nicegear blog

New nicegear website launched

2017-11-22T03:23:20.917754Z

After some furious in-house development we're happy to launch our new website. We had a lot of positive comments from our old site, and a few comments on how we could make things even better. We took these on board and tried to address them with this new site.

We spent most of our time streamlining the existing functionality that we had with the old site, we've also added some new features too. Obviously we have added this blog so we can keep you up to date on what's happening with us.

Some of the other features; You can now tag products (and of course browse by tag). You can add your comments on products (let us know what you think of them - good or bad), along those lines you can also add ratings to products. The more people who use these systems the better they'll work for everyone so please do feel free to go click/type away!

We've made it easier for you to get through the checkout process by making you enter less details and providing you with more information during the whole process.

There's also a lot of details you won't see, we've spent a considerable amount of time developing our backend systems to streamline the ordering and shipping process. This allows us keep our administration costs down while we expand to cope with increasing demand. By us keeping our administration costs down it means you continue to get the cheapest prices.

Let us know what you think, either using the comment section below or our usual contact details. The new site framework makes it quite easy for us to add new features we will be introducing more in the near future. If you have any suggestions or requests do feel free to let us know.

For those who are interested in the gory details of how the nicegear site works...

Obviously being strong believers in open source software we've based our site on open source technologies. Doing so has allowed us to achieve a high level of functionality in a short amount of time. It's also allowed us to contribute patches back to the projects where we find that something is either missing or broken for what we need to do.

First things first, the site is developed in Python, a flexible language that's great for web development (amongst other things). There's a bunch of Python modules we use to speed up development; Werkzeug, a library handling requests and routing etc., Jinja for templating, SQLAlchemy, the well known database access and ORM, and finally WTForms, a new form handling library.

For powering the site search we're using the excellent Xapian Search Engine Library with it's bundled Python bindings.

All of these technologies are hosted on an Ubuntu Linux server which runs the Apache2 webserver with the mod_wsgi Python module. The database backend is driven by PostgreSQL.

On the client side of things, the jQuery JavaScript library and various plugins allowing for faster tidier development.

We're also looking at releasing the source code for the shop platform that we've built at some stage. Since there's a bit of work involved extracting a generic platform from the nicegear site it may take some time for this to come to fruition.

I do hope people find the new site easy and fun to use, if you've got any comments please feel free to leave them below. All the best - Hadley Rich and the nicegear team.

New Zealand Dialplan for snom phones

2017-11-22T03:23:20.963613Z

There are a couple of benefits to using a dialplan on your IP phone, one of the main ones being that it allows the phone to know when you're finished dialing so it can put your call through without a delay or the need to push an extra button.

The snom desktop phones (snom 300, snom 320, snom 360, snom 370) support a powerful regular expression based dialplan.

This post shows you how to build a dialplan to handle most of the numbers in the New Zealand numbering scheme. So lets get started.

First off we'll handle local and national numbers, this will work for the whole country.

!^([2-9][0-9]{6})$!\1@\d!d
!^(0[34679][2-9]{1}[0-9]{6})$!\1@\d!d

Next up is free calling (0800, 0508) and subscription (0900) services.

!^((0800|0508)[0-9]{6})$!\1@\d!d
!^(0900[0-9]{5})$!\1@\d!d

Starting to get a little more complex now is Vodafone. There are a couple of oddities to their number which require a few rules.

!^(02102[0-9]{6})$!\1@\d!d
!^(021[346789][0-9]{5})$!\1@\d!d
!^(0210[^2][0-9]{5})$!\1@\d!d
!^(021[^0][0-9]{6})$!\1@\d!d

The last two entries here could be simplified into one if the phone supported negative lookaheads, which it appears it doesn't.

This will handle 2Talk VoIP mobile numbers.

!^(02889[0-9]{4})$!\1@\d!d

and all other mobile numbers can be caught with the following

!^(02[479][0-9]{7})$!\1@\d!d

If you happen to use the paging service this pattern will catch that The paging service is a mixture of 6 and 7 digits long;

!^(0261[0-9]{5})$!\1@\d!d
!^(0262[0-9]{6})$!\1@\d!d

Here's the final dialplan in a format ready to be pasted into the "Dial-Plan String" field on your snom phone. This can be found in the web interface under "Identity 1" (where 1 is the identity you're using) in the SIP tab.

!^([2-9][0-9]{6})$!\1@\d!d !^(0[34679][2-9]{1}[0-9]{6})$!\1@\d!d !^(1[0-9]{2})$!\1@\d!d !^((0800|0508)[0-9]{6})$!\1@\d!d !^(0900[0-9]{5})$!\1@\d!d !^(02102[0-9]{6})$!\1@\d!d !^(021[346789][0-9]{5})$!\1@\d!d !^(02889[0-9]{4})$!\1@\d!d !^(02[46789][0-9]{7})$!\1@\d!d !^(0261[0-9]{5})$!\1@\d!d !^(0262[0-9]{6})$!\1@\d!d !^(0210[^2][0-9]{5})$!\1@\d!d !^(021[^0][0-9]{6})$!\1@\d!d

There's a couple of cases that we don't handle here; one is International numbers, these are a variable length and we can't really tell when they're finished being dialed. The other is some short service codes such as 018 etc. All this means is that you'll have to push the OK/tick button to initiate the dial.

Questions, criticisms, comments and suggestions are most welcome in the comments section below.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention the service/emergency codes which is included in the full dialplan above which is

!^(1[0-9]{2})$!\1@\d!d

Why should I use VoIP?

2017-11-22T03:23:21.010418Z

We get a large number of calls from people with questions such as "Why would I use VoIP?" or "What are the advantages of VoIP?" so I thought I'd make a short post answering some of these. I'll also cover another common one, "What is the quality of VoIP like?"

Firstly lets's talk about who can benefit from using VoIP technology. Pretty much everyone can in some capacity;

If you have a home with teenagers who like to talk on the phone a lot you might like a second line (or third!) line to stop people hearing the busy tone when they call. It's better than call waiting as you'll actually know when someone calls and be able to talk to them there and then.
If you're a SOHO (home office) or telecommute then you may benefit from having all your business calls separate to your home calls. This solves that old problem of people calling in expecting a business and getting one of the family answering the call.
If you're a small or medium business then you will be able to increase the amount of incoming/outgoing lines to your office at a very reasonable price. You'll also likely save a substantial amount on calls.
If you're a business with multiple locations around the country (or world) then you will be able to save a substantial amount off not only your normal calls but calls between offices will likely be free of charge.
A contracting business such as building with mobile workers will be able to save money on calls to it's mobile workforce.

Let's mention VoIP providers briefly. These are the guys that offer you a phone service to go with your VoIP phone, much like Telecom offer you a traditional phone service. A couple of years ago there weren't many VoIP providers in New Zealand to choose from and the quality may have been less than ideal. These days there are a bunch to choose from and the quality is superb.

For an example we will pick on 2Talk (we use 2Talk for our calling here at nicegear). 2Talk has a range of plans on their website, from a no-monthly-cost plan up to larger business plans. Their entry level monthly plan (2Talk 500) offers two lines, two incoming numbers in your area (pretty much all areas of the country are covered these days), 500 included minutes to anywhere in New Zealand and most countries around the world, 5c per minute after that and 25c per minute calling to New Zealand mobiles. Along with that all their plans support a huge number of features; Voice mail (with emailed messages), call waiting, call forwarding, caller ID, call transfer, locate me (rings multiple phones simultaneously), call recording, etc. etc.

2Talk is just one provider that you can choose from these days, I've discussed them here as we use them for our calls here and know their service a little.

This brings me to the quality issue; "What is the quality of VoIP like?". In a sentence, it's as good or better than your normal phone line. If one end of the call is a normal old style telephone connection then it's going to be the same quality as it always was. The reason I say it can be better is if you're calling a friend who is also on VoIP the connection could be digital all the way, in these cases the quality can actually be better than you're used to. If you'd like to test the quality feel free to give us a call (03 974 9011) and see for yourself.

For most people the cost savings and features that you get out of the box are the main interests of VoIP, although, there are many other advantages for advanced users too such as incoming numbers in multiple areas all coming to your phone, being able to answer your phone from anywhere there's an Internet connection etc.

Of course since we sell hardware I'll pop a couple of links here :) If you're interested in getting started with VoIP here's a couple of quick suggestions (I'll cover this more in depth in another post). The Linksys PAP2T analog telephone adapter allows you to connect up to a VoIP provider and plug your normal old phone in to make calls. The snom 300 or Linksys SPA922 will plug directly into your broadband router and allow you to make calls (they also have more advanced features like transfer buttons etc.).

Dealing with VoIP on a daily basis has the side effect of making me overlook some of the most obvious and useful features it offers so I'm sure I've missed something. If you think of something I've missed or have a question that isn't covered then by all means leave a comment below.

All the best - hads

Technotrend Supply Issues

2017-11-22T03:23:21.068496Z

Unfortunately our suppliers have informed us that Technotrend is having trouble supplying their DVB cards at the moment. They are unsure whether or when this problem will be rectified.

This means that the Technotrend S-1401 DVB card, which has been extremely popular with MythTV users isn't available any longer.

We're currently trying to find a replacement card which has the same great Linux compatibility and low cost. I'll let you know what we come up with.

Arduino Mega Coming Soon

2017-11-22T03:23:21.113087Z

The new Arduino Mega which uses the ATMEGA1280 micro-controller and has many more inputs and outputs than your average Arduino has been leaked.

You'll see a picture of it above showing the size, it sports the following features;

128KB of Flash
4KB RAM
4KB EEPROM
53 IO
4 HW UARTs
14 PWMs
I2C bus
16 Analog Input pins

Sounds fantastic for those bigger projects.

nicegear will have stock of the Arduino Mega when it's publicly released and available for sale.

Where did the Linux netbooks go?

2017-11-22T03:23:21.156893Z

We've sold Linux netbooks in the past - Linux netbooks were what started the whole craze to begin with. Unfortunately it seems that they just aren't available from the official distributors in New Zealand any longer (as much as they were to begin with). It's now down to their aging overweight cousins, the Windows XP netbook.

Originally we had access to limited models of the Asus Eee and the Acer Aspire One with Linux, though both of those now seem to have disappeared from the suppliers catalogs. The MSI Wind and Dell Mini haven't been available with Linux pre-installed here in New Zealand at all, nor other brands that I'm aware of.

Unfortunately all we can do is apologise to our loyal customers and comment on the sad state of affairs that the distribution of technology is here.

snom 820 mini-review

2017-11-22T03:23:21.205751Z

Thanks to one of our great suppliers we've finally got our hands on the snom 820 and have had a chance to play with it for the last couple of weeks. The snom 820 has been out around the world for quite a while but unfortunately they seem to have been on a slow boat to New Zealand.

Even though we're late getting the phone itself New Zealand has been recognised a little and is now a tone selection in the setup, previously Australia was used as a close equivalent.

The 820 builds on the firmware from the 3x0 series, so has all the existing features such as the great web interface, the ability to control the phone via HTTP requests (this makes it super easy to implement a click to dial solution) and versatile function keys etc.

There doesn't appear to be info around about this so I'll just note here that my snom headset from a snom 360 works fine with the 820.

The big red message waiting light at the top right corner is bright and pretty un-missable compared to the small LED on the older models.

We use FreeSWITCH here at nicegear and like the previous snom phones, the 820 works without a hitch. Wideband audio, TLS+SRTP for secure calls, BLF and all other features work nicely out of the box.

Good things

It's definitely stylish. The colour display is a massive improvement over the snom 3x0 series - it's high resolution, bright and used well. There's a nice little alpha transparency overlay that comes up on incoming calls

The handset is a good weight, is comfortable in the hand and on the ear and is acoustically very nice. Combined with high definition wideband audio codecs such as G722 it has a beautiful rich sound. Another nice little touch is the lack of a physical hook switch, it's using some sort of sensor to detect whether the handset is on hook or not.

The base speaker has also been improved and also sounds great. I used to tell people that the Polycom acoustics were slightly ahead of the snom range but in my opinion the 820 has evened this out nicely.

Sitting on my desk next to the Apple aluminium keyboard it fits in pretty well :)

The bad bits

It has to be said; the price. Unfortunately at over $1000 dollars it's not really priced for the masses.

A minor nitpick; for some reason snom decided to swap the OK (tick) and Cancel (cross) buttons around from the snom 300 series. This is still taking a bit of getting used to.

Conclusion

If you can afford it, the snom 820 is a very very nice phone and one I would recommend without hesitation. I haven't found any issues at all so far, I'll be sure to add a comment if I come across any.

Products update

2017-11-22T03:23:21.247647Z

So, nicegear all started with VoIP Equipment. It seems that we've now expanded into various new product areas.

VoIP hardware is still our biggest area and all this expansion has left me feeling that we've neglected our roots in just a little. So I've gone and added a couple of new products to our range of VoIP equipment;

First off is the Yealink IP Phones, there's only two listed currently as those are the models we thought would be good to bring in and test with. Of course like pretty much all the brands we stock, we can get any model in you like, just let us know. In the next couple weeks I'll be using one of the Yealink phones myself and then writing up a short review for the blog here.

Next, some more IP Phones, the Siemens Gigaset cordless DECT IP phone range. Once I've worked my way through the pile of phones to test I have on my bench I'll be putting up a review of the Siemens phones too.

Last but not least the ATCOM AT620P phone is our first phone from ATCOM who make the fantastic IP0x range of IP PBX phone systems. The AT620P is a super well priced phone with a surprising amount of features at such a low cost.

As well as new products, some new pricing. Of course prices are always varying but I've just managed to make significant price reductions on the Polycom range of IP Phones. Have you read about the great quality of their handsets and speakers with HD Voice? Wondered what all the fuss was about? Now might be the time to try it out for yourself (I must say it is pretty neat). Like a lot of our stuff I believe we've got the best prices around on Polycom IP Phones in New Zealand.

Is there anything else that you'd like us to stock? Let me know in the comments section below, we try our best to track down what people want.

Choosing a VoIP Conference Phone

2017-11-22T03:23:21.295338Z

Here's a short guide to help you choose the best VoIP phone for your conference or meeting room. We'll be looking at the Polycom range of IP conferencing phones, as they are widely regarded as the best for this purpose. All three models are based on the SIP protocol which is the open standard for VoIP.

There are now three models of VoIP conference phones in the Polycom range; the SoundStation IP 5000 (recently released, stock not quite available at the time of writing), the SoundStation IP 6000, and the SoundStation IP 7000, shown from top to bottom in the embedded images of this post.

The IP 5000 is the smallest and lowest price unit, ideally suited to executive's offices or small conference/meeting rooms. It has an approximate microphone pick-up range of 2.1 meters (7 feet) so works well on smaller tables. The IP 6000 has a pick-up range of 3.6 meters (12 feet) and at the top of the range the IP 7000 pick-up range is 6.1 meters (20 feet). The IP 6000 and IP 7000 also support a set of external microphones to increase their range making them suitable for even larger rooms.

At the top end of the scale for the largest rooms, two IP 7000 units can be connected together in tandem, along with one optional expansion microphone on each phone. The phones work together in this configuration and either unit can be used to control calling.

All three models support Polycom's HD Voice, have dynamic noise reduction, and resist interference from nearby wireless devices such as mobile phones. The IP 6000 and IP 7000 also have automatic gain control which keeps the in-call volume at a more consistent level.

All three devices also support Power over Ethernet (PoE) which means they can be powered from a compatible PoE switch (PoE devices will still work with standard switches too).

Being the top of the range, the IP 7000 also has a few additional features such as; mobile phone and computer connectivity, advanced software features like LDAP directory integration, integration with Polycom video conferencing systems and the ability to connect to external audio systems.

You might notice that there's no wireless VoIP conference phone like there is in the analog SoundStation range. If you do need a wireless solution then you can always use one of the SoundStation 2W wireless conference phones with an Analog Telephone Adapter (ATA) to hook into your VoIP system.

For further reading the Polycom website has a comparison page which you may like to read, there's also the detailed data sheets for the IP 5000, IP 6000 and IP 7000.

I hope this helps you choose the right VoIP conference phone for your situation. If you have any questions then please feel free to leave a comment below or drop us a line.

New SSL Certificate

2017-11-22T03:23:21.341999Z

We've just installed a new SSL certificate on the nicegear website from StartSSL. StartSSL are a relatively new company in the SSL world who have an great innovative approach to validation when compared to the traditional SSL merchants. They charge a reasonable fee for the actual validations they perform rather than each individual certificate you need.

People with older operating systems such as Windows XP prior to Service Pack 2 (SP2) may be informed that the certificate is issued by an untrusted authority. If you come across this then you may solve the issue by upgrading your operating system/browser. Please feel free to contact us if you have any queries.

Cisco SPA500 IP Phones, what's the difference?

2017-11-22T03:23:21.388491Z

So we might be a little late to the party (sorry about that) but we've finally got around to adding the Cisco "Small Business Pro" SPA500 series range of IP phones to the store.

If you include the previously released SPA525G, there are 6 models in the Small Business Pro range. The new phones in order are; the SPA501G, SPA502G, SPA504G, SPA508G and SPA509G.

Firstly, lets start off with what is the same about the phone models;

All models include a 2 port Ethernet switch - this allows you to connect the IP phone to the network and then connect your computer to the phone which means you don't have to call your cabling contractor out as part of setting up your phone.
All models support standard 802.3af Power over Ethernet (PoE).
They all have a full duplex speakerphone, which by all reports gives good sound quality.
All models support HD Voice - G722 wideband audio codec which gives superior sound quality.
They've all got a 2.5mm headset jack.
All models have a Message Waiting Indicator Light (MWI) and decent amount of hardware buttons for common tasks - 12 button dial pad, 4-way navigation key, and illuminated buttons for volume, hold, menu voicemail.
They all support an expansion module for attendants.
The software supports both SIP for standard VoIP providers and Cisco's proprietry protocols to work with their UC500 platform.

and now for what differentiates the phones;

The Cisco SPA501G

1 line
No display, uses a paper insert to write speed-dials etc. on
Has 8 programmable function keys (to go with the above paper insert)

The Cisco SPA502G

1 line
Monochrome 128x64 pixel backlit display
No programmable function keys

The Cisco SPA504G

4 lines
Monochrome 128x64 pixel backlit display
4 programmable function keys

The Cisco SPA508G

8 lines
Monochrome 128x64 pixel backlit display
8 programmable function keys

The Cisco SPA509G

12 lines
Monochrome 128x64 pixel backlit display
12 programmable function keys

The Cisco SPA525G

5 lines
Color 320x240 pixel backlit display
5 programmable function keys
WiFi
Bluetooth
MP3 player
Picture viewer
RSS feed reader

As you can see the SPA525G is quite a step up from the rest of the range, unfortunately at the time of writing it hasn't been in stock at the New Zealand distributors much at all. Hopefully this situation is rectified soon.

Hopefully that gives an insight into the new-ish Cisco SPA500 Small Business Pro range of IP phones. If you've got any questions that we didn't answer here or would like to know anything else then feel free to leave a comment below or drop us a line.

Update: Fixed the number of lines which we reported incorrectly.

What's so good about Power over Ethernet (PoE)?

2017-11-22T03:23:21.432221Z

Power over Ethernet is an advantage for several reasons. Firstly, it means you don't need to plug the phone into once of those scarce wall outlets under the desk. Secondly, as the phones are all powered from a central location (the switch) it makes it easy to power your entire phone system through an uninterruptible power supply (UPS). Using a UPS means your phones keep going in the event of a power cut, and it can also protect from power surges, thus increasing the reliability of your phone system.

Questions such as "Can I use a normal switch with PoE phones?" or "Can I use non-PoE devices with a PoE switch?" are common. Part of the 802.3af PoE standard is negotiation, a PoE switch will only send power to devices which expect it, this means that you can safely use non-PoE devices with a PoE switch, and PoE devices will work fine on a non-PoE switch.

