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Richard Audette's Projects, Problems, Solutions, Articles on Computing and Security

Personal Mobility

The featured image is a mash-up of the BWM C1 and Piaggio MP3 scooters, generated by OpenAI’s Dall-e 3.

I think cycling is a great way to get around the city, but not everyone can ride them, only the most determined will ride them through the winter, and sharing space with cars is sub-optimal from a safety perspective.

For personal mobility, I sometimes thought it would be cool to combine a BMW C1 scooter (some crash protection, seat belt, some enclosure, helmet optional) with a Piaggio MP3 scooter, which has 3 wheels for stability. Ideally, add doors for weather protection and make it electric.

Batch Processing in Audacity using Python

I am not an audio person, but I have occasionally had to edit audio, and I’ve always used Audacity - it’s a great tool. Some time ago, I had to normalize sound levels on hundreds of voice recordings. A podcaster asked how I did it, I wrote it up in an email, and, thinking back, I decided it might be useful to others, so I’m posting it here. As I review the problem today, I think I would probably explore Audacity’s macro functionality to solve this type of problem - I don’t know why I jumped to scripting solution at the time. I did try the PyAudacity library, and found it was easier to interface directly though pipes.

Reverse Engineering an Akaso EK7000 Camera

Introduction

My daughter wanted to take photos at camp this summer, which incorporated a multi-day portaging/canoe trip, and no phones allowed. I picked up a cheap action camera on Amazon, an Akaso EK7000: Amazon link, Akaso link. When she got back, she dumped all her photos from its MicroSD card, and then it was available for me to play with!

It has a wi-fi mode, and sets itself up as a wi-fi hot spot - it is designed such that you connect to it with your phone, and control it with the “Akaso Go” app. Connecting to it with my laptop, I could guess some basic controls (192.72.1.1 is its IP, /index.html reveals some basic information). But I can’t see or guess any useful controls. Ultimately, I want to download photos and view live video on my laptop - like I can with the phone app.

Meshtastic Discord Bridge Bot

I built a simple Meshtastic Discord Bridge bot, which enables sending and receiving Meshtastic messages through Discord.

I keep my Meshtastic node on all the time at home. This bot his allows me to exchange messages with the mesh in my neighbourhood using my home node through Discord wherever I am. Never again will I miss a “Can you see this?” message. It’s in a “just got it working” state - pretty primitive, missing message delivery confirmation, but I’ve been using it for a few days and it works as designed.

Meshtastic: A Neighbourhood Mesh Realized

Are you a Meshtastic user in North Toronto? Reach out and I will invite you to a local Meshtastic Discord group.

Background

A mesh network is a network where all participants can communicate with each other, with each participant cooperating with the transmission of information.

I love the idea of mesh networks, where anyone who wants to take part can just jump in, and there’s no dependency on a communications provider for service. In 2016, I attempted to build out a mesh built with wifi technology in my neighbourhood but I was unable to generate interest.

Resolved: Ubuntu Kernel SRU Period had ended error

I have Ubuntu Livepatch running on one of my PCs, and I was getting the following error:

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*** System restart required. Kernel SRU period has ended ***

It was clear that I needed to update the kernel to continue to receive patches, but an apt-get upgrade wasn’t installing a new one. It wasn’t clear to me how to identify and update to the latest supported kernel, and it took some searching around.