Thoughts

Life in Air Force Academy(AFA) - Hyderabad

2010-12-01T00:02:00.000+05:30

Line Up of Kiran Jet Trainer Aircrafts on Tarmac

It was a fine July morning when I found my self standing at the Secunderabad Railway Station in front of a desk with three people sitting under the banner announcing Reporting for Airforce Academy. Got my name checked and they told me to remember the name of squadron as Brar. Outside found a few guys whom I met at SSB or medicals and was please to know that two other guys of my group from SSB were in same Sqn.
Quite a number of Cadet and some parents were standing there soon we guys boarded the bus, a photographer was clicking the pics of the guys and of course the gals present there, so that later we all could see them and make out how funny we were looking then as compared to now, and as a matter of fact one never fails to find how we people looked so funny and casual when we were still civilians( and it would be the other way round for all the normal civil guys when they notice the difference between us).

Soon enough we reached the gates of Air Force Academy(AFA) Dundigal and it was with a sense of huge pride that I looked at the runway and the gate and a feeling that finally I arrived at a worthy enough place which I deserved. The bus moved inside and the occupants of the bus kept their stares fixed at the various aircraft and missiles on display en-route from Annaram Gate to Flight Cadet's Mess(FCM) aka our home for the next one year.

I remember well that it was lightly drizzling and in my astrological beliefs that was a sign of good beginning. Our stuff got offloaded and we moved to Shamiyana for the attendence. After a long wait, we got out luggage checked. The check were to make sure that we were not in possession of a mobile phone or camera or any eatables !! and other superficial stuffs(even personal medication) like that. All these while the things were being done by the Appointments, who are the Senior Term cadets who takes care of the Cadets while they are in FCM, kind of like School Captain.

After a while we got several items issued and our cabin numbers. Life in college can be easily managed without even seeing a water glass, water bottle, hangers, brooms and all some trifle items but not so here, maintaining a living standard of an Officer requires a lot of polishing of the attitude and this was a small beginning.

Juniors

Once all the luggage was dumped in the cabin and after acquaintance with the neighbors around the rest of the evening and night passed in having a gala time with old friends from SSB and medical. Since by this time any of the Senior Term cadets have not arrived except for the Appointments, there was nobody to check any junior cadets.

Then from day two to the first week were probably the most boring and disgusting days of my life. There were lot of formalities, kit issue, tailor issue, hair cut, medicals and so on and so forth an endless number of things in which we just have to go to one place and keep standing at-ease and just wait till eternity till everyone got finished and then we march of back to Sqn Office. It was like at the end of every day we used to count that in the whole day we have just done 3-4 things and not even got to sit down once or be in our cabin for more than 5 minutes. The first night muster of the Academy was quite an experience of continuously standing in attention till all the counting was done, report compiled, its checked and rechecked that all are present and Duty Instructor come, report is handed over, he again checks and cross checks and finally goes back.

At the end of first week we could feel that our previous lifestyles have been left far behind, every luxury and privileges that we were used to were taken away. No more were we getting time to be alone as an individual, the only time spend alone was either during study hour or while sleeping after lights-out. The clothes we wore became the simplest a white shirt(with collar and cuff button and no tie) and white trouser(no provision as well as need of a belt, as only the size being fit is worn) for the formal places and white PT kit for games and ragda sessions :). No dhobi, no orderly and any facility of fruit shop, bar etc etc. It would seem like a POW camp but this is how an individual is broken down of his shells of individuality and made in an person who matters only along with his Sqn.

....

A normal daily routine of junior cadets at the beginning of term used to be like, waking up at between 2-3am depending on the amount of clothes that you have to wash(it is quite difficult to hide any dirt or dust in white clothes) or iron, and then attending a 4am fall-in in which the report never gets compiled and submitted to Sqn Appointment by the allotted time and hence by default all the undergoes a series of push-ups, sit-ups and other doses of early morning exercises. At 5 am there was another fall-in for juniors for daily Drill( that is march past) and we were left sweating from the sqn office just 10 min to 5, to change to drill uniform and report in time. From 5 am after all the junior cadets have came, all the sqns' report compiled and submitted, then the dreaded round of dress inspection by the appointments and the defaulted caught with dirty clothes, improper ironing and anything major or minor were rounded off to be destined to do some more sweating out in the afternoon and evening in the form of reportings.

Life in AFA(Air Force Academy ) - pre reporting

2010-06-30T23:30:00.001+05:30

After almost 9 month long process of CDS Written Exam, Selection Board at 1 AFSB and Medical Checkup at AFCME , the path to AFA was now clear.

It was just a formality but after the long and patient wait for the merit list of CDSE was over, the result was declared by UPSC. It was a really nice surprise to find my name on the top of the merit list. WOW !!!
So I was off to a good start. But as it happens with all of us everytime, once you have finished something a worry of the future starts to occupy your mind and in my case I started wondering if I could maintain my steam and will I be good enough to be selected for Fighter Stream after Trifurcation in the Academy.

The answer to this lied almost 1 year in future. To ease any worries I started off with a routine of daily morning running and other exercises to get in shape. Now as my bad luck would have it I found out the really hard and painful way that in my circumstances its better to avoid joining a Gym and more doing Dead-Lift without proper care. This caused me to have symptoms of hernia(or so I thought) and my subsequent lingering worries were not settled down till a Medical Examination in the Academy.

I am being so close to realizing a dream of a life time. I am sure life will rise to a different gear once the training start. Training in AFA will bring across several anecdotes and definitely a lot of memories which I will want to remember.

But the disappointing fact is that there is hardly any first person account which one comes across about life of a Flight Cadet in AFA. The purpose of this series will be to fill this gap, so that a lot of dreamers like me can know more about flying training in IAF.

Before I finish this post, I should mention one more incident.
Once I got through medicals, I went to a retired Maj. Gen. who was a faculty in my college, to get his advice on how to do well in Service. He had some gems of experience to recount.
He told me that in Defence Services a person is quite often identified by the company of people he is into. Like if you hang around with geeks you will be labeled as a geek similarly if you hang around with people having questionable incidences to their name, so will people think you to be. And in Service like Indian Airforce the size is not so big and your reputation, both good and bad, travels far and wide.

Another of his suggestion was that the Defence Services are such that they require a certain set of qualities and requirement and the training and subsequent service makes sure that you inculcate those qualities and the things in you which are not desirable gets filtered out. So one should always take care because we as a cadet and later as Officers will be judged all the time for the OLQs.

Airforce Medical checkup at AFCME

2010-06-29T22:24:00.001+05:30

People clearing AFSB (Airforce Selection Board) are next send to AFCME i.e. Airforce Central Medical Establishment, New Delhi for a detailed medical checkup to certify that they are medically fit to discharge their duties in Indian Air Force. All different categories of candidate for IAF ie Flying Branch, Technical Entry and Ground Duty have the complete checkup at this venue. Apart from this this establishment is also the place where DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation) send civilian pilots to have their medical fitness certificate issued or renewed.

AFCME is situated in the beautiful and very neatly maintained Western Air Command(WAC), Subroto Park which is located near to Dhaula Kuan. Except for Dental checkup , all other test, diagnostics and measurments are done in AFCME itself. For this its has several departments like Pathology(with the lab facilities), ENT, Radiology, Eyes, Ultrasound, Anthropology, Cardiac etc.

For the Airforce candidates the process is usually 4 day long. On our first day of arrival the business of the day started at 8:00 am with us filling a couple of forms and other necessary formalities. As usual these form filling take a lot of time and it was almost 11am by the time we were done.
Now the funny thing was that we were specifically told to come empty stomach for the tests otherwise it will take a day more. So there we were all fasting on empty stomach. and it turns out that now a days at AFCME there are no blood test done on first day so no need of the fasting(which b.t.w. sort of triggered a sinus pain in my eye, that too during the medical. what an irony !!!).
After the formalities we were send for the dental checkup which is done at a separate premise. In the dental clinic there were quite a few patients waiting for the doctors, so it took us around 3 hour time for the dental checkup to be done. Dental is usually straight forward affair and unless you have a decaying stuff up your jaws , its a clear affair. Though it is advised that you get teeth scaling done and take care of the decays or caries. In our group two guys were send to see doctor to get their nicotine marks removed.Since it became quite late so this was the only thing that was done on the first day.
I found that in almost all department and all the doctors were hard pressed with the load of the candidates, the civilian pilots and the patients. Its really a tough job for them to keep on doing their job without any mistakes or omissions.

Our lodging was in the Officers Mess and it was so tiring and hot day after getting the meal at 3 pm that for next three hours we slept deeply in the cozy dorms.

The next day again we reported at 7:30 am empty stomach and then our Chest measurement and Height and Weight measurements were taken. There is a height-weight-age chart for the candidates and its is strongly advised to get your tummy measure up to the numbers, Though the authorities give a lot of relaxation on these count. After this we were send to the pathology lab for Blood and Urine Tests. Next on card was the Ultrasound test in which abdomen, liver etc were checked if these parts were normal and to check there are no abnormal things like kidney stones and abnormal size of internal organs. Next we had Radiology in which around 5-6 X-Rays were taken of chest, Spine, Skull etc. Some of the people who had a large angle in the bones of the elbow had elbow X-ray done to determine that angle.After this we quickly had a couple of test one after another like ECG, Anthropological measurement(sitting height, leg length, thigh length and ENT.
For Ear they check for ear wax after that they apply a varying pressure to the ear and the machine generate a plot, it seemed like this test checks how the ear drum behaves in changing pressure. Then the Audio-metric test was done in which there is a headphone through which a few very faint beeps of different frequencies are emitted first in the left ear then in the right, on hearing each beep you have to press the button.The rest of the test of nose is basically one in which the doctor inserts a thong in your nose to check for DNS.
The last thing of the day was a basic test of the eyes in which we were to read a chart about 6mtrs away, a book of color blindness. After this we wore a setup with possibly a polarized lens and a light source was shined which caused a vertical line and a dot to appear.

The next day started with the detail checkup of eyes.Again this time the Medical Officer one by one made us read the Alphabet chart and the color blindness book.Next our eyes were dilated and something was checked by the doctor.
The results of ECG had come and in some cases there were doubts so two extra test 2D Color Doppler ECG and TMT or stress test was performed. In TMT I had to run for 15 minutes on a treadmill while the ECG machine was taking the reading continuously. The 2D Color Doppler ECG was similar to Ultrasound but only it was being done for Heart. Last but not the least we had surgical checkup in which different things like piles,hernia, flat foot , knocked knees etc are checked. Well this test requires you to divest of your clothes, it would seem funny , but actually this all feeling vanishes as soon as you are being checked.

So since we were a bit late our conference was scheduled for the next day. All the files of the candidates were compiled, completed and all the test results were included in the dossier.At last when all the files were completed , we were sent to the President of AFCME, who called us one by one and declared the results which was either you are medically fit to fly or whatever problem was found it was told.

In our group some of the problem which caused them to be declared TR(temporary unfit) were fracture in spine, anemia, too much angle in elbow, eyes sight problem. Since in every case of TR you are given an opportunity to appear before an Appeal Board. In this case you have to submit application for Appeal to Air HQ and then in a week or so you get the date to appear for the Appeal Board in Army R& R Hospital.

So once I was done with the Medical Board, now all is done for joining AFA.

PWM generation in BeagleBoard

2010-04-30T14:17:00.005+05:30

My primary interest to make a robot centred around BeagleBoard is incomplete without generating PWMs to control DC motors and Servos. Since Beagleboard has all what it takes to make a robot, I am not going to be bothered to have a microcontroller to aid Beagleboard.

My requirement is like this - say an image processing algorithm is running on Beagleboard, and at end of every iteration I want to update the speed of motors by changing the PWM values. In the meantime when the Vision algorithm is running, the board should keep on generating the PWM until it's value is changed.

It started with searching the community for info and this post is quite helpful. this one also is quite helpful. When I first tried all sort of permutations and combinations according to these information, it just didn't work. The file in which we are supposed to write the values like direction, value would give no write excess error. This problem was due to drivers not loaded i.e. this problem got solved when we compiled a new kernel with drivers of TPS320* which handles these IO functionalities.

Now the basic checks like making a pin high or low starts to work. To make a code to suits the above requirement, we went ahead with multi-threading. one thing to just remind here is that, in Linux these port operations are done through writing and reading appropriate files.

So here are the two files new_main.c and waveform.c

new_main.c

#include < stdio.h >
#include < string.h >
#include < stdlib.h >
#include < pthread.h >
#include < time.h >
#include < fcntl.h >
#include < sys types.h="" >
#include < sys stat.h="" >
#include"waveform.c"

time_info pwm_times;
time_info pwm_times2;

int main()
{
    int i=0,j,k,l;

    pthread_t threadid;
    pthread_t threadid2;

    pwm_times.time_h=0;
    pwm_times.time_l=0;

    pwm_times2.time_h=0;
    pwm_times2.time_l=0;

    pthread_create(&threadid,NULL,pwm,(void*)&pwm_times);
    pthread_create(&threadid2,NULL,pwm2,(void*)&pwm_times2);
    while(1)
    {
        for(l=0;l<1000;l++)
        {

          // Your main code runs here

            for(j=0;j<1000;j++)
            {
                for(i=0;i<1000;i++)
                {}
            }
           // Your code ends here

           // Update values of PWM
            pwm_times.time_h=(300000+l*1000);
            pwm_times.time_l=(300000-l*1000);

            pwm_times2.time_h=(600000-l*1000);
            pwm_times2.time_l=(600000+l*1000);
        }
    }
}

In the above code, in new_code.c the main algorithm will be running in place of the three nested for loops.
We have created two threads one for each pwm, and created a structure having parameters time_h and time_l denoting high time and low time. Whenever we want to change the value of PWM we change the value of these two parameters.

Once each iteration of the algorithm completes, we change the value of time_h and time_l for both the PWMs.


waveform.c

#include < stdio.h >
#include < pthread.h >
#include < time.h >
#include < fcntl.h >
#include < sys/types.h >
#include < sys/stat.h >

typedef struct
{
    long int time_h;
    long int time_l;
}time_info;

void *pwm(void* pwm_times)
{
    FILE *fs;
    int i=0;
    char ch;
    struct timespec pwm_delay;
    time_info *pwm_ptr=(time_info*)pwm_times;

    fs=fopen("/sys/class/gpio/gpio168/value","w");
    while(1)
    {
        fputc('0',fs);
        fgetc(fs);
        pwm_delay.tv_sec=0;
        pwm_delay.tv_nsec=pwm_ptr->time_l;
        nanosleep(&pwm_delay,NULL);

        fputc('1',fs);
        fgetc(fs);
        pwm_delay.tv_sec=0;
        pwm_delay.tv_nsec=pwm_ptr->time_h;
        nanosleep(&pwm_delay,NULL);
    }
    fclose(fs);
}

void *pwm2(void* pwm_times2)
{
    FILE *fs;
    int i=0;
    char ch;
    struct timespec pwm_delay;
    time_info *pwm_ptr=(time_info*)pwm_times2;

    fs=fopen("/sys/class/gpio/gpio183/value","w");
    while(1)
    {
        fputc('0',fs);
        fgetc(fs);
        pwm_delay.tv_sec=0;
        pwm_delay.tv_nsec=pwm_ptr->time_l;
        nanosleep(&pwm_delay,NULL);

        fputc('1',fs);
        fgetc(fs);
        pwm_delay.tv_sec=0;
        pwm_delay.tv_nsec=pwm_ptr->time_h;
        nanosleep(&pwm_delay,NULL);
    }
    fclose(fs);
}

in waveform.c we perform the toggling of pin ON-OFF manually in the code by writing to the file named value. [Beware that before even executing the program you have to do some initialisation manually which have not been done in code, these are mentioned at the end]

Since these are multithreaded files the compilation is doen by
gcc new_main.c -lpthread

Initialisation needed Before Executing
You need to do the following things:-
1. Create directory for your IO pin/s
2. Set its direction (as output in our case)

For 1st go to the directory /sys/class/gpio . In here issue the command
echo "168" > export

this will create the directory gpio168, giving you access to GPIO168 which is pin number 24, according to RevC3. Similarly do the same for GPIO183 which is pin number 23.

Now for step 2, go to the directory gpio168 and issue command
echo "out" > direction

this declares the GPIO168 as output pin.
Do the same with GPIO183.

Now your pin no 23 and 24 are ready to generate the PWM according to the code. The waveform that you should get is dutycycle changing from 50% to 100% in one pin and from 50% to 0% in other pin.

Now once the PWM are up, we need an interfacing circuit to connect there 1.8V waveform to motor drivers like L293D. So here we can use Optoisolator like MCT2 etc.

Obviously there might be other better methods to use the in-built PWM functionality, but I am still not conversant with them.

This Post possibly will be the last post on Beagleboard and related Tech. topics, since a different line of work awaits me.

1 AFSB Dehradun

2010-03-23T20:41:00.000+05:30

Group Picture - Candidate Mess (1AFSB Dehradun)

A lot of children dream of flying a fighter jet, its just that only a handful set out to achieve this goal. And in this pursuit you have to encounter Indian Air Force Service Selection Boards(AFSB).

I got my chance to undo my failure in NDA five years back at 4AFSB Varanasi. I had to attend AFSB for CDSE at 1AFSB Dehradun. This post just relays my views with a lot of speculations, what works for one doesn't translate for another.

Just when you move from Haridwar towards Dehradun on train a wind of cold and rich air hits you in the face, the quietness of the forest trees of the hills just appears like a wonder to person accustomed to the noise of the city crowd. Soon the fertile fields carved in the lap of hills with all sort of crop growing comes up on the landscape. All this beauty and serenity of the place fills you up with an energy and hope.

