Aigarius Blog (Posts about hardware)

Sedan experience (BMW i5)

Aigars Mahinovs — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 10:00:00 GMT

Two years of midsize electric sedan experience

This February (2026) marks a full 10 years since I started working for BMW, and a key employment bonus is the ability to drive a company car on special two-year leasing terms. Just before the new year 2026 started, I said goodbye to my latest company car. After driving the BMW i4, I switched to the BMW i5. In terms of power, it was a downgrade as I switched from the maximum power i4 M50 xDrive (all-wheel drive, 600 hp) to the i5 eDrive40 (rear-wheel drive, 340 hp). Did I regret that? Not for a single second! After driving 60,000 km in the last two years with the BMW i5, I was really sad to let it go -- it was the best car I have ever driven. Simple as that.

Smart Shelly with Home Assistant

Aigars Mahinovs — Thu, 13 Apr 2023 11:30:50 GMT

I am looking to improve my smart home installation as I plan to move to a new appartment. I already have a well functioning Home Assistant installation with a ton of automations (like lights that automatically come on when light level outside drops, that dim when it is time to go to sleep, robot vaccum that runs when everyone is away and also automation that lets us know when CO2 levels are too high and we should ventilate). We have colorful smart lights that can be dimmed or can change colors as the mood strikes.

However, one big problem that my setup currently has is that physical light switches on the walls can not be used to control the lights (as in - if the wall switch turns the light off, there is no way to turn it back on via Home Assistant) and if the Home Assistant goes down (which does sometimes happen, usually when I am away for a longer time) then it is really hard to control the lights without it.

So I've been searching for a holy grail: combination of smart (or smartified) light switches on the walls and smart light bulbs (with colors and dimming) that works with automations when Home Assistant is online and also just works directly to power lights on and off when Home Assistant is offline.

And I think I have found a solution that will be acceptable for me. The solution involves taking a normal dumb light installation, putting in smart light bulbs (any that Home Assistant can manage) and then wiring in a Shelly next to an existing dumb wall switch. For design consistency sake it would be good if the wall switch is of impulse type (so only connecting the connectors when the button is being pressed, like a doorbell button), but the setup should also work for normal toggle wall switches with minimal changes. Some settings on the Shelly and a custom Shelly script will take care of offline functionality. Note: Gen1 Shelly devices do not have scripting capabilities, you need a Gen2 device to do this, like the linked Shelly Plus.

So first I created a test setup to validate my design. I took an old extension cable with a damaged wire, cut out the damaged part and split up the wiring to make my test setup. It was really convinient to use the right tools - a simple cable stripper, a precise wire stripper and best wire connectors. Using the right tools it was really easy, fast and also safe to just pull insulation from the cable, split up the wires, clean off exactly 10mm off the end of each wire and push them into the Wago connectors to connect them together.

The completed test setup is a bit janky, but it works and is electrically safe (at least for testing purposes). The wiring is pretty clear from Shelly documentation (which is also just printed on the front of the device itself). The only point of clarification is that on the output side the Shelly is a relay and not a power provider, which means that when connecting Shelly to the wires going towards your lights it is not enough to just wire Shelly output one to lights live wire and Shelly output zero to lights neutral wire. Instead you need to connect you input neutral wire directly to your lights neutral (same as input ground) and then wire the input live wire trough the Shelly output contacts (so input live to Shelly output zero and Shelly output one to lights live wire). Except if you but a Shelly Plus 1PM, which has to measure power consumption and thus has to pass the whole device current trough itself to properly measure it.

When that is done, tested and plugged in you can use Shelly app to connect to your new Shelly device and make it join your WiFi network (or you can just use a laptop or a phone to joint to the Shelly ad-hoc WiFi network and configure it via its build-in web UI). When the Shelly is in your network you can continue to configure via the Web UI and Home Assistant.

Add the Shelly to your Home Assistant installation (it will automatically detect a new Shelly device and promt to enable Shelly integration once the device shows up in the local WiFi network). Add an automation to toggle the light state of the connected smart bulb(s) (Service: Light toggle) when "First button button down" event triggers on the Shelly. This will be the way the light state is going to be controlled normally. It can also be useful to add an automation that runs on Home Assistant start-up to ask all Shelly devices to turn outputs to on, so that after recovery of Home Assistant after an outage you can

In the Shelly web UI (after updating firmware, as usual) you'd want to disconnect output from input, set input type to button (assuming you have an impulse button input, like I do) and configure the output to be powered on by default when power comes back. And then you'll want to add this script to your Shelly. You will want to adjust the URL to your Home Assistant instance there. This script monitors if the Home Assistant is alive or not and if the Home Assistant is not alive, then take the matters into its own hands and power off and on the lights directly.