Though PoE is immensely useful for VoIP it is also useful in other areas. Common applications include security/surveillance cameras, WiFi access points and other networking equipment. There's even products to break out PoE for powering devices which don't support PoE natively, we've sucessfully used these to power Arduino projects around our office.

Quick Facts

802.3af PoE is a standard, products from all manufacturers work together.
PoE is low voltage (48 volts DC)
PoE devices work fine with normal Ethernet switches
Non-PoE devices work fine with PoE switches

Here's a list of PoE powered devices that we sell. If you've got any questions feel free to post a comment or contact us directly.

Introducing the Yealink IP Phone Range

2017-11-22T03:23:21.477013Z

Though new to us Yealink have been around since 2001, which, in the VoIP world is actually quite a while. The Yealink range of IP Phones has grown in popularity in the last couple of years and has been getting great reviews.

They are priced really well when compared to other popular brands and actually use the same internal chipsets as Polycom and Cisco. All the Yealink phones support Power over Ethernet (PoE), wideband audio (HD Voice), have an integrated two port Ethernet switch, full duplex speakerphone and support a headset.

We've now got pretty much the full range of phones from Yealink in stock and on an introductory special;

Yealink have been working with partners to achieve interoperability and are now certified to work with popular SIP systems such as Asterisk, 3CX and Epygi. Of course the Yealink phones also work well with all SIP based systems like FreeSWITCH, Philips, Avaya, Cisco etc.

They go superbly well with our range of ATCOM VoIP PBXs, making a featureful cost effective phone system for small and medium sized businesses. Let us know if you would like us to put together a package deal for you.

There's also a couple of accessories to go with the phones; the Yealink EXP38 38 key expansion module, ideal for receptionist duties, and the YHS32 monaural noise-cancelling headset, suitable for all the Yealink IP Phone range (except the VP-2009P).

FreeSWITCH and FreePBX v3 running on Ubuntu on an ALIX board

2017-11-22T03:23:21.521557Z

We've been following the development of FreeSWITCH and running it as our phone system here for a few years now. It's a fantastic piece of software, featurefull, extremely stable and really just works.

A lot of people aren't comfortable or just don't like hand editing configuration files. Good news for those people as FreePBX, the ubiquitous web GUI for configuring Asterisk, will soon be releasing a new version 3 which supports configuring FreeSWITCH.

We had a PC Engines ALIX board sitting around collecting dust after sustaining damage to one of it's Ethernet ports, the rest of the board is fine. For something interesting to do with with it I thought that seeing if it could run FreeSWITCH and FreePBX in it's limited environment would be fun.

We use Ubuntu on most of our computers so I started there, nice and simple. Here's a blog post about installing Ubuntu Lucid on a compact flash for an ALIX board. It's mostly correct though there's a couple of minor things I changed (post a comment if you would like details).

While the compact flash card was still mounted on my laptop I took advantage of the faster processor to install and compile FreeSWITCH, this should work for any Ubuntu system.

apt-get install git-core autoconf libtool libncurses5-dev # Install some prerequisites

cd /usr/src && git clone git://git.freeswitch.org/freeswitch.git # Download FreeSWITCH

./bootstrap.sh && ./configure && make && make install # Install FreeSWITCH

There are more details on installing FreeSWITCH here.

apt-get install lighttpd subversion mysql-server php5-mysql php5-xmlrpc php5-curl # Some requirements for FreePBX v3

lighttpd-enable-mod fastcgi && /etc/init.d/lighttpd force-reload # Enable PHP support

cd /var/www && svn co http://www.freepbx.org/v3/svn/trunk/ freepbx-v3/ # Download FreePBX

# Setup permissions for FreePBX
chgrp -R www-data /usr/local/freeswitch/conf/*
chmod -R g+w /usr/local/freeswitch/conf/*
chmod 777 freepbx-v3/freepbx/logs/
chmod 777 freepbx-v3/freepbx/cache/
chgrp -R www-data freepbx-v3/freepbx/config/*
chmod -R g+w freepbx-v3/freepbx/config/*

These instruction as taken from the FreePBX v3 installation instructions and modified slightly for Ubuntu.

After putting the CF card in the ALIX board and booting it up you can then open a browser at it's IP address and start configuring your phone system!

So, how does the ALIX perform? It handles FreeSWITCH alone really quite well. You'll notice that I used lighttpd as the webserver, I originally tried loading Apache2 but due to the low memory on the ALIX (256MB) the OOM killer killed mysql when FreeSWITCH was started. Not a great start!

After starting mysql, lighttpd, FreeSWITCH, top shows about 5MB free RAM, that will do to get going. After creating a few extensions and registering a couple of phones I created a three person conference, two phones using G722 wideband and one using G711. Looking at top the ALIX board is running at 20% CPU and about 3MB free memory. Not too bad at all for the little box!

So the conclusion? It can be done! The ALIX board all loaded up with everything can handle at least a few calls. I haven't tested how many yet, perhaps I'll run it up again and see what it's limit is. Whether you want to load up the poor little ALIX with all this stuff like a web server, database server etc. is up to you. If you do there's probably many better ways to save resources, feel free to point them out in the comments :)

Python module for SecurePayTech Payment Gateway

2017-11-22T03:23:21.562812Z

Here's some Python code to interact with the SecurePayTech credit card gateway. This is the service we use for processing your credit card payments on the nicegear site.

I open sourced this back when I wrote it the for the nicegear site and sent it through to SecurePayTech but for some reason they never got around to publishing it. Subsequently it's been collecting dust and not many people know about it so I thought I'd let you all know about it.

Here's some example usage, it's pretty simple;

from securepaytech import PaymentGateway

gateway = PaymentGateway('TESTDIGISPL1', 'd557591484cb2cd12bba445aba420d2c69cd6a88')
request = PaymentRequest(
    CardHolderName='Test Card',
    CardNumber='4987654321098769',
    CardExpiry='0513',
    Amount = '10.00'
)
request.EnableCSC = True
request.CSC = '100'
response = gateway.payment(request)
print response

At the bottom of the file is some similar example usage.

It's released under the MIT license so feel free to use it as you wish. If you find it useful or have some suggestions for improvements feel free to let us know if the comments below.

How to set up a Yealink VoIP Phone on 2Talk

2017-11-22T03:23:21.604525Z

The Yealink IP Phones we sell are a great quality and really well priced range. Whether you're looking for a low cost entry into the money saving VoIP world, or an executive desk phone there is something there to suit. Many of them are currently on special too.

2Talk are a popular New Zealand VoIP provider, we use them for our calling here at nicegear and have done for the last few years so I can vouch for their service being reliable.

This post is about bringing the two together - how to set up a Yealink VoIP phone to work with the 2Talk service. So, down to business;

First things first, you need a Yealink phone, of course we would be happy to sell you one :)
Second, sign up with 2Talk.
Once you have your phone, plug it in, once it's booted up you'll need to find it's IP address. Press the "OK" button in the middle of the direction keys, this screen will show the IP address. For example we will use 192.168.0.7
Open a web browser and go to the IP address, e.g. http://192.168.0.7 it will load the phones web configuration page.
Click the "Account" tab along the top, there's a few settings to change on this tab.
Change "Account Active" to "On".
In the "Display Name" field, enter your name (or whatever you like).
In both the "Register Name" and "User Name" fields, enter your 2Talk phone number.
In the "Password" field, enter your 2Talk password.
In the "SIP Server" field, enter "2talk.co.nz".
Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the "Confirm" button.

In moments your phone will be ready to make calls (this is one of the nice features of the Yealink phones - settings are updated really quickly without long reboots etc.).

A couple of further settings; to get the correct time, head over to the "Phone" tab and change the timezone drop down list to "+12 New Zealand(Wellington,Auckland)", click confirm down the bottom of the page again. While on that tab, click on the "Tones" link at the top (under the tab list) and choose New Zealand from the list, click confirm. This makes the ring, dial tone, etc. sound correct for New Zealand.

This covers the basic settings required to start making calls. Stay tuned for a follow up post containing some more advanced settings to make using your Yealink phone a better experience, including a New Zealand dial plan (so you don't have to push send after dialing).

In the interests of full disclosure; do note that our referral code is contained in the 2Talk links, this means we get a small commission when people sign up with them. Don't worry though - we wouldn't recommend them unless we were sure, as noted above we've been using them for a few years now.

Switchfin, a new firmware for ATCOM IP PBX series

2017-11-22T03:23:21.646837Z

Since the beginning of 2010 the guys over at Switchfin have re-invigorated development on Astfin2, the software which powers the ATCOM IP PBX devices. Things are really starting to come along now, they have made upgrades to existing software and implemented some exciting new features, some of which are still in testing and some of which can be seen and used now.

I'm a fan of lists, so here's some of the new things in list form;

Many updates, fixes and enhancements to the web GUI
Optional DHCP server
Updated to the latest Asterisk 1.4 release
Asterisk 1.6 with all it's new features available for testing
Optional building of G729 support
Updated to DAHDI from Zaptel
Call recording functionality
Updated SpanDSP library for more robust callerid and fax support
Fax2Email functionality using the SpanDSL library
Optional TFTP server
SSMTP mail server
Vim text editor for those who like doing things by hand
Improved firmware upgrade procedure
Many others that I haven't listed...

As you can see it's a pretty comprehensive list with a few very exciting points. The ones that will obviously stand out for many people are Asterisk 1.6 and G729. As G729 is patent encumbered it's not built by default, but is there in the build system for those who are not restricted by software patents and would like to use it.

With a DHCP server as well as Asterisk 1.6 this may pave the way towards being able to provision phones directly from an ATCOM IP PBX. The support in asterisk-gui is at least partially there, as the Digium AA50 Appliance has been able to provision Polycom phones for a while. This is something that we will be looking into here at nicegear.

If you try out the Switchfin firmware then let us know what you think. If you've got one of our ATCOM IP PBX appliances and want a hand to try it out then let us know.

Configuring a Yealink IP Phone for use in New Zealand

2017-11-22T03:23:21.697082Z

As promised in last week's blog post on setting up a Yealink phone for 2talk here is a more comprehensive post on setting up a Yealink phone with the correct settings for use in New Zealand.

Building on our old blog post with a NZ dial plan for snom phones and borrowing a couple of ideas from Steve Biddle's great post on configuring Linksys VoIP devices for NZ here is a configuration for the excellent Yealink IP Phones.

To make things super simple, we've put together and are hosting a configuration or "provisioning" file so all you need to do is point your Yealink phone to a URL and everything will be set up automatically.

Once your phone is all powered up either with Power over Ethernet or the included wall adapter you need to find it's IP address. The simplest way to do this is to press the "OK" key in the middle of the directional keys. The screen that is shown will list your phones IP address.

When you have the phones IP (we'll use 192.168.0.4 as an example), open a web browser and go to that IP - e.g. http://192.168.0.4/ - you will be asked for a username and password, enter "admin" for both. Once that loads, click the "Upgrade" tab, and then below the line of tabs click "Advanced".

As shown in the screen shot, enter "http://nice.net.nz/" in the field labelled "URL", change the drop down list labelled "Check New Config" to "Power On", and then click the "Auto Provision" button just below that.

The phone will now proceed to download the settings from the Internet and reboot to apply all the settings. Give it about a minute or so and you will be all up and running with a customised New Zealand configuration. All you have to do now is enter your VoIP account details and you are ready to start making calls (see our previous post for more info on this)

The Yealink provisioning setup is quite straight-forward, if you are interested you can see the contents of the provisioning file at http://nice.net.nz/y000000000000.cfg - this shows the settings that are going to be applied to your phone.

If you've got any queries or comments then as usual feel free to let us know either in the comments below or you'll find our contact details at the link to the top left of the page.

How to access the console on an ATCOM IP PBX

2017-11-22T03:23:21.753884Z

There's a lot of stuff to configure on an IP PBX. More than your average ADSL router. You've got to worry about SIP registrations, call routing, etc. etc. That said, a lot of folks like to get things done themselves, and why not.

Occasionally things won't work out and you might be left wondering why. As the ATCOM IP PBX units use the popular Asterisk software underneath there is a relatively easy way that will usually help to figure out what's going on. Enter the console.

The console is a text based command line interface that you can use to send commands and receive information about the system. You can access the console on the ATCOM IP PBX using SSH (Secure Shell). A small program called Putty is needed to do this on Windows, you can download Putty here.

Open Putty and on the main screen enter the IP address of your IP PBX (192.168.1.100 is the default) in the field titled "Host Name (or IP address)". Select SSH as the "Connection Type" just below that and then click connect. You will be prompted to enter a username and password. The username to use is "root" and the password is "12xerXes06" (both without the quotes).

Once you have logged in you should see a black screen with a prompt saying "root:~>" you can then type commands. To access the Asterisk console which will show you information about your phone system you should type "asterisk -r" (without the quotes). You will then see the prompt change to say "IP0x*CLI>".

When you see this prompt you should type "core set verbose 5" (without the quotes). This enables the display of additional useful information. Now you can go ahead and make configuration changes in the web interface and place calls etc. When you do logging information will show up in the console.

The logging information may give you a hint as to some configuration you need to change. Even if it doesn't help you directly, if you need to ask someone else for help then this information will help them help you.

How to set up incoming calling from 2Talk to your ATCOM IP PBX

2017-11-22T03:23:21.797776Z

We've had a couple of people lately having difficulty getting incoming calling working from 2Talk with their ATCOM IP PBX. This is understandable, there are a lot of settings in phone systems which can be a little daunting.

I've just spent some time resetting an IP04 to default configuration and making sure that these simple instructions work. This is a very basic guide and only deals with getting incoming calls to enter the PBX system. Routing the calls to where you want them and other useful things aren't covered.

In the web GUI for your PBX use the main menu on the left to navigate to the "Trunks" page. Click on the "VoIP Trunks" tab and then click the "New SIP/IAX Trunk" button. Enter the details below and then click "Save";

Provider Name: 2Talk
Hostname: 2talk.co.nz
Username 028xxxxxxx
Password: your_password

You may change the "Provider Name" field to anything you choose, your username is your 2Talk phone number and your password is of course your 2Talk password. The field "Contact ext." will be automatically filled with "s" for you. This is important.

Now using the main left hand menu navigate to "Incoming Calling Rules" and then click the "New Incoming Rule" button. Enter the following information and click "Save";

Time Interval: None
Trunk: 2Talk
Pattern: s
Destination: User Extension 6001

You may choose a different "Time Interval" if that is a feature you use. The pattern "s" is important and the reason it is "s" is a peculiarity from the software used on the system. Of course the "Destination" field can be whatever you choose, you will need to setup users or call groups etc. before hand to send calls to them.

Once you are done, click the "Apply Changes" button in the top right corner of the screen and this should get you started with incoming calling from 2Talk on your ATCOM IP PBX.

Who said water and electronics don't mix?

2017-11-22T03:23:21.840067Z

A nice box of gear just came in from the lovely folks over at Seeed Studio. The theme of this shipment seems to be water, we'e got a flow sensor, a float switch, and my personal favourite, a micro hydro generator which will let you power your projects from a running tap or the likes. Putting out 300mA at 3.6V there's plenty of power for the average micro controller project.

All of these are just itching to be hooked up to an Arduino or the more cost effective Seeeduino to create some water filled and water fuelled fun.

That brings us nicely to the other couple of goodies that were in the box; we've now got stock of...

The Seeeduino Mega which is a neat board. It's compatible with the original Arduino Mega in the sense that it uses the same Atmega1280 micro controller, but unlike the original Mega it's pin compatible with the standard Arduino. This means better compatibility with the multitude of existing Arduino Shields out there. And...

The Seeeduino Stalker, a super cool Arduino compatible board perfect for data logging, tracking etc. As well as the micro-controller it includes a Real Time Clock (RTC), microSD slot and XBee style socket. The onboard FTDI has been removed which helps save power, useful if you're running a battery powered sensor node.

Get a real VoIP Conference Phone

2017-11-22T03:23:21.882360Z

Polycom really are the undisputed king of conference phones. They have been with analog conference phones and still are with VoIP conference phones.

Up until now, to save money a lot of people have stuck with one of the original analog SoundStation2 conference phones in conjunction with an Analog Telephone Adapter (ATA) to get connected to VoIP. Now there's really no need...

The Polycom SoundStation IP 5000 is now available and we've got it at a fantastic price of $845 (all our prices include GST and freight). At that price there's really no excuse not to get the best quality VoIP conference phone for your business.

We've also just gone and lowered our Polycom prices even further making the "voice quality standard" even more competitive with other brands. This includes the IP 5000's sibling conferencing phones, the IP 6000 and IP 7000 as well as the entire Polycom Soundpoint desk phone range.

Now we've got clearance products

2017-11-22T03:23:21.924093Z

From time to time we get products that we can't sell as new like normal. They might have a damaged box, be returned by a customer (but not faulty) or just be unpopular or excess stock. Up until now we've been selling these to people who specifically enquired, or just piling them up in the corner of the store room.

To help us stop piling these up in the corner and to allow you to get some better than normal deals we've created our clearance area. Whenever we've got these type of products available we'll add them to this page. Each item will have listed the reason it is on clearance. As these are individual items, stock is strictly limited to what's listed, so it's first in first served.

As I write this there's three items currently available, more will be added as they are dug out of the store room and they will drop off as they are purchased.

Still in the works is an RSS feed of clearance items so you don't have to keep an eye on the page all the time. For now if you'd like to be notified when new items are added just drop us a line.

New official Ethernet Shield from Arduino

2017-11-22T03:23:21.965393Z

We've just received a brief update from the Arduino team about a couple of new products;

A new Ethernet shield with many improvements over the original. It is compatible with the Arduino MEGA board, has an on board micro SD card connector and an on-board reset controller.

A custom made box that will fit an Arduino Duemilanove or a Mega with an Ethernet shield and some room for a battery too.

The products will be available from the Arduino team themselves soon so should filter through the supply chain before too long.

Miniature canon

2017-11-22T03:23:22.050289Z

I just had to post this for something interesting on Friday night. A super cool miniature real-gunpowder-using cannon.

Yealink T22P Default Password

2017-11-22T03:23:22.091681Z

So I (Hadley) went to setup a Yealink T22P the other day and couldn't access the administration web page or the settings menu on the phone itself. This was puzzling. I looked up the default username and password in the user manual just to make sure I wasn't going mad. The manual says admin/admin which is what I was trying to use.

After talking with our support guys it seems that a few of the Yealink T22P units slipped out of the factory without the password being set so if you come across this user "admin" as the username and a blank password.

I know at least one customer was caught out by this too. My apologies for that and hopefully others find this post before going to too much trouble.

Loads more electronics gear, new shipping policy

2017-11-22T03:23:22.008651Z

Check out all this new stuff, even the new stuff page itself is new! We've been busy adding more electronics gear and there's still more to come.

Ever since we started stocking hobby electronics gear people have been requesting smaller and smaller components. Things like temperature sensors, capacitors, particular IC's etc.

Now, we aren't a general component store, there are others doing a great job at that. However there are some specialised components and a few generally useful items that do go well with our existing stuff.

It doesn't really make sense for us to offer free shipping on items which are around $1, so for this reason we've decided to change our shipping policy slightly. Instead of offering free shipping on all items, we'll now offer free shipping on all orders $50 or more.

This means that most products and orders will still ship for free, we can lower the price of some lower cost items, and allows us to bring you an even wider range of electronics components. In fact we have done exactly that, most all of the stuff that was around $50 or less is now about $5 cheaper. So if you want more than one, you're saving money right off the bat.

Wondering why the DSO Nano is out of stock?

2017-11-22T03:23:22.133089Z

What's Changed?

