Category: TCPIP

Ultimate alarm clock

Post author By Joker
Post date 2013-06-17

I’m thinking about making an alarm clock as none of models I see in stores have all the features I want. I was thinking some of the features could be upgrades that you connect while the clock is off.

Here are some features I’ve thought of so far in no particular order.

Auto-snooze (If you don’t hit the snooze button in x seconds it will assume you want it to snooze.)
Color selection for display. (Could also include fine level brightness controls. RGB LEDs or LCD screen. I have a friend that wants his alarm clock to have a purple display.)
Multiple alarm sounds (Also allow custom alarm sounds.)
Battery powered (Some features might need to be disabled on battery power.)
Auto time set (Either through the Internet or at least in the lower 48 states use the Colorado nuclear time clock.)
Web interface to program alarms, & upload alarm sounds & make changes to device settings. (Password protected)
Version for hotels when guest requests a wake-up call to have a recording play to wake them up. (The alarm clock could call the worker to remind them that the room X wanted a wake-up call.)
For hotels in the lower 48 a device that will pickup the time from the Denver Colorado Nuclear time clock to broadcast over hotels network. (Some buildings construction could block the signal from the individual alarm clocks.)
Line in for speakers to play from any audio device.
Multiple USB ports for charging devices with a 5 volt & 2 Amps per port & configured to work with devices like the iPhone.
HD radio.
Internet radio apps, Pandora, Last.fm, etc…
Day of the week & date on display. (Could be just a button to display it.)
Can tell the temperature. (With a local & a remote sensor.)
Ability to tell time verbally.
Option to have display dot matrix or the more traditional digital display format.
Ability to have a custom enclosure made.
When powered on upgrade door(s) are auto closed until power is lost.

Some questions about options to do a feature.

For time zone should it be set by a switch or stored on SD card & also if DST is used. Which way should it be done?
Would you want a solar panel on a battery only version?
Should the web interface WordPress with a plugin be used for the interface or something else?

Are there any ideas you want to add?

I’m also thinking about making the hardware open source & using as much open source hardware as possible, unless a closed source chip is cheaper I might use that instead.

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More on the Zune 4.0 & related stuff

Post author By Joker
Post date 2009-10-02

Well I just made another large post on the Zune forums about the issues I’ve had with the 4.0 software & other related stuff. It made me realize I forgot to mention another issue is they seem to be abandoning the pre Zune HD hardware. It looks like they are going to only be releasing apps for the Zune HD which means back when “Larry Hryb, Xbox LIVE’s Major Nelson” said that were doing XNA for the Zune that they dropped support for the originals or they are taking the back burner, IE the apps in the Zune Marketplace are only for the Zune HD at the time of this post with no indication of that ever changing. I really want to know which it is & why. I figure part of it is the new device has a much more powerful processor but beyond that I don’t see a reason why they would do that.

This is one of those issues I’d just like them to address as to what their plans are. I like having my expectations set as that makes me happier.

Oh I just thought of another issue that I’ve had with the Zune software for some time why do we only have unrated, broken heart & heart. I like the way that Netflix does the rating system better. Unrated, Not Interested, or a 1-5 star rating. I guess in the case of the Zune software that sort of arrangement would make more sense. Then we would have something like not rated, broken heart, or 1-5 hearts. That makes more sense to me then the current broken system. One more thing I don’t care that to someone else 1 star means a different thing to them since no one has said this is what they mean in the software. I think that is something else that Netflix has done better 1 star = Hated it, 2 stars = “didn’t like it”, 3 stars = “Liked it”, 4 stars = “really liked it”, & 5 stars = “Loved it”. So if you would just say what you think the different stars mean like they did you would have less confusion as you would have set the expectations of everybody. I remember back when I was trained to do support for Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition that one of the key points to making the customers happy was setting expectations.

Also does the software have to keep all the past downloads listed. The only way I’ve found to clear that list is to close the software. One more thing I just remember why after I finish a video or a piece of music does it still want to play it again & keep switching between showing that & the downloads at the same time in the area it used to in prior versions if you finished watching or listing to a single podcast episode just stop saying you are playing what ever it was you just finished. I like it showing when I’m playing but after I finish I want it to go away like it used to.

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More issues with the Zune 4.0 software

Post author By Joker
Post date 2009-09-28

I now believe that the Zune testing teams should do more testing on dealing with podcasts. They should do some of the testing on low speed Internet connections & see if the Internet is still usable while the software is downloading all the episodes of a podcast they just subscribed to.

I choose the podcasts listed because they have things the software has issues with these are PDF files & tons of episodes in a feed. The first three have a high percentage of PDF files in them & the last one has a large number of files in it enough that I think it is a good test of someone trying out several podcasts with just the one source. So without any further delay that are the following “Cadence Revolution”, “Learn Japanese with Beb and Alex“, “MAKE Magazine: MAKE Podcast“, & “TEDTalks (hd)“. I list these because they have challenges for the Zune software.

Oh also upon further study, that is to say I subscribed to the “TEDTalks (hd)” podcast I found out that me previous test wasn’t 100% up to snuff. The reason my Internet was better after making that one change is that the Zune software wasn’t trying to download the new massive podcast yet. So Microsoft is having issues that early BitTorrent software had, that is it has no limits on the amount of bandwidth used at any given time. This was solved by the various programs adding the ability to change the limit on individual computers so that they would not kill their Internet while downloading Torrents. I wish Microsoft would have the sense to do the same thing with the Zune software.

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Zune & Audible

Post author By Joker
Post date 2009-09-19

Well I just noticed today when I was syncing my Zune that it somehow generated a play list for Audible, but of course as things go I get to notice the issues. For some reason the Zune software can’t sync it. I wonder if I just need to add the folder that audible downloads to as a watched folder. Well I don’t see an option for audio books in the software for watched folders.

Although that looking did make it so I noticed that pictures now is listed as a Zune folder so I guess that means that if you copy pictures from the Zune to your computer it will no longer get sent to your audio section so they did fix that issue & I didn’t look close enough to check earlier.

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I found out why Zune 4.0 was killing the Internet for me

Post author By Joker
Post date 2009-09-18

Today I woke up early & couldn’t go back to sleep. I just remembered something is that I’ve installed some updates on my computer & realized that it might be Microsoft restricting the tcpip.sys file to 10 half open TCP connections. That was killing my Internet on my computer.

So I went to download a program to patch it to a more reasonable number, which happens to be greater than the default Microsoft sticks you with. I did that because I realized that the Internet on other computers was not wasted by the Zune software constant downloading of PDF files. I think they should force the Zune team & the Windows team to have a podcast that is at least 50% PDF files with this version of the software running so they can learn why it is a bad idea to only allow 10 connections at a time & also learn why they shouldn’t keep downloading the same file that they can’t read anyway because the software doesn’t support PDF files.

When I made the last post I had forgotten to check on a different computer if I was killing the network or just the one computer. I was still blaming the right company it was just two different departments that were working together to screw me over. To bad they still think that Windows XP should be choked to death so that it can’t do much. I forget how long ago Microsoft Imposed that limit on Windows XP but I do remember it was long before Windows Vista came out. Well a quick Google search yields Windows XP SP2 was the beginning of the abuse Microsoft Imposed on Windows XP. I did some more searching & I found that it was released back on August 6, 2004 or 2004-08-06 so they have had it broken for a very long time ([fergcorp_cdt_single date=”Fri, 06 Aug 2004 00:00:00 -600″]) I’m just glad other people have come up with ways to fix the file so that it behaves more reasonably then the way Microsoft seems to think it should.