I am sure there are many ways this can be improved and tweaked. I like the flexibility this approach gives - I can cleanly program behaviour in Home Assistant and also directly on the Shelly switches (without even having to flash any custom firmware). This particular way is also quite scalable - if I have 10 Shelly switches in my home I can have exactly the same script and settings on all of them - the link between the switch and the light(s) is done via physical wiring and via automation settings in Home Assistant. The Shelly does not have to know what smart lights (or other devices) are connected to it and how they are supposed to be controlled.

If you are using MQTT with Home Assistant, then Shelly can also speak directly to MQTT instead and the online check becomes much more trivial because the MQTT object in the Shelly Script API has isConnected property.

Ryzen 7000 amdgpu boot hang

Aigars Mahinovs — Sun, 16 Oct 2022 14:15:13 GMT

So you decided to build a brand new system using all the latest and coolest tech, so you buy a Ryzen 7000 series Zen 4 CPU, like the Ryzen 7700X that I picked, with a new mother board and DDR5 memory and all that jazz. But for now, you don't yet have a fitting GPU for that system (as the new ones will only come out in November), so you are booting a Debian system using the new build-in video card of the new CPUs (Zen 4 generation has a simple AMD GPU build-in into every CPU now - great stuff for debugging and mostly-headless systems) and you get ... nothing on the screen. Hmm. You boot into the rescue mode and the kernel message stop after:

Oct 16 13:31:25 home kernel: [    4.128328] amdgpu: Ignoring ACPI CRAT on non-APU system
Oct 16 13:31:25 home kernel: [    4.128329] amdgpu: Virtual CRAT table created for CPU
Oct 16 13:31:25 home kernel: [    4.128332] amdgpu: Topology: Add CPU node

That looks bad, right?

Well, if you either ssh into the machine or reboot with module_blacklist=amdgpu in the kernel command line you will find in /var/log/kern.log.1 those messages and also the following messages that will clarify the situation a bit:

Oct 16 13:31:25 home kernel: [    4.129352] amdgpu 0000:10:00.0: firmware: failed to load amdgpu/psp_13_0_5_toc.bin (-2)
Oct 16 13:31:25 home kernel: [    4.129354] firmware_class: See https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware for information about missing firmware
Oct 16 13:31:25 home kernel: [    4.129358] amdgpu 0000:10:00.0: firmware: failed to load amdgpu/psp_13_0_5_toc.bin (-2)
Oct 16 13:31:25 home kernel: [    4.129359] amdgpu 0000:10:00.0: Direct firmware load for amdgpu/psp_13_0_5_toc.bin failed with error -2
Oct 16 13:31:25 home kernel: [    4.129360] amdgpu 0000:10:00.0: amdgpu: fail to request/validate toc microcode
Oct 16 13:31:25 home kernel: [    4.129361] [drm:psp_sw_init [amdgpu]] *ERROR* Failed to load psp firmware!
Oct 16 13:31:25 home kernel: [    4.129432] [drm:amdgpu_device_init.cold [amdgpu]] *ERROR* sw_init of IP block <psp> failed -2
Oct 16 13:31:25 home kernel: [    4.129525] amdgpu 0000:10:00.0: amdgpu: amdgpu_device_ip_init failed
Oct 16 13:31:25 home kernel: [    4.129526] amdgpu 0000:10:00.0: amdgpu: Fatal error during GPU init
Oct 16 13:31:25 home kernel: [    4.129527] amdgpu 0000:10:00.0: amdgpu: amdgpu: finishing device.
Oct 16 13:31:25 home kernel: [    4.129633] amdgpu: probe of 0000:10:00.0 failed with error -2

So what you need is to get a new set of Linux Kernel Firmware blobs and upack that in /lib/firmware. The tarball from 2022-10-12 worked well for me.

After that you also need to re-create the initramfs with update-initramfs -k all -c to include the new firmware. Having kernel version 5.18 or newer is also required for stable Zen 4 support. It might be that a fresh Mesa version is also of importance, but as I am running sid on this machine I can only say that Mesa 22.2.1 that is in sid works fine.

