CircuitMonkey

About me

2012-01-11T15:41:00.000-08:00

Hello, my name is Johan Helmer and am a self confessed geek!

Among other things I am also a;

PhD candidate currently writing up a thesis in biometric security
Developer working for a market leading ERP solutions company
Bit of a gym freak
Hacker!

It's to the last of these traits that this blog is devoted to.

By hacker I do mean the true sense of the word, I enjoy inventing, programming and modifying. In the past I may have touched upon the more malicious meaning of the word, but more out of curiosity, and always with the permission of the owner.

To start with I will be posting old projects that I previously hosted on my own server (now been retired) but keep posted as I have plenty of other projects that I'm waiting to start

If you wish to get into contact with me I can be emailed at johan (at) helmer.com

TripRecorder

2011-09-22T15:05:00.000-07:00

So the application still needs some polishing before it's ready for the market, but I think you'll agree it produces some great footage!

Calais to Rimini in 5 minutes, lets go!

Time laps videos

2011-08-09T15:03:00.000-07:00

I've been messing around with developing an application for Android to produce a time laps recording of the Rally.

The program is called TripRecorder, and it's in a very early alpha stage, but here are a couple of example outputs.

It works in theory, just need to mess around with the settings.

Moto Dext Car Holder

2010-01-19T12:55:00.000-08:00

I'm loving my new Motorola Dext/Cliq/MB220 a lot, but one thing that has pissed me off since I started using it, was that in spite it having GPS built in, I wasn't able to use it for in car GPS navigation because it doesn't come with a car holder!

After much searching online I couldn't find a holder that would hold my Dext in a landscape orientation, with the keyboard out (hey typing using a touch-screen whilst driving is dangerous after all!) without the holder fouling the keys or sockets required to use the phone.

So... to the drawing board!

The Design

The initial design called for layers of foam glued together and carved to fit the phone with wholes for the charger and volume control.

Scavenging for parts

Since I have used the same goose-neck holder for my last 3 phones (HTC P3600, Nokia N82, Nokia E90) I wanted to use the same neck with my Dext.

To do this would require manufacturing a new mount to snap onto the neck. For this I'd need the correct type of plastic that won't be to brittle that it snaps with every use.

Luckily mother had just cleaned out all her old kitchen appliances that she didn't require anymore. The following Jug was the perfect material and thickness, result!

I used my dremel alternative with a cutting disk to cut out a back plate,

and then a smaller disk and grinder stones to cut the pattern required.

The Foam Layers

I sauced some foam sheets and glue from a lock craft shop for under £9

These where cut to an approximate size and then glued together one layer at a time (this was very messy work and nearly stuck my fingers together a couple of times)

Being rather short sighted I forgot to take photos of this stage. But following is the finished product!

Un-Mounted

And we're all finished!

Top view

Back view

Side view

Front with cable

Mounted!
So here are the results;

Not bad hey!

It works well, I've taken it out in the car and it stays firm, even over the rough stuff!

You can shake it upside down and it still won't come out, all said and done, I've very happy with my phone holder. It may not be the prettiest thing in the world, but it works well!

4850X2 Replacement Cooler

2009-01-09T12:23:00.000-08:00

So recently I was lucky enough to recieve a 4850X2 and as happy that I was to get it, I couldn't help but notice that it is just to noisy for my nice and quiet build.

After much research and a small thought that I would be voiding my warrenty I thought I'd venture into making it queiter. The only problem being that the lack of aftermarket coolers for this card ment that it would not be an easy ride.

The major problem with finding alternative cooling for this card is the proximity of the two R700 cores being so close. This greatly reduces the number of coolers available.

After a bit of browsing and seeing good results with a single GPU, HD 4850 I thought I'd give two Zalman VF900-Cu LED a try.

Tear Down;

After first removing the 8 small screws surrounding the fan the outer shrowd will lift off.

Next remove the rear 8 screws securing the heatsink to the card.

The two Heat sinks will then lift off and the fan plugs can be removed.

I then cleaned the top of the two GPUs.

And did a dry fit to make sure that the two VF900-Cu would fit onto the card.

And lo and behold... It fits!

Apply the thermal paste, I chose to use Thermaltake's TG-1, mainly because that's what I had to hand, and it's always served me well.

Tighten the new coolers to the card

And we're all finished!

Results;

To test the temperatures of my card I used GPU-Z 0.3.1 and to simulate full system load I used Orthos to load the CPU and GPU Caps Viewer to load the Graphics card using the built in furmark at 1680x1050 and 8X MSAA.

I performed all the tests for 10 minutes waiting for the GPU temperature to fall to the idle temperature before the next test was started.

It should be noted that at the time of testing the ambient room temperature was 20deg C.

Results;

So here are the results;

First off it should be noted that the Zalman coolers are, to my ears a lot queiter at 100% than the Stock cooler at idle.

That said, you can see the Zalman coolers offer a lower idle temperature, but unfortunatly they don't cool so well at full bore, and short of under clocking the GPUs there is no way that they can be used for extensive periods of time.

For this reason the Sapphire heat sink has been put on, but this will not be the last time I will attempt to queiten my lovely new graphics card.

Cathedral

2009-01-09T11:51:00.000-08:00

I was recently contacted concerning building a high end gaming machine for a company a friend works for. Brilliant I thought, a nice excuse to stress test (who am I kidding, play games on) some high end kit.
And it all started out so promising!

Specifications;

After talking specs we decided upon;
Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6950
eVGA 680i SLI A1 rev

1x 150GB WD Raptor4x 1GB Corsair 1066Mhz DDR2
3x1TB WD HDD
Highpoint R2400 PCI-e Raid Controller
8800 Ultra (main graphics, room for additional in future for SLI when software concerned supports it)
8400 GT (2nd monitor)
Windows XP Pro (32bit – Software requirement)

If only it were all that easy, firstly getting the qx9650 was no mean feat, then getting the bugger to work was damn near impossible.

Problem;

Installing XP pro on machine results in blue screens and continuous reboots. These would normally happen just after the drive was formatted and files copied from the disk. Just at the point where you begin to setup the installation with you personal preferences.

Work around;

In the BIOS, I was able to disable 2 of the 4 cores of the processor, and reduce the multiplier to 6x.
Early results show stable enough system performance to complete Installation.

Results;

To discover the highest CPU frequency with stable performance I started with the x6 multiplier and increased the number of cores enabled. These are the results that I was able to achieve;

Multiplier	2 Cores	3 Cores	4 Cores
x6	Yes(Boots to XP)	No(Post Only)	No(Post Only)
x7	Yes(Boots to XP)	No(Post Only)	No(Post Only)
x8	Yes(Boots to XP)	No(Post Only)	No(Post Only)
x9	Yes(Boots to XP)	No(Post Only)	No(Post Only)

So it will work at stock speed, all be it with only 2 out of the 4 cores enabled.
Somewhat disappointing for a Motherboard which performed so well with the QX9650 engineer samples!
I hope this can help people in some way as reading various forums it has become obvious that there are quite a few people with the same processor and chipset who have made nothing more than an expensive paper weight.
Here’s hoping that a BIOS update will restore the functionality of this processor, as for me, I'm going to have to order a X38 based motherboard for the time being so the machine can be delivered in timely fashion.

*** Update ***

I received an ASUS P5E motherboard based on the x38 chipset and the installation went swimmingly! The machine is now with its owners and from what I understand they're very happy.