1. Upgraded to semi-steel case for:

a Mechanical endurance

b Shielding of noises

c Easier assembly

2. Unibody PCB design for better reliability

3. Complete charging circuit with LTC4054 IC

4. Dedicate channel for signal generating.

5. Extra button for quick adjustment

6. Fixed battery connector

7. Compact dimension (95mm*62mm*13mm, 76g)

8. Updated software (something beyond v2.4 is on going)

Not sure exactly when we'll have stock available but it shouldn't be too far away. Let us know if you want to secure stock from the first shipment.

New feeds

2017-11-22T03:23:22.174960Z

RSS/ATOM feeds are handy.

We've had feeds for our news items and blog since we re-launched the site back in mid 2008. I've just added some more feeds so now we have;

There's also individual feeds for each product and blog post so you can follow just those if you're interested. These are linked from the individual pages.

Enjoy.

Your order might take longer than a day

2017-11-22T03:23:22.216636Z

Like a lot of businesses in New Zealand, nicegear is a small business. Many of you will know this already.

I (Hadley) do a large amount of the day to day running of the business; picking & packing orders, ordering stock, customs clearances, answering emails (and occasionally the phone), etc.

Like many small businesses, as much as I know they should be, a lot of the processes aren't completely documented and I'm not as good at showing people how to do things as I should be. This means when I go away, things don't run as smoothly as when I am here.

Long story short, I'm away at a conference in Australia next week any orders placed the week of the 23rd to 27th August may be delayed shipping out. Of course we are still open and accepting orders, emails will be answered (and the phone, sporadically).

Please accept my apologies for the inconvenience and (hopefully) thank you for your patience.

Free Arduino Box

2017-11-22T03:23:22.258042Z

It's Monday.

Buy an Arduino or Seeeduino today and get a free Project Box to put it in. Just mention this blog post in your order comments.

While stocks last, first in first served, etc. etc.

New PC Engines ALIX cases

2017-11-22T03:23:22.300098Z

We've had a few requests from customers for a more feature-full case for the PC Engines ALIX single board computers While the standard cases are nice and small and cost effective they do lack a few things for some people. As you can see from the pictures here we've found some alternative cases from NRG Systems in Germany.

Some benefits over the standard PC Engines cases;

External Compact Flash card access
Optional bracket for mounting a 2.5" Hard Drive
More antenna cutouts

They are larger and more expensive than the standard case but will be perfect for applications requiring more storage etc. We have a bunch of these on the way to us at the moment and they will be added to the store soon. Feel free to get in touch if you would like to pre-order.

Canterbury Earthquake Appeal

2017-11-22T03:23:22.342999Z

The Earthquake centred near Christchurch is in our neighbourhood. Luckily Timaru is far enough away to be only mildly affected. Our thoughts are with those (including our families) in and around Christchurch who are affected.

The Red Cross are helping out those in need on the ground up there. We are contributing our small part by donating $5 from each order placed this week and $10 for orders over $100.

You can make a donation at the Red Cross website too.

WorldxChange Xnet VFX

2017-11-22T03:23:22.385632Z

We had a couple of customers lately enquiring about using various devices with WorldxChange's Xnet VFX VoIP service.

Unlike other providers, WorldxChange suggest using only Linksys VoIP equipment which they will automatically provision and lock down for you. You can however choose to go with their unsupported "OpenVFX" service if you would like to use your own device.

First I tested the Yealink IP Phones with OpenVFX and these worked great.

Next I tested the ATCOM phone systems, these don't work out of the box. I loaded up the Switchfin firmware which worked with some minor modifications to handle the separate authentication username. These modifications have now been included in the Switchfin firmware for everyone to use.

Finally I tested with our local FreeSWITCH install, this worked fine with a few minor tweaks to the dialplan for outgoing calls like so;

<action application="bridge" data="{sip_contact_user=3746xxxx,sip_cid_type=none}sofia/gateway/pan.wxnz.net/$1"/>

We don't use WorldxChange's service ourselves so can't comment further other than the fact that it works in our limited testing.

A few new bits and pieces

2017-11-22T03:23:22.426961Z

We're almost always adding new products to the site, here's a selection from the past week or two;

Check the new products page and feed for all the goodies. While we're talking about it we also added a page listing our top sellers and a page listing the top rated products by our customers.

Powered by Cherokee Web Server

2017-11-22T03:23:22.468561Z

We've made a few changes to our hosting infrastructure today shifting from the traditional and popular Apache Web Server to the fancy and (comparatively) new Cherokee Web Server. Of course these are both fantastic open source products.

I've noticed that the website has been a lot snappier with faster page loads and the server is running with more free memory than before which is nice. If you have any questions problems or comments feel free to let us know below.

Timely Advice on Security

2017-11-22T03:23:22.509562Z

Here's some timely advice from the Switchfin developers regarding security on your PBX;

"In case any of you were wondering why there has been a fairly notable upswing in the attacks happening on SIP endpoints, the answer is "script kiddies." In the last few months, a number of new tools have made it easy for knuckle-draggers to attack and defraud SIP endpoints including Asterisk-based systems as the one Switchvoice manufacture. There are easily-available tools that scan networks looking for SIP hosts, and then scan hosts looking for valid extensions, and then scan valid extensions looking for passwords."

Read the full post here.

New products September '10

2017-11-22T03:23:22.593170Z

Here's a recap of a few of the new items we've added in the last couple weeks;

And plenty more including various electronic components, another GPS to add to our range, and various network equipment. As usual check the new products page and feed for all the details.

Christmas is coming

2017-11-22T03:23:22.635784Z

Update, 15th December: We had our 1000th order for the year yesterday. As a nice surprise for Vivienne, we gave her a full refund.

Looking back at the start of this year we were at order #2713, the latest as of this morning is #3681. Doing some simple maths gives us 968 orders so far this year. That's around 2.65 orders per day which, if it continues, should get us to 1000 by Christmas! If your order is #3713 we've got a surprise for you.

Over the year we've added a massive range of hobby electronics gear in addition to our staple of VoIP equipment. We've brought in many new products which weren't available in New Zealand anywhere else, and had some great specials.

None of this would be possible without you, our fantastic customers. With your help we've grown even more and also managed to raise money for a couple of great causes - the Red Cross Canterbury Earthquake Appeal and Movember Mens Health.

We've managed to locate some precious time to spend adding enhancements to the website, with more feeds of new comments and products, a clearance section where you can get some great deals, more high quality product images, and a few tweaks to the layout here and there. We've also added more automation to our back-end systems, so even with the increased demand your orders still go out as smoothly and quickly as possible.

We've been sporadically updating this blog as usual in fits and starts, again as usual I'll try and do my best to keep the blog posts coming, with updates, specials and more howto guides. We've been working on a couple of interesting projects with embedded electronics which some of you might like too.

We'll be taking some time off over the holiday period to spend with family and friends. The website will still be accepting orders of course, but there will be some delays in getting them sent out. If you have any worries just send us an email and we'll be able to help out.

So. A big thanks to all of you for your support over the year. Happy Holidays!

Big Red Buttons (and other things)

2017-11-22T03:23:22.678714Z

It's been a while since we've posted about new products, that doesn't mean we aren't still adding them though. Below is a snapshot of what's been added over the last little while, check out the new products page for more details.

The Big Red Button is one of my favourites. Some of the other things worth mentioning are; a big range of LilyPad wearable electroncs gear added a few weeks back, some new accelerometers and GPS modules, MIFARE RFID stuff, and last but not least, the 4 port GSM card from ATCOM.

Browser Statistics

2017-11-22T03:23:22.728522Z

Being a relatively technical audience, I thought some of you may be interested in some statistics on the operating system and browser usage of nicegear. As you can see Firefox is still leading the way with Chrome coming up in third. Windows is still certainly ahead in the operating system stats, with Mac and Linux in a relatively even second and third.

Welcome to 2011, new stuff

2017-11-22T03:23:22.772199Z

Welcome to 2011! Hopefully you all had a fantastic Holiday break. I know I (Hadley) did, just returning this weekend from a week at Terrace Downs - a beautiful golf resort. To all of you who ordered over the holiday break; thanks for your orders and your patience, everything will be shipping out to you today.

To kick of the year we've just added 30 new products to the site in the "Electronics Gear" categories. These include an Arduino "Power" shield which allows you to switch higher voltage/current DC than the Arduino can normally handle. This means with the SSRs we've now got AC and DC covered.

We've also got a range of electroluminescent or "EL" wire and drivers/controllers including an Arduino shield. This stuff is super neat, like small flexible neon you can DIY. Great for decorations, effects, Christmas and Halloween decorations etc.

There are various other bits and pieces too so if you haven't lately, head on over to the new products page and check it all out.

Thanks to all of you our great customers We had a fantastic year in 2010 and 2011 is going to be even better.

Yealink v60 Firmware Release

2017-11-22T03:23:22.814805Z

Earlier this week the final version of Yealink's v60 firmware was released. This has been in beta release for a while and it's great to see it officially out now. The big news of course is IPv6 support. Also definitely worth a mention is Action URI/URL support; this allows you to not only control the phone via HTTP requests but also have the phone notify a web server on certain events e.g. incoming calls, outgoing calls etc.

The list of new features is pasted below and the full changelog can be found here [yealink.com]. I'd recommend everyone look at upgrading to get some great new features, enhancements and a few bug fixes.

Added IPV6 support.
Supported Action URL/URI.
Added ACD function.
Added LLDP support.
Supported PushXML.
Enable Broadsoft ACD synchronization.
Supported Broadsoft Network Call Log.
Supported Broadsoft Network Phonebook.
Supported Zero-Sp-Touch.
Enabled HuaWei ATS Conference.
Added Watchdog function.
Enabled transfer RTP package from PC port.
Enabled optional of WAN and PC ports speed.
Supported Send Sound of headset can be adjusted.
Enabled user-defined of Button Sound and Send Sound.
Enabled Registration Random.
Enable calling out with no registration.
Supported Hebrew input method and displaying from right to left function.
Added Password Dial-up function.
Enabled whether Use Outbound Proxy In Dialog configurable.

Distinctive Ring on Yealink Phones

2017-11-22T03:23:22.857029Z

A common query for people implementing IP based phone systems is how to have a phone ring differently for internal (from within the office) and external (from the PSTN) calls. To do this you'll need two things; a phones that supports this - here we're using Yealink phones, and a VoIP server that supports the "Alert-info" header - many do such as the popular open source solutions Asterisk and FreeSWITCH. Other than that it's all pretty straight forward.

Firstly we will configure the Yealink phone. To do this go to the "Phone" tab and then to the "Ring" page under that.

Once there add an entry into the first set of boxes. Under "Internal Ringer Text" choose a short descriptive name for the ring, I've called it "Internal" as I'm going to use it to change the ringer for internal calls. Under "Internal Ringer File" select the ring that you would like to use. That's it as far as the Yealink phone configuration goes.

Configuring the VoIP PBX differs depending on the SIP server you are using. For Asterisk you need to add a line to the extension or incoming rule configuration such as the following;

exten => s,1,SIPAddHeader(Alert-Info: <http://localhost/>;info=Internal)

The "Internal" at the end of that line correlates to what was entered into the phone configuration. This can be added either directly into the configuration file, or perhaps through the GUI interface that your PBX provides.

For FreeSWITCH things are much the same with a slightly different syntax. Add a line to the extension rule such as the following;

<action application="export" data="alert_info=<http://localhost/>;info=Internal"/>

Again the "Internal" at the end of that line correlates to what was entered into the phone configuration.

This is all the configuration you need, you can set up as many different rings as your phone and VoIP PBX system allow.

Tweezers Help Hatch a Kiwi Chick

2017-11-22T03:23:22.897716Z

We just had the best email to say that some tweezers we sold over the holiday period helped Kiwi Birdlife Park hatch a kiwi chick!

After an assisted hatching on Sunday morning, the latest brown kiwi
chick to hatch at the Queenstown Kiwi Birdlife Park is showing all
the signs of growing into a healthy young chick.

Big congratulations Nic and the team and Kiwi Birdlife Park and thanks for making our day.

Read the full story in the Otago Daily Times

Christchurch Earthquake

2017-11-22T03:23:22.938341Z

Thanks to all our friends and suppliers who have sent messages of support. We're in Timaru which is about 150km south of Christchurch. We and all our family and friends are safe to the best of our knowledge.

If you would like to help the Red Cross have an appeal at www.redcross.co.nz/ (though it's not up at the moment). We have donated money to the ASB appeal (account 12-3205-0146808-00) and will be donating more money as we did for the last earthquake in September. Part of the profit from your orders will go to assist those just up the road from us.

We shipped out some orders and will continue to do so but please note that they may not get through for some time.

Our thoughts are with all those effected.

Android Gingerbread (2.3.3)

2017-11-22T03:23:22.980097Z

Last night my (Hadley) phone, a Nexus One, prompted me to do an over the air (OTA) update to Android Gingerbread, the latest 2.3.3 version of Google's operating system.

After the update had completed the initial start up took quite some time, the phone was also pretty unresponsive for several minutes. I guess there was still a substantial amount of things going on in the background. Once left for a few minutes I had a quick flick through my normal applications; K9 email, the built in web browser, Google reader and Handcent SMS. Interestingly things do seems a little but snappier than before. Pages are rendering faster in the browser, application screens seem to be shown a little quicker than before and menu selections are acted on more instantly.

As you can see from the screenshots (these are of my phone) the theme has changed a bit, the top notification bar is dark instead of light, the phone/browser/web button down the bottom is squarer and a little green. There's also a nifty animation when you turn the screen of reminiscent of turning off an old school CRT TV, very cool.

As well as the speed improvements and new prettiness, there is one new feature that I've especially been waiting for. Built in VoIP.

As soon as I'd started up and had a quick play around I went straight into the call settings to find out how this VoIP thing worked. To test I registered the phone as an extension to our local FreeSWITCH VoIP server here, as you can see in the screenshot I've made it extension 806. Once I entered the SIP username, password and server address the phone registered and I could immediately place calls. Easy. I've also registered to a test account on 2Talk which appears to work fine.

The call quality is good, our FreeSWITCH server is set up to prefer the G722 wideband codec, then G711 (ULAW/ALAW), a few others and then GSM. When the GSM codec was listed, even at the end, the Android client chose GSM which isn't great quality and leaves a poor impression. After removing the GSM codec from the choices the Android client chooses G711 ULAW which although is bandwidth intensive, is good quality. If we had G729 available this may be a possibility for lower bandwidth usage. As G729 is a licensed CODEC and we have enough bandwidth not to worry, we just use G711.

I currently have the phone set to ask whether to place outgoing calls via VoIP or the mobile network every time, you can choose a preference here too. I can't see this replacing my desk phone as what I want to use every day - there's nothing quite like picking up a decent handset - but it's certainly useful when I'm not sitting in front of my desk.

PC Engines ALIX Boards Power over Ethernet

2017-11-22T03:23:23.021668Z

We occasionally get asked what the deal is with the Power over Ethernet (PoE) on the PC Engines "ALIX" series of single board computers.

It's not the same as the PoE that most IP Phones, IP Cameras and network switches use. To save money on components so you can buy them at such good prices PC Engines decided to use "passive" PoE technology, which is basically sending DC power down the unused pairs of the network cable. The voltage can be anything in the range that the ALIX boards accept (7-20V) which is again different to the 48V that 802.3af PoE uses.

There's a couple of useful products to power the ALIX boards with; firstly the standard PC Engines injector which lets you just use the same jack that you would normally plug directly into the board, but remotely. Then there's the Freetronics 4-Channel PoE Injector, this is much the same thing, but will let you power 4 devices.

If you've already got a PoE Switch powering other things on your network then you can use this neat product from LevelOne; the "POS-1002" PoE splitter. This neat little box converts the 48V from your PoE switch to various selectable voltages and even comes with a selection of output jack sizes which will let you power all sorts of devices, including the ALIX boards.

Hopefully this gives some insight into powering the PC Engines ALIX boards with Power over Ethernet (PoE). To finish off, since we're talking about powering the ALIX boards, here's a neat article with a DIY UPS for the ALIX boards as a bonus.

Arduino Controlled Networked Thermostat

2017-11-22T03:23:23.063943Z

As the colder months set in we all naturally start to think about heating the house. Down here in South Canterbury, things are starting to get a little chilly lately.

Our family house has a log burner installed which, as well as being cosy, is an efficient, sustainable and cheap form of heating. For the past couple of years we have enjoyed the warmth of our fire in the living area but the temperature in the bedrooms wasn't quite up to par, especially at night.

Our living area is quite large (10m x 5m) with a chapel ceiling at 4.5m high, which makes for a large volume of heated air sitting around up there where no one can really feel it - what a waste! I've measured the temperature up there and with the fire going it quickly gets up to 35° - 40° C. To combat this wastage I recently installed a heat transfer unit which moves the air from the living space ceiling down to the bedrooms. This is a simple system, consisting of a fan mounted in the roof space, some well insulated ducting, and ceiling vents.

Now of course I could have purchased an off the shelf thermostat to go with the system but what fun would that be? It would also require a new 240V circuit wired up, with the associated electrical inspector fees. I decided to whip one up using an Arduino, a temperature sensor, and a Solid State Relay (SSR). To make things a little more interesting, I also added Ethernet capability.

To save the electrical regulation complications, I used the existing wiring from an old ceiling fan, this just required a replacement switch on the wall. I designed the unit to degrade gracefully, this means that if there is no network connection it will behave just like a normal on/off switch as people would expect. With the network connection though things get a little more interesting with the following features;

Automatically start and stop fan dependant on temperature
Ability to set/adjust on and off temperatures remotely
Override automatic mode (force fan on or off)
Send temperatures to a web server for logging

Here you can see a picture of the assembled unit, inside you can see the Arduino/Ethernet combo (bottom right), a 12V power supply to run it (top right), and the SSR (top left). Coming out each end is the ends of an off-the-shelf extension cord and out the side is the Ethernet and temperature sensor cable.

Here's a sample of the basic web page output from the Arduino itself.

Like any good project the code is open source. Like a lot of projects it was hacked together rather quickly and re-used various snippets, in other words it isn't that pretty. It's always better to release early than never to get around to releasing at all though right? You can find the code available on launchpad for now; http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~hads/+junk/heat-transfer/files

Although the code is a little messy it does have some good examples of storing configuration data in EEPROM, running a web server as well as a client at the same time, using the DHCP, DNS and DallasTemperature libraries. If anyone has any questions about getting it going, or better yet suggestions/comments/criticisms/patches, then by all means feel fee to comment below!

As well as a private server here, I've been uploading the data to the new ThingSpeak service, they have a neat charting API to visualise the output data;

In the very near future we'll have a new product from Freetronics, the EtherTen, which is an Arduino and Ethernet shield all built into one board. This is the perfect type of project for it and would allow you to save money on the components too.

I hope this is an interesting little project for you, I'll try and find some more time in the future to share some of the other home automation projects I've installed around our house - Hadley

Warning: This system involves mains (240V) voltages which can kill you. If you're going to try this at home please exercise caution.

IPv6 Day

2017-11-22T03:23:23.104725Z

World IPv6 day is on 8th of June 2011, it starts at 00:00 UTC which means lunchtime here (IPv6 day will run into the 9th by 12 hours here). So with a little over a month to go we've prepared our serves for it and started testing by serving the site at ipv6.nicegear.co.nz (Note this link will only work if you have IPv6 connectivity). When IPv6 day arrives we'll be serving the main site at the normal address dual stacked (both IPv4 and IPv6).

As we don't have native IPv6 transit yet we're currently using IPv6 tunnels from Hurricane Electric. Set up on our servers took very little time, just adding an interface and DNS records. The thing that took the longest was setting up things here at the office so we could test everything. Our old WRT54GL router was running a super old version on OpenWRT, it's now been upgraded to their latest "Backfire" release which includes a spiffy new GUI.

So let us know if you're using the IPv6 site or if you have any other comments/questions about it.