Automation of embedded development

Aigars Mahinovs — Fri, 23 Mar 2018 13:03:10 GMT

I am wondering if there is a standard solution to a problem that I am facing. Say you are developing an embedded Debian Linux device. You want to have a "test farm" - a bunch of copies of your target hardware running a lot of tests, while the development is ongoing. For this to work automatically, your automation setup needs to have a way to fully re-flash the device, even if the image previously flashed to it does not boot. How would that be usually achieved?

I'd imagine some sort of option in the initial bootloader that would look at some hardware switch (that your test host could trip programmatically) and if that is set, then boot into a very minimal and very stable "emergency" Linux system, then you could ssh into that, mount the target partitions and rewrite their contents with the new image to be tested.

Are there ready-made solutions that do such a thing? Generically or even just for some specific development boards? Do people solve this problem in a completely different way? Was unable to find any good info online.

Wireless photo workflow

Aigars Mahinovs — Thu, 03 Apr 2014 10:04:14 GMT

For a while now I've been looking for ways to improve my photo workflow - to simplify and speed up the process. Now I've gotten a new toy to help that along - a Panasonic FlashAir SD card with WiFi connectivity. I was pretty sure that build-in workflows of some more automated solutions would not be a perfect fit for me, so I got this card which has a more manual workflow and a reasonable API, so I could write my own.

Now I am trying to work out my requirements, the user stories if you will.

I see two distinct workflows: live event and travel pictures.

In both cases I want the images to retain the file names, Exif information and timing of the original photos and also have embedded GPS information from the phone synced to the time the photo was taken. And if I take a burst of very similar photos, I want the uploading process to only select and upload the "best" one (trivial heiristic being the file size) with an ability for me to later choose another one to replace it. There would need to be some way of syncing phone and camera time, especially considering that phones usually switch to local time zone when traveling and cameras do not, maybe the original time the photo was taken would need to be changed to local time zone, so that there are no photos that are taken during the day, but have a timestamp of 23:45 GMT.

When I am in Live Event mode I would like the photos that I take to immediately start uploading to an event album that I create (or choose) at the start of the shoot with a preset privacy mode. This assumes that either I am willing to upload via 3G of my phone or that I have access to a stable WiFi network on-site. It might be good if I could upload a scaled down version of the pictures during the event and then later replace the image files with full-size images when the even is over and I am at home in my high-speed network. I probably don't need the full size files on my phone.

When I am in Travel mode, I want to delay photo uploading until I am back at the hotel with its high speed Wifi, but also have an option to share some snapshots immediately over 3G or random cafe Wifi. I am likely to take more photos that there is memory in my phone, so I would like to clear original files from the phone while keeping them in the SD card and in the cloud, but still keeping enough metadata to allow re-uploading an image or choosing another image in a burst.

Now I need to flesh out the technical requirements from the above and write an Android app to implement that. Or maybe start by writing this in Python as a cross-platform command-line/desktop app and only later porting it to Android when all the rought parts are ironed out. This will have an extra benefit of people being able to run the same workflow on a laptop instead of a phone or tablet.

Let's assume that this is written in a pretty flexible way, allowing to plug in backends for different WiFi SD cards, cloud services, plug-in points for things like instant display of the latest photo on the laptop screen in full-screen mode and other custom actions, what else would people love to see in something like this? What other workflow am I completely overlooking?

Istabai.lv - installation

Aigars Mahinovs — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 20:02:21 GMT

So, the price of heating my apartment has gone up significantly since last year and a lot of people have noticed the same trend. As a geek, I want not just any solutions, but geekiest solutions possible to that - enter a Smart Home system. The heating in my apartment is separated from all other apartments with a separate heat meter that measures both heating water flow and the temperature difference on the incoming and outgoing pipes, so if I reduce the heating consumption I will immediately see that in lower heating bills. This particular smart home system is very simple and made in Latvia and also relatively cheap, so I decided to give this a try.

The start was very simple - I filled out a form on their home page and got a call the next day to verify the specifics. They already knew my building and had experience installing there, so they offered me two options: I could have two thermal sensors and a radiator controller on each of the 3 radiators in my apartment or (seeing how my apartment is relatively small and well ventilated thus reducing the efficiency of per-room control) one thermal sensor and one radiator controller installed on a new valve that they would build into the heating pipe just outside my apartment. I chose the second option as that was cheaper, simpler and involved less installation for me. Also they offered a nice discount.

