Quick update:
All IR starter Kits are ‘in the air’ and on their way around the world, including the ones requested this week.
We have completed updating the Getting started guide and have installed a website CMS, discussion forum & bug tracking system on our website. However, we don’t plan to expose anything on our website just yet.
We will continue to work through our task list for the remainder of this week.
…..more later.
Wow, what a couple of months this has been with over 1,300 emails received, new partners, over 4,168 referrals to the campaign, 208% funded, several world firsts with IR on Arduino & Raspberry Pi and most importantly backed by 150 people from 32 Countries across the globe. Not to mention some great bonus features added to AnalysIR along the way, some of which have been inspired by our backers.
Our tasks for the next week include, progress on the following:
– Documentation
– Installation Package for download
– Some bug fixing
– Online bug tracker
– Online discussion board
– Web site
– Select & Issue email Invitations to 1st phase roll-out participants
– Ship remaining kits.
I would like to finish up this update by welcoming our latest backers and thanking all our backers for your support.
The AnalysIR Team
We posted another update a couple of days ago covering many of these points, but it seems to have evaporated (Maybe I forgot to hit the ‘Post’ button).
We know some of the kits have arrived locally in Ireland. However, one backer reported that the packaging was ‘compromised’ but that the components were OK. He sent us some photos & we will now update packaging on all future kit shipments. If any backer experiences a problem with the packaging, email us and we will sort it out. We plan to post the next batch of kits over the weekend or early next week.
On the Raspberry Pi front we have learned some differences compared to Arduino. For what we are doing with AnalysIR, Arduino appears superior, which was initially surprising considering the 16MHz vs 700Mhz CPU speed. But apparently, it’s because Arduino is dedicated exclusively to IO & RPi is a linux based OS doing lots of other things simultaneously. I believe RPi may perform better with kernel patches or over-clocking, but we don’t want to go there yet.
Yesterday we got the measurement of IR modulation frequency working on RPi using GPIO. This may be a world first for both Arduino & RPi. The only downside is that we cannot decode the signal & measure the modulation frequency simultaneously on the RPi, which we can on the Arduino. So for now, we will just provide a command line facility on RPi for measuring modulation Frequency. We have also written a script to take the raw output from LIRC on the RPi and convert it to AnalysIR format via LAN, which means we can also use LIRC as a real-time recording mechanism on RPi. (In theory, it should be easy to extend this to every other Linux platform with LIRC installed)
One bonus with the RPi is that we can already decode & analyse IR signals over the LAN, a feature which the Yún will also provide via WiFi. We also read the blog post on the upcoming Arduino Yún release and can’t wait to get AnalysIR running on it…… The Yún should work out of the box, via serialUSB as it also has a Leonardo on-board and we will have to write up some small script to enable the WiFi part (Oct+ time-frame for WiFi).
Regarding our planned roll-out (circa 9th Sep), we plan to stick with a 2 phase approach as outlined on the main campaign page. If there are additional slots available for the initial phase we will contact backers directly. The reason is to avoid wasting time for 100+ people with a new release.
I would like to finish off by thanking you all for supporting AnalysIR.
The first set of kits has shipped today and because we were able to get a discount on the components we also included some bonus components as a gift (2 x npn transistors, 4 x 100 ohm resistors & 4 x 4k7 ohm resistors). These extra components may be of use to those who want to build their own IR led Driver circuit with the TSAL6100. We didn’t realise that shipping components was such an ordeal (individual Customs & Air Safety declarations depending on destination). The shipping cost was more than budgeted, but was also offset by the discount achieved.
On the Raspberry Pi front, AnalysIR is now running well without any noticeable glitches. The approach we have adapted is to connect to the RPi over the network. The solution was to pipe the output over the LAN to a virtual serial port on the Windows PC. The virtual serial port utility is freely available for Windows and the network stuff on the RPi is just standard shell commands. I should point out that we haven’t yet tried to measure the modulation frequency on the RPi, just straight decoding though the IR Receiver. When idle we are using only 1.3% CPU on the RPi, when recording a single signal it goes to 1.6% CPU & when full out recording IR it goes up to ~ 4.9% CPU usage. This is pretty good as it doesn’t impact on other processes; considering our first attempt was using 99% CPU when idle 🙂
The potential to decode & analyze over a network may lead to some interesting features in future – ideas welcome. As a minimum, the work with the RPi will make the port to the Arduino Due easier (we are expecting a Due next week) and also when the Arduino Yún is released with WiFi
We have now reached 100 unique backers for AnalysIR and we would like to thank you all for your generous support & welcome our latest backers. In particular, we would like to give a special thanks to those who made donations without perks.
And now for the News:
use CTRL+
On the top you can see the same IR signal recorded directly by AnalysIR at the same time (via 2 different IR receivers – one connected to an Arduino & the other connected to an RPi pin)
That’s all for now……… Next week = Documentation update
As we are approaching the last 10 days of the campaign we would like to share the following updates:
● Today we were informed that the kit components were shipped via UPS to us here in Dublin. Hopefully, they will arrive within a few days, which means we should be able to start posting them out over the weekend or early next week.