We reported at the designated place outside Railway Station , and I could see around 100 people. The Air Force bus took us to the board. After the OIC-Call up addressed the candidates , we were led into to fill some forms, after that the documents were verified and chest numbers distributed. Since some people had cleared PABT/INSB we were led off to Candidates Mess while the freshers were send off to testing. In the meantime we guys sat in the Sun and chatted. One among us was an Airman and he had a lot of tales to tell about the life of an airmen. When the other guys returned, then we had our Lunch and all the people were assigned rooms. We retired for the day since the Screening Test were due next day.
During our chat in the afternoon, I was filled with a bit apprehension about clearing the screening. To me screening appeared just normal, but a lot of talk by the guys like about half of the people to be screened out sort of made me a bit wary of my chances.

Next day lot of guys waked up real early and then wondered what to do till the breakfast is served at 6:00 am !! In the testing first we had OIR(Officers Intelligence Rating) tests, which are a bunch of same booklets since 1970. The test is pretty simple with Verbal and Non-Verbal Questions. It went well and then we were send back to candidates mess to wait for PP and DT(Picture Perception and Description Test) to start.
We were made a group of 10 people and the picture shown to us was a Big smoke in the background with a poor looking man standing and a women and man crouching in the fields. We wrote our stories and then were led to a small room for the GD on it. Soon 3 evaluators came and asked us to narrate our stories one by one and then let the group discuss and come to a conclusion. While the individual narration was going on, I tried to scribble down main points from all stories, hoping it would help in summation. The point I noticed in GD was that obviously everyone tries to say his stuff, but the guy who can direct the discussion of the group by saying like " Lets first decide the age and mood of characters", shows the skills of holding the group together. So try to put forward the points which acts as sub topics of discussion, so that the group can move along these lines, like "Lets first decide the age and mood of characters", "Now what caused the smoke or Fire", "What is the response of the Hero", " What qualities did the hero show by his action", these kind of guidance to the group will definitely be a good performance from you.

We returned back and waited for the results. Soon our DSO(Duty Selection Officer) came and started calling names of people screened in. I knew they will call in DOB order with freshers first and then repeaters, but the wait and anticipation was a bit tough. Finally around half were screened out and we were left with 47 people for the next 3 days.

There was a feeling that we could have the Psych tests on the same day and it turned out to be true. Personally I did not like that because I sort of wanted to have a preparation of Self-Appraisal before I go through it, but now I had no choice.
Just after lunch we were led into the projection room to start with PPDT, WAT, SRT and Self-Appraisal tests. It seemed that the Board had just converted to a automated Software for these tests, but the people were not quite conversant with the usage of the whole system, so we got quite some time between different pictures to write a story.
In PPDT there were 12 pictures like two friends sitting on a Mango tree, a boy opening and Almirah, a boy in in a boat in middle of storm in open sea, a boy siting in a library, a boy following a dark figure in the street etc and the last one was blank. I had not planned this before but as soon as the first picture was shown I got an idea and almost all the stories that I wrote were really me. I just put myself into the situation and wrote the story. Like the friends on Mango tree - one friend asks the other one not to steal and not to injure himself by jumping , the second one - small boy find bad things in his brothers Almirah and stop his bad habits, third one - a boy set out to sail around the world and succeeds and so on. The basic idea being any picture whatever it may be should not reflect a negative idea.
WAT as such is a bit hectic and it is recommend to do a practice of it to make sure you can write fast enough and legibly at the same time. The rule of WAT is that each sentence should reflect your idea about the word not a descriptive sentence, so that the psychologist can understand your personality.
In SRT, I had read somewhere that for any situation who have three options - attack the problem, withdraw form the situation and last one compromise. Again answer behaving like you are a good helping citizen. Going good till it is required and then minding your own business.
Self-Appraisal is the part in which you write about yourself from the view of your friend, parents, teachers and your own view, what would you like to improve in yourself and what are your aim in life.

Maybe doing too much preparation of the last component can lead to a divide between the conclusion about your personality derived by the psychologist from the first three sections and what you are telling about yourself from the last section. Just have in mind what the above persons really think about you and don't overdo this by adding a lot of bogus things but a few negative traits could easily be skipped.

We were quite tired till the time this whole thing got over and it was also late, so everybody just roamed around here and there or played the indoor games , some watched TV etc. Some time later the schedule for the next day was put and I was a quite happy to find that I had nothing the next day, meaning the whole day off. Some people had Interview starting others had Group tasks lined up.
Before our Dinner started the DSO again turned up and we were handed two copies of PIQ(Personal Information Questionnaire) to be filled. The form is basically about your Education, family , Hobbies, Achievements, Previous SSB attempts etc. It goes without saying that honest is the first thing that you should keep in mind while filling the PIQ, because one copy of it goes to Interviewing Officer(IO) and other copy goes to maybe Psychologist.
After dinner we watched some TV and slept a bit late and also waked up late.

During the Call-In the next morning I got confused seeing people in full Formal Dress for the interview, ranging from Full Sleeves Shirt, with a Matching trouser and Laced Shoes and thrown on top a good looking tie with a shining belt around the waist. Now to be frank I sort of half expected that but way in no way prepared for this. There I was with one formal Trouser and nothing else from the above list. My problems increased when we were told that people who had no task could have interview if the current one got over early. I tried to Book Out as soon as possible but that did not happen and finally the time just passed by and I was out of danger for the day.
As soon as the testing for the day was over we booked out for the first time and went out to explore the town. The first stop was the Tibetan Buddhist Temple , which is at a walking distance from AFSB. The temple was really good, the garden surrounding on all sides was nicely laid out, inside the temple all the possible wall spaces were covered with painting from the Buddhist Mythology, just as we had entered there were preperation being made for the evening prayers. The prayers are a spectacle in themself. The low humming voice of head priest , something like pronouncing a single syllabi creates a environment of meditation, then periodically the drums type instruments are hit softly producing a sound further reinforcing the sacredness of the rituals. It was really a place to see and the realization that the ancient tradition of Tibetan Buddhist is continuing unhindered and peacefully in India , thousands of miles away from the native place of The Forbidden Palace - Lhasa, just says how great our Nation is after all.
Sometime soon I started off to Paltan Market in search to buy some Formal Dress and Shoes, for the intending Interview. It was then I noticed that in Dehradun the ratio of females seems much higher as compared to any other metro, city or town I had been to. In this city it being the state capital there are many Colleges and a lot of boys and girls from several places come here to study and this contribute a lot to the young crowd in all the places in Dehradun.

After coming back we looked up our schedule for the next day and I had the bulk of activities, starting with Interview at 8:00 am , then Group Tasks from 10:30am. From the other guys it was found that one of the Interview was basically about PIQ form that we had was asking questions like you your friends, your friends view about you, etc. Though I should have prepared answers for these but I didn't. After dinner all of the people in our room got together for a kind of mock GD. It was more fun that discussion and we had regular uncontrollable bouts of laughter thrown in now and then. Our Airmen guy had major roles in the whole thing and one of his incident was that in any discussion that he had nothing to say, he would say "Gentlemen, I think this is because of the lack of Education". To maintained sanity of discussion we asked him not to say that in the GD or else we would all be rolling in laughter in front of GTO.

The next morning I got ready to face the Interview and with a borrowed Tie and Shoes dressed up smartly and raring to go. At 7:40am the peon called my Chest Number, and led me to the office of IO. Now the schedule time was 8am but fortunately I was ready before the call came. On reaching the office , I was asked to sit down outside on a chair and my documents including resume were sent inside. A minute later I was called and we exchanged pleasantries and then once I was comfortable, the IO started asking questions. The very first one was a rapid fire. I was asked about my education, what all subject I studied, which one I liked most, which one I disliked most , my favorite professor, one professor which I did not like, what were my extracurricular activities etc. I tried remembering all these but while answering I forgot a few. Once I had stopped, the IO asked is that all and then repeated the questions that I had missed. Then he asked about my friends, what do they have opinion about me, what do they do , how do I spend my free time on a normal day , on a holiday etc.
Somehow though I am not convinced about the effectiveness of this method, It seems that when you are asked about opinion of other people, what you say reflect your own personality.
Later he asked my views on Telangana issue and the Women Reservation bill. With a little more chit-chat, he wrapped up the Interview and send we off warmly. The whole thing lasted around 40 minutes and I was quite satisfied overall.

After this we kitted up in PT overalls for the GT of the day.First task at hand was Group Discussion and Military Planning.
In first GD, the GTO(Group Task Officer) gave us two topics - India's Participation in International Summit - useful exercise of waste of exchequer money and The breaking Social fabric of Indian Families. We agreed on the first topic and the discussion started. My group was quite knowledgeable so points kept flowing, I was also active in the contribution and since all were give arguments how the participation was a good thing, to explore the other side, I presented some counter points. I feel that usually in GDs there are always some angel or some points which are not covered and this gives a good opportunity to make your mark.
The second GD was on Riots because of Anti-social elements, judiciary failure or (something ....), the GD went on as the previous one, just when the discussion was going on as usual, our Airmen guy popped up and said "Gentlemen , I think this is because of lack of education". There was a silence for a second, I looked around to see any signs of smiles breaking out, but fortunately people holded on and a tragedy was averted :).
Next came Military Planning , in which we were given a sand model of some villages and a situation to avert like, a hurt tractor driver, prevent a robbery, stop a train and get back to hostel by time. Everybody wrote down their solution to the problem and then we were given the 10 minutes to discuss and come up with a common solution.
The discussion started I immediately knew that other people had nice ideas so rather then pitching up my own ideas I tried to moderate by first pointing all the situations to solve, how to solve each one of them and how many men to depute for each task. Apparently finally at the end, some people were of the view that the Military Planning was ok, others said that maybe everybody got exited because of me, well so this test also ended and we were led to the PGT (Progressive Group Task). Since it was quite late that day we were only able to finish this.
Before the PGT, GTO gave us a piece of advice that whatever ideas, you come up with go through them completely and don't waste time in new idea. The general rule of engagements, I had got from the books is that just keep in the front, be active, volunteer for anything, if you are not getting the ideas, then support the ideas of others.
In the PGT, when we started it is usually the general perception that the guy who first gets hold of the Plank or balli will put them together and get up on the front in the obstacles, but I noticed that the guy in our group who was in the forefront was not really implementing his ideas, or proposing one, he was just doing what other guys were deciding, so that kind of thing does not really help. One guy was always in the end , just not happy that the whole group was just doing what everyone was wishing. I was not really getting all the ideas,so I just kept going along the group, sometime in front , sometime at the back and continuously doing something or supporting others and so on.
Accidentally at the end of very first PGT one of our guy jumped and his foot landed at an angle and it swelled pretty badly so he was out for the rest of PGTs. The guy was immediately send away in Ambulance for Medical Care.
We people somehow finished the PGT and were left off for the day.

In our Batch we had a lot of guys from Punjab, these guys were a real fun, though most of the time we didn't understand the jokes in Punjabi , but still it was a great fun in the company of these guys. When people talk a lot of speculations and experiences of the guys who have attended earlier are shared. Like the Interview of one of the guy was taken by the President of the selection board itself, it turns out that maybe the guy who scored really good in the OIR, is interviewed by the President. We have had several anecdotes like someone told that there was one guy, who in his Group Task was given to dispose a mock bomb, since the task was not complete and the time was about to get over, this guy say to the group "Gentleman, everybody like down , the bomb is about to explode" , well that definitely shows presence of mind and taking good initiative. We got to know that the officers who do really well in there SSBs only get a chance to become GTOs or IO later in their service. Since one of our fella had got injured , we felt that the people who still hold out and do their tasks have a much higher chance of getting Recommended from the GTO. Our guy showed courage and managed to do his Command Task and some Individual Obstacles and that got him through.Though it is believed that the three evaluators GTO, Interviewer and Psychologists don't talk about the candidates before conference, but we found out that to the contrary when our GTO asked one of the guy, why did he ask a particular question to the Interviewing Officer !!

The next day we were to complete with our Group Task ie Command Tasks, Lecturate, Individual Obstacles and Final Group Task.
We started off with Command Tasks. Before my turn cam I was called as helper by two guys, this gave me some idea about the tricks of doing the tasks, and also how the GTO evaluates. One of the speculation by guys was that people who get hard Command Task are being evaluated closely by the GTO and have a good chance. In the command task, the GTO puts a constraint and keeps of changing the situation like the rope is not there or the support is given or the balli is broken etc. The trick is that just proceed with what you have got, just standing frozen does not give a good impression to the GTO. And it is definitely a good idea if you utilize your helper as most as you can, but I have seen people doing quite a lot of work in their own command task. A grave mistakes I committed was that I was helping a lot more that the guy was asking me to, and on this the GTO cautioned me. In my own Command task, I was called up and the GTO asked a few questions about me and then the task started. I started off well with giving clear instructions to my helpers, then the GTO cautioned me that I was breaking a lot of rules(maybe he wanted me to come under stress) and then he also scolded me on one of the approach I was taking, I went on the next approach without any pressure or getting worried, with a little hit and trial I achieved the goal and that was the end of it.

The next task was Lecturate, we each were given a time of 3 minutes to prepare our thoughts on a topic and the speak for 3 minutes. For me it did not really go off well. I deduced that to give a good Lecturate, just think a brief introduction of the topic, 5 pro points and 5 cons point. Then the most important thing, whatever you say , speak short sentences so that you put your point across well rather than trying to speak a lot and ending up speaking quickly which nobody end up understanding.
After this came the 10 Individual obstacles, my strategy was start with the toughest and with maximum marks , so I started off with Rope climbing , tiger jump, burma bridge, monkey crawl and so on complete 7 obstacles worth 44 points. Later heard some guys did all 10 obstacles in the 3 minutes , so that's also achievable.
But after the Individual Obstacles everybody was dead tired with air pumped out of their lungs still the GTO called us up for the Final Group Task(FGT), since none of us was in a condition to talk a lot , we progressed mechanically with what we were supposed to do and the task was completed with everybodys satisfaction.

With this our SSB testing got over, except for the Conference the next day. We booked out and decided to visit a "Tankeshawar Temple". In the evening when we returned back our DSO cautioned us to take good rest for tomorrow and be ready for the Conference. His advice was to maintain a sense of mind and give proper answer to the questions of the Board.

The next day we were once again dressed up in formal clothes and ready to face the music :).
All of were made to sit in the conference room and waited till our turn came to be presented before the Board consisting of The Board President, all the GTOs, IOs, 2 or 3 psychologists, in total about 8-9 people. Slowly one by one the candidates were called to face the board. All of us knew that if you are not asked anything in general and just pleasantries are exchanged then either you are in or out, but in case you are asked questions like SRTs or some other dimensions, then you are a border-case, with these questions, the Board want to get a clear idea about some of the doubtful areas of your personality.

Finally after due wait, my turn came. Somehow wearing Formal Dress bring out the smart person in me and I was quite confident with a bit of pride that I will be ok. I went into the room and wished the Board a Good Morning and stood still. It was just a mere second after which the President asked me to take my chair, but that small time difference does show your etiquette. Surprisingly I was not able to just have a glance at all the members of the board. All I could see in my Tunnel vision was the President and the OIC. Once seated the OIC immediately came straight to the point and started asking a few personal questions like give an instance when in Leadership role, you made decisions contrary to other people ideas ...., name some of your good friends, why did you not play lot of sports and so on. Then I was asked about my group, was the Group Task difficult or the Group was difficult etc. I once remember that when I had answered one such question, the OIC looked at my GTO, maybe I had given a proper reply to a question about which my GTO had doubts about me. My conference ended and I came out without too much hope or any letdown.

We all sat together with the guys waiting for the Conference to end and the results to come. Some time later the DSO came with a piece of paper. We Falled In and then after a bit of usual talk, the DSO announced the names of people who passed in PABT/INB. Most of the guys had cleared but still a few didn't. Then finally the Big Moment arrived and he started announcing the Chest No of people recommended. It is funny to remember that I was blank minded till the time my Chest No was called. I walked to join the people who had been Recommended. Though I had quite expected it, that feeling to pump in the air, feeling overjoyed did not happen to me. I was very normal and surprised about being this way also. Maybe somewhere at the back of my mind the fear of getting struck in Medical was present. I didn't wanted any premature celebration. Then when the DSO went back, we congratulated each other and our mates who didn't make it. In total 16 Guys were recommended that day :), the people ranging from freshers to one guys in his 12th attempt.

We picked up our belongings and moved to fills documentations. I knew it would take a long time, but this long ? We started the process at around 2:30 pm and were finally done at 8:30 pm !!! In between this we had to fill a few dozen forms and declarations.

Finally before we were led off, the OIC addressed all the candidates. I was feeling a bit uncomfortable why I was not very excited, but it was soon to go away, when the OIC said "Take care of yourself, your life is more valuable to the Nation now, now you are almost a National Property !!! " that statement made my day :) :) :).

Before being led off to the Bus Stand, we were handed over a gift of a T-Shirt with Su-30MKI poster on it :D :D and dinner packets to eat.

This is how this memorable event ended. Just wishing to clear Medical Examination and be on my way to Airforce Academy(AFA), which is incidentally in Hyderabad itself.

Internet over USB-OTG on BeagleBoard using NAT

2010-03-22T12:20:00.000+05:30

Firefox working in BeagleBoard

NAT stands for Network Address Translation. This concept allows to route a packet with changed address header so that the packet can be transported from one network to another.

Here is how it works for BeagleBoard.

Power up the BeagleBoard and connect it to your host computer using USART using minicom.
once you have logged in, enable g_ether.ko driver by

# cd /lib/modules/2.6.29-omap1/kernel/drivers/usb/gadget/
# insmod g_ether.ko

Now the driver is enabled. Now connect the USB-OTG cable between beagleboard and host computer. Configure the connection as follows:-

# ifconfig usb0 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0
# route add default gw 192.168.1.5
# vi /etc/resolv.conf
    Add hostIP as nameserver, your hostIP will be 192.168.1.5 as explained later
    -> nameserver 192.168.1.5

# export http_proxy="http://192.168.36.204:8080"

the last step set the variable to our local proxy and port number , change this according to the connection on your host machine.