A plumber of my building installed the valve at some point during the day, I did not even have to be there or arrange anything special, it was all included in the main bill. Then the next day a friendly guy came by to my office and gave me three very cute boxes. The packaging was very, very Apple-like. The three devices were named 'mother', 'spy' and 'puller' - basically that is a base station, a temperature sensor and a radiator regulator - a wireless stepper motor.

The installation was straight forward - I connected the base station (something very similar to this thin in size and looks) to Ethernet and power, went to the web address specified on the sticker on the base station, completed a registration process there, entered a code from the base of the base station into the website and it just found it. After that I pressed a button on the temperature sensor (a Zippo lighter sized box with a built-in Li-Ion battery rechargeable via microUSB once a year or so) and put that on a shelf. I secured it with some double-sided tape after the cat got to it once and played some hockey while I was away. The temperature sensor immediately showed up in the Web UI and I could assign it to a room.

The regulator installation was the most complex bit, but it was trivial as well - all I had to do was insert some AA batteries (helpfully included in the box, should last a couple years by their estimates), then go outside to the newly installed inlet valve, put this thing on, screw the thread with my hands and then push and hold a button for 10 seconds. After that the controller came to life, connected with the base station and started spinning the valve, testing its operational range I presume. The range is very good - you can see 13% signal in the screenshots - that is across the whole of the apartment, trough 3 solid walls and another 5 meters out in the hallway inside another wall.

As soon as that was done, the Web UI showed the controller and asked my to assign it to a room. So now I have 1 room defined with 1 temperature sensor and one controller. That is all that is needed.

From the charts I have already found out that at current inside/outside temperatures my apartment cools down at around 0.3 degrees C per hour and with current radiator settings it heats up by around 1 degree C per hour. I should turn the radiators up a bit thus increasing the rate at which the system is able to heat things up. Also I should try to re-inspect all possible cold spots to see why the cooldown speed is so high. I expected it to be lower. At least now I have real data to compare things.

At this point you can either fire up your web browser or a Android/iOS client on you mobile device to monitor and control the temperature of the apartment. But that was not enough for me - I opted for the PRO upgrade which includes the ability to program a weekly cycle of desired temperatures. The programming is limited and thus simple to do - there are three temperature modes: day, night and eco. The idea is that you have the night mode every night, then at some time during the day, you have the day mode (to wake up), then you switch to eco mode (when noone is home) and then in the evening you go back to day mode and later to night mode. There are separate sliders for each day of the week and temperature settings for each of the modes for every programmed room.

Total investment so far - 210 Ls (or around 3 months worth of just heating bills). The experience of other users tells of 30-50% heating bill reduction, so this should pay for itself in 2-3 years. In addition I get a more stable and predictable temperature at home and some more geeky stuff to brag about - yay!

These guys have their work cut out for them - I have no idea how/of they do international orders, I would definately like to see more information in the web site about how my system is working (more temperature history, valve state history, wireless signal and battery history, mobile apps are a bit wonky - it feels like the mobile app does not respect the temperature set over the web and tries to reassert itself when opened and it often shows out-of-date temperature data with no indication that it is out-of-date + the mobile apps are missing charts.

All in all - this is a great start: easy, quite cheap and stylish home heating automation. Good work!

P.S. I am pretty sure they use Linux, but it is so packaged, that there is basically no way to confirm or deny that.

P.P.S. Also - check out this overnight chart, there is definitely some mode switch anticipation going on :)

Kā dabūt 100% ātruma drošību uz ceļiem

Aigars Mahinovs — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 12:11:32 GMT

Auto ātrums nav vienīgais avāriju, nāves, ievainojumu un materiālo zaudējumu cēlonis, taču tas ir šo seku reizinātājs (pat ja auto saslīd neuzmanības dēļ runājot pa telefonu, sekas tam būs jo smagākas, jo lielāks bija sākotnējais ātrums). Ja atrast veidu kā nodrošināt to, ka cilveki ievēro atļauto ātrumu, tad rodas iespēja gan palielināt atļauto ātrumu tajās vietās, kur tas ir jēdzīgi, gan arī atbrīvot policijas resursus citu pārkāpumu vai problēmu apkarošanai. Tāpēc būtu prātīgi atrast kādu vieglāku un drošāku veidu kā nodrošināt atļautā maksimālā ātruma ievērošanu netērējot tam pārāk lielus ceļu policijas resursus. Fotoradari ir labs pirmais solis, taču ar mūšdienu tehnoloģijām ir iespējams sasniegt arī labāku rezultātu.

