Its_All.Lost
Because hope just breeds everlasting misery…

PCDUINOs, just don’t

Yeah like the title says: PCDUINOs, just don’t. While they look good and smell good, they don’t taste good.

The board has impressive specs, and it runs pretty rock solid. Not to mention it has a SATA port! But the support is horrific. The images to dump on it are horrific – if you have happened to find one. My whole experience so far (five months) has been bad. The board is still sitting on my desk because of these issues. The overall support blows. Now let me say, I have not contacted LinkSprite because there aren’t any issues that I feel they would/could resolve over an email. The community for these boards is horrible. The overall support for PCDUINOs on the intarwebs is just plan bad. And it seems to be that no one likes AllWinner chips.

Save yourself the headache and time and get a different board that has tons of support on the web. You will thank yourself that you did later, trust me.

UPDATE: I have decided to try to use the PCDUINO as an arcade emulator. As long as I can get a linux (ubuntu or debian) running on it with no issue I think I should be OK. I have a 250GB 2.5″ SATA drive on it now which is perfect. I don’t need the GPIOs for the emulator either so no fussin with that code. I just don’t get a fancy Raspi GUI 🙁 I’ll let you know what happens.

Enter the world of Jasper

Want to play around with some voice activation? Want to talk to your Raspberry Pi? Your choices so far are Alexa and Jasper. I went with Jasper after finding out AlexaPi requires you to press a button on a website to activate the voice goodies. So you would have to click a button on a web page every time you want to talk and are done talking to Alexa. Fuck that noise! Jasper it is! First off don’t follow the Jasper Documentation install guide. Do not! (as of 05/04/2016), it doesn’t work. It was also written for older Pies.

Instead you should probably follow this guide (Wheezy only): https://github.com/bablokb/jasper-install (I have not tried this myself). I downloaded an image made for a Pi2 B+.

Pros to not downloading an image, you don’t have to wait for the download and you can tweak stuff during the build I’m sure, if you know what you are doing, this is not me. Cons, the build time takes 4-8hrs. Pros to downloading an image, all that build time is gone. Cons, you have to (find!) download the 2gb-7gb torrent.

So this is what I did. Download the image for the Raspberry Pi 2 B+ and bake it to a SD Card (I use the ApplePi Baker, so easy). Do the standard raspi-config crap after your first boot. Now go and follow everything in the configuration section. All of it. Now you should be good to go. Use thePi Baker to “freeze” (copy the image) of the SD so when you fuck it up later you don’t have to start from scratch when you jack shit up later.

(Finding and) Downloading Jasper for the RPi2…
This guy did all the work and released it to the world for free but he requires you to download and install some shitty ass 3rd party torrent software to get it. What a total asshat, on top of that he protects everything with fucking keys. Total douche cannon move.

Mega download: https://mega.nz/#!T5VHXb4A!ZFaDDAUASswYb6Fi_-opDScBWOpNqmJMWS9KgPgn2nU
Guy that made the IMG: http://www.dansinclair.co.uk/raspberry-pi-2-jasper/

Debian DEB: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/jasper-support-forum/RVATTGel-OQ

You can also find a few IMGs for the RPi2/B+ in the Google Groups, most of them require that stupid 3rd party software and keys to unlock them (fucking asshat!!): https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/jasper-support-forum

Some side notes that may help keep your sanity longer:

To start Jasper at Boot
sudo crontab -e
Add the following:
@reboot /home/pi/jasper/jasper.py;

To remove Jasper start at boot
sudo crontab -e
place # in front of the job or remove it
save (ctrl+o) and quit (ctrl+x)
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/jasper-support-forum/boot/jasper-support-forum/5C6wtDfBlRE/AoRN5j8cJFUJ
http://jasperproject.github.io/documentation/usage/

OR (untested, copy/pasted from Google-Groups)

You can just add the scrip to ‘/etc/rc.local’, something like:
su -c '/usr/bin/python /home/pi/jasper/jasper.py' pi

I removed News.py and HN.py, these news scripts were useless to me and for some reason News.py would override every other script. So Jasper would constantly tell me the news no mater what I asked him, and that is not a short script so you get tired of waiting for it to finish and telling him no all the time.

I tried to change the default voice (its hard to understand sometimes) but Google-TTS is a no go for me, it requires a Google Developer Account and that costs $25. I’ll pass. So stuck with espeak. Have not tried the others yet.

If you are running into “I’m sorry but I can’t see that far into the future” with Weather.py then you’re probably using your zipcode in the config, like the instructions said, well that wont work surprise. You need to use the special chart to get the closest big city in your area and use that number then Jasper will tell you the weather. I also started using the Weather.py from the google groups here instead, its better and worked for me out of the box.
(I can’t remember where that special chart was, soon as I do I will update the post)
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/jasper-support-forum/kQ7KzDqJIDs/THW-DZxSBQAJ

Super handy tip #1:
The volume level will most likely not be set at a decent usable level. From a terminal run “alsamixer” on your Raspberry Pi for microphone and speaker level controls. Raising the microphone level will help Jasper to hear your voice from a greater distance, and up the output volume while you’re at it.