On the Host computer:-

# ifconfig usb0 192.168.1.5 netmask 255.255.255.0
# sudo vi /etc/sysctl.conf
   uncomment the line   net.ipv4.ip_forward=1 , to enable forwarding of packets.
# sudo sysctl -p
# sudo cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
   to check that the change has been made and routing is enabled
# sudo iptables --table nat --append POSTROUTING --out-interface eth0 -j MASQUERADE
# sudo iptables --append FORWARD --in-interface usb0 -j ACCEPT

This will establish the connection of beagleboard to the internet. Test the connection using ping command.

Now you can realise the power of opkg and install the packages, driver directly from the repositories

VNC, Self-Powered USB Hub & Squid(?) for BeagleBoard

2010-01-25T23:00:00.003+05:30

Once the Ethernet over USB between your System and BeagleBoard is established , it is time to see the BeagleBoard Desktop first hand.

Download and install some VNC utility(Virtual Network Client) TigerVNC in my case.

Launch VNC , and in the window in which it asks for address for VNC Server , enter the IP of BeagleBoard i.e. in our case 192.168.1.1 .

Since I still don't have a Powered USB Hub in place for hooking up keyboard or mouse, after connecting the BeagleBoard through VNC, I connect the DVI-D connector to the LCD Monitor.

This arrangement is as good as it gets :)

The only bottom side is that the connection hangs up once we try to transfer a large file.

ScreenShot of VNC on Fedora Desktop

My USB Hub Attempts

Wanting to connect keyboard and mouse to BeagleBoard, the first attempts to directly plug USB Optical Mouse didn't even power up the LED on the bottom of mouse, signifying the insufficient power being supplied to the Mouse.
To supply enough juice to the Mouse, I made a small PCB , in which the USB connection coming from the BeagleBoard is connected to USB wires of the device as follows:-

USB from BeagleBoard          USB of Device               Status of the connection

GND                                     GND                           Connected
D+                                        D+                           Connected
D-                                          D-                        Connected
Vcc                                       Vcc                       Not Connected

[ The Vcc of the device is powered through external 5V, and the Vcc from BeagleBoard is left unconnected]

But unfortunately this also does not seems to produce any results apart from displaying the message

Device Not enumerated

I can only speculate here that maybe, the high Speed USB Host is not enumerating the Low Speed USB Device ?

Using Squid to provide internet Connectivity to BeagleBoard(?)

Once the connection to Laptop through USB is established, I reasoned that if I could configure my Laptop as a proxy server for the BeagleBoard , then it would be possible to provide Internet connection to BeagleBoard through my Laptop. Thinking on these lines , I found Squid Proxy Server to be a tools to do just that. After investing a lot of time making change in the config file of Squid , Now it seems that Squid can't possibly do this sort of networking , since the Laptop and BeagleBoard are on a seperate network.
Sigh !!Sigh !! , I do have to purchase a USB dongle .

..

Ethernet over USB-OTG for BeagleBoard

2010-01-25T22:32:00.001+05:30

Once Beagleboard is up and running with Angstrom OS and a serial port connectivity , we next turn to get ethernet connectivity over the USB OTG cable.

You will need a USB Type-A to USB Type-A mini connector for this purpose.

Configuring in the BeagleBoard
After you have logged in as root, go to directory /lib/modules/2.6.29-omap1/kernel/drivers/usb/gadget .
In this you will find a driver named g_ether.ko. At this point of time issue command

root@beagleboard:/lib/modules/2.6.29-omap1/kernel/drivers/usb/gadget# lsmod
Module Size Used by
g_ether 29376 0
ircomm_tty 36148 0
ircomm 21292 1 ircomm_tty
irda 186816 2 ircomm_tty,ircomm
ipv6 275228 12

This will tell you the driver currently loaded. If you don't find the module g_ether in the above output, then you need to load this driver to enable Ethernet over USB OTG.

root@beagleboard:/lib/modules/2.6.29-omap1/kernel/drivers/usb/gadget# insmod g_ether.ko
[ 218.496032] g_ether gadget: using random self ethernet address
[ 218.503570] g_ether gadget: using random host ethernet address
[ 218.534881] usb0: MAC 26:25:a1:4e:cf:55
[ 218.565948] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): usb0: link is not ready
[ 218.572082] usb0: HOST MAC ae:c2:3b:52:78:5a
[ 218.587066] g_ether gadget: Ethernet Gadget, version: Memorial Day 2008
[ 218.627716] g_ether gadget: g_ether ready
[ 218.632476] musb_hdrc musb_hdrc: MUSB HDRC host driver
[ 218.654815] musb_hdrc musb_hdrc: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2
[ 218.694671] usb usb2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 218.722137] hub 2-0:1.0: USB hub found
[ 218.739471] hub 2-0:1.0: 1 port detected

This will load the driver.

Now go back to root and configure the Ethernet connection of your BeagleBoard.
In the BeagleBoard Validation site it is adviced that the IP address be set to 192.168.1.1 and netmask be set to 255.255.255.0 , we do this here

root@beagleboard:/# ifconfig 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0

Configuring Your System

[root@shubham shubham]# ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:19:B9:5F:09:A2
inet addr:10.2.36.221 Bcast:10.2.36.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::219:b9ff:fe5f:9a2/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:113982 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:28358 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:35000144 (33.3 MiB) TX bytes:5238712 (4.9 MiB)
Interrupt:17

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:24 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:24 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:1520 (1.4 KiB) TX bytes:1520 (1.4 KiB)

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:19:D2:BC:26:38
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

wmaster0 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-19-D2-BC-26-38-A1-D1-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

This will show you the network devices active, here we don't see a USB0(which will represent the connection to BeagleBoard )
Once you have configured the connection in BeagleBoard , then issue 'ifconfig' command , you will find one more device

usb0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 4A:00:09:5E:78:15
inet6 addr: fe80::4800:9ff:fe5e:7815/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:5 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:2056 (2.0 KiB) TX bytes:670 (670.0 b)

Now configure this device by the command

[root@shubham shubham]# ifconfig usb0 192.168.1.5 netmask 255.255.255.0

This will lead to an Ethernet over USB OTG being established, to test your connection ping any of the devices.

[root@shubham shubham]# ping 192.168.1.1
PING 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.536 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.482 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.479 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.354 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=0.355 ms
^C
--- 192.168.1.1 ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 4882ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.354/0.441/0.536/0.074 ms

This checks that you connection is good.
You can send file to-and-fro BeagleBoard – your System using ssh command like :

[root@shubham shubham]# ssh test.txt root@192.168.1.1:

..

Serial Port Setup in BeagleBoard

2010-01-25T22:25:00.000+05:30

[Italics shows the actual commands]

After the Memory Card has been formatted and Angstrom OS files loaded , it is time to configure the Serial Port connection to your Laptop.

We need Serial-to-USB Adapter like the one using PL-2303 from Prolific Inc. In latest Linux distribution the driver of PL-2303 is provided and is loaded automatically on detecting the device.

Also we need a 10 pin Flat Cable to connect to 10 pin box Serial connector on the BeagleBoard.

To connect the 10 pin Flat Cable to Serial-USB Adapter we made a small PCB.

The connection are as follows -

BeagleBoard Serial Port Connector

Pin No – 2(RxD) Pin No - 3(TxD)

Pin No – 3 (TxD) Pin No - 2(RxD)

Pin No – 5(Gnd) Pin No - 5(Gnd)

The PCB for connecting 10-pin connector to DB9 and the powered USB device arrangement which didn't work :(

After connecting the USB connector of Serial-USB Adapter in your Laptop , it is time to configure the virtual serial port.

[root@shubham shubham]# dmesg

......

pl2303 ttyUSB1: pl2303 converter now disconnected from ttyUSB1

......

This will give a long output and among them try to find the line which has the mention of PL2303. This tells us that the name of serial device is ttyUSB1 .

Use a serial port utility like Minicom (you can install that on Fedora system using Yum )

Open the Serial Port Setup

[root@shubham shubham]# minicom -s

+-----[configuration]------+

| Filenames and paths |

| File transfer protocols |

| Serial port setup |

| Modem and dialing |

| Screen and keyboard |

| Save setup as dfl |

| Save setup as.. |

| Exit |

| Exit from Minicom |

+--------------------------+

Select option Serial Port Setup by using cursor.

Change the name of Serial port device to represent /dev/ttyUSB1,which was found using dmesg command. Make the other setting of Baud Rate, number of bits, one error bit by setting it to 115200 8N1

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

| A - Serial Device : /dev/ttyUSB1 |

| B - Lockfile Location : /var/lock |

| C - Callin Program : |

| D - Callout Program : |

| E - Bps/Par/Bits : 115200 8N1 |

| F - Hardware Flow Control : No |

| G - Software Flow Control : No |

| |

| Change which setting? |

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

Save these settings and exit.

Now Launch the Minicom using

[root@shubham shubham]# minicom

Serial Connection to BeagleBoard

Now power up the BeagleBoard and you will see the Booting up:-

Notes :-

We observed that USB OTG does not always supply sufficient power so if the booting fails again and again . Try using DC power using Barrel Connector. But make sure it is exactly 5V.
An indication of BeagleBoard being booted properly is that LEDs USR0 and USR1 keeps glowing intermittently.

..

Installation - Fedora 11, ffmpeg, OpenCV

2010-01-14T04:55:00.003+05:30

Before starting with Computer Vision , I had to install OpenCV on my Laptop.
I decided to reformat my whole dual-boot OS , installing Vista after backing up my data was a straight deal. Then I installed Fedora - 11 on a different partition.
The slightly tricky thing in the otherwise simple Fedora installation is getting yum working. In my case I was able to connect to internet directly but on running
# yum list all
I continuously got error like
# [Errno 4] IOError : < urlopen error (111, 'Connection refused') >

after looking around a bit on forums and making changes in these files /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora.repo and /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo as given here
as well as changing the /etc/hosts file to include the extra mirror sites.
In my case I added the mirror site of IIT-K as it being the nearby server.
But the same error persisted, some more searching and a quick-fix to the problem was found. The problem being of yum being not able to access the servers through default proxy server, hence to just correct the proxy problem, we do
# export http_proxy=xxx.xxx.xx.xxx:8080

So this finally worked and Yum started to install. later I added the proxy setting in .bashrc file.

Now for OpenCV, FFmpeg is to be installed before that. Since I had a new installation of Fedora , so first I installed gcc and gcc-c++ compiler through Yum , to be able to install FFmpeg & OpenCV. The process of installation of later is as follows(Courtsey: Gaganpreet)

[ the ftp is on IIIT's Intranet , so is not accessible outside]
A small modification is mentioned at the end of these instructions

wget ftp://10.3.3.52/ffmpeg.tar.bz2ftp://10.3.3.52/opencv-1.0.0.tar.gz
tar xvjf ffmpeg.tar.bz2
cd ffmpeg
mkdir /home/{ffmpeg,opencv}
./configure --prefix=/home/ffmpeg/ --enable-shared
make
make install
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/ffmpeg/lib

wget 
tar xvzf opencv-1.0.0.tar.gz
cd opencv-1.0.0/

./configure --prefix=/home/opencv CXXFLAGS=-fno-strict-aliasing

CFLAGS=-I/home/ffmpeg/include/ CPPFLAGS=-I/home/ffmpeg/include/ LDFLAGS=-L/home/ffmpeg/lib/

make

I got an error at this point

# ../../cxcore/include/cxmisc.h:133:6: error: #elif with no expression

to fix that goto the file /cxcore/include/cxmisc.h, line no 133  and

change the routine to [note the extra +/- sign and else statement added]

#include

#elif defined HAVE_ALLOCA
     #include 
-#elif
+#else
     #error
 #endif

You will get errors like: cvcap_ffmpeg.cpp: cvcap_ffmpeg.cpp: error:
integer constant is too large for 'long' type etc.
For that do:

vim otherlibs/highgui/cvcap_ffmpeg.cpp

Add these two lines to the beginning:

#define INT64_C
#define __STDC_CONSTANT_MACROS

and change this line:
url_fclose(&mywriter->oc->pb);
to
url_fclose(mywriter->oc->pb);

make install


To compile a code now:
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/ffmpeg/lib:/home/opencv/lib    #You can
put this in ~/.bashrc
gcc code.c -lcv -lhighgui -I/home/opencv/include/
-I/home/ffmpeg/include/ -L/home/ffmpeg/lib/ -L/home/opencv/lib/

This will install FFmpeg and OpenCV in your Linux , enjoy :-)

.

DSP CourseWare on HawkBoard ?

2009-11-28T00:46:00.001+05:30

Designing a series of experiments for conducting Lab courses on what theory is taught in basic Signal Processing Courses like Signal and System , Digital Signal Processing , Speech Signal processing at IIIT-Hyd, seems a very interesting idea to me. Right now there is a complete lack of exposure to DSP Processor among students here and so it would be an achievement if we could take initiative to introduce and establish DSP Lab at IIIT and develop in house expertise in working with DSP Processor.

This would also lead students getting exposure to Embedded Linux and playing around with Linux kernel, creating Device Driver, compiling kernel yada yada ...

I clearly favour HawkBoard as the single Platform for such requirements. It has a Floating point DSP Processor and ARM9 core.These will be easier to deal at the beginners level as compared to ARM Cortex8 and Fixed Point DSP processor on Beagle Board. It is as important a fact that HawkBoard has VGA output(so good old Monitors will work with this) , Ethernet connector(an added advantage) and few more things.

But getting this done is quite a task. First of all I have to learn all what have been mentioned above coding for DSP processor to learning conecepts of Embedded Linux and kernels.
From that onwards, designing the experiments and getting the correct documentation is a very tedious task , which I learned the hard way while doing it for Embedded Hardware Design course.

I have posted this proposal for Early Adopters Scheme of Hawk Board. Hope to get one kit and start the interesting journey with Hawk Board.

Btw Hawk Board seems to be available here. The price quote(including local taxes and shipping anywhere in India) I got is Rs 6240/- per Board. This is substantially more that $85 which was the initial estimate by Hawk Team, I hope it soon comes down.

.

.

Optimizing a Software for a Processor

2009-11-25T22:09:00.000+05:30

It came as a sort of surprise to me when I got to know that people actually optimize the performance of their software based on what processor they are using , that means that if we say Matlab is a very optimized s/w , them some one would have painstakingly sat down and coded in assembly the functions or routines that Matlab implements so that what all hardware options and advances are present they are utilized to their core.

Now though I am not very clear about the issue but sometimes companies offer cross-compiler so that a normal person could sit down and writing the routines in popular languages like C , he could cross compile the routines to be more optimized for a particular hardware say a DSP processor.

In upcoming platforms like Beagle Board , Hawk Board , which have a different processor than your PC or Laptop , an application will not be able to make full use of the hardware present if somebody has not optimized it for that processor say TMS300 or ARM 9 .

In case of Intel , it has Integrated Performance Primitives which is a library of optimized functions for different utilities. So is the case with other Processor makers.

Beagle Board Validation - First Contact

2009-11-25T18:33:00.001+05:30

Today the two ordered Beagle Board arrived from IDA Systems through courier(pretty fast service !!).

We(me and Abinesh) sat down to do the most basic Validation Test of the BeagleBoard.

The most basic minimum things required are :-
1. Beagle Board - Rev C3
2. USB OTG - USB cable ( for powering BeagleBoard)
3. DB9 Connector (for connecting to serial port of PC)
4. 10 pin FRC box connector (for connecting to RS232 pins on BeagleBoard)

Luckily I managed to get USB OTG cable from the Nexys-2 FPGA kit.

The above images are USB OTG cable, comparision of OTG and normal USB connector, 10 pin FRC Box connecctor, DB9 connector.

The first thing to test is to power up BeagleBoard, by connecting the OTG connector to the USB OTG connector just on top of 5V DC supply jack and connect the other end to USB Port of PC.

As soon as power is On , PWR Led(D5) glows and after a delay of few seconds , three other Leds glows up(D6,D7,D12).

Press reset switch and see that Led D6,D7 turn Off and after releasing Reset Switch ,turns on after a delay of around 3-4 seconds.

After Power On test , turn off the power by disconnecting the USB from PC , now connect the 10 pin connector to BeagleBoard RS232 pins as shown above.

On the DB9 connector(female) solder pins no 2(Rx), 3(Tx) and 5(gnd). Now connect pin 2,3,5 to pin 2,3,5 on the 10 pin RS232 pins on BeagleBoard.

An easy way to identify pins on RS232 connector is to look for pin marking 1, 2, 9, 10 on Beagle Board.

After making the connection between DB9 connector and 10 pin Box connector, connect the DB9 into Serial Port of PC.

Open Hyperterminal on Windows and set the following settings :-

BAUD RATE - 115200,

DATA - 8 bit,

PARITY- none,

STOP - 1bit,

FLOW CONTROL - none

start the session with the above settings.

Now turn on power and you should see the following appear on Hyperterminal Screen.

This is the most you can do without a SD Card. The main page which has details about Validation of BeagleBoard is here .

Beagle Board Ordered and waiting

2009-11-21T20:33:00.001+05:30

So through Robotics Research Centre I managed to order 2 Beagle Board and also Dell Ultrasharp 1708FP LCD Monitor to hook up to DVI-D connector on Beagle Board.

Right now we have access to one Beagle Board in IIIT-H and till now several things have been tried out like VNC to make use of monitor of PC for displaying the video of Beagle Board.

Once our Beagle Board arrives , I will try to put a lot of documentation on the procedure to follow on Beagle Board

..

Win Free Hawk Board

2009-11-21T19:09:00.004+05:30

Hawk Board community has announced an open contest for Early Adopters. Propose an idea to implement on Hawk Board and you could win your own Hawk Board for free !!!!

Hurry the deadline is 30th November.

Post your proposal here

Hawk Board Community Page

Yes I will apply and hope to grab one of it !!!! :)

USB Bootloader Kit for ATmega16/32

2009-11-05T23:07:00.003+05:30

For working on AVR microcontrollers and particularly if the person is a beginner , it greatly helps if he is shielded from the Hardware or the circuit making aspect for the time being until he gain certain minimum proficiency in programming AVRs.