Iedomāsimies mazu melnu metālisku kastīti, kas piemetināta auto šassijai, pieslēgta auto elektrosistēmai kā barošanas avotam (ar rezerves batareju iegšā) un sevī iegšā satur: integrātu System-on-a-Chip ARM mikroprocessoru ar integrētu GPS un GLONASS uztvērēju (kas līdzīgs SIRF Atlas IV), Bluetooth raidītāju un 1 Gb flash atmiņas. Pie liela izmēra ražošanas tādas iekārtas izmaksas varētu būt ap 20 Ls. Ar triviālu programmu šada iekārta var visu laiku, katru sekundi pierakstīt auto GPS koordinātes. Katra gada beigās, kad auto ir tehniskajā apskatē, CSDD var caur Bluetooth nolasīt visa gada vēsturi un izrakstīt sodu par visiem fiksētajiem pārkāpumiem. Šādas kastītes esamība un sodu apmaksa var būt par priekšnoteikumu TA iziešanai.

Tas arī viss. Pārējais jau ir implementācijas sīkumi un visādas izņemuma situācijas. Piemēram tas, ka ceļu policijai apstādinot auto uz ceļa derētu pārbaudīt, ka auto ir šī kastīte, pievienoties tai caur Bluetooth, pārbautīt autentiskumu, paprasīt kastītei vai tā nav bijusi izslēgta, kādi ātrumi bija pēdējo dažu minūšu laikā un tamlīdzīgi. Vai tas, kādai jābūt sodīšanas robežai, kādiem jābūt sodiem, kā viņus jāsummē kopā, kā izslēgt tos sodus, kas ir izrakstīti atsevišķi, kā izslēgt īpašos gadījumus un kā pārsūdzēt kļūdas.

Tā pati iekārta varētu visu laiku retranslēt GPS signālu caur Bluetooth, lai auto iekšienē navigācijas iekārtas vai telefoni varētu to signālu uztvert un rādīt precīzāku vietu un ātrumu.

Pie izšķirtspējas ap 1 sekundi šīs iekārtas dati būs ārkārtīgi noderīgi jebkuras auto avārijas izmeklēšanā - tās precīzi un pierādāmi fiksēs katra avārijā iesaistītā auto atrašanās vietu un ātrumu. Lai šo lietderīgumu palielinātu, iekārta var arī īslaicīgi glabāt pilno GPS informāciju par pēdējām dažam minūtēm un saglabāt to atmiņā, ja iekārtas paatrinājuma sensori sajūt strauju triecienu. Tā var arī atklāt auto, kas ir kādu notriekuši un tad aizlaidušies no notikuma vietas.

Tas gan nepalīdzēs pret: autozādzībām (zagļi ātri izdomā kā tādas lietas apiet, piemēram noņemot vienu kastīti un uzliekot jaunu tās vietā), citu likumu pārkāpumiem (grūti pierādīt kura persona ir bijusi pie stūŗes tajā brīdī) utml.

Auto ir privilēģija. Autovadītāja apliecība ir privilēģija. Tiesības atrasties uz publiskajiem ceļiem ir privilēģija. Sabiedrība ir tiesīga uzlikt apgrūtinājumus uz personām, kas grib izmantot šīs privilēģijas. Lidmašīnām melnās kastes un GPS transponderi ir obligātais aprīkojums, taču mūsdienās vairāk cilvēku mirst auto nekā avio avārijās.

Visticamāk šāda tipa iekārtas būtu vērts vispirms izmēģināt ar policijas auto. Policijas auto pirmajiem ir jāsāk ievērot visi CSN (izņemot brīžus, kad ir ieslēgtas attiecīgās bākugunis ar skaņas signālu) un šis būtu labs veids kā to nodrošināt, pie reizes pārbaudot arī jaunās tehnoloģijas dzīvē.

Cloning or pre-configuring a batch of Android phones

Aigars Mahinovs — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 14:09:43 GMT

An interesting question popped up in my Twitter stream today - is there an Android alternative to Apple configurator (for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch) that allows to create a bunch of identical Apple devices with some added configurations and applications. The best I could come up with is not as polished, but on the other hand much more powerful option - Nandroid backup and restore (also known as ClockworkMod Recovery backup).

