So I did it and now it seems that all examples are working. Ok … the varray example is not working. It somehow is not willing to compile for me and I am too lazy to look into this problem. (perhaps next time)

You can get it here.

Have fun!

Most examples seem to work. The ones that do not work need a more complicated fixing. But the API should run correctly. (I hope so ™)

You can get the first version here.

I will try to continue testing and fixing the bindings. I i do so there will probably be also a repository for it. Who knows … ^^

I have tested it with sbcl 1.0.12 on a Leopard driven MacBook Pro.

Have fun

P.S. Greetings from 24c3 ^^

P.P.S … I made a screenshot that is attempting to proove that it is really working: shot

I had some problems doing this because I do not posess a machine with a builtin Serial interface and Windows. The problem is that the programmer uses a bitbang protocol on the serial port with very stirct timing constrains so I can not use a Serial to USB converter. First time I tried to program the controllers I tried to use the laptop of a friend but it seems that because it has frequency scaling the timings were not right, so I had to use a windows machine at my university.

It seems that everything works so far. The programmer said that the download was successful and the LEDs light up.

Later I also tried to program the controlers using avrdude under Linux. I built up a linux machine from some spare parts that were lying around my room. Sadly it is not working. avrdude says that the device is not responding. I have to try some other linux machine with builtin serial device to see if the problem is because of the very old hardware.

Next step will be to get some brushless motors and build up the fourth controller. I was thinking about getting four Robbe ROXXY2824-34. I heard that they often have problems so I will have to buy more then four to make sure that I get 4 working ones.

Still I will have to wait some time until I start working at my diploma thesis company. Before that I have no money to purchase them.

But still I am very happy that programming was a success what means that I did not screw anything up during the assembly (at least for now). Another small step towards my own mikrokopter. ;)

Why I have not built four BL-Ctrl is because I broke one Atmega microcontroller while assembling the PCBs.

Next step will be to test the BL-Ctrl modules. To do that I still need some things. First I need some possibility to connect my 12V power supply to the modules and second I need multipin connectors on the BL-Ctrl modules where I can connect the serial converter.

I will look for the parts I need at Reichelt and order them. During the assembly of the modules I realized that I miss some tools so I will order them too.

At least I did one step towards my own Mikrokopter. ;)

Today I got my PCBs for the serial converter and BL-Controls. Now I can finally start building all up. It took an unexpected long time until they arrived.

I hope that most parts I ordered will mostly fit on these small things … the package with the parts looks very big compared to the PCBs ;)

But the positive thing is that they will be back on monday the 19th so they will perhaps ship them tomorrow. Can’t wait to get them and start building.

I will need some kind of tweezers for soldiering the parts. Hopefully I will be able to organize them before the PCBs reach me.

I still wait for the PCBs but according to PayPal the payment is through, so I should get them in the next days too. Hopefully I can start to assemble everything on this weekend.

Some weeks ago a friend of mine showed me these incredible machines at mikrokopter. I was so amazed about these small flying machines that I got myself the first parts for building such a small flying machine myself.

Because I have nearly no money I split the purchases in small pieces. First of all I got myself four brushless motor controller pcbs and an Atmel programmer pcb from the mikrokopter shop and the nessesary parts.

The next steps will be getting following parts:

• One brushless engine to test the controlers
• Flight-Control pcb with all parts (that will be a pretty big chunk)
• A reciever and a remote to test the flight-ctrl
• A frame
• The remaining engines
• And finally the rotors

Then I should have a complete and flying mikrokopter. I will probably stretch the purchaices over many months while I progress with assembling, testing and earning nessesary money.

Wish me luck with that project. ;)

Some time ago I owned a Powerbook 15″. This one had a problem with its second ram slot. It was not detected by the system. I called Apple Care but they were not willing to fix that. I really was upset about that because it was a known problem. Still the serial number of my Powerbook was not in the range Apple considered affected by that problem. >_< Now I have a MacBook Pro 17″ and some days ago my battery grew to its double size. Yes just like the one in this article here. I realized that only because my touch pad button was not clicking anymore and when I put my hand near the touch pad it triggered the button. Searching the web showed the article at Gizmodo above. I looked at the back of my laptop and was shocked.

