How to add Point of Interests (POI) to Nokia Lumia device

All Nokia Lumia comes with Here maps that work offline. You can download the maps available for any region worldwide. "Here" maps allow to search for locations and is fairly accurate. But many times, the places may not turn up in the results, especially remote getaway places. You found the place in Google map but how do you store the location in your Nokia Lumia?

Here is a way to do it.

• Login to here.com from desktop and choose Collections. Here you can add locations that get sync'd up with your Nokia Lumia. (In the Here application in phone, login using the same id)
• Any arbitrary location on the map can be right clicked and "Collected" (Right click and choose "Collect this location"
• If you need to add a point from Google maps, copy the location (lat, lon) from google and paste in the search box of here maps and the location will be pin pointed.
  (for copying the lat/lon, enable the "Drop Lat/Lon" tool from the Beta labs in Google Maps).
• Organize the newly added location to collection/folders. The new locations will be sync'd up with the phone in no time.

Moto G Dual Sim Error

I had this Moto G for couple of months now and only one sim were used till now. I got a new BSNL prepaid sim card on Saturday and installed it in the second slot. All good so far and the signal showed up in the top of the display. I was doing some Dual Sim settings and suddenly the signal vanished and says "No Service". The sim was marked as disabled and a cross sign appeared along with the sim card symbol. Flight mode and back did not make any effect. Reset the phone and the sim got enabled again, but after 3 mins the sim got disabled. (This was repeatable). I could call the BSNL customer service (1507) during this period using the phone.

Worried that it could be an issue with Moto G and the one month period for exchange with Flipkart is also over. Swapped the sim card slots and the same issue repeats for the new sim card. Certainly the issue with the sim card. Thought of going back to the BSNL to exchange the sim.

Somehow, during this period, the SIM got fully activated and the problem never happened again. Apparently the phone was disabling the SIM when some of the service was not fully active for the sim. And no error codes/messages were given.

The Moto experience is back to glory. They have designed the dual sim software very vell and is very intuitive and convenient.

LG 32LD330 LCD TV USB Hack to enable Media Player

I recently stumbled on a website that detailed on enabling a hidden feature in LG TV, at least for some models. I have a LG 32LD330 LCD TV which is a bare TV that don't even have an audio out (the search which led to the said webpage)
http://openlgtv.org.ru/wiki/index.php/Access_hidden_service_menus_/_modes

I also have a Protouch universal remote that can send arbitrary codes. Fired the secret menu codes and opened up the USB menu option in no time. Mighty impressed. Wonder why LG doesn't enable the media player by default?!

Canon Pixma MG3170 CISS (Continuous Ink Supply System)

I bought the Canon Pixma MG3170 CISS from flipkart couple of months back and bought a generic Canon CISS kit from eBay at the same time. Though my usage is not heavy, the cost of the cartridge prompted me to go for the CISS kit.

Installed the CISS right from the beginning. There were not many videos on Youtube for this particular model, but people had done it. Installation is a bit tricky. Some of the instructions/photos on the web requires one to dismantle the scanner assembly on top, but I found that it is not required. This model is a multi-function printer and thus there was not much space above the cartridge for the ink tubes to move around. Also I had to remove the cartridge door to route the tube inside. The cartridge door does not have any functionality than to hide the cartridge. The tubes were held to the channel below by using two paper clips that was cut short.

Let the pictures do the talking. As you can see the black ink is not filled up in the tube. There seems to be a minor air leak in the black cartridge tube connection. This does not affect the printing, as the black cartridge is now in a 'refill mode'.

The CISS tank stays on the right side, same level as the printer.

The ink tube is routed below the main front door. It has a very narrow gap just to pass the tube through.

The tube is held on to the floor in front of the cartridge replacement door. The cartridge door is permanently removed. I removed it by using a small screwdriver on the left side and popped out the hinge pivot.

The ink tube passes along the edge of the metal channel and is held on by two paper clips. The paper clip has to be cut to shorten it and form it such that the tube is firmly held on to the channel. This part is tricky because there is very narrow gap between the metal edge and the cartridge path.

The tube goes on the top of the cartridges.

Whole CISS arrangement.

Leave just enough length of tube so that the cartridge moves freely. 

About a purchase of a Bluetooth dongle from eBay.

