blog/archive/2018/06/06.rss

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   4                 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries from June 2018</title>
   5                 <description>Entries from June 2018</description>
   6                 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/</link>
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  10                 <title>The worlds only stone power plant?</title>
  11                 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_worlds_only_stone_power_plant_.html</link>
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  13                 <pubDate>Sat, 30 Jun 2018 10:35:00 +0200</pubDate>
  14                 <description>&lt;p&gt;So far, at least hydro-electric power, coal power, wind power,
  15 solar power, and wood power are well known.  Until a few days ago, I
  16 had never heard of stone power.  Then I learn about a quarry in a
  17 mountain in
  18 &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremanger&quot;&gt;Bremanger&lt;/a&gt; i
  19 Norway, where
  20 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.bontrup.com/en/activities/raw-materials/bremanger-quarry/&quot;&gt;the
  21 Bremanger Quarry&lt;/a&gt; company is extracting stone and dumping the stone
  22 into a shaft leading to its shipping harbour.  This downward movement
  23 in this shaft is used to produce electricity.  In short, it is using
  24 falling rocks instead of falling water to produce electricity, and
  25 according to its own statements it is producing more power than it is
  26 using, and selling the surplus electricity to the Norwegian power
  27 grid.  I find the concept truly amazing.  Is this the worlds only
  28 stone power plant?&lt;/p&gt;
  29
  30 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
  31 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
  32 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
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  37                 <title>Add-on to control the projector from within Kodi</title>
  38                 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Add_on_to_control_the_projector_from_within_Kodi.html</link>
  39                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Add_on_to_control_the_projector_from_within_Kodi.html</guid>
  40                 <pubDate>Tue, 26 Jun 2018 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
  41                 <description>&lt;p&gt;My movie playing setup involve &lt;a href=&quot;https://kodi.tv/&quot;&gt;Kodi&lt;/a&gt;,
  42 &lt;a href=&quot;https://openelec.tv&quot;&gt;OpenELEC&lt;/a&gt; (probably soon to be
  43 replaced with &lt;a href=&quot;https://libreelec.tv/&quot;&gt;LibreELEC&lt;/a&gt;) and an
  44 Infocus IN76 video projector.  My projector can be controlled via both
  45 a infrared remote controller, and a RS-232 serial line.  The vendor of
  46 my projector, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.infocus.com/&quot;&gt;InFocus&lt;/a&gt;, had been
  47 sensible enough to document the serial protocol in its user manual, so
  48 it is easily available, and I used it some years ago to write
  49 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/infocus-projector-control&quot;&gt;a
  50 small script to control the projector&lt;/a&gt;.  For a while now, I longed
  51 for a setup where the projector was controlled by Kodi, for example in
  52 such a way that when the screen saver went on, the projector was
  53 turned off, and when the screen saver exited, the projector was turned
  54 on again.&lt;/p&gt;
  55
  56 &lt;p&gt;A few days ago, with very good help from parts of my family, I
  57 managed to find a Kodi Add-on for controlling a Epson projector, and
  58 got in touch with its author to see if we could join forces and make a
  59 Add-on with support for several projectors.  To my pleasure, he was
  60 positive to the idea, and we set out to add InFocus support to his
  61 add-on, and make the add-on suitable for the official Kodi add-on
  62 repository.&lt;/p&gt;
  63
  64 &lt;p&gt;The Add-on is now working (for me, at least), with a few minor
  65 adjustments.  The most important change I do relative to the master
  66 branch in the github repository is embedding the
  67 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/pyserial/pyserial&quot;&gt;pyserial module&lt;/a&gt; in
  68 the add-on.  The long term solution is to make a &quot;script&quot; type
  69 pyserial module for Kodi, that can be pulled in as a dependency in
  70 Kodi.  But until that in place, I embed it.&lt;/p&gt;
  71
  72 &lt;p&gt;The add-on can be configured to turn on the projector when Kodi
  73 starts, off when Kodi stops as well as turn the projector off when the
  74 screensaver start and on when the screesaver stops.  It can also be
  75 told to set the projector source when turning on the projector.
  76
  77 &lt;p&gt;If this sound interesting to you, check out
  78 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/fredrik-eriksson/kodi_projcontrol&quot;&gt;the
  79 project github repository&lt;/a&gt;.  Perhaps you can send patches to
  80 support your projector too?  As soon as we find time to wrap up the
  81 latest changes, it should be available for easy installation using any
  82 Kodi instance.&lt;/p&gt;
  83
  84 &lt;p&gt;For future improvements, I would like to add projector model
  85 detection and the ability to adjust the brightness level of the
  86 projector from within Kodi.  We also need to figure out how to handle
  87 the cooling period of the projector.  My projector refuses to turn on
  88 for 60 seconds after it was turned off.  This is not handled well by
  89 the add-on at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;
  90
  91 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
  92 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
  93 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
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