Please have a look and put in some comments.
Hope to you again in 2011,
Bye bye Aero India!

Audio Switch- A Failure story

Ver 0.1

Ver 0.1.1

As I'm a music freak, I have different music on different machines of mine(a desktop and a laptop), but I have only one 2.1 channel sound system which has to be shared by both machines, for which I need to switch between both by plugging and unplugging to a machine each time. This turned out be a huge problem as I have to reach out to the wires plug in/out. So I thought of making a manual Audio switch which would help me with this problem.
First I came up with the Version 0.1 of the switch.
Its summarized below:

Advantages:

1. Easy to handle.

Disadvantages:

1. It was very unstable because it wasn't mounted on a PCB.
2. The sound output was not stereo mixed because of a design error.
3. Was very noisy.

Then I came up with the second version named 0.1.1(since no change in design), which is summarized below:


Advantages:

1. Was easier to handle than the old one.
2. Noise was reduced to a great extent.
3. Was stable as it was mounted on a PCB.
4. Stereo quality sound output.

Disadvantages:

1. Was prone to loose contacts and internal resistances of the extension chords.
2. Instead of providing two separate channels, the switch was multiplexing both inputs, which turned out to be a Disaster!

In the end both versions didn't satisfy my needs and the Audio switch turned to be a big FAILURE!

If if you have any suggestions to improve this please do leave a comment.

Solar Eclipse 2009

This year's very first eclipse, the solar eclipse was visible in Bengaluru. This time the eclipse wasn't as intense as last time(check this out) which happened in 2007 but it was fun watching the celestial event from my home. I wish I could see a total lunar eclipse from my home at least once in my life time.

Interfaced LCD on an ATMega8!

After slogging out for more than three years I finally managed to boot the LCD panel on an ATMega8!

This winter I was determined to boot the LCD somehow. When I was crawling on the WWW I found this guy's code/tutorial from
extereme electronics which turned out to be very useful. He has explained each step in the interfacing process.
Now since that I haven't done anything great I wont give much details on the interfacing, rather I would like to give the link to the tutorial. The tutorial is here.


In the end I would like to tell that seeing the LCD boot was a big boost to my morale.

Happy New year 2009!

I wish you all a very Happy New year 2009!(I know its late, but my apologies for that)Like last year even this year I have designed a Calendar themed on 'Panoramic view'.Please download it and have a look at it and send in feedback.
The link to the calendar in a PDF Full resolution pics
Here's a sample to the WORK I've done

Pick and place remote controlled robot

Hello ARM COREs!

This is my first venture on ARM cores. After trying a bit, I succeded programming the CORE on an LM3s811 evaluation kit.
This wasn't that hard compared to programming the Atmega core(see this to know how I struggled/struggling to program the MCU).
The text you see is on a 96x16 OLED screen. The chip you see on the left is the LM3s811 MCU. And its fun to program the core on Keil!

PS: eval kit courtesy Devadutta

Ubuntu 8.10 reviewed

The new Desktop effect on Compiz and a KDE 4.1 Desktop sporting new look.

This weekend (1st Nov) I upgraded to Ubuntu 8.10, which took a staggering 10 hours to update my box which hosts both KDE and Gnome. So I thought to review Ubuntu as a simple end user. Here it is

Firstly the things I liked:

• Amazingly fast boot/shutdown time
  
• KDE 4.1
• Good looking art work for both KDE/Gnome
  
• Slightly new Compiz effects

Then comes the things which make Ubuntu 'Rocking' always:

• Superb driver support
• Easy up-gradation/installation feature
• Quick fresh install feature
• Vast repositories
• Amazing media rendering/acceleration with Amarok

In the end some things which makes any Ubuntu user 'Irksome'/'Pissed off'!

• Kaffeine is gone for now.I dont know why KDE ditched Kaffeine and replaced it with some 'Dragon player'.
• Hell long updating time! It took around 10 hours for me to update. I've seen even Vista taking such humongous time to update but I like Ubuntu and I want to it to make me feel 'GOOD' ;)
• Initial glitches with sound I face every time I upgrade to new release.
• Dirty looking GTK apps on KDE.
• A difficult to remember keyboard layout for Kannada( in general Unicode).

Back on Field work!

After a long break I'm back on Field taking photographs.So here's one.

Water level indicator

This summer, the much needed water level indicator for our home was succesfully designed,tested and implemented.

• It is designed to indicate 3 levels in the overhead water tank.

• It beeps using a buzzer when the tank is either full or empty.

All thanks to www.circuitstoday.com and my "All time" project guide Devadutta.