To do this, you need a source phone and a bunch of destination phones. On the source phone a ClockworkMod Recovery (CWR) must be installed (either via a root or via a bootloader unlock). On the destination phones you will either need to also install ClockworkMod Recovery or unlock the bootloader to allow the Fastboot tool to work.

So the procedure then goes as follows:
1. Unlock the bootloader on the source phone (search for device specific info on how to do that)
2. Use fastboot flash recovery filename.img to write a device-specific version of CWR to the recovery partition of the device (the phone must be in fastboot mode at that point)
3. Do whatever customisations you want to the source phone at this point. You can use custorm ROMs, install whatever applications, do whatever configuration, but I would suggest keeping everything in phone memory so you don't have to flash the SD card as well.
4. Reboot the source phone into CWR mode, use the backup option to create a full backup.
5. The backup will now be in the SD card of the source device. Copy that to the computer that you will use for creating copies.

For each destination phone:
6. Unlock the bootloader of the destination phone
7. Reboot the phone in the fastboot mode, connect it via USB to the copying computer
8. Flash all partitions from the backup using fastboot flash ... commands, skip flashing the recovery partition if you don't want CMR on the destination device
9. Re-lock the bootloader (with fastboot oem lock)

And you are done!

All the phones must be of the same model. And that model must support unlocking bootloader for this to work.

I prefer this method, because this way it is possible to create an end device without root, with a locked bootloader and without CWR thus providing some security as unlocking the bootloader wipes the device, so without specific hacking an attacker can not easily get access to system data on such device. It is also possible to do this with devices that do not have an boot unlock if there is a way to root the original firmware which allows to install CWR and go on from there, but that is significantly more complicated and time-consuming, so using devices with an ability to unlock the bootloader is much preferable.

However, before you go to all that trouble, it might be worth to consider if maybe for your particular use case it would be enough with the two commands from Android SDK - adb install ... and adb push ... to install applications or individual files on devices or adb backup AppName and adb restore ... to backup and restore one or more individual applications with all their settings. These options have the benefit of that they will work across different device models and that they do not wipe other data or applications from the devices.

As I could not immediately find a better way or even a detailed guide how to do this, I decided to write this post, so it would be easier for other people to find this information. If you know a better way, please do mention it in the comments section!

You though NVidia was bad, don't try AMD

Aigars Mahinovs — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 20:09:34 GMT

Remember when Linus Torvalds lambasted NVidia for not supporting their Optimus technology in their Linux drivers for half a decade and counting? Well, I went out and bought an AMD/ATi video card as mu upgrade. And you know what? Its Linux drivers are far, far worse than NVidia.
1. Most of the games I had working fine on NVidia, do not work on AMD. And those that do suffer far more visual corruption, synchronization bugs (like bottom 40% of the screen rendering half a second after the top 60%), strange visual artifacts (weird triangles popping out of everywhere) and crashes, lots of crashes.
2. There were crashes with NVidia too, but NVidia never managed to crash Compiz along with it or crash the whole X server or lock up the system so far that only SysRq works or even lock up the system so far that only powering it off manually works.
3. And then there is the configuration atrocity. Apparently AMD is too good to store its configuration in /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Or even to document the supported options there. Instead they have their own (also undocumented) configuration file in /etc/ati folder. And it is undocumented because it is a cryptic mess and the only supported way to change it is to use their tools - aticonfig and amdccccle. The command line tool is almost reasonable, except it is also barely documented. For example, one of my screens somehow was always stared at 1920x1080@30Hz. There were 3 different ways to specify default resolution, but none of them used or saved the refresh rate. And when I changed it in the GUI tool - the refresh rate did change, but it was never saved. Oh there nowhere is a save button. It 'just works', except when it doesn't. Like: both of my screens for some reason started with huge black borders around the screen, I finally narrowed it down to the GUI setting "overscan" which defaulted to 10%. Ok, so I change it, it works, but next time I reboot, the overscan is back! I had to find an undocumented invocation of the aticonfig that would change the default value to 0%. Why did this one setting not save? Oh and fun note - the refresh rate of that second screen was correct on the login screen, but it then swiched back as I logged in. Fun, huh?
4. Even at basic desktop tasks fglrx if inferior to not only the free driver, but also to the nvidia driver - even simple scrolling of a large folder in nautilus seems to tax the 200$ card to its limits - the bottom row blinks into place almost half a second after I stop scrolling. Another example - with NVidia when I switch my TV to the HDMI input from the card, the sound starts at the same moment as the picture, however with AMD the sound only decides to show up 10-15 seconds later. And sometime it does not show up at all, unless I start the AMD Control GUI tool and only then the sound shows up 15 seconds later (without doing anything in the GUI).