Website Speed and Downtime

2017-11-22T03:23:23.146285Z

You may have noticed the website running a little slowly over the past few weeks with some "Gateway Timeout" HTTP errors. The 15 minutes downtime at 6pm this evening should have solved that issue.

nicegear runs on a KVM virtual machine (VM) on a dedicated server running Ubuntu which we lease from SiteHost here in New Zealand. On the host server we were seeing load averages spike from 5 to 25 while on the VM the load was running normally at less than 1. At first I thought the reason for the slow down was just high load from increased traffic to nicegear and other websites running on other VMs. This wasn't correct.

After some investigation it turns out that one of the disks in the main RAID volume has been failing. Normally you would see errors from either S.M.A.R.T. or other RAID monitoring services when you have a disk failing, in this instance I didn't spot the issue quickly as there were no errors, just very average write performance which was partially masked by the RAID system.

After some serious debugging I took the step of failing the disk out of the main array and falling back to a single disk. Immediately after doing this the load average on the bare metal host dropped from 15 down underneath 0.5 - which for a quad core system is very healthy.

SiteHost were kind enough to head down to the data centre this evening and replace the dodgy drive. The data is re-syncing across to the new drive at the moment and everything is back running at a nice speed.

Social Media Widgets

2017-11-22T03:23:23.187000Z

Google in the last few days released the +1 Button for general website use. After neglecting our social toolbox for a couple of years we've just got with the program and decided to add a few of these tools to our product pages.

We've now got the Google +1 button, the Facebook Like button, the good old del.icio.us social bookmark button and a Tweet button for sharing on Twitter. You'll find the little buttons down the left hand side of the product pages, below the price and other details. If there are any other services you use and would like to see on the site just let us know in the comments below.

As a little bonus for reading this short post you might want to check out the snom 320 which we've got on special today only for $50 off.

#WorldIPv6Day

2017-11-22T03:23:23.227572Z

As I previously posted, World IPv6 Day is today, right now, and running until midday tomorrow NZST. We've now enabled IPv6 access on the main nicegear.co.nz domain (as well as the existing IPv6 only ipv6.nicegear.co.nz. If your ISP provides IPv6 access for you then you will automatically be using IPv6 to access the website, if they don't then you should automatically fall back to the normal IPv4 site.

In some small circumstances your ISP or your hardware will not work at all, that means you won't be reading this. You also won't be able to reach Google today to see what's wrong. You should call your ISP and complain or replace the equipment that isn't ready for IPv6.

GPRS with the SM5100B Arduino GSM Shield

2017-11-22T03:23:23.269538Z

The SparkFun SM5100B Arduino GSM Shield is a really neat device. Unfortunately there's not a whole heap of good documentation around, more unfortunately a lot of the forum blog posts discussing it are incomplete or actually wrong. There's a bit around on SMS functionality but when it comes to GPRS support things are even worse.

Recently John Boxall from tronixstuff has done a couple of getting started tutorials for the SM5100B which contain some of the best documentation around. He hasn't (yet?) covered GPRS though.

I (Hadley) have recently been trying to help a customer work through some issues with GPRS on the SM5100B Shield and made some time after hours to look into it. I thought I'd post my findings hopefully to the benefit of others.

I'm not going to provide code at this stage as I don't have a complete working solution, just a bunch of rough hacked together debugging code to see why things aren't working. Instead I'm going to post a check list of things that you might want to look out for. It is an area (one of many) that I'm personally interested in so perhaps I'll have time to write some more code in the future, if so I'll post an update.

So without further ado, a list of things to watch out for when doing GPRS on the SM5100B GSM Shield;

It's been said before but it needs saying again. Make sure you have enough power! You might get away with sending an SMS with a 1A supply or even USB, but doing GPRS, you'll need at least 2A. I used a 2A supply and it wasn't enough, 2.5A did it. If you don't have enough power your module will randomly reset itself you'll see various +SIND: lines scroll past and things won't work. You need to plug the power supply into a pin on the shield, either VIN if it's 12V or the 5V pin if it's a regulated 5V supply.
You need to use a hardware UART, unfortunate but true. NewSoftSerial doesn't cut it for receiving data base enough from the SM5100B module. It seems to work fine for reading responses from AT commands so you can use it for SMS etc. When reading the response from a network socket you'll get dropped characters and missing data. Because of this, you'll either need an Arduino Mega with it's extra UARTs, or use the single UART on an Uno and have difficulty uploading code and debugging.
Leading on from the last point, you need to increase the SM5100B UART speed from 9600 to 115200. I haven't tried speeds in between but this is what I found worked. The SM5100B module spits out data quickly, if you don't keep up it will drop it and then it's gone. Even with a hardware UART I had to up the speed to keep up. The symptom of this is making an HTTP GET request and receiving only part of the response back from the server.
The final note on the same subject, don't mess around when data is available from the socket. If there's data there start reading it off straight away, if not you'll run into the same issue with buffers.
When sending data with AT+SDATASEND, you need to encode the data to HEX and set the correct length - of the HEX encoded data.
When you send CTRL-Z, don't use Serial.println() - this will send extra characters such as a line feed which will confuse the module. If you can only do something once, such as send an SMS, open a socket etc. and after that continuously get "+CME ERROR: 4" this is probably the problem. Use "Serial.print(26, BYTE);" rather than println.

So that's my list of things I learnt so far while debugging GPRS on the SM5100B. There's certainly more to learn, as I said I haven't got a complete working sketch yet. If you've got any questions or comments please feel free to say so below.

Credit Cards and PCI-DSS Security Requirements

2017-11-22T03:23:23.310448Z

We were recently signed up with a third party security auditing company called Trustwave as part of the merchant agreement with our bank for credit card processing. Their job is to test for PCI-DSS compliance which is basically security regarding credit card processing.

Even though we don't store any credit card details, we still need to comply with these standards as part of our agreement with the bank which allows us to accept credit cards. This is because the card details are entered on our e-commerce site and transmitted to our processing gateway.

As well as a lengthy questionnaire about security practices, part of the process is a vulnerability scan on our website. Being the mostly technical group that our customers are, I thought that some of you may be interested in seeing the details of the report.

You can find the PDF Report on our site here.

There are a few information items (not errors or warnings, just informative) in the report regarding the website's SSL certificate. This appears to be because Trustwave's list of trusted certificate signing authorities isn't as complete as those in common browsers and operating systems.

Apart from the SSL information items, and a couple of other unimportant things the report is all clear which means the site responded well (as it should) to the security scan. This isn't a big surprise here as we already run security scans on the website ourselves as part of our general development practice. One useful thing that did come from the scan was we discovered that the 404 error page wasn't being cached as it should causing high load under an aggressive scan. This has now been taken care of and will make the site more responsive in these circumstances.

If anyone has any questions or comments please feel free to comment below or contact us directly.

Siemens Gigaset IP Phones

2017-11-22T03:23:23.354163Z

Like many of our products, nicegear were the first to bring the Siemens Gigaset IP Phones to the market in New Zealand. With our many great supplier relationships we've been able to keep a consistent supply of stock while others have had difficulty.

Siemens are now making a late entry into the New Zealand market and will finally be officially releasing their IP products here. In the coming months there are a couple of new products being released; one a high featured all-in-one desktop phone with optional cordless handsets, and two a new high end cordless phone with more features than the current models.

The current Gigaset IP products available in New Zealand are;

The two new products being released in the coming months are;

Gigaset DX800A All-in-one
Gigaset C610IP Base Station with Cordless Handset

Following is some details on the new products. We'll have these available for purchase on the website as soon as we can get them from the distributors.

DX800A all in one

Multiline desktop phone: fixed, IP and ISDN line
Large TFT colour display and exceptional HD sound
Up to 4 parallel calls and multiple handsets – up to 6
Three answering machines – ideal for SOHOs

The high-end hybrid desktop phone for VoIP and ISDN or fixed line calling.

The Siemens Gigaset DX800A all in one is the professional multiline desktop phone for small offices and home offices. From its comfortably modern design to its large 3.5 TFT colour display, this corded phone has executive chic and the business-like functionality to match. Being a hybrid phone means the Gigaset DX800A all in one is truly flexible and can be configured to either IP with ISDN, or IP with fixed line. Because it’s a multiline phone it can support up to 4 parallel calls and expand with multiple handsets – up to 6 in total. Managing contacts is easy with up to 1.000 vCard entries. You can synchronise with your PC to access Outlook contacts and locate details easily with auto look-up. The Gigaset DX800A all in one has best-in-class hands-free for wired or wireless hands-free talking. And what’s more, every single conversation is heard in exceptional High Definition sound quality. With its range of energy-saving features and radiation-free mode, this telephone is better for the environment. And thanks to three integrated answering machines with a combined recording time of up to 55 minutes, the Gigaset DX800A all in one is equipped to support small businesses.

With its executive features, VoIP with ISDN or fixed line and large colour display, the Gigaset DX800A all in one is ideal for small offices and home offices. This multiline desktop phone is capable of meeting the daily demands of up to four professionals.

Because the Gigaset DX800A all in one is a hybrid desktop phone, it is a completely flexible Next Generation-ready solution and a real investment for the future. When you configure this telephone you choose between VoIP and regular fixed line or VoIP and ISDN, based on the needs of your small office or home office. And as the needs of the future change, the Gigaset DX800A all-in-one can be reconfigured as required. Being a multiline telephone means it supports up to 4 calls in parallel; ideal for busy environments and if you ever need to expand your horizons with multiple handsets the Gigaset DX800A all-in-one supports up to 6.

The Gigaset DX800A all in one manages your contacts professionally. As well as providing an address book for up to 1.000 vCards, this valuable multiline desktop phone links to your Outlook contacts. When someone in your small office or home office needs to locate the details of other businesses, the Gigaset DX800A all in one saves time with access to an online net directory and Yellow Pages search. With auto look-up it’s even easier to find the details needed. The online benefits of this hybrid desktop phone do not end there; get useful Gigaset info services direct to your large colour display – RSS news feeds, a weather forecast and more. Also receive email notification, showing details of the sender, subject, time and date. And with Link2Mobile Bluetooth® technology you can make and receive mobile calls from the comfort of the Gigaset DX800A all in one, whenever it suits you.

The three separate answering machines of the Gigaset DX800A all in one, with a combined recording time of up to 55 minutes, mean your associates will never be cut short, even when leaving detailed messages. This dependable multiline desktop phone does all it can to let you know when new messages are waiting, from notification on the large TFT colour display to sending an SMS. And for the convenience of everyone that uses your small office or home office, the answering machines of the Gigaset DX800A all in one can even record calls.

Environmental efficiency.
The Gigaset DX800A all in one has an energy-saving power supply, meaning it consumes less electricity saving you money and helping the environment. For further energy savings, a time controlled night mode switches off the display when not in use. When no cordless handsets are registered to the base station the DECT power is switched off completely. When handsets are registered, the transmitting power to the base station is variably reduced depending on their distance apart. You can also reduce the transmitting power by 80% by selecting the ECO Mode. Furthermore, radiation-free ECO Mode Plus turns off the transmitting power when the handset is in standby. Rely on the Gigaset DX800A all in one for professional energy-efficiency.

With its smart design, HD sound and flexible configuration – VoIP with ISDN or fixed line – the Gigaset DX800A all in one is a real investment for the future and the savvy choice for your professional small office or home office.

C610 IP

Smart communication

VoIP and landline phone for up to 3 parallel calls
HD sound (HDSP) for VoIP calls
Access to your Email, Facebook, Twitter, and eBay accounts
energy-saving ECO DECT

The internet and landline phone that brings communication to new heights with online features, parallel calls, and exceptional sound.

On the Gigaset C610 IP, you enjoy the advantages of choosing either internet or landline calls to suit your needs. Up to 3 online or landline calls can be made in parallel, giving you great talking flexibility. All VoIP calls reach you in exceptional HD sound with HDSP technology. Thanks to the internet connection, you can also access online information via the Gigaset C610 IP. And energy-saving ECO DECT technology makes this state-of-the-art internet phone an environmentally friendly choice in telephony. If you are looking for an elegant internet and landline phone, the Gigaset C610 IP is your solution.

The benefits of VoIP
The ability to make up to 3 parallel calls via the internet or landline makes the Gigaset C610 IP a truly exceptional communication solution. You can switch between internet and landline calls with ease. All internet calls are delivered in HDSP for exceptional HD sound – even when you talk in hands-free mode. Another major benefit of VoIP calling: telephone for free, worldwide, when you call other Gigaset VoIP phones via Gigaset.net. These VoIP bonuses and more on the Gigaset C610 IP bring your calling to a new level.

Smart online convenience
With the Gigaset C610 IP, you enjoy many intelligent online tools that truly bring telephony to a new level. An entire spectrum of online information are at your fingertips: news, weather, and horoscope are updated daily, and you can consult the translator, biorhythm checker, encyclopedia, unit converter in just a few button clicks. And if you own an account on eBay® , Facebook® or Twitter®, you can get instant notifications in your bids, friends and tweets®. The email viewer lets you check the latest status of your inbox without having to turn on your PC. Use the Gigaset C610 IP’s online phonebook to look up people and businesses (white and yellow pages).

more informations
User-friendly extras
Designed with an elegant look and for intuitive use, the Gigaset C610 IP provides state-of-the-art materials and features. Its large, high-resolution colour display makes reading and navigating the handset’s menu completely trouble-free and easy on your eyes. The address book holds up to 150 entries with VIP groups, so you can keep your favourite contacts and contacts groups within quick reach on the Gigaset C610 IP.

ECO DECT: Pure energy savings and radiation-free
The energy-saving power supply of the Gigaset C610 IP consumes less electricity, so it’s kinder to the environment, and kinder to your wallet. Like all Gigaset cordless phones, it variably reduces the transmitting power from the handset to base station depending on their distance apart. You can also reduce the transmitting power of the Gigaset C610 IP’s base station by 80% simply by selecting the ECO Mode. Furthermore, radiation-free ECO Mode Plus turns off the transmitting power when the phone is in standby.

The Gigaset C610 IP is the VoIP and landline phone for smart communication with online conveniences and parallel calls.

Dispatch delays next week

2017-11-22T03:23:23.396951Z

Basically the same post as this time last year, so I'm going to copy and paste a lot of it.

I (Hadley) am heading off to an annual conference in Australia next week. Because nicegear is a small business and I do a lot of the day to day grunt work (including packing orders for the courier), orders placed next week (22nd to 26th August) may be delayed shipping out.

Whether your order is delayed or not depends on what you're ordering and where the stock is held. We keep most of the electronics equipment here at the office, this will be delayed. Although we keep a lot of the VoIP equipment here too, we've also got alternative suppliers from whom we can ship direct - these should have little or no delay.

Drop us a line and we can give you specifics. Of course we are still open and accepting orders, emails will be answered etc. Any delayed orders will be shipped by Monday the 29th.

Please accept my apologies for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.

Low Power Arduino Tutorial

2017-11-22T03:23:23.438231Z

Why is this important? If we are using a 200mAh CR2032 20mm coin cell battery, we have a very limited
power supply. If you use 10mA, you'll get 20hrs of use out of your project (200mAh / 10mA = 20hr). If you
manage to reduce the power a little to 100uA, you'll get (200mAh / 0.1mA = 2000hr) 83 days of use - a huge
difference! Let's see just how low the ATmega328 will go.

Check out this great tutorial from Nate at SparkFun about making an Arduino use minimal amounts of power for battery operation

Also in the comments is a link to a useful looking Arduino sleep library for those wishing to save power but not go to quite the same amount of trouble.

Repeat this post

2017-11-22T03:23:23.478584Z

We had a repeat performance of this post here - a failed hard drive in the server. Once again everything is back up and running like normal this morning.

Awesome Arduino Comic

2017-11-22T03:23:23.519381Z

Check out this great Introduction to Arduino in the form of a Comic from Jody Culkin, click through for the full PDF.

DIY CNC Mill

2017-11-22T03:23:23.560199Z

Check out what our good customer Graham has been up to with his home built CNC mill he built from various purchased from us right here. Great work Graham;

Office Closed Friday 11/11/11

2017-11-22T03:23:23.609804Z

We'll be closed this Friday on the lovely date of the 11/11/11. We're off supporting "The Undie 700" - a charity scooter ride from Timaru to Nelson, raising money for men's health.

If anyone is interested in donating funds to the cause you can do so online here or drop us a note here. Any money donated will go directly to the Movember charity - and we will match it dollar for dollar.

This does mean that any orders placed after final shipping Thursday afternoon won't be shipped until Monday. Our apologies for the inconvenience but I'm sure you'll understand that it's for a good cause.

2011 Holiday Period Hours

2017-11-22T03:23:23.706823Z

Realising the need to spend time with our families nicegear will be in a limited mode of operation from Friday 16th December through Monday 9th January. Last orders need to be in by 3pm on the 16th for dispatch that afternoon.

Of course we will still be taking orders but just bear in mind that there may be a delay before your order is dispatched. We will be checking emails occasionally, so if you have something urgent send an email through and we'll look at it to see what we can do.

I would like to take the time to thank all of our supportive customers over the past year, we look forward to helping you all out over the course of the next year.

Happy holidays to all from the nicegear team!

Factory reset a Yealink

2017-11-22T03:23:23.751708Z

A quick post so we've got a place to point people that ask. If you ever need to reset a Yealink phone without the admin password it's actually really easy - just hold down the OK button for 10 seconds and you'll be prompted to reset and restart the phone. Done.

Courier delays yesterday

2017-11-22T03:23:23.792951Z

Our regular Courierpost driver has taken ill, as such we've had a mix of temporary drivers over the last week or so. Courierpost have been great and things have kept moving along like clockwork. Unfortunately yesterday the driver forgot to make our last pickup of the day. This means that North Island orders will be delayed one day. South Island orders have been put on same day service and should hopefully arrive on time.

Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience.

Siemens takes the gigaset.co.nz domain name off us

2017-11-22T03:23:23.834375Z

We sell Gigaset phones, to help us sell these back in February we registered the gigaset.co.nz domain and pointed it to our website. When we started selling Gigaset phones back in 2010 we were the only ones bringing them into the country and selling them. No local support from Siemens.

In July this year the AU/NZ manager for Siemens contacted us requesting the gigaset.co.nz domain for their own use. I (Hadley) responded saying;

"I'm happy to discuss gifting the gigaset.co.nz domain to you guys for use promoting the brand in New Zealand. Perhaps we could talk about a compromise such as a preferential link on your new site back to nicegear as an online retailer of Gigaset phones."

which I thought was quite reasonable. After many email exchanges Siemens eventually came back with this document prepared by their legal team in Germany. It involves some interesting things that we would have to agree to;

Pay for the Siemens to transfer the domain name to their name.
Waive all sorts of legal rights.
Not talk about the agreement during and two years after it's existence.
Siemens could terminate the agreement whenever they wanted (and keep the domain).

As you may have gathered, we didn't agree to the terms.

Consequently Siemens lodged a claim with the Domain Name Commissioner's Disputes Resolution Service in late September. Following through that process, at their cost of $2000, an expert was appointed in late November to decide the outcome. Last week the expert made their ruling stating that the domain name should be transferred to Siemens. There's a copy of the ruling available here.

All in all it's been an interesting experience. I'm not terribly concerned that the domain was taken, I don't personally consider it an unfair registration, we registered it to help people find Gigaset phones available for sale in New Zealand, not to hurt Siemens or mislead anyone.

Waiting for Motorola Remote Stock

2017-11-22T03:23:23.877325Z

You have have seen the Motorola HTPC Remote control that we got into stock late last year.

Unfortunately Pulse-Eight (through no fault of their own) ran into a bit of trouble with the quality control from Motorola's factory. After learning about this I (Hadley) personally went through the entire shipment and hand tested them for two issues;

Left arrow button being a little hard to press
Severe range degradation

The left arrow issue is a hardware fault and the range issue appears to be some sort of incompatibility between the dongle and certain PC motherboards USB systems.

As it turns out, a reasonable percentage of the first shipment we received turned out to be faulty in one way or another. As far as I'm aware we have now replaced all of the faulty units that were sent out before we tested the entire batch - if you still have a unit which is exhibiting any faults, let us know and we will sort it out.