Super handy tip #2:
After a day or so of playing with Jasper he started crashed constantly for what seemed like no reason. The only error I would get is

Which after some digging I found is related to the Google email notification script. If you comment out your email address in profile.yml the error will go away. Google email notifications won’t work either, but at least Jasper will stop crashing.

Super handy tip #3:
This person suggests changing keywords to at least 4 syllables so Jasper has an easier time hearing you over background noise, sounds like a legit idea but I haven’t tried it yet.
https://github.com/GeoBeBee/mySystem/blob/master/Jasper_keywords.txt

Some useful information on how to write Jasper scripts:

Build your own Siri with Raspberry Pi2 and Jasper

Things left to do:
1. Spotify control
2. Integrate with the house security system/Raspberry Pi (the one in the garage)
3. Write some more scripts

Jasper modules I have found
https://github.com/studioimaginaire/phue#groups
Reports system status https://github.com/edouardpoitras/jasper-status
https://github.com/edouardpoitras/jasper-movies
https://github.com/iamjake648/jasper-dictionary
https://github.com/iamjake648/jasper-wiki
https://github.com/marclave/Jasper-Google-Calendar
https://github.com/adamjreed/jasper-hue/tree/master
https://github.com/maalbano/jumpsparc

Collections of modules I have found
https://github.com/Hadjimina/JasperModules (some good ones)
https://github.com/ketonne/jasper-modules
https://github.com/aaskasen/JasperModules – sample home automation
https://github.com/RosesDurden/Jasper_modules
https://github.com/alexsiri7/jasper-modules
https://github.com/androbwebb/jasper-yelp-module

I got a new watch

Samsun Gear S2
Samsun Gear S2
I went in to the AT&T wireless store the other day to upgrade my phone. I wanted to go from my Galaxy S6 to the Note 5. There was nothing wrong with the S6 and it was performing well still (even though I swear to god “they” slowly break the phone via software updates over its lifespan), I really wanted the S Pen. I have a Note 8 tablet with the pen and I love the damn thing.

So while I was upgrading the lady asked me if I was interested in a Smartwatch, not really. Then how about a tablet – already got one. Then she throws out the fishing pole….it’s free. Damn it, you got me. So needless to say I walked out of the store with a Note 5 and a Samsung Gear S2 Smartwatch (actually it had to be mailed but whatever).

The watch is awesome. I wasn’t sure at first if I would like it or even want to use it, I am not really a watch kinda guy. I wish I had been able to get the S2 Classic (it’s more of a classic watch style, duh classic) than the sport but whatever. I took the dark grey one. There could be some more apps but I am not really complaining, there seems to be app for the things I want to do – except for the Roku. I need a watch Roku app!!

Revisited: So I came back to this post a month or so later. I have had the watch for about 45 days now. I like it, and I find it useful. Is it $199-299 useful? Hell no! Its a watch that has gimmicky things to it. One of the major drawbacks is the watch faces. The majority of the faces available are utter garbage. There are a few faces that are made really well but they are few and far between. Android Wear seems to own the crown here. New apps are slow to come, and all the faces are basically the same. But the bezel is cool!

User Purge

Got hit with user registration spam, had to purge em all. So if you are the 1 user that was legit – my bad, register again. Or don’t. Spamtasticfighting plugins have been installed, no more future issues.

New Server!

Just crazy. A while back when I had acquired the Dell XPS 710 I was using (that died) there were also a few other machines that fell into my hands. Most of them where old desktop garbage, under 1ghz 256mb ram stuff, eck lol. But there was also a server. A Dell PowerEdge 840. The machine was stripped of all drives and memory but it did have a SCSI card, which I have no use for. I had to borrow some ECC unbuffered memory from a friend to try and get it to work, which I couldn’t. I was able to get it to boot but nothing I did would make the damn thing recognize a hard drive. Even adding a PCI-E SATA card, nothing. I could not bring myself to throw it away however, I have a hard time letting go I guess. Which is a good thing!

After the server died last month I have been trying to figure out where I am getting the cash for a new one or “what else could I do”. I was going to go down the PCDuino road when I decided to try the PowerEdge one more time. I was pretty sure I did not have any ECC ram, but sure as shit when I looked in my Bag-o-Ram there was two 512mb sticks sitting there. WTF, I do not remember those. So I tossed them in and the machine booted up. Quick look through BIOS, yup everything looks OK. Power down, added a hard drive, powered up. #$%&@#$$%&!!!1 It fucking worked. I did have to enable all the hard drive options in BIOS but I would have sworn I would have tried that the last time too. Fuck it, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

Moved all the drives, minus two smaller IDE drives (not enough ports/room), and ClearOS booted. Albiet into emergency mode or whatever but hey it booted. I had to issue a command and no I don’t remember what it was, but it was printed out on the screen. “Hey idiot, do this.” And then a reboot once or twice and ta-da Bob’s your uncle. I did have to do a little finaggling with the ethernet card, but since I moved the PCI-E card too it wasn’t that bad. At first ClearOS gave me all new card names (like eth0, eth1 instead of enp3s0. Which I always thought was an odd name). but it renamed them all to the older scheme after a reboot. It basically only took about 20 minutes after I moved all the hardware over to get ClearOS up and running. I am very pleased – for once.