When this idea of introducing AVR Microcontroller as a new course of Embedded Hardware Design was formulated by Prof RN Biswas based on my request that IIIT already has a legacy of AVR in robotics, so it was required to have a platform which which make this exercise of teaching and doing Lab Experiment on AVR a reality.

Prof RNB is very particular about courses and he takes care that they are structured properly and with indepth planning.
I was already involved in designing the AVR Kits for Robocamp at that time and after seeing its design, he wanted a new design in which only PORTs interconnections and USB link to Laptop is present, so that the breadboarding part is done hands on by the students.

Finally after making lots of layouts of a kit wired around ATMega16 and after taking care o lot of issues, this was the final design of AVR USB Bootloader Kit.

Features:-
1. USB Bootloader enabled, directly dump your hex file into the controller.
2. LCD(removable) connections through Burg Strip.
3. Connections to all PORT pins.
4. ISP connector
5. Powered through USB cable or external power supply.
6. LCD can be powered independently.
7. Slide Switch for enabling Bootloader.
8. LEDs for power & bootloader condition.
9. On Board 12MHz crystal.

The USB Bootloader firmware was avliable at Thomas Fischl(of the USBasp fame) and from Objective Development.
The Bootloader is the USP of this kit.

This kit was designed keeping in mind the experiments that the Students of Embedded Hardware Design, Microprocessor Based System Design and Embedded Systems-1 for UG2, UG3 and PG1-VLSI respectively needs to perform using Atmega16 microcontroller.

The Silkscreen of the circuit is shown

and also the kit in being use during a stepper motor experiment

Back Side of PCB

Front Side of PCB

The Resolution is pretty bad for want of a better Camera, anyways the size of PCB is 10*6 cm.

The base circuit of USB Bootloader Kit for ATmega8 is

For making the kit with ATmega16 , the following changes need to be done in the firmware:
1. Change the D+ & D- pins to what is convenient to your design , though keep D+ to INT0 to avoid major changes in firmware.

2. Change the Bootloader address in the firmware, the compiled code that comes is according to ATmega8 whose memory size is 8KB , so the starting address of the Bootloader program(size 2KB) is 6KB. In case of Atmega16 whose memory size is 16KB , the starting address of Bootloader code 14KB (16KB-2KB).

3. Compile the changed code.

4. Before dumping the Bootloader code into the controller, have a 12MHz crystal connected in circuit and do all three steps together ie setting Fuse bits(High and Low) and writting the Bootloader code.

5. We are using HIDBoot Utility to dump the code into the controller using ISP.

6. In case the procedure is not successful, you can try that again , since the controller does not get bricked.

The Pdf of Layout of USB Bootloader Kit

USB Bootloader Kit User Manual

- Any Queries are most welcome !!! :)

Beagle Board & Hawk Board

2009-10-31T00:03:00.002+05:30

I am sick with writing about that Travel Memories, so something fresh is the need of the hour.

Some months back EFY(Electronics For You) carried an article about Open Source Hardware and Beagle Board was the main focus for that. Since my interest lied in getting a DSP Board for implementing my Final Year Project, so I kept Beagle Board at the back of my mind. Sometime Later when I searched on net about it, I was hooked with this tiny sexy looking board with a ton of features !!!
(Btw I am trying to get access to an Analog DSP Board for the project work)

Beagle Board is a Fan Less Single Board Computer based on TI's OMAP 35x processor.

leaving aside the specs, its clear that this small board 8cm*8cm packs a lot of punch. This offers an opportunity to port a OS on this Board and do all the mouth watering interesting stuffs and Electronics guy would love to do. For me it offers a leap up from the world of Microcontrollers to OS level designs.

As usual after getting hooked up to this, I tried to go through several resources online and found that in India, the cheapest supplier is IDASystems , the present cost being Rs 9K , w/o any thing else other than the board itself.

Later on I digged one more interesting thing - The Hawk Board. This is also a SBC, but based on less powerful OMAP L 138. Right now this board is under development and will be available in near future.

The Best part about Hawk Board is that first it has a VGA port meaning , a normal person need not buy a separate HDMI capable monitor for displaying from Beagle Board, and also it has Ethernet port(RJ45) and the best but not the least it might cost less than half of Beagle Board !!!

But I think if am able to arrange for an HDMI monitor than I am going to buy a Beagle Board soon rather than Hawk Board(since I feel open source support for Beagle Board is more dominant)

I am so much wanting to do some Real Time Image processing on Beagle Board.

Any new developments will be posted :)

Travel - Part 6 - Reching Madurai

2009-10-03T19:49:00.001+05:30

We booked two seats in a 2*2 Pushback type Minibus for getting to Madurai. The minibus was a sort of guided tour as it stopped to some of the Temples in Rameswaram to allow the people to visit them. On the Pamban Bridge the Bus stopped again and hence I got the opportunity to spend some time on the Bridge and more interestingly take some good snaps of this interesting location.

Then the bus started and the rest of the journey was not very consequential and so I just partly slept and partly observed the surrounding , the towns on the way , and the people.

It took around 4 hrs to reach the Madurai and the bus dropped us near the South gate of the Temple.

Travel - Part 5 - Rameswaram

2009-09-04T23:39:00.001+05:30

So here I am at Rameswaram , the most memorable part of this whole journey.

We got down at the railway station at around 9 am and it was really hot at that time, we started walking to the end of the platform like everyone else. There was a sort of union of three wheelers, not to be bothered more we took one auto to be taken to the Ramanathswamy Temple. The auto dropped us near the temple and fortunately we got a balcony room with a wonderful view to the Temple. So after the 56hr journey , I got an opportunity to take a bath !!!!. We got our self all freshened up and then immediately set out for paying our regards to Ramanath Swamy. First we walked towards the Akniteertham, where I made my first contact with the holy sea of Rameswaram. But actually I was a bit disappointed, all through the way I had this image in my mind that i could really find a nice place to swim in the ocean here. But seeing the condition here I was sure that with all the people here taking a holy dip , this was definitely not a place to have a conventional swim in the water. After the holy dip we proceeded in the wet clothes itself towards the temple with the guide who was with us since the hotel. He lead us to the main temple where we paid for bathing in the 22 holy ponds.
One of the unique points of Rameswaram Temple are the 22 wells, each of these ponds is a fresh water well. It was a very different experience to feel the water from these wells , as a matter of fact the taste of water of all of them was different. It is a said that Ramji used water from these well to do Abhishek of Shivling. Some people believe that the water has medicinal value, who knows the combination of water and sun might be what it is believe to be. The way in the temple was bit confusing while going from one pond to another. As a matter of fact the corridor of Ramanathswamy Temple are one of the longest in the country. After the holy bath we had the darshan of Shivlinga as well as the Shivlinga brought by Hanumanji.

I would say that overall the Temple was not a beauty and I was a bit dissappointed when I say it at first. The very first impression on seeing the Temple Gopuram painted all in Yellow color was reducing the the beauty by a large factor. The picture of Meenakshi Temple of Madurai in mind made me assume that the Gopuram will be a piece of workmanship and it will be exquisitely decorated in all sort of colors. Inside also several panels, walls and pillars were unpainted. Though it is one of the CharDham tirth , the lack of beauty was a sore sight in the eyes. I hope that all these works get finished very soon and the temple stands above the Holy Shivling with all the grandeur and pride of Hinduism. Later we came back and had our Lunch at a local Marvadi Restaurant(Marvadi are residents of Rajasthan). I liked taking the food a fulfilling and tasty food after being feed up with Train Pantry Car food.
One very important thing that I did not mention, was that the moment that I say Ocean for the first time , I was longing to have a long and nice swim.(A swim is different from getting yourself wet , which is what I find most of the people doing in our country, I guess most don't know swimming and all they can do is to splash water on one another and jump over the waves !!! and this is what they call bathing in the Ocean). I was now a worried man , all through the visit in the temple I was thinking how could I salvage my situation. I was so determined to do scuba diving(which I had read that Rameswaram is a good place for) that I thought I would give a really hard try before giving up.

So just after our Lunch , I picked up my swimming costume and a towel and set out to what turned out to be a "real adventure". Before setting out for that , I tried asking my hotel guy is there is some place where I could do swimming or scuba diving. I tried hard to ask in a way that would make it sound that my intentions are very decent. But it did not help, the guy said in almost a sarcastic way that these things are not done in Rameswaram and for that you have to go to Chennai or Goa !!!. So I set out alone. The only thing I knew that on Wikimapia a location on the eastern side was marked as "Scuba diving" , so I got the impression that there might be someone who would rent out the snorkeling equipment. So for Agnitheertham I set out on foot to the north.(I remember I started from hotel at around 2 pm). So I was in Capri with a cap on my head , but without a water bottle and no watch or cell phone or a Digicam. So I kept walking on and on. After some distance I saw a foreigner coming from the opposite side, I thought that she might be knowing about the place I was seeking. She had also been trying to find a place to do snorkeling and it was also written in her guide book that it can be done here, she had walked on for about an hour, but found nothing. All she saw was that the fisherman were harvesting some kind of sea weeds and drying them up. It thanked her and started to start my own exploration. I was not happy about the situation that we don't even seem to have proper information dissemination mechanism in place , which could tell the tourists what attractions of the place are available. Soon the road turned away from the beach and so I came off the road and started walking on sand along the beach. It was there that I saw a building which was running some program of Microsoft in collaboration with TN govt. I was satisfied to find that atleast in some places poor people have some support from various agencies.

Well it is a known fact that it is much difficult to walk on sand than that on soil. This beach was rocky with sand in places and there were quite a few thorny bushes populating the beach. On top of it I was wearing sandals, so occasionally hot burning sand with a few minute thorns used to get into my feet and create problem in walking comfortably. Inspite of all this I just wanted to find that place to do scuba diving or to find that there is no such place like that at all. So I thought that I would go till the north most point of the island and then I will be convinced that no such place or facility actually exists. But I missed one point that the island was quite roundly shaped up in the north most point and I did not have compass and the sun was almost overhead , so it was not easy to estimate that you have reached the north most point. I had somehow assumed that when I had reached the north most point , I would be standing on a edge with land on my right and on my left. As I kept walking the water became cleaner and clearer. Now and then occupying a small portion of beach there were fishermen engaged in the activity of harvesting the sea weeds and drying them up. I was bemused to see the fishermen were a bit confused to see a stranger walking pass them. They might be thinking what does this guy what and where is he going to ? ( because they knew there in nothing special out there !!) I kept on walking on and on and mind you that too on sand, after some distance I would find that the beach would turn left and this kept on happening that the beach kept turning after I reached the end of one turn.
The small doubt that I had in my mind that there is really nothing out there so I have to decided sometime to turn back. As time passed several thoughts kept coming to my mind again and again. Some of them were absurd like if I was mugged by some of the locals( I am not a coward but , I could help just thinking about it !!!). Well to clarify nothing of that sort happened and I believe that such an endeavor are totally safe specially in broad day light. My mind was also working on possibilities like that what would happen if I would get dehydrated in this hot sun. These thoughts kept on becoming more and more prominent as I kept pushing forward.
After some point of time I was almost sure that I would not find what I was trying to find , but the driving force was that I should verify myself that if such place do not exist or not. I don't know how long I kept on going since I didn't have a watch on me. Though all through this I had been walking pretty briskly and that to at a constant pace, I was just not feeling tired, but the fear of dehydration was always on back of my mind. So at some place I finally decided that there has to be an end to every idiosyncrasy. I had really came a long way and I knew that it was not possible to go back along the beach itself. I had to get to some village and then find a way back to hotel and that too me being all in 1 piece. I rested in the serene water by wetting my feet for some time then I asked the nearest fisherman the way to city, he showed me the way, a path through thorny bushes.
Till the time i was along beach , i knew I could always walk back and find my way, but the way i was going could get me struck in no where. I kept walking on the marked path , but quite some time did not find even one person anywhere in sight. After walking for some distance I could see a long way away, the Doordarshan tower , but more importantly I also saw a temple on a hillock. I reasoned that in this town of temples , this one might lead me to some means of transport to get back to hotel, so I proceeded in that direction. But it still was a long way away but I had no choice and I kept walking and finally reached the Temple. It was often visited temple. It turned out that this temple was the highest point on this island and it is called Gandamadana Parvath. It is an excellent vantage point and it is said that Ramji took stock of his armies from this point and in the temple there was a foot impression of Ramji's feet in stone. It was only much later that I realized that I had actually walked about 1/3th of the island's coastline. It was easy to get a ride back to my hotel from there. By the time I reached the room, it was around 4:00 pm and all this trip or trekking took only two hours !!! Nonetheless I hit the sack and was deep asleep. I waked up again in two hours and we quickly decided that we will visit the 7 places of attraction in Rameswaram.
There are a lot of three-wheeler guys who easily offer a tour to all of these locations. So to ease our efforts we took one such three-wheeler with a deal to visit all these spots except Dhanushkodi. These places are the Sita, Hanuman Temples, temple with floating stones used in building the SethuSamundram Bridge to allow Ramji to reach Lanka. It hardly took 1 hr for these 5-6 places and we got an opportunity to visit the Ramanathswamy Temple once more. It was like getting lost in a maze, with the very long corridors and the temple dimly lit. Mother got an opportunity to do some shopping in the fancy shops in and around the temple selling lots of articles.

We waked up early the next morning and then quickly went to the Agnitheertham. I knew that we are supposed to do Manidarshan and then take bath and then the darshan of Ramanathswamy Temple. Somehow I assumed that Manidarshan meant seeing the Sun rising and it the first ray of Sun would be like a Mani or a pearl. We waited for quite long and the time kept passing and with nobody really taking a bath we got skeptical, so we now go to the Temple and we got to know that Manidarshan actually means the darshan of a sphatik-mani shivling in the Main temple.
So now a funny part was that, I has read quite clearly that there will be two lines for Mani Darshan, one of Rs 50 and other of Rs 15(something) and very surprisingly the Rs 15 line moves faster than Rs 50 line. I had this in mind but when we say both the line at the ticket counter we found more rush at Rs 15 line as compared to Rs 50 line. So I thought that maybe what I read was wrong and we purchased two Rs 50 tickets and quickly got into the Inner Sactorium, now here was the real deal, since lot of people like us had purchased Rs 50 ticket so there was a long line inside of that and a very short line of Rs 15. We being who we are, we got into the line of Rs 15 and even the ticket checker did not object. With this convenient arrangement, we had a very nice and relaxed Darshan as opposed to a rough treatment the Rs 50 ticket holder were receiving.
Next we went into Agnitheertham and I took a bath and since it was morning, so several energetic youths were enjoying themselves by actually swimming in the ocean. This was my first and as I understood as the Last opportunity to swim in the ocean on this trip, so I also took to the water. Now the reality hit me in the face. I was out of practice with swimming and it was almost a year since I had immersed myself in the pool, and all my dashing desire to go on swimming till I touch the horizon melted away in the vast expense of water within a few strokes. I was grasping for my breath :), so I did my best to satisfy these aquatic desire of mine !!!.

When I was done after about 30 mins, we again went to have a Darshan in the temple. It was nice to finally being able to get into the religious tranquility of the place.

After this we inquired about the bus to Madurai and the only one available left at around 2 pm , so we decided that there is still a lot of time, hence we checked out from our hotel and took a bus to visit Dhanuskodi. Dhanuskodi is about 18 Km from the city and we waited to board the bus to Dhanuskodi. The bus takes about 45 minutes to reach the last point of the motorable road. At this point there is a post with INDIAN NAVY written on it. And on this post there were a few soldiers manning it. At this point we found several jeeps which take tourist to the lands end. Well just to inquire about Dhanuskodi I went to one of the soldiers. HOLY COW !!!!! it turned out the guy was a MARCOS, who on earth would have thought that a very highly trained Indian Marine Commando will be posted on a distant place. It must be a really necessary and of course highly important task. Anyways I don't know what the commando saw , but he kind of presumed I was some officer or something !!!! :P.

We bargained a lot with the jeep guy and finally boarded the jeep. I took a vantage seat on top of the jeep, just before the jeep was about to leave the Navy Post, I tried to take a pic of the Post but the Marcos guy signaled a No. Nobody in there right frame of mind would like to cross their path with a Marcos guy on Duty , so I obliged and put away my cam.

Very soon the jeep was cruising on the sands rather than a metalled or paved road. So the story goes like this that several years back in around 1964 there was a big Tsunami which struck Rameswaram really hard. AT that time Dhanuskodi was a town with even a railway station. At that fateful night there was a train going towards Dhanuskodi Station and very tragically the train with all the occupants was washed away in the fury of nature. Not only this the whole town was washed away along with the Tsunami waves. The Pamban bridge also took a hit but due to some tireless engineering it was back in service within a record time. Since then nobody inhabited the old town again or neither the road or the rail link was restored again. So all the vehicles have to move over the sands to reach the end of land i.e. the last bit of Indian territory. The sand was really thick and the wheels of the jeep were leaving behind about 6 inches deep scars on sand. This piece of land was seemingly like a desert though surrounded on both sides by oceans. Far away we could see human figures like a very thin stick moving in this desert and even farther back in the north the TV tower was still visible though it became fainter and fainter as we moved ahead. Suddenly the jeep stopped and a middle aged women came out and walked towards a group of abandoned and ruined huts and buildings. Somebody told that she was a teacher and she comes here to teach the children who lives in these huts. I was so impressed that a person would actually come all the way here to nowhere and teach the children of fishermen so that they would actually become someone in their lives. The dedication of the teacher and all the people connected with this effort was worth saluting.