It may be that one part of AMD is better than NVidia at talking to free driver developers, but another part is so much worse at actual technical work of writing a driver, it is not even funny. They are busy reinventing the bycicle of configuration and display management, while their core driver is just ... not good enough.

TL/DR: Anyone wanna buy a HD 6850 cheaply off my hands?

Crossposted to Google+ - https://plus.google.com/u/0/107099528362923100900/posts/6PC7RFQpm8K

P.S. I also noticed the color difference - with NVidia there was no difference between colors on my LCD TV and my IPS monitor, but with AMD there is a huge difference, the TV color just got washed out. I guess there is no proper color calibration support in the AMD driver?

Update: I have managed to return the HD 6850 to the shop where I got it from (thanks to a nice law requiring web shops to take stuff back within 14 days no questions asked) and got the new NVidia GeForce GTX 660 instead. I had to build an updated NVidia driver (304.48 from this post, just like here or here) but other than that it was smooth and painless and everything is working great again. Only even faster :)

Fun with the new camera

Aigars Mahinovs — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 13:08:37 GMT

So, I finally received my Canon 650D and Canon EF 40mm STM lens. I am very happy with the purchase. The STM lens is very, very compact, it is barely bigger than the lens cap that comes with the camera. The focusing is fast enough and it is very smooth and silent enough not to be audible in video mode. The largest bonus of the 650D compared to my old 550D is the articulated display. It has come in handy many times already. It is especially useful with the STM lens, live view and touch to focus function. Very useful to focus on something even when the camera is at an weird angle.

And a couple days ago I got to really use the new camera capturing the shot above (an others in that set). It turns out capturing cool lightning shots is quite easy:

Get a great vantage point. In my case that was my apartment balcony. I actually chose this particular place specifically because of the great views in two different directions from the large windows. But really any high point with a roof will do

Setup you camera on a tripod in the general direction of the incoming storm, frame the shot to include some ground in the shot, so you get the sense of scale and perspective

Get a focus lock on either the horizon or some far away building an then switch to manual focus to preserve that. You want the lens focused to "infinity" as the action will be outside the normal focus range of most lenses

Set manual mode, 5-10 second exposure, aperture (F) to 8 or above, no flash, iso 100

Take a test shot, make sure you bracketing is ok, make sure that the sky is dark or black without the lightning, but that if there are any lights from buildings that those are bright and clear and sharp

I use 5 second exposures. If you set it longer, you will get less shots to check and more chance of more than one lightning per shot, but you will then have to up the aperture to avoid overexposure and you do not want aperture over F16, because then you will loose detail due to diffraction in the lens. If it is too dark, either increase exposure time, or up the iso to 200, but do not lower F under 8, otherwise you risk out of focus shots.

Disable long exposure noise reduction - this feature works by taking another photo with the shutter closed, that will take extra time the same length as your exposure time, which means that you will miss half the lightning strikes

Find some way to make the camera shoot continually without your action. I switched my camera to continuous shot mode and then used a bit of duck tape, a couple zip ties and a plastic nob to press the shutter button and keep it pressed down fully all the time. This makes the camera take a new shot as soon as it is done with the last one, so with a 5 second exposure it takes a photo every 5 seconds.

Make sure you have plenty of space on the card and a full battery. I had a 32Gb SD card, but I barely shot 8Gb in one stormy evening

Watch the show! Do not forget to adjust the way the camera is pointing as the storm moves. There is a splitsecond window where the camera viewfinder shows the image between the shots, you can use that to make sure that the shot is looking good after adjusting the camera location.

After all is done, just filter out the pictures with some lightning in them :) It is usually easy to see even in a thumbnail

It is basically the same as shooting photos of a fireworks display, with the exception that lightning is not so bright sometimes and that there is a high chance of rain in a thunderstorm ;)

P.S. Got over 5k photos in Flickr now with this set, and closing in for 500k views. That feels cool :)