And the lightbulb goes off

    So yesterday I was finally able to download all the requirements for OpenKinect. Its been a painfully slow process of making space then downloading then making space and so on. Anyway I was able to use James' Kinect on my mac. It worked for a little bit but of course it froze my computer after it had been losing too many packets of information. Anyway James and I spend some time on looking at the code and while looking at it a light bulb went off. Even though it was kind of a small one, id say about 5 watts, it was still a new discovery. We found the register that is dealing with the exposure and the value to turn off the automatic feature. Also there is a function that allows you to input a value to a certain register. This is a nice discovery even though it doesn't solve our problem it is a step in the right direction because I think we might be able to edit that function to help us with our problem.

     I also did our assignment for TOSS chapter 7, which had to do with applying a patch. A really useful command is diff -u. This puts the differences into a patch format so it is easier to read what the differences are. Hopefully we will be able to put this skill to use soon but while talking to my group we realized that we might have to write a new driver and I have no experience in that. But I can't wait to learn how to!

Uses of OpenKinect

I've downloaded and built the source code for OpenKinect on linux but since I am the only one in the group with a mac I am also trying to get it built on OSx. So far it is a slow process of downloading the required parts for mac, so while I have been waiting I've browsed some OpenKinect videos. Here are a few that I found interesting. There is one with Mario Kart on Nintendo and there is one with Windows 7. I think both are very fascinating and you should check them out if you have any interest. Anyway I'm still trying to get it built on Mac but I'm running out of HD room...... 

Bugs in openKinect

Now that we have decided to switch projects, from Empathy to OpenKinect,  I was able to download and build the project within a few minutes. Unlike the last project where it required an unreleased version of ubuntu and other packages.

First I just want to say that the bug tracker for OpenKinect isn't very good at all, but Empathy uses bugzilla which is great for tracking and organizing bugs. The oldest and only two labeled bugs were created 2 months ago. One of the bugs broke OpenKinect for mac OSx. It was resolved but some people still run into this problem. To get past their problem they just comment on the bug their problem and someone else usually responds with what might help to fix it. Creating an account for github was too easy, I'm just glad when I was signing up I noticed the free open source account. I was looking into trying to reproduce one of the bugs but I can't get anywhere without the kinect. Some I'm going to wait on Ashley and work with him on it. Sadly I can't do the last part of the TOSS chapter because we don't have any "new" bugs to triage. Anyway we just need a kinect to jumpstart this project. And I can't wait to try it out!

Freeciv

Freeciv is a turn based strategy game, and while learning more about open source projects we had to download the source code for this game and build it. It had simple directions to follow but of course I had the hardest time doing it. I spent a very very long time trying to build it but kept running into problems that they didn't document. After spending hours trying to build it I found out that josh posted a command on his blog that downloads and installs all of the packages needed in one swift motion. After running this command I was able to finish it easily and play the game for a little bit.

Subversion and building problems

Last week I spent a while on subversion, I was able to figure out how to grab files from the repository but I couldn't load things onto it. I got some help from classmates and after a couple hours of looking through a tutorial was able to upload to the server. Once I got that to work, I tried to build empathy but I keep running into this problem of packages that aren't available yet or I can't get the most recent version but they are required to build it. I feel like once we are working on it together as a group we will be able to break through this problem or agree on scrapping the project. One good thing is that I was able to sign up for their bug monitoring system(bugzilla). I haven't chosen which bug we are gonna work on as a group, but I have been able to narrow it down to some very simple bugs. It is a good start for us because none of us really know the language C.