Yesterday I called Equinux and asked what can be done. They checked my Serial number and said that I should bring my laptop over. So directly after work I went there and without much asking they took my battery and said that they will replace it. (That is something that I was not expecting after my experiances with my Powerbook.)

As I was already there I pointed out a little cosmetic problem I had. The band underneath the keyboard weared off and lost its matt look just some weeks after I got my Macbook. (I will post a picture of it later.) They also said with no hesitation that they will replace the whole top if I want to. The problem I have is that I need my laptop all the time for my work so I can not leave it even for a day for fixing. So they said that they will make a appointment with me so I can come over and the technician will replace it in one hour. That is what I call service.

Now they showed me that Apple can also have a very good support as long as you have a guarantee coverage on your hardware. I can only say that I am very happy that I bought Apple Care along with the MacBook. That will save me lots of money and annoyance in the future.

Because of an idea I have, that is not yet ripe for decision, I was trying to get a graphics library that is portable and has a Common Lisp binding. Finally I got stuck on opengl and cl-opengl binding. I had a hard time getting it to run on Mac OS X so I tried it on Linux first where it worked out of the box. It is pretty nice even if making a mistake sometimes kills your lisp.

To install cl-opengl you need a Common Lisp implementation (I use sbcl), cffi (I used cffi 0.9.1), an opengl library (I used the one shipping with Mac OS X) and GLUT (I used OpenGLUT but more on that later).

First I tried to get cl-opengl running with the native Mac OS X GLUT implementation but it did not work. I found information on the cl-opengl list that you need FreeGLUT. The problem with FreeGLUT is that it does not compile on Mac because of some joistick problems.

So… get the source tarball of OpenGLUT.

Untar it and run “CPPFLAGS=”-I/usr/X11R6/include” ./configure”. You need the CPPFLAGS variable because otherwise the build system will not find the right opengl headers.

Now run make and make install. In my case I added the option –prefix=/opt/mine to configure to not taint the running system with self compiled stuff.

Finally you should end up with OpenGLUT libraries.

Now download cl-opengl (probably using darcs “darcs get http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cl-opengl/darcs/cl-opengl/”)

Link the .asd files to your sbcl systems directory:
# ln -s ~/cl-opengl/*.asd ~/.sbcl/systems

The problem with OpenGLUT is that it uses X11 to create windows. So you have to start the Mac OS X X11 server and start sbcl in the xterm within X11.
After starting sbcl you can run at the repl the following:
* (asdf:operate ‘asdf:load-op ‘cl-glut-examples)

That should compile and load the cl-opengl cl-glut and cl-glu bindings and also cl-glut-examples.

Now you should be able to test it running:
* (cl-glut-examples:gears)

on the sbcl repl.

Conclusion:

cl-opengl binding is really nice. It still needs work so that it catches all errors that may occur. Doing something unpredicted with opengl may cause your lisp process to crash.
It also requires at least FreeGLUT that is not willing to compile on Mac OS X but that is understandable because GLUT itself misses some features that are required to create really dynamic applications what is what you want. OpenGLUT does compile on Mac OS X but seems to be pretty old (2005 last release) and just like FreeGLUT requires X11. That is really nasty. I do not want X11 :(

It is usable it is pretty nice but there still is a lot to do! I will for sure dive more into that stuff and try to fix at least some of the problems I found.

But nonetheless thanks OpenGLUT and cl-opengl guys for your fine work! Now I can finally create some nice graphical stuff! Woot!

One more thing… the cl-glut-examples:gears demo gives the following frame rates on my MacBook Pro:
23857 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4771.400 FPS
24407 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4881.400 FPS
24316 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4863.200 FPS
24293 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4858.600 FPS

I think it is amazing! Tell me what framerates you get! ;)