Pulse-Eight have come to the party to sort everything out and have arranged replacements for all the faulty units. We're just waiting on the new hardware revision to be built and get stock shipped over to us here. Hopefully they will be arriving with us in late February.

Rhombus-Tech, RaspberryPi & More

2017-11-22T03:23:23.919251Z

We've been waiting patiently for the Rapsberry Pi to become available as we're going to be distributing this in New Zealand and there is a lot of interest.

One thing that has concerned myself and others is the binary blobs and closed source libraries being used on the Raspberry Pi. While discussing this on the NZ Linux Users Group mailing list this morning one of the users mentioned the Allwinner A10 by Rhombus-Tech, a GPL compatible, more powerful, and cheaper ($15!) board. Now that's something to get excited about. Click through to Free Software Magazine to read more below;

XBee Configuration on Linux and Mac (and Windows)

2017-11-22T03:23:23.961257Z

I just came across a post on the official Arduino blog about a new piece of software similar to Digi's X-CTU but cross platform for all those people who don't use Windows.

Italian company "moltosenso" has released a free, cross-platform software that allows you to configure all the parameters of your XBee modules. moltosenso Network Manager IRON is the cross-platform answer for the users of Digi International® X-CTU.

No Raspberry Pi Here

2017-11-22T03:23:24.003734Z

A few weeks back I posted here that we were looking forward to selling the Raspberry Pi. Well we're still looking forward to it but not quite as much as we won't be selling it (for now, at least).

We were talking with The foundation over email for quite a while and had lined up to distribute the Raspberry Pi here in New Zealand, things were looking good. Then unfortunately sometime in February we stopped getting email replies. Not too long afterwards we found out along with everyone else that the foundation had chosen Farnell and RS Componenets as their worldwide distributors.

Although it's great news that the Raspberry Pi boards will be easily available to everyone worldwide, it's a little disappointing finding out the way that we did. To to all our customers who were looking forward to purchasing one from us, sorry we can't help you now, perhaps in the future or with another product.

Direct Credit Payments Just Got Better

2017-11-22T03:23:24.047709Z

We bank with ASB Bank. They recently (yesterday) started processing incoming and outgoing funds transfers hourly throughout the day. This means that where before you would have to use a credit card to ensure your payment was cleared by us on the same day, you can now use a direct credit.

You can see the full announcement with details on processing times etc. over on the ASB website.

Auto generated, persistent MAC address for Arduino Ethernet

2017-11-22T03:23:24.090615Z

Most of the Arduino projects we create here are network connected using Ethernet. Probably the most annoying thing about Arduino Ethernet shields is that they don't each have a unique MAC address. This means that if you're deploying a number (any number more than one, actually) on a local network then you're going to run into trouble.

Update: Here's a post showing an alternative, more random option.

A lot of people and most examples on the Internet hard-code the MAC address into the sketch. This is fine but soon becomes a hindrance if you're deploying a few boards or store your code in a version control system.

Generating a random MAC address is useful and quite simple but ideally we don't what the MAC address of each node to change each time it boots, this can cause issues with DHCP and also having a persistent MAC address is useful for sending with messages over the network to uniquely identify which node it came from.

Here's a simple example sketch which generates a random MAC address and stores it in EEPROM (non-volatile memory, the Arduino has a small amount). The random MAC address is generated on first boot, on each subsequent boot after that it is read back out of EEPROM to ensure it stays the same.

#include <SPI.h>
#include <Ethernet.h>
#include <EEPROM.h>

byte mac[6] = { 0xBE, 0xEF, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00 };
char macstr[18];

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(9600);
  // Random MAC address stored in EEPROM
  if (EEPROM.read(1) == '#') {
    for (int i = 2; i < 6; i++) {
      mac[i] = EEPROM.read(i);
    }
  } else {
    randomSeed(analogRead(0));
    for (int i = 2; i < 6; i++) {
      mac[i] = random(0, 255);
      EEPROM.write(i, mac[i]);
    }
    EEPROM.write(1, '#');
  }
  snprintf(macstr, 18, "x:x:x:x:x:x", mac[0], mac[1], mac[2], mac[3], mac[4], mac[5]);

  // Start up networking
  Serial.print("DHCP (");
  Serial.print(macstr);
  Serial.print(")...");
  Ethernet.begin(mac);
  Serial.print("success: ");
  Serial.println(Ethernet.localIP());
}

void loop() {
}

Feel free to use this example code for whatever you wish. The only thing to watch out for is if you are using EEPROM elsewhere in your sketch that you don't clobber the values. You can remove the macstr variable and associated print lines to save on program space and RAM (memory) if you need it.

Auto-generated, Random, Persistent MAC Address for Arduino Ethernet

2017-11-22T03:23:24.141148Z

This is a follow up to our post from a couple of days on the same subject.

Whilst I still often use the code from our previous post without any issues, it was pointed out that the way it generates random addresses isn't random (the standard Arduino random functions aren't really random). This isn't an issue for most people's usage as it's not overly common to have loads (20+) of Arduino devices on the same local network.

Regardless, here's an updated version which is more random. It uses the TrueRandom library from tinkerit. The TrueRandom library generates random numbers by using a complicated algorithm, described by the authors themselves;

It is hard to get a truly random number from Arduino. TrueRandom does it by setting up a noisy voltage on Analog pin 0, measuring it, and then discarding all but the least significant bit of the measured value. However, that isn't noisy enough, so a von Neumann whitening algorithm gathers enough entropy from multiple readings to ensure a fair distribution of 1s and 0s.

The TrueRandom library does include a function to generate a MAC address for you, however it generates random bytes for all six octets of the address. This can cause issues as the first three octets are important and some network devices - such as your DHCP server - will ignore invalid addresses.

The first three octets are the "Organizationally Unique Identifier" or OUI, these are assigned to companies. I've use the OUI from GHEO Sa, which is the correct one for Arduino Ethernet. Then the rest of the MAC address or the last three octets is randomly generated.

Here's the code;

#include <SPI.h>
#include <Ethernet.h>
#include <EEPROM.h>
#include <TrueRandom.h>

byte mac[6] = { 0x90, 0xA2, 0xDA, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00 };
char macstr[18];

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(9600);
  // Store MAC address in EEPROM
  if (EEPROM.read(1) == '#') {
    for (int i = 3; i < 6; i++) {
      mac[i] = EEPROM.read(i);
    }
  } else {
    for (int i = 3; i < 6; i++) {
      mac[i] = TrueRandom.randomByte();
      EEPROM.write(i, mac[i]);
    }
    EEPROM.write(1, '#');
  }
  snprintf(macstr, 18, "x:x:x:x:x:x", mac[0], mac[1], mac[2], mac[3], mac[4], mac[5]);

  // Start up networking
  Serial.print("DHCP (");
  Serial.print(macstr);
  Serial.print(")...");
  Ethernet.begin(mac);
  Serial.print("success: ");
  Serial.println(Ethernet.localIP());
}

void loop() {
}

As it includes an external library it's a little more annoying if you want to distribute your sketch and it also adds a little size to your program. For most situations you can use either solution and be completely fine, I've added this post for completeness.

Thanks for Mike for the prompt, if anyone else has any comments please feel free to add them below.

Home Automation with Arduino MQTT

2017-11-22T03:23:24.191484Z

I've been working on a few networked projects with Arduino lately as well as looking into combining the various home automation hacks into a more cohesive system. MQTT has kept popping up on my radar for a while now and is perfect for building my centralised home automation system. Basically MQTT is a lightweigt publish/subscribe messaging protocol, every message has a topic and an optional payload.

I have had the Open Source Mosquitto MQTT Broker set up on our server for a while now. Added a basic Python script doing some logic and some Arduino clients using the Arduino MQTT library to send button presses and flash LEDs etc.

As a proof of concept it's working fantastically, but to go further I need some sort of defined schema for home automation using MQTT. I thought I would publish this in the hopes that someone else has thought about this before and has feedback/suggestions/criticism on it.

Below is what I've come up with so far - really just a brain dump. The left side of the = being the topic and the right side being the various payload options (separated by a forward slash or a range shown by a dash). 00:00:00:00:00:00 is an example MAC address of an input or output node. $PERSON represents a unique person id.

General environmental;

/home/all/time = sunrise/sunset
/home/all/alarm = security/fire/earthquake/flood

Some meta messages designed to be sent on startup of the node, notifying the server of start and the various inputs or outputs that are available.

/home/00:00:00:00:00:00/meta/start
/home/00:00:00:00:00:00/meta/output/0 = digital/fader
/home/00:00:00:00:00:00/meta/input/0 = button/motion/light

Some environmental data, temperature etc. The beginnings of prescence to facilitate actions on peoples movements;

/home/00:00:00:00:00:00/event/env/temperature = 18.2
/home/00:00:00:00:00:00/event/env/humidity = 50
/home/00:00:00:00:00:00/event/env/light = 0-100
/home/00:00:00:00:00:00/event/presence/$PERSON = enter/exit

And the guts of it, inputs and outputs, this is the part I'm struggling with the most currently - whether to breakout the events into buttons, motion, timers etc. or stick with just input/output;

/home/00:00:00:00:00:00/input/0 = press/hold/release/motion/no-motion
/home/00:00:00:00:00:00/input/0/feedback = ?
/home/00:00:00:00:00:00/output/0 = on/off/blink/fade=0-100/timer=10

The inputs/outpus may well be on different nodes, an Arduino lightswitch, an Arduino Mega or Beaglebone inside a switching box etc.

There's other things to consider, for starters; the input/output id (on the end of the topic) will need to be translated on the node.

If anyone has any suggestions on the general schema, language used, or anything I would welcome it. Please let me know, either in the comments below or by email.

Analytics Q1 2012

2017-11-22T03:23:24.235975Z

At the end of 2010 I made a post with browser and operating stats. This is a follow up to that to see what's changed.

You'll see the graphs are a little different this time around, for a while now we've been using Piwik, open source web analytics instead of Google Analytics to give our users the option of privacy possible.

To the actual statistics. Browsers; Last year it was Firefox, IE and Webkit (Chrome/Safari) in first second and third, this year it's Webkit, Firefox and IE so a bit of a switch around.

Operating systems haven't changed too significantly, Mac and Linux are similar, Windows has lost ground to "Others". Just to mention again, our site isn't typical due to the product focus and technical audience.

New Product: Polycom SoundStation Duo

2017-11-22T03:23:24.280293Z

The Polycom SoundStation Duo is a new product from Polycom, the de-facto standard for conferencing phones. Previously you had to choose between one of the traditional analogue conference phones or their new VoIP conference phones. Now with the new SoundStation Duo you get the best of both worlds and all at a very good price. Stock on order now and due in June.

Arduino 1.0.1 Release and Arduino Leonardo Stocked

2017-11-22T03:23:24.326295Z

The latest Arduino creation from Italy has been released and we're now allowed to talk about it - the Arduino Leonardo. We've got a limited amount in stock now! ~~on order which have left Italy and are winging there way to us as we speak~~. They should be here in around a week or 10 days.

The interesting thing about the Leonardo is that rather than having a separate chip/controller to talk USB to the computer it's all based on one micro-controller - the ATmega32u4. This keeps the price down and also allows some really neat things, like acting as a USB keyboard/mouse amongst many others. The Arduino Leonardo getting started guide is a great read and will fill you in on all the details along with a few tricks.

Along with the Arduino Leonardo comes a new maintenance release of the Arduino Development Environment (IDE) - 1.0.1 - here's the official announcement.

The main features of the Arduino 1.0.1 release are support for the Leonardo and some new translations. Apart from that there are a bunch of bug fixes so it's a recommend upgrade for everyone. Here are a couple of the bug fixes that are interesting for our usage here;

Issue 716: DHCP lease handling - this is a big one if you work with DHCP environments and want to start using the built in DHCP support of the Ethernet library from 1.0+
Issue 454: Add Stream.readString() and Stream.readStringUntil() that return String instances - the String objects are a time saving and convenient features so it's good to see more options for using them.
Issue 728: Core support for ATmega1284P - the ATmega1284P (and Atmega644P) are great chips which deserve to be included in the main distribution.

Thanks for reading and keeping us here running around mad trying to keep up with everything!

Linux Laptops!

2017-11-22T03:23:24.369994Z

A couple of years ago we had a selection of Laptops with no Windows or operating system installed. These were mostly for people who use Linux or other Free/Open Source software. Unfortunately we haven't been able to source Laptops without Windows through the "normal" suppliers for quite a while now.

Today though, things have changed. We still can't get them, but, great news! Zareason has set up a store in New Zealand selling Laptops built from the ground up to run Linux. They are great people and if you're looking for a new laptop you must head on over there to check out their great products.

By the way we aren't related to Zareason at all, except for the fact that we both love open source. So you can take this as an impartial recommendation.

New Zealand XML Dialplan for snom IP phones

2017-11-22T03:23:24.419627Z

This is a follow up post to my previous post from back in 2008. Andrew nicely sent me an email the other day saying that he had translated the regular expression based dial plan I created into the snom XML dialplan format. Here's what he cam up with below, thanks Andrew!

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<dialplan>
 <TEMPLATE MATCH="3.." Timeout="1" User="Phone"/> 

 <!-- Emergency Services -->
 <TEMPLATE MATCH="1,1.." Timeout="1" User="Phone"/> 

 <!-- Local and national calling to landlines -->
 <TEMPLATE MATCH="1,[2-9]......" Timeout="1" User="Phone"/> 
 <TEMPLATE MATCH="1,0[3-4][2-9]......" Timeout="1" User="Phone"/> 
 <TEMPLATE MATCH="1,0[6-7][2-9]......" Timeout="1" User="Phone"/> 
 <TEMPLATE MATCH="1,09[2-9]......" Timeout="1" User="Phone"/> 

 <!-- Free calling (0800, 0508) and expensive (0900) services -->
 <TEMPLATE MATCH="1,0800......" Timeout="1" User="Phone"/> 
 <TEMPLATE MATCH="1,0508......" Timeout="1" User="Phone"/> 
 <TEMPLATE MATCH="1,0900....." Timeout="1" User="Phone"/> 

 <!-- Vodafone (021) -->
 <TEMPLATE MATCH="1,02102......" Timeout="1" User="Phone"/> 
 <TEMPLATE MATCH="1,021[3-4]....." Timeout="1" User="Phone"/> 
 <TEMPLATE MATCH="1,021[6-9]....." Timeout="1" User="Phone"/> 
 <TEMPLATE MATCH="1,0210[0-1]....." Timeout="1" User="Phone"/> 
 <TEMPLATE MATCH="1,0210[3-9]....." Timeout="1" User="Phone"/> 
 <TEMPLATE MATCH="1,021[1-9]......" Timeout="1" User="Phone"/> 

 <!-- 2Talk VoIP mobile numbers -->
 <TEMPLATE MATCH="1,02889...." Timeout="1" User="Phone"/> 

 <!-- All other mobile numbers -->
 <TEMPLATE MATCH="1,024......." Timeout="1" User="Phone"/> 
 <TEMPLATE MATCH="1,027......." Timeout="1" User="Phone"/> 
 <TEMPLATE MATCH="1,029......." Timeout="1" User="Phone"/> 

 <!-- Paging services -->
 <TEMPLATE MATCH="1,0261....." Timeout="1" User="Phone"/> 
 <TEMPLATE MATCH="1,0262......" Timeout="1" User="Phone"/> 

 <!-- Default -->
 <TEMPLATE MATCH="*" Timeout="15"/> 
</dialplan>

WiFi Light Painting Wellington

2017-11-22T03:23:24.460783Z

Some guys at Trade Me got in touch the other day about an office challenge they were having. They wanted to create something like this, WiFi light painting.

Using an Arduino Mega 2560 and a bunch of super bright LEDs they created their own version. Check out the super-cool picture of the result;

How to program 55 Arduinos and stay sane

2017-11-22T03:23:24.502348Z

For a recent, yet to be blogged about project I had to program 55 Arduino boards. I don't really mind repetitive jobs but you still want to make things as simple as possible. There's no point doing something that takes one minute 55 times if you can write a script in 5 minutes and then take 10 seconds to do the job 55 times. That's a saving of at least half an hour, or a lot more if you have to do the job more than once!

In this particular instance, as you can see from the picture above, we chose the Seeeduino v3.0 from Seeed Studio. There were a couple of reasons for this; one was cost, they are a large enough amount cheaper than the alternatives that when you multiply it by 55 the saving certainly adds up. Two was the low profile nature of the Atmega chip, power jack and USB connector, with the shield we stacked on top this was useful.

So if I stop beating around the bush, this is the part you want to know. Using the excellent command line Arduino toolkit, Ino and a tiny script I wrote, all you need to do is plug and un-plug an Arduino and watch the screen. That's it. This is the script;

#!/bin/bash

if [ -z $1 ]; then
    echo 'Usage: '$0' /dev/tty...'
    exit 1
fi

DEVICE=$1
NEW=true

echo 'Ready to program Arduino on '$DEVICE
while true; do
    if [ -c $DEVICE ]; then
        if $NEW; then
            ino upload
            NEW=false
            echo 'Next please...'
        fi
    else
        NEW=true
    fi
    sleep 0.2
done

For those who are after more info on the project itself I've got some more info to come which I'll be posting on the blog. Any questions in the mean time feel free to comment below.

Some Raspberry Pi accessories have landed!

2017-11-22T03:23:24.543165Z

The Raspberry Pi $50 Linux computer has created quite a stir selling out the first shipment within minutes and having a huge demand worldwide. People have been waiting to get their hands on the little boards for quite some time and they are just now becoming more available.

Thanks to our distributor arrangement with the fantastic Adafruit we've managed to get our hands on some great accessories so people can properly play with their little Raspberry Pi computers. The following are currently available;

Adafruit Prototyping Pi Plate Kit for Raspberry Pi
GPIO Ribbon Cable for Raspberry Pi
Adafruit Pi Cobbler Breakout Kit for Raspberry Pi
Adafruit Pi Box - a beautiful clear perspex enclosure (very limited supply right now).

If you want your own Raspberry Pi to go with these fantastic acccessories head on over to Element14 or RS Componenets who are the exclusive distributors - we don't have any sorry, no one else has.

Arduinos in Schools

2017-11-22T03:23:24.584894Z

A good customer and now friend Mark Beckett has been doing great work passing on his experience with electronics and Arduino to some 10-12 year olds from Swannanoa School up north of Christchurch.

We (along with Ponoko and The Shed Magazine helped out with the hardware while Mark donated his own time and money to give the kids some great education during the holidays. The course was very well received and a majority of the students have now purchased their own kits to continue to experiment with.

Great work Mark! We're really pleased to be involved.

If you've got a project that you would like to chat about, feel free to drop us a line.

Milking Cows with Arduino - Part 1

2017-11-22T03:23:24.626552Z

I'm going to break this up into a couple of shorter posts, starting with a general introduction here. Please feel free to let me know in the comments if there is anything specific you would like me to cover.

Over the past couple of years I've been working with some local farmers building an automated calf feeder (that's a topic for another post). Over the winter one of the farmers involved in that project came to me asking if I could tackle another project, this time in his milking shed with grown up cows.

While his cowshed (a rotary with 54 milking bales/stalls) is only a few years old, the electronics in it were failing, and unfortunately the company who installed it were offering no support. A replacement system from one of the traditional dairy companies was going to run up to $50,000 or more, and the one he had his eye on wasn't ready to install for this season (marketing departments are often ahead of R&D).

The electronics in question are relatively simple, each milking bale has a few inputs - buttons and switches - and a few outputs - air solenoids for switching vacuum on and off. Sounds like something perfect for an Arduino to do, but remember as there's one for each bale anything we do we're going to need to do 54 times over.