Purchased a dongle from eBay for ₹145. Item arrived super fast by Bluedart. Plugged in to usb port and surprisingly there was no indication of new device found by windows. Tried in different PC,but no luck. Thought that the device is bad and reported to the seller. Got a ridiculous reply that the product is covered under warranty and take to the nearest service center. Service centre for an el-cheapo chinese dongle??? Hmmm.. Waited for a few days and today evening just decided to open the dongle and see if I can fix it. Popped open the cover and got a shock??

Update: Thanks to the eBay Guarantee program, I got full refund after opening a case. 

SysExporter - Nice utility

I found a nice utility to extract the data from common windows controls. It was useful for me to copy around 100 rows of list view data which otherwise would have taken me hours to copy to a document by hand.

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/sysexp.html
Thanks to Nir Sofer for an excellent application.

Run time error 5992

The other day I stumbled on this error in Word 2007
Run time error 5992 'Cannot access individual columns in this collection because the table has mixed cell widths.'
I was working on BeyondCompare to generate HTML file difference reports and paste this to Word. BeyondCompare report uses tables and it had a few rows that spanned across multiple columns. This was causing problems for Word VBA. I looked for solutions on the web, but unfortunately could not find any. It seemed silly because the individual columns can be moved manually using the margins on the ruler, but the script cannot access it. It became clear that this is limitation of Word VBA interface and I need to look for work arounds.

I edited the HTML to remove offending spans and pasted the tables to Word and this error is gone.

Another solution is to probably to use script to remove the spans in Word itself or work on the individual cells adjusting its width.

Upgrade to Ubuntu 12.04

Took the plunge yesterday and upgraded my 10.04 LTS to 12.04. This Unity thing was holding me from upgrade last year with all those negative comments. At the moment, I am lost actually - where are the menus and stuff! May be I'll get used to it after a while.
Some Observations:
1. Laptop is running cooler - they seemed to patch a power management issue was hogging for long time.
2. Upgrade was smooth and all programs seem to be intact. Usually I had to spend atleast a day to fix all the issues after an upgrade - searching the net for issues and finding solutions.
3. Not all applications are Unity compatible, leaving a mixed bag. Therefore the windowing experience is confusing and inconsistent. e.g. Firefox and chrome.
4. I expected to get new versions of applications with 12.04, but did not. e.g. Gimp is still 2.6.
5. Meanwhile, while typing this post, I closed the browser at least three times, while trying to open the menu from top left corner. Thanks to Chrome, I got the windows back, along with the unsaved blogger post!

Laptop running hot? Fans might be clogged!

Just yesterday, my sister left her old laptop with me to have it re-formatted. It was terribly slow and I didn't see any improvement even after restoring to factory state. Now, I had hated this restore thingy, which copies the image from a hidden partition to C drive. But this time, it was god send, and the restore took hardly 15 mins. When I checked the CPU temperature (using an utility called SpeedFan), it was hovering around 75degC. I knew it was high and could feel the fan running at high speed all the time.

Now, this is an 8 year old laptop and I thought the fans and heat sink could be clogged, though I could not see any dust when looking through the sides. Searched for disassembly videos on youtube and luckily got one. Finally reached the fan assembly and saw this:

Took apart the fan assembly, removed the fan from the housing, cleaned up the fan/fins using a small brush. It was not easy. Wish I had compressed air can.

Assembled the whole thing back, booted up and after running a while with all browsers with flash pages, ran the Speedfan again. This time the CPU temp showed 65deg C. That's a lot of improvement. The PC seems to run better, though not to my expectations. But the fan speed seem to be normal.

Micca MPLAY media player

I bought this Media player, primarily for the dual-use in Car as well as Home. It is value for money, can play from SD card and from USB stick/hdd.

It can play the following specs.

	File Type	Video Codec	Audio Codec	Notes
Video	*.AVI	MPEG4, DivX, Xvid	MP3, AAC, PCM	720 x 576 Max
	*.MP4, *.MOV	MPEG4	AAC, OGG
	*.VOB (DVD)	MPEG2	MPEG, PCM
	*.MPG, *.DAT	MPEG1/2	MPEG MP3
	*.RMVB, *.RM	RealVideo	RealVideo, AAC, MP3	1024 x 576 Max
	*.3GP	MPEG4	AAC	640 x 480 Max
Audio	*.MP3		MPEG Layer-3	32kbps-320kbps
	*.WMA		Windows Media Audio	32kbps-192kbps
Photo	*.JPG, *.GIF *.BMP, *.PNG			JPG 7800 x 5280 Max

Here are some quirks.
1. The format selection is based on the extension, so one needs to save the file as correct extension to read the file properly.
2. The player seems to slow down due to some reason, especially with Xvid codecs.

