Pong... yay...

Well ... just pong... Youtube link Enjoy!

VGA 8bits per pixel limitation... not a real issue!

This was the most colourful image i could find in my images folder (image from VGCats.com): As you can see only the sun is a bit weired... this was using a custom 256 color pallete on gimp and simply changing color mode to index using dirthering.... Dirthering is really powerful ... I was surprised with the results i've obtained using only 256 colors, specially with only 2 bits for blue channel, i shall try applying a small image into fpga to check if the final result is really this good... who knows, perhaps a small animation XD I may upload the pallete later for the ones who wish to try :p PS: It's 12:48 ... why does blogger think it's 4:24am .... i'll never know >__>''

FPGA and VGA Screen

It wasn't easy... but i manage to put VGA to work on the nexys2. Main issues i found and solve: 1) Screen mode - My lcd doesn't like 640x480@60Hz ... it works but it complains (something like: please use 1440x900@75Hz) 2) Calculus issues - After change to 800x600@72Hz (50Mhz pixel clock - the clock of the fpga how nice... XD), i found out my pixel mapping was all wrong... the reason? Apparently a math error, mine of course, i just forgot that putting stuff closer isn't made first x_coor <= H_Counter - HP+HB that + was supposed to be a minus or ... just put it like (HP+HB) .. yeah, stupid me... >__>'' ... it's a bit sad, since this thing made me lost about 3h of work... 3) Syncronization issues - After try some extra logic stuff to calculate the color of a pixel, i found out that it might cause some little gliches .... not happy with them, i used a syncronization buffer In the end i just obtained a very nice VGA module it allows the use of an independent pixel mapper module, thanks to an extra sincronization module... it even allows the sheduling of pixels ahead of time... that way is possible to pipeline some work. If possible i'll try to show my VGA module in action in a near future (maybe a pong game, that sounds easy enough XD) And in case you're gonna ask how VGA signal works: Timings The best google result you will find (pdf) Any questions or ideas, just post below...

Hello World!

Well ... here it is! The hello world in the nexys2 ... lol... not that complex, but the block i made will allow me to output useful information once i start to implement more serious stuff... HELLO World Enjoy...

Comics update!

Well ... 2 new comics suggestions: ULTIMO - Sci-fi, fantasy, action, fight Bamboo Blade B - Hard to describe... filled with craziness...

FPGA - Nexys2

While was not today, the Nexys2 from digilent has finally arrived, i spent the weekend playing a bit with it, it is a quite neat package, i had already the latest Xilinx ISE Webpack installed, so was just a matter of reading the reference manual, set the pins and start testing stuff. Just a tip: If you adquired one of these, you may feel some trouble in using the segment display, to activate an anode you must use zero value there and to activate a catode (that controls each segment independently) you must also use zero value there. Also, buttons and segment displays are inversed, so ... button zero is at right and segment display controled by anode zero is at left, so if you're using buttons to do some action on the display above them take this in consideration. The demo/test provided gave me some trouble to compile in ISE 10 ... it was made for version 8, eitherway source code of it provides a nice tutorial in how to use VGA port and PS/2 for a mouse. If i get time i shall show you some demos of it running crazy stuff i made to test some code (an Hello World running into segment displays.. scrolling of course, 4 displays aren't enough for 11 chars) I also leave some links that might be useful if you didn't already knew it: fpga4fun (digilent site has changed)

Awesomeness!

I just took a sneak peek into NOiSE manga .... it's just... awesome - a very action packed fist chapter! If you are to search for such comic may be advised that: "May contain strong language, excessive violence, nudity and/or lots of blood and gore." I can say it contains excessive violence and gore... Good reading >:D

A very big joke...

I believe most of ppl know the uncyclopedia website as a parody to wikipedia... well... I go there usually to have a good laugh, today i found something quite nice, hilarious.... and .... long... XD .. They also have Unbooks one of them is a nice big, continous joke, i leave the link here so that you with free time can also lose some on reading it, enjoy! My_New_Life_as_a_T-Rex

5800 XpressMusic - Review

Yep, i buyed the first S60 touch device by nokia... i've been using it for a couple days, so lets talk about the goods and the bads: The goods:

• The screen is perhaps the best screen i ever saw in a mobile device, a little smaller than iphone but with increased resolution, it has an awesome constrast and bright (i use it with bright on lower settings).
• The battery looks like it gives what it promises, i used it for 2 days on a intensive kinda way and it is still kicking
• The performance doesn't make it the fastest device, i won't recomend it for 3d games, but it is quite fast on most of the tasks, reproducing video with 640x368@25fps without trouble.
• Connectivity tests were flawlessly, Wi-Fi wizard configuration is quite intuitive, bluetooth sincronization with hands-free headset was easy, trully a nice experience on this point, helping all this browser is really good rendering pages very similar to desktop way, flash lite 3.0 is a nice think as it supports flash 8 videos and animations.
• The GPS works quite well ... Nokia Maps and Google Maps (google maps works really well on this device!) provide a nice interface and worked quite smoothly.
• Multimedia features are quite nice, video, music, radio and images are presented/rendered nicely, the interface on these aplications was quite well made.

The bads:

• The interface while fast (except for auto-rotate in internet browser) it's not the most intuitive thing, sometimes you need to tap to select and to tap again to confirm, requiring a double tap, this usually happens in dropdown-like menus. There are also some gliches in browser and with mini-QWERTY keyboard (not that bad). Also in landscape mode the top bar of the browser (equivalent to the title bar and status bar of the desktop merged) is freaking huge the could save that area to the page and provide a bar identical to the one in portrait mode...
• Lacks pre-loaded software, you can however download a bunch of free stuff in a aplication very similar to app store, some are trully free like QuickOffice (only for read documents not to edit), others are trials... the worst thing is that Adobe Reader 2.5 LE is TRIAL!!! I mean with all that bunch of pdf's that exist on the internet a pdf reader is quite handy but to not make it free when non-touch versions are free is freaking bad...
• OS is not that open as most of people may think by look at nokia foruns, installing some applications may prove near to impossible (certificates are a pain), adding to that, the tools provided to development are beta or bug filled. The device is still 'green' require a some extra time to enable development of aplications worth the effort.

In the end is a nice device, lacks a bit in software support, but i read that firmware updates are arriving to correct some stuff (available in Asia). During the usage of this device i found some nice stuff that you may like if you have one of these:

• Game Boy Color Emulator MeBoy - A freaking good java aplication that works pretty well with the touch interface provided by the phone to java aplications.
• Google Maps -You know what this is ...
• Handbreak - You WILL need this to watch your videos on the phone, SUPER is also a nice alternative.
• Well .... this - I didn't tested all of them... lol

That's all ... enjoy ^__^