We went further ahead and now the two oceans started coming closer together as we forged our way ahead. Finally we reached our destination. We found a group of men doing some religious offerings. It was not actually a beach or land but technically they call it salt pans. We found it why, I went to wards the water and hardly had I stood for 5 seconds, I sinked till the knees. I just thought that if somebody just became unconscious while swimming then he would just be buried alive. The jeep was to stay for sometime and so I could not prevent myself from thinking about getting myself wet in the blue and serene water of the ocean. I quickly made good use of my Swimming costume and did a little splashing of water etc with the other guys on the jeep. It was a real fun and enjoyment as the water was so clean and cool. Most importantly this place was far away from the rush and madness of the normal tourists spots.
I had a brainwave at this time. It was a place which I knew , if I could I would definitely come back here. This place was idle from get away from the world. How would it be if a person could come here for a week in solitude and live here and reflect upon the Life. The placid surrounding , with the oceans on both ends and nobody really to disturb you, will definitely rejuvenate any wanting soul.

We got back again in the jeep and then the driver took us to a group of Huts belonging to the Fishermen who lives here. To our surprise there was a small Durga Temple present in which we presented offerings and sought the deity's blessings. I saw for a first time a Japanese well which was barely 50mts from the sea shore but the water was still sweet !!.

Then we returned back to the town on the same way by the bus. The entire journey took around 3hrs and after having our Lunch we waited for our Minibus to Madurai.

Interfacing LCD with Microcontrollers

2009-08-27T05:06:00.001+05:30

EMBEDDED HARDWARE DESIGN

Tutorial 2009-10/I

[This is a tutorial written for Embedded Hardware Design Course here at IIIT-Hyd]

LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) has become very popular option for displaying in Embedded Applications. Since they are very cheap and easy to interface with microcontrollers, they are widely found in devices like telephones, vending machines, washing machines, toys etc.

LCD comes in several varieties i.e. 16*2, 20*2, 20*4 etc. These different LCD varieties can display different number of characters i.e. 16*2 can display 32 characters at a time.

Introduction

The LCD module that we will be using is 16*2 JHD162A. This model has 2 lines and 16 rows of display blocks. Each block can be used to display 1 character. So there are total 32 such blocks. One block has 8*5 pixels. Depending on which pixel is ON and which is OFF we can display several Alpha-Numeric characters. This model also has a green backlight, which helps us to see the display even in dark. In reality this module consists of a controller chip, a segment driver chip, LCD display and some passive components.

There are total 16 pins in the LCD module.

Pin Number	Pin Name	Pin Function	Connection to ATMega16
1	Vss	GND Supply
2	Vcc	+5V LCD Power
3	Vee	Contrast Adjustment
4	RS	Register Signal Select(Command/Data)	PC7
5	R/W	Read/Write Select	PC6
6	E	Enable (read/write enable)	PC5
7	DB0	Data pin	-
8	DB1	Data pin	-
9	DB2	Data pin	-
10	DB3	Data pin	-
11	DB4	Data pin	PC0
12	DB5	Data pin	PC1
13	DB6	Data pin	PC2
14	DB7	Data pin	PC3
15	LED+	Backlight Power +5V
16	LED-	Backlight Power GND

These connections have already been made to the USB BootLoader Kit so when you insert the LCD module properly, the connections are made as mentioned in the Table.

While using LCD, we can think a simple analogy for its operation. Each of the 32 blocks is a memory, as soon as we write an ASCII number into one of these 32 memory locations the corresponding character is displayed on that block. The function of displaying the character after decoding the data is done by an onboard controller chip.

In reality the LCD module consists of several memory locations apart from the 32 dedicated for the display. Since LCD module can be used in several ways we need to select one of these modes and configure the LCD for this mode.

The various operations that we need to perform are:-

1. Write to LCD memory to display data

2. Configure LCD module by writing commands to memory location

3. Read data in Memory locations

4. Perform some special operations like Clear Screen , Bring Cursor to starting position etc

The various pins that are provided like RS, R/W etc acts as a way to do all these operations.The 3 control pins have important functions

1. RS – The LCD has 2 modes of operation Character and Instruction. Depending on its value the data on the data line (DB0-DB7) is treated as either command or character. If RS is LOW then the data on DB0-DB7 is an Instruction and if RS is HIGH then data on data line is character

2. Enable – The pin acts like a clock for the LCD module, when there is a falling clock edge then the data on the data lines is taken in by the LCD module and processed.

3. R/W - This pin identifies if the operation to be performed is a read or write.

If R/W = 0 write operation R/W = 1 read operation

RS = 0 Command RS = 1 Character

E -> falling edge , data processed by LCD Module

To be able to correctly perform an operation we have to assign the values of these 3 control pins and data lines in a proper sequence.

Let’s look at one example i.e. displaying a character by writing to its memory location. The steps are:-

1. Set the data on the data lines i.e. the 8 bits of data are assigned to each of the 8 pins (DB0-DB7) like LSB -> DB0 and MSB ->DB7.

2. Set RS pin i.e. make RS pin HIGH.

3. Clear RW pin i.e. make RW pin LOW.

4. Toggle E i.e. make E high, wait for some time, make E low.

Another example, if we want to write a command, the steps are:-

1. Set command on the data lines i.e. the 8 bits of data are assigned to each of the 8 pins (DB0-DB7) like LSB -> DB0 and MSB ->DB7.

2. Clear RS pin i.e. make RS pin LOW.

3. Clear RW pin i.e. make RW pin LOW.

4. Toggle E pin i.e. make E high, wait for some time, make E low.

A very important point to note is that the sequence of these steps can be done manually using toggle switches only and the microcontroller is only used because the repetitive steps need not be performed manually again and again.

In the above examples we used 8 data pins and 3 pins for control signal i.e. total 11 pins of the microcontrollers are used. An efficient way is to use 4 data pins instead of 8. In case we are using 4 data lines , the higher nibble is send on these 4 data lines first and then we send the lower nibble on the 4 data lines. In this case we are using 7 lines of the microcontroller. This mode is called the 4-bit transfer mode. By default when we are using 4-bit mode the data transfer happens only through DB4-DB7 (the LCD pins) whereas DB0-DB3 are unconnected.

In the datasheet of LCD module we find a table shown below. This is the Instruction set of the LCD Module JHD 162A.

Let’s look at first row - SCREEN CLEAR. This Instruction tells the LCD module to return the cursor to the starting position i.e. (1, 1) and also to clear the screen of any characters. The code for this instruction is 0x01. If we want the LCD module to clear the screen, then we should write the command 0x01 to the LCD Module.

Similarly we have DISPLAY SWITCH instruction. It selects options for the display like Turning the display on/off, turning the cursor on/off, turn blinking of cursor on/off.

If we want to turn display on we set D (DB2) to 1, to turn cursor on we make C (DB1) 1 and to select blinking cursor B (DB0) is set to 1. Hence the final code of Display switch is 0x0F.

If we write a command 0x0F, then the LCD module will perform the above mentioned 3 actions.

Finally we will look at FUNCTION SET- this Instruction selects the 4-bit/8-bit mode (DL =0 means 4-bit transfer mode selected whereas DL=1 means 8-bit mode selected), N selects the number of lines in LCD (N=1 means a 2-line display), F select font type (in our case we have 5*7 type font which means F=0).

Hence to select a 4-bit mode, 2-line display and 5*7 font the value of FUNCTION SET becomes 0x28.

If Instruction INPUT SET is not given then by default after every character write, the cursor moved to next block. [But this does not implies that after writing to (16, 1) the cursor will automatically come to (1, 2)!!! you will have to set the address of cursor to (1,2) yourself.]

Instruction Set of LCD Module

0x80

0x81

0x82

0x83

0x8D

0x8E

0x8F

0xC0

0xC1

0xC2

0xCD

0xCE

0xCF

Memory Address of Display Block on the LCD Module

The Memory addresses of blocks on LCD display are as shown above. So if you send a Command say 0x80, then the cursor will reach to the first block i.e. (1,1) similarly if you send a command 0xC5, then cursor will reach location (5,2) and so on. In this way you can move cursor to any position.

To make the LCD work with microcontroller you will proceed in this way:-

1. All the functions of the LCD will be written in a separate file named lcd.h, so that whenever you need to use the LCD functionalities, you will just include this header file lcd.h, and call the functions written in lcd.h to display or configure LCD module.

2. In the lcd.h you should have the following functions:-

(a) LCD_init(void)

(b) LCD_Send(char c, unsigned char DC)

(d) LCD_GotoXY(unsigned int x, unsigned int y)

(e) LCD_Print(int data, unsigned int x, unsigned int y)

LCD_init – This function initializes the LCD module by setting 4-bit data transfer mode, turning the display on, turning the cursor on and setting the cursor to blink.

LCD_Send – This function takes two arguments c, DC. Here c is the data which we want to write and DC identifies this data to be a command or character (data) i.e.

if DC=1 => Data

if DC=0 => Command

LCD_Send_String – This function takes a string as input and after parsing it ,send character by character to LCD_Send() function , to print the character on by one on the display.

LCD_GotoXY – This function takes the cursor to position (X, Y) in the display.

LCD_Print – This function takes 3 argument i.e. data (a numeric value), and x, y co-ordinate of the starting position of the printing of the data. First this function calls LCD_GotoXY to move cursor to (x, y). Then the function calls itoa() function and send the resultant string to LCD_Send_String().

The Pseudo code of the functions are written as follows:-

LCD_init(void)

{

Clear RS pin, clear RW pin.

Write a command to clear the screen

Write a command to turn display on, turn cursor on, turn blinking of cursor on.

Write a command to select 4-bit mode, 2 line display, 5*7 font.

}

// when we say write a command it means that the function LCD_Send is called.

LCD_Send(char c, unsigned char DC)

{

Break the 8 bit value of char c into 2 parts, upper nibble and lower nibble.

If it is command

Write upper nibble on data line

Clear RS pin, clear RW pin

Toggle E pin, put some delay (~1ms)

Write lower nibble on data line

Clear RS, clear RW pin

Toggle E pin, put some delay (~1ms)

If it is Data

Write upper nibble on data line

Set RS pin, Clear RW pin

Toggle E pin, put some delay (~1ms)

Write lower nibble on data line

Set RS pin, Clear RW pin

Toggle E pin, put some delay (~1ms)

}

// you will need to put delay while toggling E i.e. Set E, put 1 ms delay, Clear E.

LCD_Send_String(char *s)

{

Break string s into characters, say c1, c2, c3…

LCD_Send(c1), LCD_Send(c2), …..

}

LCD_GotoXY(unsigned int x, unsigned int y)

{

If it is line 1, send the command corresponding to address of 1^st line.

If it is line 2, send the command corresponding to address of 2^nd line

}

LCD_Print(int data, unsigned int x, unsigned int y)

{

Call LCD_GotoXY(x,y)

Break integer data into character and call LCD_Send_String().

}

Travel - Part4 - Reaching Rameswaram

2009-08-15T14:52:00.001+05:30

Somebody had said "Journey is Reward", but when the journey is a continuous 56 hrs , then I do have to think a lot. For the uninitiated ones I measure these travel times as the times between I get an opportunity to bath !!. Reaching Rameswaram was a 3 part journey from Shirdi to Pune, Pune to Chennai and then a link train to Rameswaram.

When our bus started from Shirdi it was around 10am , according to my research and travel agency this bus journey to Pune was supposed to take only 6 hours and we were supposed to catch a train for Chennai at 5:30 pm. There was some small incidence with the travel agency guys and this resulted in a bit of my ego getting hurt and melting away, but that resulted in a comfortable journey for us !!. The weather in Shirdi was wet and it was a very refreshing. Soon
when we got out from Shirdi and the road undoubtedly was good, the bus was smoothly cruising in midst of freshly sown fields and some of them with some greenery. It was raining lightly and the air was quite cool, the experience was just like it was a hill station. Pretty soon far away in the background mountains began to appear. This was the time when I really felt that this vacation was a good idea and I was going all gaga about it.

I was enjoying every moment of the scenery , weather and my state of mind also. What maybe did not cross my mind at that time , but was stinging me like a gadfly before was that I always believe that if we get something easily without struggling then that thing is not really worth it or alternative it is not so productive. Till now things had gone smoothly, it was hard to believe that GOD's were in a mood to play a little Humour with me. Suddenly I saw a bit far away a big mountain coming up and I got a feeling of something going wrong when I saw some vehicles on road of that mountain , pretty soon I could make out that they were actually stationary. Meaning we got a jam on the mountains !!! That's a deadly combo , even then I found I was
not feeling in any hurry. Every minute delay means our tight schedule schedule was getting even tighter. I had got what I wanted. . With the jam not showing any chance of lifting up , since the vehicles from opposite side were just not coming. My brain impulsively went to damage control and alternate planning mode. I thought that I will reach Rameswaram if we missed the train,
by taking bus to Hyderabad , then to Chennai and then to Rameswaram. I was just not willing to bog down and I thought that I will do whatever it takes to reach the destination. Gradually but painfully slowly the bus started moving for a small distance from time to time. Actually this narrow mountain road got this terrible jam because a long trailer (and I guess more than one) got damaged at a sharp turning, resulting in chocking the two lane road to a single lane. Well was that a coincidence that this road which never had a jam , got one on this fateful day, i guess so !. It took us finally 2 hours to get out of this mess, and then came the part which I hate the most , suspense. It was like an IPL match , runs vs deliveries left. Here the case was hours vs Km. I was literally counting every milestone and being totally hopeful that we would make it to the train in time. The suspense were on growing and surprisingly all the way through I still believed we would catch the 5:30 train. So it was already around 5:15 when the bus dropped us
at a bus stop which was also at some distance from the Railway station, we got a 3 wheeler immediately and by the time we reached the Station, it was already around 5:32 and it took some minutes to get to the platform , and then we heard the message that out train is arriving at right time at 6:00 pm. Now that was a real surprise. We checked our ticket and found that it was indeed 6 pm not 5:30. Had it been 5:30 and would the train had been right time, we would have easily missed it. I heaved a long sigh of relief. Soon the train came and I happily boarded it. So even with preety descent planning , it all boiled down to the fancy of GOD.

The Train journey started and it was in general inconsequential. Except one thing, at some station before Ranigutta(where people alight for Tirupti) the train had to slow down and stop at some station for about an hour. When the train started again, we got to know that the the tracks were being repaired hence this delay ,but surprise was the fact that when train reached Ranigutta , but was just 10-15 min late , meaning some smart guy in Railways had anticipated this delay and did some positive correction for it well in advance. So we reached Chennai Central at nearly right time. The next train was from Chennai Egmore Railway station and we had 3 hours before that.

We reached Egmore in a three wheeler, the first task at our hand was to confirm that we had reached the right place and our train will be leaving from here. Next we went to the Reservation counter to get one ticket canceled. I was a bit elated as well as amused to find the total difference in the way the queues were formed . In here there was no queue that I had known earlier, the queue was formed by sitting peoples. When the front chairs became empty ,the peoples in the next row used to come and occupy them and so on. This was a surprise so as to say and I justified the behavior of people because of a mere presence of a policeman. Had he not been there , there wouldn't have been such a civilized show of behavior.
Later we occupied the Waiting room and I went out looking for a shave. While I was roaming outside and around railway station, a boy(visibly poor) aged around 10 stopped and asked me in Hindi, where I was from (in a dialect that seemed like Maharastrian). I thought he would like to ask for way to some place. Then when I replied in Hindi , he told that his father has been lost and he and his mother needs to go to Mumbai , and they have no money for buying a train ticket !! Now as a rule I don't give alms, reason being that I believe that if you give money to a beggar than he may use it for some wrong and probably anti-social activity and you will be a partner in that. But here I don't know why I felt that this was a time I should change my rules. It appeared that those guys were indeed a needy case. So after some waiting(i was pretending to be thinking) I handed over Rs 100 to that boy, then her mother said , we can't do with this only give us more , I was confused and instead of those two I was the one feeling helpless(because I couldn't decide if I was doing right or wrong), I looked up to the sky and said to heavens, I am giving money to these people because of you, now you decide if it goes to good or bad. With that I gave the boy Rs 50 more. It happened just then that a taxi driver intervened, I could barely understand what he wanted to say in Tamil but I got that part that he wanted this women and her child to be taken to police, I went further and grabbed the arm of the boy who was trying to get away with her mother. The taxi driver told me to take them to ticket counter and buy them a ticket. I aggread and asked them to return the money and I offered to buy them tickets instead. They were shocked at the intervention of taxi driver and I realized I was being tricked and had been almost been dumped. So I went ahead with more conviction and got my money back. I later thanked the taxi driver a lot. After that I was really feeling very disappointed , that how I allowed myself to get into such an embarrassing situation . Now after that I did change my rules concerning alms
"Charity is not for people who have not got the time to see through their money being spend well.Never ever give money as alms. It is always better and safe to pay in kind rather than cash to beggars".

Then after having a taste of Chennain food we safely boarded the Rameswaram Express.
When I woke up in the morning , in the far end , I could see tree line meaning we were closing in on to the Pamban Bridge.
I was really exited about Pamban Bridge or Indira Gandhi Bridge. I had read a lot about it and my imagination was that, when the train would be over the bridge it would really be scary with the bridge just like a thin straw , and the train slowly chugging ahead, with the constant feeling that a breeze will plunge the train into the ocean waters.
When the Bridge really came , it was great to see the ocean on both the sides and the narrow bridge with the train slowly moving ahead like a cautious juggler trying to balance itself on the rope.

I really liked the view there , both the rail bridge, the road bridge as well as the ocean. I did clicked a lot of pics. It was a place to visit again and again .

Then in no time the train reached its destination i.e. Rameswaram Station.
At the time of getting down , I had the usual feeling that finally I am in an unknown new place , will I be able to communicate well and go around the town in a normal way .

Travel - Part 3 - Shirdi

2009-08-11T22:47:00.001+05:30

So here we were at the first stop of our journey at Shirdi. It was around 11 am and as we were starting to hunt for a suitable hotel , it began to rain lightly. Well we actually did not try to get accommodation in any of the Trust Run Buildings because at that time their was quite a long line. When we were still in our room it rained very heavily for half an hour and the whole climate became very cool and totally refreshing when compared to the heat of Delhi. Anyways after taking bath we went in for Darshan in the main temple. It was afternoon and normally at this time of year , there was not much rush and maybe it took us about half an hour to get Darshan at Sai Baba's Samadhi.