I use a Handbrake to transcode the video files to the right codec the player can play.

Quick reference: Audio and Video Commands in Linux (Ubuntu)

Extract audio from a movie and save as mp3
ffmpeg -i input.avi -vn -acodec libmp3lame -ar 22050 -ab 256k -ac 2 output.mp3

Extract to wav file:
ffmpeg -i input.avi -vn -acodec pcm_s16le -ac 2 output.wav

More info:
http://howto-pages.org/ffmpeg/

Electrolux fridge freezer fan motor replacement

We took a vacation for 10 days and decided to keep our fridge switched off. We were back, switched on the fridge and got a burning smell after a while. Found that the fan in the freezer was not working. Since it was a Saturday late evening and the service call would not happen until Monday, I decided to give it a try to fix myself. I opened up the freezer back plane and found that the fan motor was indeed not working. Took it out and the next day set out in search of a replacement motor. Went to SP road (The place in Bangalore for all electronics/computer spares) and found most shops closed being Sunday. Enquired at a few places and got to know that I need to look at Chikpet for electrical appliance replacement parts. Headed to Chikpet and enquired in a few electrical shops and got to know that one Prakash Electricals stocks the replacement motors. To my dismay, I found the shop closed and was about to leave. After a few strolls, found another Prakash stores and the small shop indeed had the motor. It didn't looked as good as the original one, but the dimensions matched. I was worried about the rotation direction of the motor, the shopkeeper assured me that all Freezer fan motors have standard direction.


Got back home and replaced the motor in no time and was happy that it worked. But something was wrong, the bottom section was not cooling enough. Since the original fan was not working, I did not know which direction the fan should run. After careful looking, it seemed the direction of the motor was reverse. The fan should blow air into the freezer from behind (the cooling coils), but the new fan motor was blowing warm air into the cooling fins. Since it is an AC motor, reversing the terminals won't change the rotor direction. Disappointed, I decided to call in for service and put the old motor back. But later, I thought why don't reverse the rotor, so that it turns opposite direction. The motor assembly was simple and allowed me to change the rotor orientation. Put the motor back and the fan now works correctly. Though the replacement motor is a bit weak and I am not sure how long it would work.
 
Here are some pictures:

Freezer's back plane removed. The fan motor is mounted on the back plane and has channels for air circulation. The square cavity on the top is where the fan draws air from.

Old motor. Had markings MSP63S 10mm Motor.

 New motor in place. The rotor doesn't rotate as smoothly as the old one. The rotor is exposed.

Electrolux 235L (EKL 235FF) wiring diagram

This is the second time our Fridge needed repair, after close to 8 years of purchase. First, it was the defrost timer that failed and had to replace.

Royaltek RBT2300

I had purchased the Royaltek RBT2300 GPS logger sometime in 2008 and have been using it during my driving trips. This performs reliably well and thought of writing something about it.

Basically, this is a GPS receiver with bluetooth module that allows one to pair a Mobile/PDA/PC and get the GPS data in NMEA format. It has a logger function also that stores the GPS data in its internal flash memory at regular (configurable) intervals. The storage is huge and it has never ran out of memory even with 10-12 hours of logging (5s interval).

Issues that i have found.

• When downloading the GPS data from the device on the same day, the last portion of the data would not come out. If I log some seconds on next day and then try again, I would get the whole data for the previous day without any issue.
• If I switch off the device during some breaks in the trip, the logging gets screwed  up. The continuety is lost sometimes.

Some tips for usage.

• While on a trip, connect the device to the car adapter and never switch off till the end of the trip.
• 5 second logging seems to be reliable and anything less can cause issue for long trips.
• Wait for a day and log a few seconds in open sky (GPS lock) and they download the data for previous trip.

Microsoft PowerToys equivalent

I have been using Microsoft PowerToys since Windows 95. Was really surprised to know that Windows 7 doesn't support the old Powertoys. I was missing SendToX  - the most coolest among them. Also the 'Command Prompt Here...' menu. After a few mins of search on the web found a compatible/equivalent software: http://www.gabrieleponti.com/software/#sendtotoys

My new laptop

Trying out Windows 7 on my new Dell Latitude 6410. A few crashes in the beginning, things are stable now. Trying to find what's in for the developers.