Photo: Cgoodwin Wikipedia

The proposal he came to me with was to see whether we could come up with something low cost to use in the interim, to get him through a few seasons until he decides what he would like to do about a commercial solution. The kicker was that we only had a couple of months over winter to design and implement the solution, it needed to be ready for July when cows start to calve and need to be milked. No milk on a dairy farm is a big problem.

Some specifics about the electronics: There are 4 main digital inputs and outputs - easy for an Arduino to do, but the shed's electronics all run at 24 volts so dedicated drivers need to be switched from the Arduino logic for the outputs.

The four inputs are; 1) A button which starts and stops the milking process for each stall. 2) A switch which detects when the user lifts the cups and automatically starts the milking process. 3) A milk flow meter so we can tell when the cow has finished being milked. and 4) A voltage input to tell us that the plant is being washed. 1 and 2 are basic inputs, 3 and 4 come from an external voltage source so need to be isolated from the Arduino.

The four outputs are air solenoids switching vacuum pressure. One controls the main vacuum for taking the milk from the cows udder back to the tank, two control the pulsators which actually milk the cow, and the final one controls an air ram which removes the cups once the cow is finished milking.

I looked for a while at off the shelf solutions, there are loads of Arduino Shields around these days and even some which offer similar functionality to what I needed, but nothing quite fitted perfectly. In the end I decided to go down the route of creating a custom shield - a big step considering it's not something I had done before. I enlisted the help of hairy.geek.nz, who I knew had experience designing PCBs as we sell one of his products. This worked out great and he was really helpful throughout the project.

That's all for this instalment, next time I'll go into the board and electronics and putting things together.

Part 2 is available here.

Milking Cows with Arduino - Part 2

2017-11-22T03:23:24.668339Z

This is a follow up to part 1, the introduction. This post will talk about the electronics we designed and built. To the right you can see a picture of one of the air solenoids that we needed to drive.

First things first I built up a prototype controller. To get going as quickly as possible I used some off the shelf breakout boards from the store. Paired with a Freetronics Eleven I used a Prototyping shield, four Freetronics N-MOSFET Driver Modules, a couple of rectifier diodes and a birds nest of Hook Up Wire. I didn't get a picture of the set up but you're not missing much - it wasn't that pretty anyway.

I took the prototype electronics down to the dairy shed, plugged it in to a power supply, wired up a couple of buttons to act as inputs and wired up the vacuum solenoids to the MOSFETs. It worked - a good start! The next stage was back home, designing the actual PCB to use in the installation.

Although I am competent with basic electronics theory and know how to draw a circuit I've never designed or built a PCB before, so everything was a little new to me at this point. I opened up Eagle CAD - a PCB design program - and quickly decided that I was out of my depth. With no experience and a 2 month time frame for completion now was not the time to be learning how to design a PCB.

As I mentioned last time I enlisted the help of hairy.geek.nz, after he agreed to help I sent through a photo of a rough drawing I made with a pen and paper. Quickly I received back a picture of a PCB ready to be sent off to a board factory to be made. A couple of emails back and forth later and I did just that - sent the boards off to Mitch from hackvana.com.

There are loads of prototype PCB services out there to choose from but Mitch at Hackvana does a lot to support people creating open source hardware, his prices are great, and the turn around is good and quick. About 10 days after sending the design through to Hackvana I had a set of 5 prototype boards in my hand. I built a couple up and took them down to the farm (about 30 minutes drive).

When I got down to the farm ready to hook up my shiny new board I was quite excited. I pulled out my multimeter to check there was power before wiring things up to the shed's power supply and that is where I ran into the first issue - the shed runs on 24 volts, which the Arduino can't handle as a direct input. Originally when I talked to the farmer he had told me it was all 12 volts. First lesson learnt - don't rely on provided information, test things yourself.

We worked around that for the moment to see if the everything else with the electronics (basic program, inputs and MOSFET outputs) was working - which it was. So at the end of the day, some good points and some bad. Back home to work on a new board revision.

I talked to hairy.geek.nz again and decided that the best solution considering the time frame we had to work with was adding an off the shelf switching regulator to the existing design. It was rated to convert 24V to 9V, and then let the Arduino regulator convert the 9V to 5V as it normally does. He quickly sent through a new board layout which I sent through to Hackvana for another set of prototypes.

I think that's enough for this instalment so I'll leave it there. Next time I'll talk about the production of the boards which I didn't manage to get to this time and hopefully the installation. Any questions so far? Please feel free to ask in the comments.

Part 3 is available here.

Milking Cows with Arduino - Part 3

2017-11-22T03:23:24.710981Z

This is the third and final instalment in a series, part 1, the introduction, is here. This post will talk about the custom Arduino shield we designed and built, and the installation.

We left off last time having sent the second PCB revision to Hackvana for a prototype run of 10 boards. These arrived in good time. I built up one of the boards and took it down to the farm to test. Plugged it in to the 24V shed power supply to test the new regulator set up, wired it up and everything worked as expected. I then went ahead and ordered the full production run of 50 boards. With the prototype run that gave 60 boards total, we needed 54 so that left a margin of 6 spares.

While I was waiting for the production boards to arrive I assembled a couple of boards to get a head start. This is when the reality hit me of how long the build was going to take. I timed one of the builds and it took 20 minutes, some quick maths leads us to 55 x 20 minutes = 1100 minutes, or, 18 and a half hours! Second lesson learnt, do a time budget before you start. A multiplication factor of 50 makes even the smallest job much bigger than you think.

The production boards and parts arrived, a few late nights and lots of solder later, this was the result (well most of it, I couldn't fit all 55 boards in the picture);

After my experience building that number of boards I've started working with surface mount components to allow for more automation in assembly.

Next up was the installation, despite never having worked with PCB manufacturing before, and learning a huge amount there, I think I learnt nearly as much from the installation.

To keep the cost down for the farmer we re-used an IP66 rated enclosure from part of the previous electronics. While the Arduino and shield fitted well in this, by the time all the cables (eight double insulated cables) were put through glands it was a very tight fit. Small lesson learnt - you need a much bigger enclosure than you think when you're dealing with more than a couple cables.

Partly due to the enclosure size but also just due to the general amount of work required the installation proved to take quite some time. I timed it at about 30 minutes per board. As this was going to be too much time for me alone I employed the help of another local consultant. He normally does residential and commercial audio visual installations so this was a bit of a change for him but he was well suited to the job - wiring is wiring.

Another one of the things I discovered while installing the boards was that screw terminals are stronger when they are all clipped together in a long row. Having them spaced apart (as you can see in the picture) doesn't give them all the torsional strength that they could have which leads to some movement when tightening down the screws. Not a big deal but something to consider for a new revision.

After installing a few of the boards we decided to switch things on for a test. This is where things went a bit wrong and I learnt my biggest lesson of the project - do better testing. Although we tested with the actual load (the vacuum solenoid valves), we didn't test for an extended period of time. Turns out that we had an error in the board which was causing the MOSFET to not switch completely on. This resulted in heating and eventually, the destruction of the board.

So at the end of the first day things didn't seem to be going very well, we were taking longer than we thought to install the boards and the ones we had installed were trying to catch on fire. After a bit of a stressful afternoon I discovered the problem and had a patch fix. One of the traces on the PCB was not quite going to the right place, this was causing the solenoid to look like a resistor which created a voltage divider, this in nturn lowered the voltage to the gate of the MOSFET so it didn't turn fully on. Cutting one of the PCB traces and soldering a resistor in its place fixed the issue.

Although I had a fix, at this point in time we didn't have enough time to create a new set of boards, wait for them to be delivered and build them up. Instead we patched all the boards and installed them as they were. Not completely ideal but the fix was solid and there really wasn't any other choice.

I'm pleased to say that the cowshed has been running perfectly for the last few months with no failures. The farmer is happy with his system, which is running better than it ever has, and saved a bunch of money too. If anyone has any questions feel free to ask in the comments below or get in touch through the contact page.

Bulk Relay Control with an Arduino

2017-11-22T03:23:24.752059Z

Check out what the folks over at Clandestine Laboratories are up to with an Arduino, a stack of Freetronics Relay Driver Shields and a pile of relays controlling solenoid valves.

Polycom SoundPoint IP and SoundStation IP Default Password

2017-11-22T03:23:24.794625Z

A common question we get is the default web interface password for phones and other gear that we sell. Most people try admin/admin admin/password and various other common combinations. That won't get you very far with Polycom IP Phones, they chose the username "Polycom" and the default password "456". That password also works through the phone interface too.

Giving away a Rapsberry Pi tomorrow!

2017-11-22T03:23:24.837456Z

We've got a few Raspberry Pi accessories available in the store now and we've been doing a few things with the Rapsberry Pi ourselves too. Currently I (Hadley) am working on a solar powered remote webcam and weather monitor using 3G to upload data to the Internet.

Since we've got a few of the new 512MB Raspberry Pi units here I thought it would be fun to give one away too. All you need to do to enter is follow and mention us on twitter - use the #nicegear hashtag or if you don't do that Twitter thing post a comment on this blog entry.

A winner will be selected at random tomorrow (Friday 9th November) at around 4pm using random.org. Good luck!

Electricity Meter Usage over MQTT

2017-11-22T03:23:24.880696Z

Last week some guy came around and switched out our old meters for new ones. Not "smart" meters, just new dumb meters, which is fine as the current crop of "smart" meters don't seem to benefit the customer, rather just the company.

A couple years back we used to have a Currentcost device which I had hacked with an Arduino to put data on the network but I always had issues with phantom loads so the transmitter stopped working I never did anything about sorting it out.

Anyway, the new meters have a red LED impulse output that flashes 1600 times per kWh used. These are just about the perfect way to hack into your meter - no dangerous (and potentially illegal) connections required and super easy to do. It should also be very accurate since the meters are certified correct.

Here's a photo of the meter box showing the new meters and the sensors (with black tape over them). The two meters are on the outside and the ripple control in the middle. The Arduino and enclosure are just outside the photo to the right mounted on the wall, I thought it best to keep "odd looking things" out of way of the power company.

For the controller I used a Freetronics EtherTen which is an Arduino Uno compatible with built in Ethernet, these are great boards that we use a lot of here. The sensor is just a Photocell on the end of a small twin core wire connected back to a Prototyping Shield with a resistor.

The sensors are covered in black duct tape to keep out ambient light and connected up to the two interrupt digital input pins on the Arduino to make counting the pulses really easy (see the code below).

I already use MQTT (which is a simple network publish/subscribe system, great for machine to machine (M2M) communication) for some home automation around the house so publishing the electricity usage there made perfect sense. The EtherTen publishes the data on the network and any number of clients can subscribe to this and receive updates. Currently there's just a Python server which logs the data into a redis db for historic graphing. Here's an example graphs;

You can see that our house and its young family has a long way to go with saving energy. The blue graph is the standard meter and the red graph is the water heater circuit. This graph is actually higher than normal, it was a cold day but not cold enough to have the log burner on which heats up the entire house. You can see overnight the electric heaters in the children's bedrooms cycling on and off and at 6am the heat pump (air conditioner) ramping up to heat up the living area.

Of course you could also add any other network device and have it subscribe to the electricity usage MQTT topic. Perhaps I'll build a little RGB LCD display and have it show the current usage with a colour that reflects how well (or badly) we're doing at saving energy.

Here's the code I've been playing around with, suitable for Arduino 1.0+ and the not quite latest Arduino MQTT client (there was an update released this weekend which I has a small API change - easy fix).

/*
* By Hadley Rich <[email protected]>
* Released under the MIT license.
* Some ideas taken from arduino.cc example code.
*/

#include <stdio.h>
#include <SPI.h>
#include <Ethernet.h>
#include <PubSubClient.h>

byte mac[6] = { 0x90, 0xA2, 0xDA, 0x44, 0x34, 0x28 };
char macstr[18];

const int chan1_pin = 2;
const int chan2_pin = 3;
const float w_per_pulse = 0.625;
const unsigned long ms_per_hour = 3600000UL;

unsigned int chan1_count = 0;
unsigned int chan2_count = 0;
unsigned long report_time = 0;
unsigned long chan1_first_pulse = 0;
unsigned long chan1_last_pulse = 0;
volatile byte chan1_pulse = 0;
unsigned long chan2_first_pulse = 0;
unsigned long chan2_last_pulse = 0;
volatile byte chan2_pulse = 0;

PubSubClient client("sodium.nice.net.nz", 1883, callback);

void callback(char* topic, byte* payload, unsigned int length) {
}

void chan1_isr() {
  chan1_pulse = 1;
}

void chan2_isr() {
  chan2_pulse = 1;
}

boolean connect_mqtt() {
  Serial.print("MQTT...");
  if (client.connect(macstr)) {
    Serial.println("connected");
    char topic[35];
    snprintf(topic, 35, "house/node/%s/state", macstr);
    client.publish(topic, "start");
    return true;
  }
  Serial.println("Failed.");
  return false;
}

void setup() {
  pinMode(chan1_pin, INPUT);
  pinMode(chan2_pin, INPUT);
  attachInterrupt(0, chan1_isr, RISING);
  attachInterrupt(1, chan2_isr, RISING);
  Serial.begin(9600);
  delay(1000);
  snprintf(macstr, 18, "x:x:x:x:x:x",
    mac[0], mac[1], mac[2], mac[3], mac[4], mac[5]);
  Serial.print("DHCP (");
  Serial.print(macstr);
  Serial.print(")...");
  if (Ethernet.begin(mac) == 0) {
    Serial.println("Failed.");
    while(true);
  }
  Serial.println(Ethernet.localIP());
}

void loop() {
  char topic[35];
  char value[6];
  static unsigned int chan1_watts;
  unsigned long chan1_delta; // Time since last pulse
  static unsigned int chan2_watts;
  unsigned long chan2_delta; // Time since last pulse

  if (!client.connected() && !connect_mqtt()) {
    return;
  }
  client.loop();

  if (millis() - chan1_last_pulse > 60000) {
    chan1_watts = 0;
  }
  if (millis() - chan2_last_pulse > 60000) {
    chan2_watts = 0;
  }

  if (millis() - report_time > 5000) {
    chan1_delta = chan1_last_pulse - chan1_first_pulse;
    if (chan1_delta && chan1_count) {
      chan1_watts = (chan1_count - 1) * w_per_pulse * ms_per_hour / chan1_delta;
      chan1_count = 0;
    }
    chan2_delta = chan2_last_pulse - chan2_first_pulse;
    if (chan2_delta && chan2_count) {
      chan2_watts = (chan2_count - 1) * w_per_pulse * ms_per_hour / chan2_delta;
      chan2_count = 0;
    }
    if (!(report_time == 0 && chan1_watts == 0 && chan2_watts == 0)) {
      snprintf(topic, 35, "house/power/meter/1/current");
      snprintf(value, 6, "%d", chan1_watts);
      client.publish(topic, value);
      snprintf(topic, 35, "house/power/meter/2/current");
      snprintf(value, 6, "%d", chan2_watts);
      client.publish(topic, value);
      Serial.print("Chan1 ");
      Serial.println(chan1_watts);
      Serial.print("Chan2 ");
      Serial.println(chan2_watts);
      report_time = millis();
    }
  }

  if (chan1_pulse == 1) {
    chan1_count++;
    chan1_pulse = 0;

    chan1_last_pulse = millis();
    if (chan1_count == 1) { // was reset
      chan1_first_pulse = chan1_last_pulse;
    }

    snprintf(topic, 35, "house/power/meter/1/usage");
    client.publish(topic, "0.625");
  }
  if (chan2_pulse == 1) {
    chan2_count++;
    chan2_pulse = 0;

    chan2_last_pulse = millis();
    if (chan2_count == 1) { // was reset
      chan2_first_pulse = chan2_last_pulse;
    }

    snprintf(topic, 35, "house/power/meter/2/usage");
    dtostrf(w_per_pulse, 4, 1, value);
    client.publish(topic, "0.625");
  }

  int dhcp_status = Ethernet.maintain();
  /*
    returns:
    0: nothing happened
    1: renew failed
    2: renew success
    3: rebind fail
    4: rebind success
  */
  if (dhcp_status) {
    long now = millis();
    Serial.println("DHCP Lease");
  }
}

All that's left to do now is tidy up the Ethernet cable... Any questions or comments please feel free to leave a comment below.

What Size Solar Panel and Battery Do I Need?

2017-11-22T03:23:24.923560Z

I (Hadley) do a little work with solar powered installations. Lately I've had a few people ask how to work out what size solar panel they need to run some electronics so I thought I would take the time to note down how to calculate it here. Solar dimensioning is pretty straight forward once you know what equations you need to work out. One thing you'll probably notice is that you need a lot bigger solar panels and batteries than you think, especially if you want to run something 24 hours a day.

First for this theoretical example we'll make a few assumptions.

The load we want to run is 10W
We want to run the load 24 hours a day
We get an average of 4 hours of peak sun each day.
We want to size the system large enough to handle four rainy/cloudy days without sun.
We'll be using lead acid (car) batteries.

Now to the actual calculations you need. To start with we work out what sized batteries we need and then what size solar panels we need to charge them.

Lets work out the Watt-Hours we'll be using, our load is 10W and it's running all day and night so: 24 hours 10 x 24 = 240 Watt-Hours

Once we have the Watt-Hours and the type of battery we're using we can work out the Amp-Hours, 240 Watt-Hours divided by 12 Volts: 240 / 12 = 20 Amp-Hours. That's only for one day though and we wanted to withstand four days of bad weather (autonomy). Let's multiply: 20 x 4 = 80 Amp-Hours

With a lead acid battery you really only want to discharge the battery to 50% at the most, any more and the battery will wear out quickly. So double the Amp-Hours needed and we get a battery size of 160 Amp-Hours - quite a lot bigger than you would think, also that's quite a big battery, it will be about 30kg!

Now that we have our battery size we can move on to working out what size solar panel we need to charge it. Remember from our first calculation three paragraphs above our daily use is 240 Watt-Hours. Our assumed daily sunshine is 4 hours. To recharge the battery for one days worth of usage in one day charging, we need a solar panel that is: 240 Watt-Hours / 4 hours = 60 Watts.

The charging system isn't 100% efficient, a good rule of thumb is to allow for 20% losses. You might also want to add some solar panel capacity to allow for a quicker recovery from extended periods of bad weather, perhaps another 20%. So your panel choice may by up to: 60 Watts x 140% = 84 Watts. A standard panel sizes are 60W and 90W, depending on your exact usage and the level of autonomy you want somewhere between those would be a good choice.

I hope that gives some insight into how you go about sizing up a solar and battery system. There are some web based solar calculators out there which may do some of this work for you. Have a search around the web. Just beware that a lot of them aren't fantastic quality and it's not all that difficult to do the calculations yourself on a plain old calculator.

To calculate the actual sun hours for places around New Zealand, including the differences between summer and winter, check out SolarView from the good folks at NIWA

While we don't sell large solar system components talked about here we do have a range of small solar modules and components which you might like to check out. If you've got any neat projects you're doing please do let us know in the comments below. Cheers!

Christmas Opening Hours 2012

2017-11-22T03:23:24.965442Z

Just a quick note to with all our fantastic customers a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Also to let you all know our holiday operating times for the 2012 holiday season.

We are a family business and think it's important to spend the holidays with family. Our office will be closed from this Friday 21st of December, the website will of course still be accepting orders but dispatch will be delayed until we reopen on Monday 7th January.

If you have any urgent requirements feel free to email. I (Hadley) will be sporadically checking emails and may be able to respond during the holidays.

All the best to you and yours for the holidays, enjoy yourselves, stay safe, and try not to eat too much!

Cheers!

Rocks

2017-11-22T03:23:25.007275Z

A customer of ours sent in this neat photo from the Rock & Mineral Show that they put on at the Mineral Club of Hutt Valley and Wellington.

Here you can see the left hand part of the display in more detail, there's a Freetronics EtherTen controlling the turntable which moves various radioactive rocks into position under an old Geiger counter, very cool!