● We have been busy this week with preparing the Windows installation package and it seems to be going well – so far.
● We also improved the Arduino code and increased the effective RAM available for AnalysIR.
● We have also integrated the IR modulation measurement into the GUI and it works well with the Modulation frequency being updated ‘at least’ once per IR signal. As we mentioned previously, we have not seen an example of IR modulation frequency being measured on an Arduino before, and particularly not simultaneous with IR decoding.
● We have also added support for compression of IR when importing or exporting in Global Cache format.
● Yesterday we had an interesting experience with the Arduino. As we were swapping out one IR receiver and held the signal line in the hand – a signal received by AnalysIR. We inspected the signal and it seemed to be pretty consistent, so it was analysed quickly using excel and it turned out (not surprisingly) to be mains hum which in this part of the world has a frequency of 50Hz (vs 60Hz elsewhere). That then got me thinking about the following hack!
● We then tested sending a series of serial signals from another Arduino into the IR rx pin and voila the serial trace appeared in the display of AnalysIR. We successfully tested up to 38400 BAUD and bit higher. So even though we do not plan to ‘officially’ support serial protocols at this time, it means that you could potentially use AnalysIR as a pseudo Serial analyzer or even a basic digital signal/logic analyzer of sorts. The limit would be somewhere between 40-50kHz, on a 16MHz Arduino. Not bad a hack before release 🙂
● We have recently come across several new IR protocols including:
Denon
Motorola
Samsung
Daewoo
Japanese Code
– To date we have completed all the investigations needed to decode them and add them to AnalysIR. However, we will have to defer this until after the initial release has settled down & we can get reliable source signals to verify against. Once we complete these new signals we will be heading towards an even more comprehensive list of supported protocols.
……stay tuned
Today we have added a new perk of IR starter kits and retired some of the other perks.
The kits are provided as a quick starter aid for backers who dont have IR receivers to hand. Please note that a learner IR receiver is required to measure the modulation frequency and at least one IR receiver is required otherwise (=Kit A).
Of course you can still use the powerful import/export feature without any Arduino or IR receiver connected.
Please feel free to purchase your own components directly. Otherwise we have a student ready to do all the leg work for a small bribe (oops I meant Tip).
On the technical side of things – we have greatly improved the performance, design & implementation of the Arduino based code along with some User Interface improvements, over the last few days .
Finally, a big welcome to our latest backers and thanks again to all our 80+ backers.
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Here is a screenshot showing the new automatic signal cleaning feature in AnalysIR. You will notice in channel 2 (yellow & red) where I have overlaid the recorded signal from CH1 (green) on top of the cleaned signal in CH2 (yellow). The green & red signal is the recorded signal & the yellow signal is the ‘cleaned’ signal.  Note: Use CTRL+, CTL-, or CTRL0 – to zoom in & out on most browsers Combined with AnalysIR’s sensitivity setting for decoding it is possible to rebuild a perfect signal from a really poor signal. With this new ‘Bonus Feature’, we can export almost perfect signals from AnalysIR and re-import the exported signal to compare against the original recorded signal. This will be a great benefit when designing IR devices or circuits. |
After the great news of reaching the initial target on IGG today, I wanted to give a few more updates.
1: AnalysIR has been invited by one of the leading IR equipment manufacturers to join their global partner programme. We hope this will open up access to a potentially huge user base for AnalysIR gong forward with great benefits for both partners. This would not have been possible without the great support from our backers.
2: We wanted to update everyone on our progress with export in Global Caché command format. Well after some initial mistakes using IRremote to generate the signals for a SKY HD remote, we finally succeeded in verifying that the export works with GC equipment, with the help of one of our backers, who happens to have this equipment installed. (Unfortunately, we didn’t have a SKY remote control available)
As part of the debugging process in this exercise, we decided to implement a new feature, to clean up the recorded signal, which means that we can now export almost perfect signals from any signal decoded by AnalysIR, even if it is imported via another format. With this additional ‘Bonus Feature’, we can record or import a very poor signal and recondition it into a perfect signal for export – automatically. We believe our methodology for this could be patentable, but unfortunately we don’t have the resources for this, at this time.
The really good news is that AnalysIR played a key role in debugging & identifying the silly error we made initially.
So now AnalysIR can import & export in the following formats:
– IRremote
– IRLib
– Pronto
– Global Caché GC-100
– Global Caché iTach (*)
– Global Caché GC-IRL (*)
– Global Caché GC-IRE (*)
(*) = Export not yet verified with physical device.
3: As we indicated just over a week ago, we are now implementing a feature freeze on AnalysIR from today. This will allow us to complete some ‘in-progress’ features and allow us to concentrate on testing, documentation & packaging AnalysIR for release. We would still like to hear any new feature requests from backers for inclusion in later releases & additional import/export formats. Just send us a comment, message via IGG or email.
Finally, we are considering adding some new perks over the next few days and may be retiring some of the existing perks. ….more later
Wow – A big thanks to all of our 70 backers, we have now reached the minimum target, which means that AnalysIR will be released.
….more later.