After that we were really hungry. So we turned our steps towards the Famous Prasadalay. After walking around 100mtrs from Main temple on the main road, we reached the complex. We purchased the food coupons which were Rs 6 per person(IIRC). Since we had come around 3 pm so here also we didn't encounter any queues. When I entered the main eating area , I was amazed, it was so big , I had somewhere read that NDA(National Defence Academy) had the biggest mess atleast in the whole country, but here this single hall was so big ,a few times bigger than a football field, that I really doubted the accuracy of the NDA mess capacity being the largest !!!. I asked one of the attendants there about the capacity of the Hall and he told 6000, I later found that a similar Hall was also there on the First floor of the complex and so I guess that 6000 figure was the combined capacity of both Floors. But size was not the only thing that was amazing there. The way the people there were serving, the arrangements, cleanliness etc was a sight to see. Everything was running like a clock work , the whole staff knew what to do and how to do. The Prasad was also very good. When we returned back to our room it was already 5. I had decided that it was a good idea to wake up really early the next morning so as to be able to attend "Kakad Aarti" . So I slept very soundly and uninterruptedly from 5 pm to 1:30 am.

When we reached the line , there was a queue , but how long it was , we couldn't make out. After waiting for about half an hour , when the aarti time began, all the people were lead into the main Hall in front of Baba's Samadi. Fortunately we got some place before the Hall was filled up. Then for some time the Holy Chants of Aarti were sang in unison by all the priests, and with this the daily routine of giving Baba a bath from the Holy waters, decorating Baba with fresh attires and later performing Aarti to Baba were performed. During that time a thought came to my mind, "great people or saints spend their whole life in service of others , following routines like rising very early and working very hard for the benefit of others and here I am seeing that even when they are not present with us physically on the earth, they still follow the same routine for the benefit of their devotees". Then slowly but in a well controlled fashion devotees were ushered one by one into the line to have a closer Darshan of Baba. Later we also went to Dwarakamai to see in amazement Baba's kitchen , Dhuni etc. To say that several millennium ago Bhagawan appeared on a place and so we go to visit the temple there is totally different from the fact that there is a place where really in our own time , Baba lived amongst people and the very fact that HE inhabited this soil in not so far a past , is a thought that overpowers you.

It was around 6 am when we were done with the Darshan and so after that we packed our bags and got a seat in a Pune bound bus.

One very important feature of Sai Baba Temples and the other complex managed by Trust was that everywhere I found out that there was no mis-management. Everything was going totally smooth, each security person knew what to do , there was provisions that the devotees face the least inconvinience as long as they are there. At regular interval in the queues , there were LargeScreen TV's so that devotees who are waiting can have a constant virtual Darshan. The main Samadhi Hall of Baba had lots of Gold plating as well as even more silver plating on the pillars and walls. The whole shine of these metals was very beautifully adding to the grandour of Baba's Samadhi and a Life size statue of Sai Baba Himself.
The temple complex had several amenities inside the complex itself, i.e. museum , Bank, ATM, book stalls, eating shops etc etc , I liked these things very much. There were lots of CCTV camera and this implies that the security was quite strict even though to a casual eye it might not be obvious.

Overall I was impressed by the way things were being performed in a clock work fashion.

Some Snaps

2009-08-09T13:28:00.001+05:30

When I moved into my new room one year back , I was very careful while selecting the view that I would be getting [:)].
Some snapshots of some very enchanting evenings are

Travel - Part 2 - Reaching Shirdi

2009-08-01T20:47:00.001+05:30

As usual before departure on this long and tiring journey , I began feeling like that I should just remain at home, the thought that I will be coming out of my comfort zone was not very comforting to me. Well even though I was feeling extremely lazy , it was inevitable now. Even though I had wanted to undertake this so much , I was having second thoughts !!

So as I had wanted so much , I finally managed to pick up my lazy bones and went to Nai Sarak in Delhi to buy books on Tamil/Telugu. That was a very bad time to go , with Delhi raining fire and half the roads closed due to 'Shiv Kavads'. Though I was happy I had to make so much effort to get these books that I though I would finally read them to learn a bit of these languages.

Finally we boarded the train from Nizammudin. I found out that the train halts at Kopargaon, which was nearer to Shirdi than Manmad. So we decide to alight there. This train journey was not a routine as I finally made good use of the Diary given to me by Jimmy as a birthday present. I spend most of my time writing some of the entries of this blog. That was real nice thing and it helped me to pass my time very comfortably.

Well it so happens that one of my co-passenger was quite interesting. He said the people coming to pay their respects to Sai Baba has recently increased since the TV show on Sai Baba has started. I found that to be true and that seems to be case with my mother also. Well one more bitter experience he told us that , once while in Shirdi his son was very sick and he wanted some warm water for his son, but nobody was willing to give him that even though he was willing to spend a lot of money for that and he was so pissed off with that he never went to Shirdi again. Well I did not say anything to that person. Later this thing ringed my mind , I thought that I did not react anything because I reflect upon thinks rather than react to them !! I thought that maybe a staunch devotee of Sai Baba would have said that , " This was a test for you , you did some thing before that you got this hardship in your life ."

We had our tickets only till Manmad and Kopargaon was the next station. We were told before we got down that tickets would be checked there , but that did not bother me , I thought we had tickets. But as soon as I saw the Ticket Checker , I realized that my ticket is till the last station and we could be fined something for that. Somehow we managed to evade two of them !!! .

Reaching outside the Railway station , the scene was problematic for us. Normally the people going to Shirdi were in large groups and each group was was hiring a 7 seater for going from Kopargaon, we had quite sometime finding 2 seats in a vehicle , and I was worried that if we did not do that in time and most of the arrived people leave then we will have to wait till the next train arrives because these auto won't go until they are full.

Reaching Shirdi was about half an half affair. We stopped at near Main Temple gait and from there went on to see a few hotels and took room in one.

Travel - Part 1 - Planning

2009-07-30T23:46:00.001+05:30

It has been a really long time since I visited some places for the sole purpose of touring. So it all started when I got the idea of visiting Tirupati during summer vacations. Since it had been 3 years while I had been residing in Hyderabad, so Tirupati seemed to be a place to at least pay one visit. I promptly informed home and mother seem to be willing to visit with me. Later the whole tour was expanded again and again to include 5 places. I had no qualms to visit 5 most famous religious places in India. I was more than happy to being able to go to new places and it would be a wonderful getaway from the college. So the places we decided to visit were Sai Baba temple at Shirdi, Tirupati Balaji, Rameswaram, Kanya Kumari and Madurai.

I was to do all the planning and my thought was that starting from Delhi , I would like to end my journey at Hyderabad with mother proceeding back to Delhi. So our itinerary was roughly like this Delhi to Shirdi , Shirdi to Rameswaram, Rameswaram to Madurai, Madurai to Kanya Kumari and back to Madurai, Madurai to Tirupati and then from Tirupati to finally Hyderabad for me and Delhi for mother.
Now it was a challenge to plan this tour in a fashion ensuring that we have sufficient time to visit and stay each place and also it was not a good idea to be spending a lot of time at each place which will result in it becoming boring if we have just pass away our time. First I tried to find what all places we have to got to see at each location and decide how much time to devote to each location. After that it was time to decide how to reach each location. My philosophy was that Shirdi to Rameswaram was the longest leg and it was best to get a train between these places. Luckily there is a direct train Okha-Rameswaram Express between these places. So I scheduled the whole tour centered around this train.

So initial plan was like this
Leave Delhi on 19th afternoon and reach Manmad on 20th morning. From Manmad reaching Shirdi will take around 2 hours. The Okha-Rameswaram Express starts from Manmad on 22th morning so we will be having around one and half day at Shirdi. We will reach Manmad in the night of 21st itself for catching train early next morning. Then we will reach Rameswaram on 22th evening and I planned 4 days to totally spend in total at Rameswaram and Madurai and then catch the train from Madurai to Tirupati on 28th evening. Reach Tirupati on 29th morning. Going to Tirumala will take max 2-3 hrs and hopefully we will have darshan in the same afternoon-evening and will return to railway station in night to catch train to Delhi on 29th morning.

Later I realized that Rameswaram does not have so much to offer and decided to include Kanya-Kumari in our itinerary.

Later events did not turn out as expected as we did not get reservation in train from Manmad to Rameswaram, so after a lot of planning again I decided to take Mumbai-Chennai Train from Pune on 20th evening(after reaching Pune from Shirdi by bus- 5 hrs) and then a connecting train from Chennai to Rameswaram on 21st evening. Plus points we will be arriving in Rameswaram 12 hrs earlier. Negatives , will be changing trains ,bus etc and most importantly schedule became quite tight. We got delayed in any one of the things and we will miss the next connecting travel.

All set and done for the departure from Delhi.

On the oversight this was the first journey I was planning and I wanted to be prepared exhaustively to the point that it became a pain :). I checked WikiMapia of each city we were to visit, checked the locations of bus stands , railway stations which we might need to travel to. Went through lot of travel related documents of these places. I even thought I would calculate how many pairs of clothes I would need !! and how much minimum luggage would be required. In my grand scheme of things I thought I would go to Delhi and buy a Hand book of Tamil and Telugu to help me talking to people at these. I have already mentioned that I found how much time would it take to reach from one location to another and tried to keep some spare time for each journey. I also decided i will take some pairs of spare dry cells for my Digicam , so that I never run out of juice while I am clicking. I had also packed my swimming costume for the Ocean swim I was so much looking forward to at Rameswaram.

My Encounters with Science as a School Kid

2009-07-30T11:04:00.001+05:30

This is one part of my childhood I very fondly and vividly remember. Even then I have never ever shared these with anybody before and I don't feel inclined to do so in the near future, because it might appear that I am trying to boast about myself. So I decided to write these down here , so that these might remained remembered and maybe a few some people might accidentally going through these pages will go through it. These events are true to my memory of them and they are apart from the regular experiments and things that a normal school child do.

While in school , I don't remember having anything too much to do and as a consequence life was a lot boring. To fill the time , I used to hungrily go through all the old books of my parents trying to find any book that might be understandable by me ( and these included literature, history, geography, home science, law, military strategy and campaigns, philosophy etc etc...). I remember that when ever we got new books for new year I used to eagerly read all my and my brothers book in a few days(and then read them a few times over). One of the good part was the science books.

The first little " scientific experiment" I remember was when I was very very small , not even going to school. I used to put 2 wires to a plug , the other end of which used to be joined together and wind around it a lot of paper and put this thing under a wooden block . When I used to turn on the switch , there used to be a small bang and I used to thing that that was a sort of cracker and so I used to try this several times over. I was too little to understand what was going on and at that time the wiring was such that short circuit would not fry up the wiring of the house(there were no circuit breakers then !!).

Once I read in a GK(General Knowledge) book of my class that if you drop a mouse and a cat from a tall tower, the cat will die but the mouse will only feel only a bit confused but will be safe. Well so I promptly caught a mouse in my house and took it outside and threw it high up (to recreate the dropping from the height thing). I guess the person who wrote that never tried it out because the mouse probably got fractured legs :( but it still ran away.

The next incident was quite dangerous. I had read quite a lot how harmful mercury is to human health. I had read in Chemistry books the physical properties , MP, BP , inertness of Hg. Also the disease like Minamata surely put a scare in your mind. now we all know that thermometers have mercury in them and in my house thermometer was the only scientific instrument present. So one day I put thermometer into fresh boiling milk just to see it. I observed that the mercury quickly rose in the capillary and as soon as it reached the top, the bulb of thermometer broke and all the mercury in the thermometer flowed out into the boiling milk. I thought I was screwed. I was all in 7th grade then and was staring in front of me the prospectus of poising everyone with the mercury mixed milk. I distinctly remember the fact that Hg can result in effecting the mental abilities of a person. I was also scared to admit that I had caused that to happen. I though of finding a solution to the problem. Since Hg is liquid at room temperature and it is not supposed to react/dissolve in milk which might be around 100 degree. so I carefully removed all the milk and took out Hg and stored it with me. Looking back to this event that happened around 10 years back , I don't think the mind of anyone in my family got affected anyhow :P( I am still keeping my fingers crossed).

The next one is again about rats. At that time I was expert at catching rats by bare hands. So one day while catching one of them , the unfortunate soul got hurt and eventually died.
At that time I had a biology book of class 9. The book was good and in one chapter it had a internal diagram of a dissected rat/mouse. Now I had a dead rat with me and a diagram of the internal parts of its. It didn't take me any time to decide that I was going to do a dissection of this dead rodent. Well now there was the logistics problem. I didn't had knives, gloves , dissection table etc. I knew about flues and many epidemic spread through rats so I was not going to take a chance there by unsafely exposing myself. So I took a razor blade as my knife and polythene bags as my gloves and dissection table. The book mentioned that for vertebrates we dissect the body from bottom(or stomach side) and the non-vertebrates animals from the top side. I proceeded by first removing the fur kind of covering on the body(I deduced that all animals have a similar arrangement in which if we remove the fur we get a kind of water tight membrane, inside which everything is there). Then I cut the membrane to see all the internal organs. I didn't get any blood spilling out(strange !!).
The internal organs were just a beauty to see. The rat's body is so small and inside it so many things are packed so efficiently that there was absolutely no empty space. The organs were so small. I could find and identify lungs, heart, liver, intestine(with little green food) etc. Unfortunately I was unable to openup the brain and that was the part I missed. Finally the corpse and equipment of postmortem were safely dispensed.

After reading in 10th class chemistry books a lot of reactions involving NaOH, I wanted some NaOH so that i could myself perform some of those reactions. So for that I thought that if I get some Sodium metal and just put it in water will produce NaOH. The problem was to get sodium. Now table salt is NaCl , so I thought that maybe strong heating of table salt will give sodium. I took some salt in a spoon and kept that on gas burner. It turned out that salt slowly turned black from white and the individual crystals started to jump just like corn jumps while preparing popcorns. The spoon got so much burned and blackened that it was never to be cleaned again. I lost hopes of making NaOH by this way(as it turns out NaCl has one of the strongest electrolytic bonding and no way is normal heating sufficient to break it). Next I thought electrolysis of water seems pretty straightforward , so I started for that. First I prepared a supersaturated solution of NaCl in water by dissolving more and more salt in water by constantly heating it(maybe this way for making NaOH somehow , but I don't remember exactly). Then I put a transistor's AC power cable into this solution and switched on power. There was a lot of sound and within a few seconds water became hot. Later I filtered this blacky liquid using blotting paper, but I don't think this procedure produced anything new or useful. By this I realized that for electrolysis we need DC supply not AC .
At that time I was pretty fascinated with Hydrogen. One of its property that I don't think I will ever forget is that it burns with a 'popping' sound. This fact was mentioned in every textbook and I just wanted to see that happen with my eyes( and ears). But for this I needed Hydrogen and electrolysis seemed to be the answer for that. So I took some water with a little NaCl dissolved into it , then I took a AC-DC converter , a ball point pen. Hydrogen is lighter than water so it could be collected by downward displacement of water, so I filled my ball pen with water and kept it in inverted position over the '+' of AC-DC converter , when I turned on power, I could visually see the formation of O2 and H2. WoW !! There were bubbles forming and coming out from + & - terminals. At one terminal bubbles were forming at twice the speed so I deduced it must be H2 and collected that in ball pen by downward displacement of water. Now I just wanted to hear Hydrogen gas burning with a popping sound. So I opened the mouth of ball pen in front of fire. Phew !! no popping sound, though I was sure , I had collected Hydrogen gas(maybe because the thing continued to burn by itself , proving that it was a combustible gas). In place of that something totally new happened. I observed that the ball pen was burning and producing fiber like smoke i.e. the smoke was having carbon in form of around 1 cm long ' fibers '.
I had never seen or read about this thing before . Some weeks later the coaching class that I used to go for 10th class science, the teacher suddenly asked us what is 'particulate matter' as this was present in a chapter on pollution. Now the best part was that I was good at guessing. I had never heard of ' particulate' before and though I was well read considering class 10th standards, I had never read about this 'fiber' before. Immediately it clicked that maybe this new term was the new thing I had seen. I told the teacher the same. Phew ! I had just hit bull's eye. The teacher was totally impressed and he asked again and again that how did I knew. So rather than telling him that I did some experiments in my house, I told something gibberish and still he was totally blown away :D.

Apart from these one of the favorite things I used to do was to open up things and look what's inside them. be it radio, watches, TV, washing machine, walkmen, scooter etc etc. It was a pity that I didn't had proper tools for these exercises , otherwise I bet I would have disassembled each & each thing that I could to its elemental form. I just has 1/2 worn out screwdriver and some things more, so my handy tool was a kitchen knife which I used as a screwdriver. Unfortunately my reputation was pretty bad in my home and it was a generally believed that anything that I touched to open it would never work again. To my defense I attributed this fact to the lack of proper tools :P.

Now a little about geography. When I was in around class 3/4 , my mother used to ask me to draw maps which were given in books like Map of Japan, Australia, Italy, Europe, France etc. Slowly I picked up this and drawing maps became my past time. Once I made a pretty accurate map of India on whole of ans A2 size paper. For making that I divided the map given in the Atlas into grids and also divided my drawing paper into grids. Then I drew the map grid by grid to make it proportional. Finally the end result was good and so I copied the Master copy of Map using carbon paper. Then on each copy I marked things like Mineral distribution , political map of India, physical features of India like mountains, rivers plateau etc, food grain production, industries and so on. I also used to read geography books with lots of interest. Geography was a subject in which you could read things and understand them logically something like Physics. Also the plus point was that you could learn new things about so many places .These made geography interesting for me. Once when I was in 6th giving final examination, next to me sat a girl who was in 9th class. her's was geography paper . She was supposed to mark some simple things on Map of India and Asia, but she was messing up everything I felt bad for her and started telling her where to mark what. After sometime the invigilator saw us and thought that I was taking help from her and gave me punishment. So much for helping others :P.
I class 6th once it was geography class. In the book things were written that in Egypt wheat , barley, corn etc is grown. I knew what is wheat , barley , corn etc meant in Hindi since I had already been told by mother. Some guy asked the teacher "mam what is barley ?". I simply replied the Hindi translation of it. then he asked for others and again without much thought I gave the answer. Now i was not expecting that when the teacher asked me to stand up asked me my name etc and then for next 5 mins she kept praising me. Then onwards when a lesson was to be read in class she used to ask me to do it.
Well as far as geography goes I continues to help my neighbors in their examinations wether they be in higher class or lower. I discontinued the map making exercise , but still very much continue the practice of just staring at a map and seeing what all things,places are present.