Get a real MAC address for your Arduino Ethernet

2017-11-22T03:23:25.048782Z

There's this thing that some people like to call the "Internet of Things" (IoT), mostly this is just a fancy name for "devices that don't have a person sitting in front of them connected to the Internet". As part of that general theme, Ethernet connected Arduino projects are very popular, we use them a lot ourselves here. Most of the projects we do are connected to some sort of network.

If you've ever had more than one Arduino device with Ethernet on the same network then you will have had to deal with the issue of MAC addressing. When you've just got one one you can make one up, the good old DE:AD:BE:EF:FE:ED is popular. What happens though if you want to add another project to your network? Things stop working.

There are various solutions, we've posted a couple on this very blog, none of them are just right though.

So we created a shield to solve the problem once and for all. Introducing the MAC ProtoShield - an oddly shaped shield for an Arduino which gives you an official MAC address, none of this made up stuff, no having to manually hard code one in for each Arduino.

You can see it above installed on a Freetronics EtherTen along with an 802.3af Power over Ethernet (PoE) module. That's the reason for the funny shape - you can fit one of the Freetronics PoE regulators inside the MAC ProtoShield footprint, making it easy to do tidy one cable installations.

The secret is seen in the bottom of the picture, a tiny surface mount EEPROM chip which has a built in MAC address accessible over I2C. You also get 2Kbit of extra EEPROM to play with. We've got some simple example code available to show you how to incorporate it into your next project. It's really easy and small, only 40 lines of code.

You also get a small prototyping area with power rails and if you use stackable headers it's a good solution to the problem of the Ethernet jack getting in the way of a full sized shield. Although we like to use them with the EtherTen, they also work just fine with a standard Arduino Ethernet Shield, Arduino Ethernet or anything else that supports the "r3" headers.

The board design is open source and available on GitHub if you're interested. We'd love to hear your comments or questions via the comment form below or you can contact us directly here.

Building the OrBlink USB RGB LED

2017-11-22T03:23:25.091393Z

This is the guide to building the OrBlink USB RGB LED Kit.

You'll need a few tools which aren't included in the kit. To assemble the board you'll need a soldering iron, some solder, some wire strippers and some small wire cutters. To pull apart and put together the orb you'll need a large flat head screwdriver (or a coin), a small phillips screwdriver, and a drill or something else to make a hole. Other useful items are a helping hand tool to hold the board while you solder which will make things much easier and a good multimeter to test your joints but they aren't strictly necessary.

Step 1. Check the parts, you should have the following;

1 Orb
1 OrBlink PCB
1 Pre-programmed ATTiny85 microcontroller
1 DIP socket for the microcontroller
1 RGB LED
2 Zener diodes (D1,D2)
1 220 ohm resistor (R1 - red red brown)
1 330 ohm resistor (R2 - orange orange brown)
1 150 ohm resistor (R3 - brown green brown)
2 68 ohm resistors (R4,R5 - blue grey black)
1 1.8k ohm resistor (R6 - brown grey red)
1 USB Cable

Step 2. Remove the base of the orb, it's best to use a coin here or a really big flat head screwdriver - they tend to be pretty tight.

Step 3. Remove the old PCB and battery assembly from the orb. Save the screws, do whatever you like with the old PCB.

Step 4. Install R1 (220 ohms, red red brown), R2 (330 ohms, orange orange brown) and R3 (150 ohms, brown green brown). Bend the legs, insert them through the holes and bend as per the picture to hold them in while you solder.

Step 5. Solder the resistors by touching each lead with the soldering iron a piece of solder lightly. Trim off the leads with your flush cutters.

Step 6. Install R4, R5 (68 ohm blue grey black) and R6 (1.8k ohm brown grey red) using the same technique as above.

Step 7. Install the zener diodes using the same technique as the resistors above. Be careful as diodes are polarised - you need to install the stripe to match the stripe on the PCB.

Step 8. Solder in the DIP socket, orient it so that the end with the notch cut out is at the same end as the small circle pin 1 marker on the PCB.

Step 8. Place the RGB LED through the PCB, leave it sticking up around 15mm so it doesn't cast shadows of the other components on the inside of the orb. Orient the LED so the flat side of the plastic is facing towards R4.

Step 9. Solder in the LED. Use a little solder here as the pads are quite close together and may bridge if you use too much.

Step 10. Install the ATTiny85 microcontroller, if you need to you can bend the legs in slightly by pressing down on a flat surface. The end with the little round impression on the top goes at the end of the socket with the notch in it.

Step 11. That's the PCB assembly completed, well done! Now you just need to put the orb back together.

Step 12. Cut the end off the USB cable (not the one that plugs into the computer) and strip the large outer insulation, then the four smaller wires inside that. You only need a short amount os the inner insulation stripped.

Step 13. Remove the rubber gasket from around the orb base and drill a small hole in the very bottom of the thread. It needs to be big enough to fit the USB cable, around 3mm.

Step 14. Insert the stripped end of the cable through the orb base and the large hole in the PCB.

Step 15. Solder the stripped wires into the PCB, most USB cables use standard colors. Red for 5V, black for ground, green for D+ and yellow for D- match them up to the labels on the PCB.

Step 16. Screw the newly completed OrBlink PCB into the existing holes in the orb base with the screws you saved from the start.

Step 17. Screw the base back on to the orb, plug the OrBlink into your computer and start making colors!

If you're new to soldering you might want to test the USB cable to make sure there aren't any shorts which may cause damage to your computers USB port. This is up to you.

Introducing the OrBlink, a USB connected RGB LED Orb

2017-11-22T03:23:25.133823Z

Introducing the OrBlink, a USB connected RGB LED Orb, plug it into your computer (any will do, no drivers required) and use it to indicate whatever you can imagine.

I (Hadley) came up with the idea for making one in early 2013 when our Mr3, our 3 year old got confused about when to get out of bed. Daylight savings had ended and it was quite dark in the mornings, this meant Mr3 didn't know if it was really early or not.

Mr3 already has a low power computer in his room which we use to play music for him so I thought I could leverage that for power and logic to control an RGB (Red Green Blue) LED and show him when it was an okay time to get up.

I wanted something nice and soft and diffused so it didn't cast shadows in the room, kids don't tend to like that much. So I hunted around and found some nice little plastic orbs or spheres, about 80mm in diameter. These were designed as a color changing LED to start with, but battery powered and not controllable.

I purchased up a few orbs and when they arrived I pulled one apart. There was a small circuit board in there with a couple of cheap batteries and LEDs, conveniently held together with screws for easy removal.

This was the time I turned to the Internet and typed "avr usb rgb led" into DuckDuckGo (which is a great alternative to Google but that's another story). The "avr" in there is for a type of microcontroller from Atmel, much the same as what's used in Arduino Boards, the rest of the search is pretty self explanatory. The first link in my search was to some code written and kindly published by some bloke called Dave back in 2009 who built something pretty much exactly the same, thanks Dave!

With that information found I knew pretty much what I needed to do, a simple circuit based on the ATTiny85, a RGB LED and a few other passive components. I put together an ugly little prototype on a cut down square protoboard (we were all out of round protoboards) with bits I found around the workshop hanging off it left right and center. Ugly it may have been but it worked first try which is always a bonus.

Using my newly found interest in designing custom printed circuit boards (PCBs) I set out and created a replacement PCB that would fit in the existing little base of the orb. Here's the schematic I came up with.

I sent my board design off to Hackvana, the friendly custom PCB making service, a short time later I had some prototypes in my hand. Here's what they look like, assembled with all the through hole components, but not yet mounted in the orb.

Looking at the little built up PCB made me think that perhaps other people might like to build one of their own, and it fits in pretty nicely with all the other stuff we sell, so I decided to make up a bunch of kits and put them up for sale on the website here.

There are a few other very similar products around all created recently such as the Blink(1) by ThingM and the BlinkStick by Agile Innovative. They are all based on the same basic hardware and principle, most of them are based on the same source code too. I think ours is neat since we made it of course, and it comes in a neat little Orb which looks great sitting on a table.

All the source code for the OrBlink is available on GitHub, including the hardware design files (created in Eagle), the firmware to run on the ATTiny85 firmware (modified from Dave's code, which is originally based on a V-USB example), a C command line program to control the OrBlink (again based on code by Dave), and some Python code written by me based on pyusb.

Why not pick up an OrBlink Kit today, learn some new or practice your existing soldering skills, and end up with a neat useful little gadget at the end of it.

Have you got any questions or comments? Want us to consider stocking pre-assembled ones? Anything else? Let us know in the comments below or get in contact directly (especially if our comment form spam protection is being hyper active again).

All the best - Hadley

10000th Order Milestone

2017-11-22T03:23:25.176308Z

At exactly 8am yesterday (Thursday) the nicegear web store reached quite a neat milestone, order #10000 was placed. Matt from Christchurch ordered a Raspberry Pi. Like most orders this was shipped out the same day, unlike most orders and because it was such a special number we gave it away for free.

I was contemplating how fast we've progressed to that number and what the interval timing of it was so I jumped into the database to have a look with this command;

SELECT id, created FROM orders WHERE id % 1000 = 0 ORDER BY id;

After pasting the results into LibreOffice Calc (a spreadsheet app) I was given the following graph;

I'm really stoked with the performance of our little operation run out of good old Timaru, New Zealand.

Needless to say I'm quite proud of what we've achieved over the years (which seem to have just flown past!) but I mostly wanted to put this in writing to say a huge thanks to all of you, our customers. We don't advertise, pretty much the only way we get the amount of business we do is through fantastic folks such as yourselves who tell a friend or family member about us.

Thank you all very much.

- Hadley Rich

Testing Products with Products

2017-11-22T03:23:25.217962Z

We like to have quality products. Right from when we began back in 2005/06 that was one of the core ideas, to sell quality hardware which was hard to find locally. Selling crap gear is no fun for anyone; the customer gets a rude shock when whatever they purchased arrives and is big let down. We don't make any money because people return the bad products to us for refunds. Basically everybody is unhappy and we go out of business.

Back then it was quite easy, back then I could count on one had the manufacturers of the products we sold and sales were small enough for me (Hadley) to spend plenty of time on each one. Fast forward to 2013 and these days with the large order volume, wide variety of products we sell and sources we get them from, it's not quite so easy. It's important for me to be vigilant and make sure that we're not turning into just another online store selling bulk, cheap low quality goods.

Of course all of this isn't to say that we don't get faulty products, of course we do. There's always going to be a few defective products and if you start selling in a reasonable volume then this can start to mount up quickly if you're not careful. Thankfully selling the products we do means that there's usually sometime useful lying around to make testing things out easier.

We recently had a customer having issues with a 4 port USB wall charger. This is an interesting case as I am pretty confident that the chargers are decent quality. Like most products I had tested them myself before they were listed for sale. We arranged a return of the charger to check it out here.

You can see a picture of me testing it above with one of my favourite toys, an electronic DC load. You plug into that the load you want to simulate - in this case 2.1A which is the rated specification of the USB charger - hook up the device and press go. So I didn't have to cut up another USB cable I used another handy product, the SparkFun Hydra Cable which plugs into a USB port and gives you various outputs such as banana plugs I used here..

If you ignore the reflection of trees out my window you can see on the pretty display of the electronic load 2.1A at 4.56V. This is within the USB voltage specification and shows the adapter can supply what it says it does. I left this running for an hour or so, it did get a little warm but seemed perfectly stable. You'll note it's not quite 5V that USB is meant to be. This is a combination of droop from the charger under load and voltage drop over the length of the USB cable which is normal.

So what was the problem the customer was having? Turns out they were trying to draw quite a bit more than the USB adapter is rated for. They were wanting to charge two iPads and two iPhones all at the same time. Looking at the specifications these can draw up to 2A each so that is possible 8A total, four times more than the charger is capable of. At that load the voltage would drop and it may stop charging completely. I've since added a clarification to the product page so others don't make the same mistake in the future.

Using an I2C Real Time Clock (RTC) with a Raspberry Pi

2017-11-22T03:23:25.260756Z

Updated instructions for newer Pi's over here.

Unlike most computers the Raspberry Pi doesn't contain a Real Time Clock (RTC), we assume it was left out of the design to save space and/or money. A RTC is a coin cell battery powered clock which keeps accurate time, even when the computer is powered off. Without one, the Raspberry Pi isn't capable of keeping time by itself.

If you're using a Pi Model B with an Internet connection then you can get the time from the Internet using Network Time Protocol (NTP), however if you're using a Model A or just don't have a network connection, then you'll need an RTC to keep time.

Here's the basic steps you need to get the Pi RTC Module going on the latest Raspbian distribution you can download from the Raspberry Pi Foundation's website.

# Remove the module blacklist entry so it can be loaded on boot
sudo sed -i 's/blacklist i2c-bcm2708/#blacklist i2c-bcm2708/' /etc/modprobe.d/raspi-blacklist.conf

# Load the module now
sudo modprobe i2c-bcm2708

# Notify Linux of the Dallas RTC device
echo ds1307 0x68 | sudo tee /sys/class/i2c-adapter/i2c-1/new_device

# Test whether Linux can see our RTC module.
sudo hwclock

That's it! You can also add the i2c initialisation command to rc.local which means it will be run at every boot up;

# Add the RTC device on boot
sudo sed -i 's#^exit 0$#echo ds1307 0x68 > /sys/class/i2c-adapter/i2c-1/new_device#' /etc/rc.local
echo exit 0 | sudo tee -a /etc/rc.local

This doesn't cover automatically setting the clock on boot and but you can do so by adding another line (above exit 0) to rc.local with;

hwclock -s

Raspberry Pi Timelapse Camera Rig

2017-11-22T03:23:25.303085Z

A couple of weeks ago I was asked to set up a time-lapse camera rig to take a medium term timelapse video - 4-6 weeks worth of footage. The trick was that I only had a couple days notice and no budget (it's for a charity event). Since I had to work with what was available on hand here my immediate thought was a Raspberry Pi with a Raspberry Pi Camera Module.

To use as an easily mountable weatherproof enclosure with a glass front for the camera I picked up a cheap halogen work light from a local hardware store. Quite cost effective at $14. After removing the handle and all of the interior parts, there's enough room for a Raspberry Pi, camera board and USB power supply.

As the time-lapse set up was going to be mounted into a caravan it needed to run on 12V, an easy way to do so was to use a Cigarette Lighter USB power supply, that way everything was "plug and play" with a standard Micro USB Cable.

A 12V lead acid battery (standard car battery in this case, donated by another sponsor) was procured to power the rig. To decrease the power usage I switched to a Raspberry Pi Model A, which due to the fact that it has no Ethernet controller, uses less power. Measured with the bench power supply here about 50mA less. The Model B Raspberry Pi with camera etc. used around 120mA, the Model A version only used around 70mA, a significant difference when running on battery power.

Not shown installed in the picture (it was taken half way through set up) is one of our High Precision Real Time Clock (RTC) Modules for Raspberry Pi - since this rig isn't connected to the Internet it requires an external clock to keep accurate time for the image filenames. This will make things much easier to deal with when it comes to creating the video.

The original plan was to install a tiny 32GB USB drive for the images, unfortunately it didn't quite fit, very close but not quite. It would have been fine if we had one of the Low-profile microSD card adapters in stock but unfortunately we had run out. I ended up just using a 32GB microSD card for the operating system and the storage. It will fill up at some stage if it's not tended to. There's enough space for around 3-4 weeks worth of images taken once per minute.

The software side of things was very simple. Install Raspbian, enable the camera module, set up the RTC, add a cron job to save the images from the camera and that's it;

#!/bin/bash

directory=/media/usb0
filename=image-$(date +"%Y-%m-%dT%H%M%S").jpg

raspistill -o $directory/$filename -w 1920 -h 1080

And below you see the final result, the USB power supply is mounted behind the Raspberry Pi board, the camera was stuck to the glass with some tape and the Pi itself held in place with a small piece of foam wedged against the glass.

Building 100 Arduino Vacuum Pressure Gauges

2017-11-22T03:23:25.347187Z

Last year I installed some electronics controllers in a dairy cow shed, you can read about that project on the blog here.

After the job was completed and everything installed, the shed was tested by a milking machine testing specialist. Normally a milking plant would be tested once a year to make sure everything is running as it should. The machine tester will test various aspects of the plant to ensure that the cows are milked efficiently and without any pain or damage to their teats or udder.

As the electronics that we installed controlled the pulsation of the milking cups it was necessary to test this as it's a crucial part of the milking procedure. Happily for everyone the controllers were working well within specification and, according to the tester, better than a lot of the other commercial off the shelf systems.

The tester made a comment that if they were adjusted by 20 milliseconds then they would be running perfect timing. As it's all software this was a 10 second change to implement - not including uploading the code to the devices. It's nice to have the flexibility to change things to work exactly how you would like - not something you get with a lot of products.

I got to talking with the machine tester after that and it seems that the vacuum pressure of the milking plant is one of the most overlooked things in cow sheds. If the vacuum is out of specification then it can cause damage and discomfort to the cows, or make milking take longer than necessary. He was interested in something which can alert the worker in the cowshed to the fact that the vacuum is out.

Most cowsheds have a standard manual vacuum gauge pictured right. These vacuum gauges work perfectly fine but are easy to ignore (especially if it's 5am and dark). So at his request, using what I learnt from the cowshed project I set out to make a replacement, a digital vacuum gauge.

If you read my series on Milking Cows with Arduino I learnt a few interesting things, one of those was that assembling even a relatively small number of PCBs (fifty in that case) can end up taking up quite a lot of time. Since then I've done quite a lot more PCB design and have learnt to use surface mount (SMD) technology. Using SMD means that production can be more easily automated but it's still surprisingly easy to do by hand.

Taking an idea from one of the products we stock, the SparkFun Serial Enabled 7-Segment LED Display I decided to create a similar custom Arduino board with a larger 7 segment LED display and a built in pressure sensor to measure the vacuum and display it all on one board.

Here's a picture of my hand assembled first prototype, the LED display is out of sight on the bottom of the board;

The large chip in the middle is an ATMega328P (TQFP package), the same microcontroller used on the standard Arduino board, just surface mount instead of DIP through hole. The large component that looks a bit like a digital spider on the left is a Freescale MPXV5050 pressure sensor which can sense -50 to 0 kPa (-7.25 to 0 psi) vacuum pressure. This has an easy to interface with 0-5V analog voltage output, something that is super simple to do with Arduino.

After putting this board together and doing some basic electrical testing on it with a multimeter, everything seemed to be okay, I plugged it into a power supply and no smoke came out - always a good sign! Unfortunately I couldn't do much else without programming the ATMega, and first I had to learn how to do that.

It took a little while to figure out the ins and outs of programming a bare ATMega chip. Normally with an Arduino board you would plug it into your computer using USB or an USB to TTL converter such as an FTDI cable/board, open the Arduino IDE and hit "upload". The reason you can do so is because of the Arduino bootloader that's already been programmed on there for you.

When you buy an ATMega chip in bulk they're usually blank i.e. no bootloader, to get started you need to use an ISP programmer which allows you to program the chip with your code and also program a bootloader, like the Arduino, to make uploading code in the future easier.

To program the boards I used a Pocket AVR Programmer combined with an ISP Pogo Adapter.

A neat trick I discovered was, rather than burning the bootloader and then programming the code onto the chip separately, you can upload both of those together, saving time. To do so I burned the bootloader using the ISP programmer mentioned above, switched to an FTDI breakout to upload the code from the Arduino IDE, and then used avrdude to "backup" the entire chip contents into a file on the computer. Then I could use avrdude again to upload that file to all the other boards in one step, effectively cloning the first board onto all the others.