PostScript file for cross platform printing?

I had a tough time printing the PCB layout correctly that I designed using EAGLE software. I designed the PCB on my home PC running Ubuntu 10.4 and printed to a PS file. The plan was to print the board to a magazine paper for toner transfer, on my office printer. So I emailed the PS file to my work address and printed from Adobe Acrobat Professional 7.1. Got my first surprise, the print is actually a slightly scaled down replica, may be 90% of the original. I realized this late after going home and verifying with the actual component that I had. But isn't the postscript (or pdf) file supposed to be hardware independent and vendor neutral? That was my assumption.

I tried various experiments - at my home PC, viewed the PS file at 100% scale and it matched the SMD component pads on screen (I placed the SMD IC on the screen to compare). I repeated the same with my office PC and it also matched. So, while printing something is going wrong. Again at office PC, I used PDF Writer software to print to a PDF file and then print to the Xerox printer, but it also was 90% size. Over the weekend I searched some information online and somewhere I read that PDF prints are not reliable across PCs. Suggestion was to install Eagle in Host PC for printing. Not very convincing.
Came to office on Monday and tried to scale up the print to 110% to get a match. To my surprise the image was way too big - may be 125% of the original. Now I am really stumped. Got the feeling that it was the ADOBE that was screwing up. Just to confirm, I sent the ps file directly to the printer job queue, and it came fine - at actual size! So the PS file was fine, so was the printer. But I doubt Adobe being professional cannot commit such error.

More thoughts and I wanted to try out once more. I have a dual monitor setup at office - both screens having different resolutions. I know that many software have difficulty in working with dual mon setup. Maybe Adobe is one. So I disconnected my external monitor and printed from the PC using Adobe. There you go. The print looks fine! So not a good idea to have dual monitor setup while printing from Adobe.
Lastly, it could be the printer driver also. Since the PS file is handled by the printer driver before sending to the printer, may be its trying to fix the resolution.

Now let me get back to etching!

So, back to the point - postscript file is indeed hardware independent and vendor neutral, just that some software in the chain can cause problems.

Cleaning the Creative SBS15 volume control

I had these cute little speakers for my Desktop for years, exactly for the last ten years. These sounds pretty good for its size and is pretty clear over the volume range. Off late, the volume control started behaving odd due to the carbon build up on the potentiometer. I wanted to open the speaker and clean the pot, but could not find any screws at the back. I even thought that the front and back speaker faces are glued together and tried to break it with a screwdriver from the bottom. Suddenly it struck me that there could be some screws on the front, and it was true. Opened the front grill and found four screws. Opened it and voila, cleaned the pot in 5 mins with Iso propyl alchohol and a syringe. The speakers are back to its sweet sound!

Disconnect the speakers. Use a pointed screwdriver to open the grill slowly.

Remove all the four screws

Find the potentiometer (the brown circular thing)

Use a syringe to pour isopropyl alcohol to the small opening at the side. Rotate the volume control a few times to clear the pot.

Regex power

I've been hooked to regex for a couple of days now and getting to know the real power of it. I wish that I had tried this years ago.

And the coolest one is this one which I just figured out. Change the date format from DD/MM/YYYY to MM/DD/YYYY and vice versa (assuming date is the first field in the line).

Search: ^{[0-9]*}/{[0-9]*}
Replace: \2/\1

I did this in MS VC.Net 2003 editor, and as far, its supports regex well.

PDFCreator

I have been using the PDFCreator for long time. It helps converting any documents to a PDF file with ease. But this creates just plain PDF with no links or bookmarks (document map as in Microsoft Word). I disparately needed to include the bookmarks in one of the huge document ( >1000 pages) and I came across Word to PDF pluggin for Word, called as PDF-T-Maker

It converts the word document into an intermediate format, containing the bookmarks, comments, links and routes to the PS converter.

Disabling zip folder integration in Windows XP

After I got my new laptop which had new XP installation , I found that the Windows Explorer being slow to update at times, especially expanding the folder in the tree view. Figured it out that the built in zip support was slowing things up, I decided to disable the feature. To disable, simply unregister the component:
regsvr32 /u %windir%\system32\zipfldr.dll