Looking back I fell that maybe if somehow I could have utilized that spare time more to such self learning activities , I could have been better at these things. As a side thought maybe this drought of having something interesting to do made me inquisitive and motivated me to do all this and this things that I now fondly remember would not have been like this if there was some external help. Sometimes I think if I had asked for better tools and other things I would have been better off , but maybe i would not have become a somewhat resourceful person. after all when you are deprived of somethings then you innovate and finds ways where there are none.

What has been done could not be undone and I am sure reading this many of you will surely feel that if you could have done a few things like this , rather than playing and watching TV(which was banned for good or bad in our house ), both of which I got to do the least.

RNB

2009-07-30T00:02:00.000+05:30

Prof R N Biswas came to IIIT-H in 2008 and in 2009 he left , but will be coming as a guest faculty for one more semester. The one year for which he devoted his time to IIIT-H , he helped change a lot of how ECE is and how it should be taught at UG level. Though he is around 70 yrs old , he brought in fresh thoughts and the latest ways of how ECE curriculum should be designed and conducted.
His most visible contribution has been to establish a new lab for courses like BEC and DLP. This lab is a single hall with good quality oscilloscope, function generator , power supply and a Digital Test Kit (designed by him). But what I feel his most important contribution of his has been to attack the whole philosophy behind the courses like Electronic workshop 1/2 etc( which were totally unstructured and conducted in ad-hoc fashion) though this particular one is not so visible, but I believe that he put in a lot of effort and energy to change the iron clad thinking which was considered so holy before he came. He must have organized a lot of discussions and meetings to design a new curriculum and so finally from this year onwards fresh UG students will find a changed curriculum in place. I am sure that now students will find more interest and value in the courses of the new curriculum and the credit of this should definitely go to RNB.

Now a bit of what I knew about him. The first thing that turns me on is that he is PhD from Univ of Calif. Berkely that too in 1960's. There is no doubt in my mind about how a top-notch place UCB is and I am sure it would have been legendary place in his time to get a PhD from. Then he worked for some years in US itself and after that he returned to teach at IIT-K. He was at IIT-K till 1992 and during this time he headed several posts like HOD of EC Dept. and several others including Chairman of JEE in 1987. I would love to hear from someone who gave JEE that year. After IIT-K he became director of CEERI Pilani, established a company , worked in some major VLSI company fro some years. In 2002 he joined DAIICT and worked there for 5 years. He came to IIIT-H in 2008 and from 2009 he will be joining NIIT Univ Neemrana.

No doubt IIIT-H has some really good Prof. who have long chequered teaching career like Prof PRK Rao, Prof B Yagnanarayana, Prof VU Reddy. All these three are one of the best teachers in their field atleast in India and have done work which had definite positive effect in their respective areas. But these three are like big giants(no pun intended) which a normal mortal like us cannot approach easily and be comfortable with. With Prof RNB the case is different. He is also one of the giants. In fact he is totally accessible , he is a person who likes to talk(this is what I guess) and he can talk about a lot of things but his favorite items are Electronics, VLSI, . At times you can find him speaking like a real visionary about Engineering education. sometimes he also talks about politics(ie India & world, Budget etc !!). He is a hard core fan of Lawn Tennis and vividly follows all Grand Slam Tournaments. He loves non-veg food.
One very striking fact about him is that even though he is about 70 years old, he is more active ( physically and mentally ) than faculty members who are in their 40's. He is full of energy and enthusiasm. He is a strict disciplinary and I don't think anybody dare to be complicity in front of him. If you do something sloppily , you should be expecting a through dressing down even though you might be a student , a T.A. , a lab assistant or even a faculty member!!!(well I have been at his receiving ends for the first 2 cases and have been eye witness for the others).

In short I find that his overall personality is just a huge iceberg of which I had the rare privilege to knew a speck of it. It is such a humbling experience to be able to say that I knew one such person who has done so much and changed the lifes of who know how many peoples.

Happy Holidaying!!!

2009-07-14T01:34:00.000+05:30

The long and eventfull summer of 09 will finally be over now and that too by a trip to a lot of places. I am totally looking forward to that.

Lots to be posted once I return back.

AVR development Board and USB Programmer

2009-07-13T12:26:00.001+05:30

I sometimes used to wonder how and why life is sort of a boring. In the sense that why I never encounter situation that would just make a great story. Now after I started this blog , I feel that stories are just around us , you just need to be looking for them.

This is the story of how the idea of a commercial product was born and how it was finally conceived , all the way from designing to implementation to finally launching and marketing !!!

After the after shocks and hangover from Robocon 09 had subsided , an idea came to me and Sujith that we can very well design and market an AVR Microcontroller based development board as well as a USB programmer for AVR Microcontroller. The technical experience was there with us , we just have to design a layout of the above circuits and get them manufactured. Well this is what I initially thought this whole exercise would require. Never knew what was in store for us !!!

So it started by searching and analysis several designs of AVR development board available online. Based on our own experience and ideas , we came up with the basic list of functionality the board should be having i.e. power supply unit, power control to modules, LED's, LCD, keypad, Reset/Ext. Interrupt switches , USB programmer, Max 232 ckt for Serial communication, L293D motor driver and place for ATMega16.

This happened in April 09. I called a meeting of 2nd yrs and 1st yrs students to form a group which will formally take up this activity of developing robotics/electronics products. There was a lukewarm response and it was decided that these development Boards(kits) and USB will be done well before Robocamp started so that the launching could be done during Robocamp itself.

So the things cooled down a bit from there and it was May 18th when finally everything of the previous semester got over. Sujith was getting more and more busy with Robocup preparation , so he sort of deveoted his time there.
Then suddenly I got a wind of the news that some other people were also planning to develop a similar AVR Kit. Now this was hilarious , can you imagine two different set of people in the same institute trying to work on designing a similar product(Its a different story that we finally won the race and got the opportunity to finally develop our idea. Though later we realized that there was no way on earth that the other group could have done anything substantial.)
Now hearing this news , I buckled myself up and immediately started designing the PCB Layout in ExpressPCB (the interesting story of the PCB layout software deserves another blog post !!), since I was new to drawing layouts, it took around a few days to finally complete it. In the mean time I rallied several 2nd years students to be a part of this endeavor. A mail was also send to the faculty that we have this plan of launching these products.
In the mean time we were still struggling with getting the USB programmer and it was only on 1st June that it finally worked. Now finally we were able to go to the PCB manufacturing guy only on 5th June. Time was fast running out and we desperately wanted to order the PCB ASAP and start the testing the Kits.
When we talked to the PCB guy , we got two shocks of our lives:- first whatever we had done in ExpressPCB was not compatible with their procedures since they needed Gerber Files of the Layout which ExpressPCB did not generate :( , I felt totally cheated with ExpressPCB, so much time spend on doing that and we reached no-where. Secondly we were told that it would take around one week to actually have the PCB ready , with legend Printing, Green Masking and a few more mumjo-jumbos. I was in a fix, I decided that I had to learn a new Layout software and get the whole PCB layout designed in 2 days. Fortunately I found FreePCB which was just fit for the purpose.
Finally we went on Monday(8th) and asked the PCB guy to make the layout in their software by seeing our ExpressPCB layout. So it was Wednesday when finally everything was ok and we ordered first set of PCB's for testing purposes.

Since we required one PCB urgently, so we asked one PCB to be done without Legend printing and green masking , since this meant we could get our PCB in 2 days. We received our First PCB on 11th June, some initially testing was done and one bug was discovered and one was left undiscovered !!!! :( .

So with just 5 days to go before the starting of Robocamp we ordered the total order of PCB for both USB Programmer and AVR Development Kit.
the situation was very tricky , we had a deadline to meet and we were rushing through the things. It was like a disaster waiting to happen.
As Edison has said "Long experience proved that there were great drawbacks found generally before they could be got commercial" , this is what precisely happened to us !!! Thanks Edison uncle for you sound advice, will always keep that in mind .

So finally after much wait we received the PCB on 24th , in the midst of Robocamp. I learned an important lesson from this. I could have received PCB 2 days earlier had I paid money from my pocket, since I waited for getting advance payment from Institute. In the end I ended up paying from my pocket and the thing was delayed by 2 very crucial days, which could had made all the difference.
Now on the first day I along with our Lab assistant and some 1st year students sat till 3 am in the morning doing soldering the boards. This is precisely when we found a big time bug. The USB connector in the PCB was present in a way that was opposite to the actual configuration. This setback was sufficient enough for us to have the whole lot of PCB being unusable. We improvised and to overcome decided to solder th usb cale directly to the board.

One of the team member got totally discouraged by that and I did not see him being effectively involved in the Kit activity after that. This is one thing that totally pisses me off. Man if you have committed to something then have the guts to see through that the thing is taken to its logical ending. Some people have the tendency to start an activity with great enthusiasm and when going gets tough , they just leave it. Well I could not afford to do that reason being that this activity of developing Kit was I wanted to do and so there was no way I would just leave it because of some setbacks came our way.

So now it was the time to take on this challenge to get the kits ready before Robocamp ended. I decided to overcome it by sheer brute force. I was willing to put more time even at the expenses of anything to achieve the target. Fortunately our Lab Assistants were very helpful and both of them Ms Kanika and Mr Vivek put their best effort in getting the Kits ready. They kept on working till most of the work was done.
Well surprises never ceases to ambush you just before you reach the destination. It turns out that the 5 pole DIP switch that we had to use in Kits was no longer available in market( Now I grudgingly remembered what Prof RN Biswas has said that once you are making a product you have to stock the components so that in case they are no longer available you can still manufacture and service it. At that time I thought , I am not making circuit using some obscure transistor or likewise , that we need to stock things.)
Fortunately Vivek got DIP switches from Electronics lab , and thus finally soldering was completed on Friday just before the last day.
But the work pressure was full time high on me. The organization of Robocamp was almost chaotic and this created additional workload on me also. Add to the fact of the constant worry of the Development Board and Programmers. Not only this I wanted (and it was pretty necessary ) that we had some Manuals and Tutorials ready by the time we are giving away the AVR Board and Programmers. This goal created additional pressure on me.

In short even after I tried my best , we didn't had the Kits tested to be able to hand over to the people willing to buy. Nor were the documentations completed. So the only thing we could do was to give a short intro of our AVR Kit and USB Programmer to the students. At the end of Robocamp we took several orders both for AVR Kit and USB programmer.

After Robocamp ended then it was time to deliver the Kits to people who had paid the money. The irony was that now when there was no more other major work, I alone had to slog to try getting the things finally working. It again took a few more days. There were constantly deadlines to deliver the Kits. But finally I am writing this blog on 12th and we had already sold out all AVR Kits.

So this was just the end of a beginning of how a commercial product was developed and finally sold.

When I look back and ask myself this question, was it really worth doing all the "menial" jobs like soldering , testing and other small small things which apparently don't add much to your skills. These menial jobs are not intellectually stimulating and they do not seem to have the same impact as say trying to do research work as the junta of IIIT focuses on. I could have just done my BTP and would have been a happy man. What really do you gain from going through all this mentally, physically and sometimes emotionally tiring exercise? Then I reflect back and try to convince myself. Even though all these small small things were not really meaningful, even though I am not gaining so much even after putting so much effort , but I gain one thing if not anything else. i feel that when you have made a commitment , then you have got to keep it even if heaven or hell comes your way. As they say "when going gets tough, tough gets going". Going through this kind of self tortures again and again make you mentally tough, it develops in you a character , a spirit that say " never say die". You develop an attitude that when you set out to do something you have to complete it.

When I was small my mother sometimes used to recite me this poem

वीर तुम बढ़े चलो
धीर तुम बढ़े चलो

सामने पहाड़ हो
सिंह की दहाड़ हो
तुम निडर,हटो नहीं
तुम निडर,डटो वहीं

this sometimes gives me inspiration that makes me try my personal best even in situation when my team mates leave. Wishing that all this will not go in vain, someday I will find people who share the same passion that I feel about some of the things.

But another fact is that I only feel this type of very strong feeling only about a few things and not about everything I do , even then I feel its fair enough for me.

Finally I feel I should thank my Maker for destining all these things for me. He only knows what is good for whom and only the best happens to us.

Civil Unrest in China

2009-07-12T12:06:00.001+05:30

Well no doubt China is a big country with a billion people. Maybe some people in India thinks that only India is a big multi-cultural, multi-ethnicity country which today faces the challenges of internal security threats like Maoists, insurgents in NE states not counting externally motivates terrorists etc.

In case of China , it has grown imperialistically in the days of Mao when its "annexed" states like Tibet, Xinjian. I will not go in the argument if theses states were historically part of Chinese empires. But clearly culturally these states were totally remote from the Han culture of mainland China. Now that was history i.e. 60 years back. The events that are happening in these regions are a result of unsound policies followed over the last 60 years by the Communist Party of China.

Since the regions of Tibet and Xinjiang were totally culturally distinct from the mainland China, Communist party devised a policy to slowly trying to change the demographic profile of such regions which are administered "autonomously". In the past 60 the Han population in Tibet and Xinjiang has been increasing so that China has more firm control over these regions. China has pumped in money from its rapidly rising economy in these regions establishing semi-military government organizations like XPCC (Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps). Qinghai-Tibet railway is also an instrument for the same purpose , though its benefits and strategic implications are numerous.

The reason these two states are important for China is that Xinjiang is rich in Oil and other mineral deposits. Tibet has its own strategic importance , it is not for nothing that Tibet is called "the roof of the world".

The main cause of unrest in Xinjiang is that the ethnic majority of Muslim Turkic peoples like Uyghurs have not received equal treatment as the settled Han people have. This is partly because there is language and other social barriers for the Uyghurs people have made them second class citizens in their own land. The ever increasing population of Han people in Xinjiang has alarmed Uyghars. There is constant crackdown on any kind of protest or attempt by Uyghars to voice their discontentment.

If we see how China deals with any protests then some patterns emerge. First the government try to control the unrest using armed police force and enforcing prohibitory orders. This results in more stronger form of protests , resulting in local authorities retaliating and in case of Xinjiang it resulted in around 185 dead and several thousands injured according to some reports.
Not only this China has a well oiled state machinery which start demonizing the protesters as soon as some unrest starts. Mouthpiece of Chinese Communist party tried to project that Uyghars and one of their organization has links with Al-Qaida. Rumors where spread in Xinjiang resulting in direct clash of Han and Uyghar peoples in Xinjiang.
Though Chinese premier sensed the urgency of the situation and returned back home from G-8 summit.

The importance of Xinjiang is quite high when we consider the location and resources of this autonomous province. Xinjiang is rich in oil and mineral deposits. Its geo-political location is also quite important. It borders Tibet, Russia, Tajakistan, Kazakistan, Krygystan, Afganistan, Pakistan. This location is sufficient reason that might lead to raising the interest of superpowers.

In short the whole policy of Communist Party to change the demography of a region is affecting the aspirations of local population. To make matter worst the government has no avenue for peaceful settlement of genuine issues of its citizens.

It is an irony that the money that communist party is pouring into such endeavors is resulting in weakening internal security situations in different provinces.

The Man and the Ship

2009-07-05T01:00:00.001+05:30

A ship once it has tasted the sea, returns to shore, trembles and longs to return to the sea , but unfortunately it is held back by the weight of anchor so it longs for freedom , remembers the carelessness, the anticipation and the mixed feeling of fear and joy. It remembers that there was a time when it wanted to loose its old self and be a part of the sea.

Once the anchor is lifted it again sails for the sea and then without any expectations it just flows into the lap of sea. It does not care if the sea embraces it or forgets it. The ship does not want to irritate the sea by again and again trying to tell the sea how much it wants to be one with the sea. Now it does not have any burden of its own wishes, it just waits for the sea to come to it.
When the sea comes calling it just accepts and rejoices its fate.

Once I felt just like this ship. Even though longing to become free , the weight of anchor was holding back. Then after much efforts this anchor was lifted when I wrote back what I felt should have been said much earlier. Then it was like I was liberated. It was not for me to worry what would happen next. It was not for me to care about if I would sink or float. And finally when I received back a reply I was rejoiced the fact that the effort to lift the anchor was more than worth , even for whatever small measures of happiness it gave me. Now it is just sailing in the sea winds for me. Maybe sometimes there will be storms and winds. There will be times when I would thing what made me do all this silly stuff. But I will finally say that yes I sailed into uncharted waters for the first times and going to a new destination was the aim.

Whatever may happen next is immaterial. There were no expectation at the beginning nor do I have any now, nor I hope will be there in the future.

Just being frank

2009-06-30T02:35:00.001+05:30

I tried writing what i wanted to say, don't know what effect it would have.
I am not thinking about any rejection or acceptance , I just want to convey that yes I might have been a total idiot but still I am still very much interested. Let it be known that even though it is late, even though I was not able to express what I meant , even though I wanted to say how badly I wanted to take this thing further on.

Now since I wrote some things of what was really going inside me , so hopefully I will be peaceful once more and all that desperation, restlessness and frustration will depart my soul and allow myself to be immersed in all my idiosyncrasy once more.

Chineses Challange in Myanmar

2009-06-29T22:42:00.001+05:30

The news article that a Chinese company has inked the deal with Myanmar Military governement to build a pipeline from the port of to in China is a troubling news.