The commands I used to clone the boards with avrdude were;

# Backup bootloader an sketch into a file
/usr/local/share/arduino-1.0.4/hardware/tools/avrdude -C/usr/local/share/arduino-1.0.4/hardware/tools/avrdude.conf -v -patmega328p -cusbtiny -Uflash:r:/home/hads/milkbar-with-bootloader.hex:i 

# Upload the bootloader and sketch in one go
/usr/local/share/arduino-1.0.4/hardware/tools/avrdude -C/usr/local/share/arduino-1.0.4/hardware/tools/avrdude.conf -v -patmega328p -cusbtiny -Uflash:w:/home/hads/milkbar-with-bootloader.hex:i

Normally when designing a PCB you'll make it as small as possible to save on the cost of the PCB material, this is what I did with the prototype above. When it came time to mount the board in an enclosure, I discovered that it would be easier to redesign the board to be slightly larger to fit and mount in a specific enclosure. Conveniently we have some great IP rated enclosures with a clear top cover so naturally I grabbed one of those off the shelf and used that. I increased the board size, had the corners routed out and located the mounting holes to match the enclosure. You can see to the right the second revision and production prototype.

I briefly mentioned earlier how surface mount technology allows more automation in assembly. While I do like assembling boards, I don't have time to manually place the components on 100 boards, that's a lot of work with tweezers. I called around a few PCB assembly businesses in New Zealand and found one who was happy to complete a small run of 100 boards for me. All that's then required is shipping the PCBs and a box of components and for a nominal fee they will put them all together and send back the completed boards.

One thing that most assembly houses will require is a board in a panel, multiple copies of the board in one large board. This makes it easier to run through the robotic machines on their assembly production line. Luckily my friendly PCB supplier Hackvana offers panellised boards, here's a picture of the board panels ready to ship off for assembly.

Once we received the assembled boards back at the office, we then had the rather large task of final assembly. Below you can see me just finished soldering the LED displays on to a batch of 20 boards. After that they head on over to be installed in the prepared enclosures and connected up to the air line and power connectors.

Overall, the project went really well, I didn't encounter any major issues. The main lessons learnt form this project were;

Sometimes it's better to pay someone else to do what they are good at. As much as I would love an in-house pick and place machine, forking out $20,000 plus isn't a smart option when you're doing a production run of 100 boards. When do we get to buy one? I'm not sure, maybe one day. Even when we are doing doing larger production runs there's still the learning curve of using a machine to take into consideration.

Allocate more time for programming and testing. I had plans to build a programming and testing jig to make life easier. A programming or testing jig basically allows you to clip in your PCB and have connections automatically made to upload the code and test to make sure each board is working correctly. In the end I didn't leave enough time in my project schedule to build one, it would have required designing another PCB, getting it made, making sure it works, possibly getting another revision made etc. All that would take a couple of weeks at minimum and perhaps 4-6 weeks by the time you wait for shipping. I could have pushed the delivery date back (the client wasn't actually that worried about it) but I wanted to stick with the schedule.

Designing the electronics is only a relatively small part of a project/product. The physical side of things is also a huge part of it. It took me probably just as long to sort out the enclosure, mounting standoffs, decide on the right air hose, air hose connectors, power connectors etc. There's also a lot of time involved in final assembly, drilling holes in enclosures, installing glands and things and just screwing things together.

And here's the final product;

Like most of my blog posts this has turned into a bit of a brain dump rather than anything particularly structured, I hope some useful points have come across. If there's anything specific you'd like me to go into more detail about, please feel free to leave a comment or get in touch.

Hadley

We're Moving!

2017-11-22T03:23:25.389742Z

We need more room. This Friday the 6th December we're moving offices. Please excuse us if we're slow to reply to emails on Thursday and Friday.

This also means that any orders placed after 3pm Thursday afternoon won't be shipped until Monday December 9th. Our apologies for the inconvenience.

Holiday Opening Hours 2013

2017-11-22T03:23:25.431600Z

Thank you all our fantastic customers for another stupendous year! We had our 10,000 order not long ago and well on our way again at nearly 12,000. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all.

We are a family business and think it's important to spend the holidays with family. Our office will be closed from Friday 20th of December, the website will of course still be accepting orders but dispatch will be delayed until we reopen on Monday 6th January.

If you have any urgent requirements feel free to email. I (Hadley) will be sporadically checking emails and may be able to respond during the holidays.

All the best to you and yours for the holidays, enjoy yourselves and stay safe.

Cheers!

Analytics Q1 2014

2017-11-22T03:23:25.472578Z

In 2010 and 2012 I posted with browser and operating stats. This is another follow up to that to see what's changed.

The graphs are a little different again, we're still using Piwik, open source web analytics instead of Google Analytics but there was recently a major version update which is really nice.

To the actual statistics. Browsers; Last year it was Webkit (Chrome/Safari), Firefox and IE in first second and third, this year it's the same, even more pronounced.

Operating systems haven't changed too significantly. Just to mention again, our site isn't typical due to the product focus and technical audience.

How to Install Eagle 6.5.0 in Ubuntu 14.04 64 Bit

2017-11-22T03:23:25.513722Z

If you download CadSoft Eagle ready to install it on your new Ubuntu installation so you can design some PCBs you'll run into an issue. It doesn't work and the error message isn't helpful. You'll see something similar to;

eagle-lin-6.5.0.run: /tmp/eagle-setup.2645/eagle-6.5.0/bin/eagle: not found

What this actually means is that you're missing the required 32bit libraries to run both Eagle and it's setup program.

You can install the required packages like so;

sudo apt-get install libxrender1:i386 libxrandr2:i386 libxcursor1:i386 libfreetype6:i386 libfontconfig1:i386 libxi6:i386 libpng12-0:i386 libstdc++6:i386 libjpeg62:i386 libssl1.0.0:i386

Once you've done that you'll be able to install and run Eagle.

Happy Holidays 2014

2017-11-22T03:23:25.555386Z

I was looking back at my Holiday Hours blog post from last year and I saw that we were nearly at order number 12,000, we're now over order number 17,000 so it's been another fantastic and busy year here at nicegear. Thank you once again to all our fantastic customers for another great year! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all.

I also noticed my miserable attention to the blog over the last year, with two measly posts about nothing particularly exciting. Sorry! I'll try and do better, I know there's at least a couple of people out there who enjoy my more technical posts about electronics projects.

We are a family business and think it's important to spend the holidays with family and friends, take a break and a chance to rejuvenate for the new year ahead. Our office will be closed from Friday 19th of December, the website will of course still be accepting orders but dispatch will be delayed until we reopen on Monday 5th January.

The last chance for orders to be shipped before the holidays is 3pm, Friday 19th of December. After that time orders will be dispatched after the break unless by special arrangement.

If you have any urgent requirements feel free to email. I (Hadley) will be sporadically checking emails and may be able to respond during the holidays, please don't be upset if I don't though.

All the best to you and yours for the holidays, enjoy yourselves and stay safe. Here's looking forward to another great year in 2015.

Cheers!

Site Updates and Happy Holidays 2015

2017-11-22T03:23:25.598649Z

There seems to be a direct relationship with the order frequency on the store and the amount of blog posts I manage to complete. This year has been the best/worst ever. We've processed the most orders ever in the last calendar year, 1000 more than last year, and I've posted exactly zero times on the blog. One if you count this one.

TL/DR: We won't be shipping from Wed 23rd Dec to Thurs 7th Jan.

I know there are a few people who enjoy my more technical posts on the various projects I do so I'm sorry for the lack of interaction from me this year. It's been pretty full on with consulting work, the store with a lot of orders, and with staff coming and going.

Checking in our database, we've added 584 products so far since the start of the year and now have over 3000 products available with a large percentage of those in stock in our store room. A lot of those have been added at the request of customers. If there's something that you want that we don't have, feel free to let us know, we can more often than not get it for you.

In the last couple of weeks you might have noticed some minor updates to the look of the website, this is the first real round of changes since I designed the current version back in 2008. It's served us very well over that time and continues to do so now but I thought it was about time for a freshen up and some new features.

The main areas I've focussed on so far are;

A more mobile friendly layout which works on phones and tablets as well as larger monitored devices. This is ongoing and is definitely a work in progress but it's a start.
Wishlists. These have been popping up on other retails sites around the place more and more and I think they are a useful addition, if only just for myself. People often contact us and ask if we have a kit for this that or the next thing. We often don't as I mostly like to let people build their own. Some people aren't so keen on that though so this is where a wishlist comes in handy. It's also useful for educators who are running a class and can show people what they need to participate.
A better account management area where you can update your details, manage your addresses for orders and other day to day things. I really neglected this previously which has been frustrating for people so this is a good thing. More to come here too.
More automation. This may not be interesting to a lot of people but it's important for us. The most changes in the site by far have been in automating more things in our backend and making more intelligent decisions for stock ordering etc. This helps us to keep our quick dispatch targets (overnight most of the time) and response time to queries. There's a lot more that could be done here but it's a very incremental thing.

I'd like to take the time to say thanks once again to all our great customers for your support through the year. I wish you all Happy Holidays and a great break with family and friends. We will be taking a break ourselves, I believe it's very important to spend time with family and friends relaxing and recharging for the next big year to come. The office will be closed from Wednesday 23rd of December, the website will of course still be accepting orders but your order won't ship until we reopen on Thursday 7th January.

The last chance for orders to be shipped before the holidays is 3pm, Tuesday 22nd of December. After that time orders will be dispatched after the break unless by special arrangement.

If you have any urgent requirements feel free to email. I (Hadley) will be sporadically checking emails and may be able to respond during the holidays, please don't be upset if I don't though.

All the best to you and yours for the holidays, enjoy yourselves and stay safe. Here's looking forward to another great year in 2016. Here's hoping you hear more from me on the blog!

Cheers!

Where to buy the new Raspberry Pi 3 in New Zealand?

2017-11-22T03:23:25.640322Z

There's a new Raspberry Pi model in town, the Raspberry Pi 3, just released on the 29th of February 2016 (which is actually the 1st of March here in New Zealand). It's a birthday present from the Raspberry Pi Foundation for their own 4th birthday.

Buy the Raspberry Pi 3 right here at nicegear!

The form factor and connectors for the Pi 3 are exactly the same as the Pi 2. However there are a few upgrades. First off, we get a new 64-bit processor; the new BCM2837 has a quad-core, 64-bit ARMv8 running at 1.2GHz. Additionally, the Raspberry Pi 3 has on-board WiFi and BLE (no more USB WiFi dongles). Finally, and not quite so interestingly, there's a new switching power source that supports up to 2.5 amps. The standard 2 Amp micro-USB power supply for the Raspberry Pi will still work just fine, it's just that the Pi itself can provide more power to the connected USB devices, if you need it for whatever reason.

The biggest change is the inclusion of integrated Wireless LAN and Bluetooth 4.1 on board adding two great connectivity options straight out of the box. The Wireless LAN should be compatible with all home network setups and is supported in the latest NOOBs image.

Bluetooth will allow you to use a wireless keyboard/trackpad without extra dongles, keeping things nice and tidy.

Performance

Compared with the Raspberry Pi 2 the CPU is running at a 33% faster clock rate (1.2GHz vs 0.9GHz) the more modern core also means a more efficient instruction set, especially when performing operations on 64-bit values.

Video and 3D performance has also seen a bump with the VideoCore being clocked at 400MHz for video processing (up from 250MHz) and the 3D graphics processor running at 300MHz (up from 250MHz).

In general use you can expect the Raspberry Pi 3 to perform around 50% quicker than the Raspberry Pi 2 running the same software. In the future as software adds optimisations for the architecture the gap will widen further.

Interesting things to note

You will need the latest NOOBS image (1.8.0) for the Wireless LAN and Bluetooth drivers to be installed.
The indicator LEDs have moved (to accommodate the Wireless LAN antenna) which may affect some cases.
The microSD slot is no longer spring-loaded meaning a little more access space is required which may effect some cases.
Cases made from metal may cause signal issues with the Wireless LAN and Bluetooth.
Some of the smaller components on the board have moved or changed, this doesn't effect much, you can now take flash photos of the Pi without it resetting.

Raspberry Pi 3 - Model B Features

Now 10x Faster - Broadcom BCM2387 ARM Cortex-A53 Quad Core Processor powered Single Board Computer running at 1.2GHz!
1GB RAM so you can now run bigger and more powerful applications
Fully HAT compatible
40pin extended GPIO to enhance your "real world" projects.
Connect a Raspberry Pi camera and touch screen display (each sold separately)
Stream and watch Hi-definition video output at 1080
Micro SD slot for storing information and loading your operating systems.
10/100 BaseT Ethernet socket to quickly connect the Raspberry Pi to the Internet

Raspberry Pi 3 - Model B Technical Specification

Broadcom BCM2387 chipset
1.2GHz Quad-Core ARM Cortex-A53
802.11 bgn Wireless LAN and Bluetooth 4.1 (Bluetooth Classic and LE)
1GB RAM
64 Bit CPU
4 x USB ports
4 pole Stereo output and Composite video port
Full size HDMI
10/100 BaseT Ethernet socketbr
CSI camera port for connecting the Raspberry Pi camera
DSI display port for connecting the Raspberry Pi touch screen display
Micro SD port for loading your operating system and storing data
Micro USB power source

Compare the new Pi 3 to the older Pi 2

	Rasbperry Pi 2 Model B	Raspberry Pi 3 Model B
SoC	Broadcom BCM2836	Broadcom BCM2837
CPU	32-bit 900 MHz quad-core ARMv7	64-bit 1.2 GHz quad-core ARMv8
RAM	1 GB	1 GB
USB 2.0 Ports	4	4
Ethernet	Yes	Yes
Audio Out	Yes	Yes
Composite Video Out	Yes	Yes
HDMI Out	Yes	Yes
CSI Camera Port	Yes	Yes
DSI Display Port	Yes	Yes
GPIO Pins	40	40
Storage	microSD Card Slot	microSD Card Slot
Power	5 V via Micro USB	5 V via Micro USB
Mounting	4x M2.5 mounting holes	4x M2.5 mounting holes
WiFi	No	Yes
Bluetooth Low Energy	No	Yes

This post was compiled from info found around the Internet including SparkFun, Pimoroni and The Pi Hut.

Using a DS3231 I2C Real Time Clock (RTC) with a Raspberry Pi (Updated for Jessie)

2017-11-22T03:23:25.681852Z

If you're using a Pi 3 with an Internet connection then you can get the time from the Internet using Network Time Protocol (NTP), however if don't have a network connection, then you'll need an RTC to keep time.

We've found a simple to use RTC module for the Raspberry Pi with the Dallas DS3231 I2C RTC chip which is also a bunch more accurate than the commonly used DS1307 chip. It's also tiny, and fits right on the Pi's GPIO header (seen top left of the image). The image is of an older Raspberry Pi but the RTC modules works just fine on the Pi 3, Pi 2, B+ and original Model B

Here's the basic steps you need to get the Pi RTC Module going on the latest Raspbian Jessie distribution you can download from the Raspberry Pi Foundation's website.

In raspi-config, go to "9 Advanced Options" / "A7 I2C" and enable it including loading the module:

sudo raspi-config

Edit the file /lib/udev/hwclock-set

sudo nano /boot/config.txt

Comment out the following three lines:

if [ -e /run/systemd/system ] ; then
    exit 0
fi

to make them look like this:

#if [ -e /run/systemd/system ] ; then
#    exit 0
#fi

Check the system date/time is correct

date

Finally, set the hardware clock to the correct time

sudo hwclock -w

That's it! Things have become easier than our earlier instructions due to changes in the Raspbian operating system.

Hacking a Mitsubishi Heat Pump / Air Conditioner

2017-11-22T03:23:25.726567Z

Quite a few years back I decided that I wanted to hack my heat pump. The infrared remote control was boring, who wants to press buttons. I thought about automatically generating the infrared remote button protocol like a few others have done before but that still doesn't tell me what the heat pump is doing. Did it actually turn on after you sent those commands? I thought I could do better, so I decided to pull apart my newly installed heat pump unit and start poking around in there with a meter to see what happened.

Surprisingly, I remembered to take a couple of photos this time Here's the unit after pulling off the cover and poking around to find where all the wires were going. Try not to die if you do this with the power on - there's 240V in there.

Here I've pulled out the control board. Tiny little thing isn't it! You'll see one of the wiring looms connected here, this is what we need to connect to communicate with the unit from the outside world - thoughtfully of them they made us a serial port to talk to, it's 5V TTL UART running at 2400 bps and even parity. A little weird, I discovered that with a Saleae Logic Analyser - a very handy little hacking tool. The connector is called CN105 on the Mitsubishi board.

After I had manually poked about and figured out the CN105 pin output and discovered it was a UART, I found this picture of the pinout of the Mitsubishi CN105 connector! Would have been nice to have earlier! Posted here in case you're building your own cable. The original cable I built was actually a JST PH connector that I carved and sanded to fit in the existing PCB end - figuring out what type of connector was on the board was one of the most annoying parts of the whole thing! I've since discovered (after extensive searching!) that it's a JST PA series and I do have a few cable pigtails here so if you want one drop me a line.

At this stage I'm putting the control board assembly back into the heat pump and connecting it back up to all the factory wiring looms. Once of those is the internal temperature sensor with I did some testing on sensor as part of trying to decode the communications protocol - I think I'll go into the protocol in a separate post to keep this from getting too long.

Once I got the air conditioning unit back together it was time to implement the hack in a reusable manner. I decided to base my modification on a Raspberry Pi. I could have gone with something smaller such as an Arduino, or an ESP8266 board but I decided to go with the Pi as it would give the ability to relatively easily build a completely stand alone controller for people who don't have an existing home automation controller to interface with.

Above is the simple Raspberry Pi break out board mounted on a Raspberry Pi. The couple I have running (one in the office and one at home) are both running on a Raspberry Pi 2 as this was all done before the release of the Pi 3 with built in WiFi. It should work on the Pi 3 okay but I've not tested it as yet and there is a change in the Pi UART due to the on board Bluetooth. I guess it should still be able to handle 2400 bps okay but if you test it out let me know!

This is just the bottom of the prototype board with some hook up wiring and a 12V to 5V converter from Pololu to power the Pi. The heat pump has a 12V output on the CN105 connector so there's no external power needed for the Raspberry Pi. There's also a 5V supply on the connector but I wasn't sure how much I could draw from that so I decided it was safer to use the 12V rail.

Here's the final prototype that's running in my office. The wiring isn't the tidiest but that's probably inconsequential when you look at the rest of the office most of the time! I won't include a photo of that.

This is the console output from the program which bridges the Mitsubishi Air Conditioner / Heat Pump to an MQTT broker. The code is up on Github here, there's not a lot of documentation but you should be able to get something working from it.

This is a simple control interface in HTML using MQTT over websockets, we use this in house as part of a larger system. I haven't had a chance to extract this bit of code yet.

Update, as usual I forgot to mention a bunch of things : This is true bi-directional communication with the heat pump, meaning that you can send it commands and get back a response on whether they succeeded. The heat pump will also send unsolicited updates when things change such as using the IR remote. This means that the network interface will always be in sync with what the air conditioner unit is actually doing, no guesswork.

There's a bunch of documentation to do on this project which I've currently run out of time for - though I do hope to be able to pick it up again soon. The next post I hope to do is on decoding the serial line communication protocol. If you've got any questions let me know in the comments.

Holiday Break 2016

2017-11-22T03:23:25.769947Z

TL/DR: We won't be shipping from Wed 21st Dec to Thurs 5th Jan. Cut off for orders to be shipped out is 3pm Tuesday 20th.

This time of year I like to take the time to say thanks once again to all our great customers for your support through the year. I wish you all Happy Holidays and a great break with family and friends. As always we will be taking a break ourselves, it's very important to spend time with family and friends relaxing and recharging for the next year. The office will be closed from Wednesday 21st of December, the website will of course still be accepting orders but your order won't ship until we reopen on Thursday 5th January.

The last chance for orders to be shipped before the holidays is 3pm, Tuesday 20th of December. After that time orders will be dispatched after the break unless by special arrangement.

All the best to you and yours for the holidays, enjoy yourselves and stay safe. Here's looking forward to another great year in 2017.

Cheers!