Till now China was forced to ship almost all its Oil and Natural gas imports from Middle East and Africa through the Mallaca Strait. This was a very comfortable situation to governments who wanted to have a tool to keep the chinese in control in case of any tricky situation arises. Even China is aware and acknowledges the fact that "certain major powers" could choke the Mallaca Strait and bring the Chinese Economy to a grinding halt. Now Since inking the deal , China has a route to Bay of Bengal and its Energy Lines are secured in a better way.

The problem for India have increased because of this latest development. It will result in Chinese Navy presence in Bay of Bengal. If in case of any hostilities ,India wants to stop the oil shipping to China , then it must block both the Strait of Mallaca and this alternative shipping route. This will definitely streach the resources of Indian Navy and so the effectiveness of the "blockade" will be reduced.

The question to ask is that what can India's Foreign Policy do to deal with the increasing influence of China in Burma and where does India stand in the eyes of Myanmar Junta.

With the rise of Military Government in Burma, slowly Burma has become isolated from the world. It is enduring several sanctions from various countries because of the crackdown on the democratic movements. This has resulted in Myanmar economy to turn to shambles. China stepped in this situation and using several Chinese MNC's it has been involved in developing several projects like Oil & Natural Gas, Mining and others. Myanmar also provides a market for cheap Chinese goods which is killing Myanmar's own Industries. China has leveraged its strong position in Myanmar to get several benefits from the Junta. Now as far as India is concerned ,than the Myanmar Junta is trying to balance India and China and be non-aligned with both the countries. Myanmar is using India as a counter weight to China. In the past India and Myanmar have agreed to several key projects like the Sittwe port which allow access to Mizoram through Bay of bengal , when Bangladesh refused. There are several other examples of such co-operation between the two countries.
India and Myanmar coming closer has been a result of India deciding to engage Myanmar's Military Junta , even though that will be mean supporting anti-democratic regimes. This is the need of the hour as the main concern is to limit the influence of China in Myanmar.

Maybe India could have supported the democratic movement in Burma and should have developed strong ties with the pro- democratic leaders in Burma. But at this point of time the possiblity of Junta being overthrown is remote. So the best course of action is to swim with the tide.
In the case of any democratic movement takes place and the Junta rule is in danger , then China will definitely support Myanmar's Junta and that would be a tricky situation for India. Maybe in such a case India should find a proxy country which will try to help the people of Myanmar against the Junta, while at the same time not appearing to be anti-Junta supporter.

Flankers in Tezpur.

2009-06-27T22:54:00.001+05:30

The news of 4 Su30MKI being stationed in Tezpur , which is located to the north east of gawahati in Assam was received with much joy by all the nationalist defence/strategic analysts in India.
There is no doubt that positioning the Flankers(Su30MKI) in North east will surely strenghten Indian defenses in Arunachal Pradesh and Assam.

Flanker is a very potent air domination fighter jet. The latest technology and advanced avionics put together in a single platform will make sure that this plane can take on the most formidable offensive and defensive enemy hardware. Su 30 has a large operating range and since they have been based in North East , so now they can strike deep into Central China.

The question that many people asked was that why was this step taken some time back and what message does India sends to its neighbour by taking such a step.

I second the suggestion that the recent acquisition of some hardware like Aerostat Radar and other similar sytems. The point is that Su30 is a very precious piece of military hardware and it is not a wise choice to just place such a thing close to a border with China. So once Indian Military was ready with the ways to provide proper security cover for Flankers from surprise air attack or a saturated strike of missiles, they were kept out of harms' way. Now with a cover of latest radars , Indian Fighter Jets in Assam and Arunachal are safe.
The other question is that what would 4 Su30MKI would do against an enemy with numerical superiority. I believe that even stationing 4 Su30MKI is a calculated move.

A fighter jet is a machine of no use if the supporting infrastructure in form of ground control , maintainance facility etc are not capable of supporting a particular kind of aircraft. It takes time to set up these facilities for a modern machine like SU30MKI. So IAF is trying to develop these facilities by first placing 4 SU30 and then the numbers can be increased to squadron strength without much problem.
Also till the time sufficient number of Fighter Jets can be placed , the flying crew of IAF will become familiar with the terrain and operating conditions of North East.

Since Phalcon(AWACS) has also arrived so maybe Indian Defence planners though that operating Phalcon in NOrth east will be only possible if it is provided with escorts like Su30MKI and hence having a base of SU30MKI in North east becomes required.

Overall having a large number of SU30MKI suddenly in the North East will surely send a very offensive signal to China and so for the sake of not making the tension levels of situation to rise India will slowly induct sufficient number of Flankers in North East to provide a sufficient detterence to any possible Chinese Misadventures :)

Restless...after the brief encounter

2009-06-27T22:17:00.001+05:30

well as a person, i always assumed that there are something that I would never fall for even if I wanted , there are some temptations that will always remain at an arm's length from me even if i tried to indulge in them and even though how much I fantasize , some things will always never come true. So here I am writing this post to tell myself and someone else that some of these assumptions just ended in a bitter sweet way after that brief encounter.

I never thought that this situation that began just like so many other situation (which has loads of initial exitement then a sudden realization of reality) would have a different ending.

So here I am on the 4th day from that fateful meeting. I am just not being able to describe how I am feeling , totally restless and completely lonely and just thinking "ohh man , I just wish things were different, what if we could just say what we want to say , what if it would not have been too late, what if there was more time ".

I know very well that with time , it will all change back to the way it was. I will be back to normal and once more become a guy who thinks that some things in his life are controlled by destiny and there is no need to "take a chance". But this again is one more of my many assumptions which might as well be changed for ever and how i wish it would !!!

but I will remember it as a day on which I came so close and yet that proverbial adam's apple remained out of reach. this day has broken my inhibitions and things will never be the same.

I write this post not to drown and forgot my sorrows but to remember them and make it an unforgotable experience.

India and SCO(Shanghai Cooperation Organisation)

2009-06-15T22:19:00.001+05:30

The news right now is PM MMS(Manmohan Singh) has gone to Yekaterinburg to participate in SCO and BRICS meet. This is the first time India is participating at PM level in SCO and it is really interesting to see what policy and attitude India should have towards SCO.
Right now SCO is a group with two big brother Russia and China. Russia wants a firm control over SCO because this organization concerns Central Asia which is in Russia's sphere of influence. Naturally Russia is trying to project itself and reduce the influence of USA in Central Asia through SCO. The brief conflict between Russia and Georgia in August 2008 might have firmed the views in Moscow that USA still thinks of encircling Russia and include CIS states into its sphere of influence.
So Russia is trying to transform SCO into a military cooperation and understanding in addition to present goals of SCO.

China on the other hand is not comfortable with the military cooperation part. Some of the possible reasons might be that then SCO will visibly become anti US or anti-NATO. and maybe China's influence on SCO would also decrease in that case.

China is keen to use SCO as a channel to tap the energy resources of Central Asia without having a transport route passing through Russia. Naturally Russia will find this as a decrease in its influence on Central Asia.

Now India comes into picture. India definitely has eye on the events of Central Asia and the airbase at Ayni in Tajikistan is not just coincidence. Till now India has shied away from SCO and one reason was that an observer status in SCO is not in line with India's status. If India were to be active then it should be give the position and power that it deserves. Now Russia has tried to have India roped in SCO , by organizing BRICS and SCO at the same time.

There might be many reasons why Russia is interested in India being active and one possible reasons is that it will strengthen Russia own position.
If India tries to get involved in SCO it might find some concessions from Russia in CIS states and it might straighten India's security as well as energy security. India is also trying to have Afghanistan become active in SCO and this way Afghanistan can develop stronger ties with its Central Asian neighbour and become less dependent on Pakistan. Russia does not like Pakistan involvement(ie Taliban and Al Qaida) in Afghanistan so India does not have to worry about that.

I believe that India's action of waiting till the right time to actively participate in SCO has been a right move. Now India will get the high tables and a voice that will be heard.

India can surely counter China by working with Russia in this organization.
Definitely India will not be pleasing USA by becoming involved in SCO. Probably US will try ti offer some incentive to India to keep away from SCO, maybe a bit more pressure on Pakistan to address India's long standing demands.

It would be interesting to see how India associates itself with central Asian countries and how much leverage it can get out of SCO.

The Year Long Tale of USBasp

2009-06-11T21:09:00.001+05:30

It all started during summer of 08. After completing the Embedded Robotics the previous semester , I realized that the plain simple Parallel Port Programmer that we were using till then for programming the AVR microcontroller was not just sufficient for programming. It is a big pain when you need a PC with a parallel port and the every time you have to burn a new code in the micro-controller you need to physically bring the robot to the PC or in the worst case you have to take the IC out every time and put it on the programmer board, flash the code, remove it and again put it back in the robot's circuit. More so I was thinking that for competitions like Robocon we needed a programmer that is more efficient and can be used with a laptop ie USB port.

So after some googling I came across USBasp and some other USB programmer like AVR Doper. The simplicity of USBasp appealed in the first look. So I quickly soldered one PCB of the USBasp circuit. But some issues came up. First I found that the Atmega8 in USBasp was running at 12MHz and according to data sheet of ATMega8 only ATMega8 can support 12MHz CPU clock frequency and ATMega8L can clock only upto 8MHz, now here in Hyderabad (Gujrati Gali) mostly ATMega8L is available and so I tried desperately to find a ATMega8 to have USBasp completed. Somehow I found one.
Now when I tried to test the circuit it gave error "USB device not recognized" and after checking the circuit again and again I could not find where the problem is so I abandoned the whole thing.

When the summers ended and during 5th semester , we started preparing for Robocon , we ordered 2 different USB programmer and both worked well and clearly were almost same as USBasp. Next in the 6th semester I became the TA for Embedded Robotics , so we again ordered 10-12 USB programmer for students. There was big time problem with the delivery of the programmer and this created lot of problem for conducting the course.
In the mean time Jayant one of the hopeful MS student for Robotics Research Lab came and I told him about USBasp and when he tried he made it work and that too even with ATmega8L , I was totally surprised but happy that now even I can make tha thing work somehow.

When the next summers of 09 started I set down with PS Abhimanyu determined to make USBasp work. We had with us the working USBasp programmers that we had purchased and the information that Jayant had got it working.
The first thing I did was to check all the connections of the 1 year old circuit and Lo!! I could not believe myself when I found 2 bugs in the wiring. What on earth did I do 1 year back that I could not find these error at that point of time !!! anyways I saw the circuit of the programmer that we had brought and i knowingly did not short the pin 25 to GND that was supposed to regulate the speed of programmer , thinking that if this working circuit did not have this connection why would I need one myself ?
So when the circuit was connected to the laptop the device was recognized but any attempt to burn a hex file would fail resulting in error "rc = -1 .......".
Next we tried everything that was mentioned in the ReadMe file and still this problem was not resolved. Now this was a big headache , here we were supposed to design and develop AVR development Kits and AVR Kits for Embedded System Lab course and we were not even able to get the programmer working.
So I we tried our best to solve the problem , we tried to see the voltages going on the MOSI, MISO,SCK pins on the oscilloscope and they also seemed to be fine except for MISO which was almost always zero. Next we tried to read the hex file from the working programmer and tried to flash our programmer controller with the same code but this reverse engineering also did not work , we did not had the intention nor the temperament to go through Fischl's code and see what he was doing .
Totally heart fallen I tried contacting Jayant but he was not available, so after one week I tried again one night to see if the circuit works, for checking I took one of Abhimanyu's ER boards with one of his ATMega8, and tried dumping the code once and Lo !! by heavens infinite kindness that code was dumped and verified :). Now I tried changing the code several times and it worked every time but only on Abhimanyu's board ,still I was totally overjoyed and I went to sleep thinking that I have very well earned a nice and content full sleep :).

So next morning we were again brainstorming why the thing worked on only one board , and now see what the luck we had, Abhimanyu told me that all his ATMega8 were clocked at 8MHz rather then the default setting of 1 MHz, it was there that out Tube light glowed for the first time !!! All this time I was assuming that the pin 25 need not be connected to ground since it was not done in the programmer that we had purchased.

So the final verdict was that , the guy who's USBasp we had purchased had modified the source code of Fischl'e and so he didn't needed the jumper at pin 25 , to program the controller that were clocked at 1 MHz. But in our case since we had pin 25 open so we were able to program only the microcontrollers that were clocked at higher then 1.5 MHz.

So it was eventually that USBasp , a well tested and very popular USB programmer was finally up and working after 1 full year from the first time the circuit was assembled on PCB.

Then when we tested the circuit with an ATMega8L instead of ATMega8, it also worked , so we can assume that AVR microcontroller can safely be overclocked without much problem !!!

India's strategic interest in Sri Lanka after LTTE

2009-05-21T17:46:00.001+05:30

The LTTE has finally been decimated by srilankan armed forces. Now question in front of India is how to actively engage the new political leadership and counter the influence of Pakistan and China in Sri Lanka.

From what I have read somewhere , when Indra Gandhi was PM , Voice of America wanted to establish a radio station in Sri Lanka and due to the insensitivities of Sri Lankan gov towards the security issues of India, relations between India and Sri Lanka soured. So when Prabhakaran come to the scene , it seems that Indian Intelligence helped LTTE , so as to keep Sri Lankan engaged with LTTE. So far so good.
Actually I do believe in what one commentator said, Any great country needs to have neighbours who should understand that their peaceful existence depend on the good will of the Big Brother.

But when India send IPKF in Sri Lanka to actually protect Tamils , it ended up fighting LTTE(an unfortunate fact that this monster had India's hand in it ). Finally Rajiv gandhi was assasinated and LTTE(Prabhakaran) became most wanted in India.
But still India did not overtly support Sri Lankan Armed Forces by equipping them with weapons of Lethal Nature(in the mean time several senior Army officers were trained in India, and India did keep supplying non-lethal material to Sri Lanka, maybe in a way to keep its influence on the island nation).
But still there was a gap in India's Stategic planning and China exploited that by getting agreements of Hambantota port. The strategic importance of this port is immense in the Indian Ocean due to its location on the busy shipping line. This is one of China's "String of Pearls" in the Indian Ocean region.

Well India could not have been seen overtly supporting Sri Lankan Millitary because of Tamil population back home in TN. So now when LTTE has been defeated , the action for India has begin once more. The news that NSA and Foreign Seceratry have been rushed to meet Lankan Premier is a welcome news.
India now has to find a way to maintain its clout in Sri Lanka. India will rush more and more aid to the devastated areas of Northen and Eastern Sri Lanka. Hopefully India will force Sri Lanka to grant more rights to Tamil population in the Sinhalese dominated Sri Lanka. This might be in form that India can support pro-Indian leaders , or leaders who are sensitive to the security issues of India.

The next challenge in front of Mahindra Rajapakse is to fuilfill his promises to the Tamil people. India should now ensure that this is done.

PS: I am not a strategics analyst by profession or hobby : ) , these thoughts have been gathered from various blogs and forums , and I hereby present my views on the above mentioned issue.
As they say " Just my 2 cents ".

ER evaluation went badly :(

2009-05-18T22:25:00.000+05:30

So officially my second TAship(teaching assitanceship) came to an end after evaluating final projects of Embedded Robotics.
I feel a bit let down after the results were not very good , none of the groups were able to do half the tasks that were required to be done properly. Now I feel like whinning :( over it.

In contrast to first TAship of Electronics workshop where I felt very good and confident, this was quite if not totally opposite. This is in parts a failure of myself as a mentor and guide of students.

The main dilemma facing me is how to guide a student without spoon feeding him. Maybe one has to become a devil's agent to not allow things to get relaxed beyond the point required, administrative responsibilities also are not also a work that earn praises from students. Sometimes deadlines have to be struck to.

Maybe the failure was not providing sufficient components and sensors to students, which they were to buy themselves.

So many MAYBE's . How I hope someone would honestly tell me , if I was not alert enough about my duties, or I was not helpful enough or I was too optimistic or is it the also the fault of the students (as ER projects can't be completed in 5-6 days , considering electronics is a art or black magic !!! here )

Recent readings

2009-05-18T11:55:00.001+05:30

recently I read some books
Somnath(Hindi) by Acharya Chatursen, a short novel of RK Narayana and collection of short stories by Ruskin Bond.

The writing of Acharya Charutsen are just awsome, and if you try to review his Historical works like "Vaishali Ki Nagarvadhu"( meaning The city bride of vashali") , these works are just par excellence. When I was starting to read Vaishali Ki Nagarvadhu(some 1 yr back), I went through the introduction written by Acahrya Chatursen. he said "... after finishing this work I feel so elated that I happily disown all my previous literary work of 40 years and here I present in front of you my first work".
Just reading this I realised what a gem of a book the novel was and I was not a bit disappaointed.

The author did a long long study of Jainism, Buddism and other social condition like a dedicated historian and then with his superb narration and mesmersing style come out with this story.

Coming back to Somnath, when I saw the author name I was in no doubt that I again have found a really nice way to spend my time. And Somnath helped me to peacefully pass my time when I was travelling to my home from Hyderabad in a 2nd Class coach, during the month of May !!.

Since Somnath as the name suggests is written to present the historical events of the ransacking of Somanth temple by Mommd of Ghazni. so I was very much inquisitive how such a misfortune was allowed to happen by the kings and ruler of that time. So then with a mix of fiction and Historical facts the author presnts such a beautiful and vivid pictur eof the whole event that in the end I was praying that what ever was written should have actually happen long back in history. meaning Mommd of Ghazni did ransack Somnath temple in Gujrat , but he on his way back is looted of all the loot and went back a changed man.

To do justise to people like me and not to have fantasy be mixed with historical facts , the author clearly clarifies the separation of facts with his own creation.

Maybe another post will be needed to lighten my heart of all the burden that I am carrying in my heart and mind after reading this another excellent work.

Acharya Chatursen , he has clearly become my favorite Hindi writer. How I wish I could read more of his work and somehow present my respects to this priest , which I felt after realising his great dedication, honesty and the great service he has done to Hindi Literature.

Let the journey Begin

2009-05-18T11:33:00.000+05:30

So i am online with this blog, hope something good comes out of it !!