Getting Started with the Arduino Uno R3 and Windows 8

Continuing on with my Windows 8 growing pains, I encountered issues just attempting to install the driver for the Arduino R3 board.  After following the basic steps which worked fine in Win7, you are greeted with:  Arduino UNO R3, The third-party INF does not contain digital signature information.

After a little online dumpster diving, I found the solution on the Arduino forums in a post from Louis Davis in March 2012 (appears to be during the Win8 beta based on the date).  The key to the solution is to disable the Win8 default requirement for all drivers to be digitally signed.  The steps are basically the same today, although Microsoft rearranged the menus a bit since that time.  The following are the steps I followed to get the drivers installed:

• From the Win8 desktop, run (Windows Key + R) the following command:

shutdown.exe /r /o /f /t 00

• Windows will restart to a options screen, navigate as follows:

select Troubleshoot
select Advanced options
select Startup Settings
press the Restart button

• The system will reboot to a Startup Settings menu

select 7) Disable driver signature enforcement

The system will now reboot with the driver digital signature options disabled.

From this point, you can proceed with the normal Arduino install procedures.  Note that under Win8, the initial device appears under "Other devices", not under "COM & LPT" as seen below.

Right click the Unknown Device and choose update drivers, then select the driver directory (and disable the feature to include subfolders):

With driver enforcement now disabled in Win8, you will be given the following option:

And after selecting "Install this driver software anyway", the installation will complete as expected:

Building a new workshop PC

The old dinosaur of a pc in my workshop was long overdue for retirement.  Rather than taking the easy way out and buying a quick turnaround Dell, I decided it was far too long since I had built a rig from scratch on my own.  I sourced all the materials from Amazon and thanks to prime shipping, had all the needed parts in two days.

I decided to go large on the case, and selected a Thermaltake Level 10 GT.  This case has an absolutely enormous interior, plenty of cutouts for wiring, 3 large fans, and a hot-swappable drive rack.

 

To power the beast, I selected the Corsair Professional Series AX850, an ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe, an Intel Core i7-3770K Quad-Core Processor, and 32GB of Corsair Vengeance RAM.

To keep the CPU cool, I went with an after market fan, the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO.  Compared to the little thing that Intel ships with the processor, the 212 EVO is enormous.  There is not an awful lot I remember from my undergrad heat transfer class, but I do remember that surface area counts, and in that category, there is absolutely no comparison between the fans.

Since the components above depleted most of my available budget, I decide to forgo a solid state drive for the time being, and stuck with a good old fashioned drive, the Seagate Barracuda 7200 3 TB.  The thing is a bit noisy on startup, but overall seems to be performing well and for $45/TB, its hard to argue with a bit of noise.

Everything installed without too much hassle, and thanks to all the wiring cutouts, the finished product is clean (I really need to learn to take final pictures AFTER the cable ties are added) and should be fairly easy to maintain.

And finally, as a totally aesthetic feature, the case has a number of exterior cutouts and LEDs which are a big hit with the "little engineers" running around the house.

So far all of the parts are behaving well, and I would recommend any one of them.

Making the Intuos4 work with Windows 8 and Adobe Photoshop CS5

The pain of early Windows 8 adoption continued with the realization that my Wacom Intuos4 tablet no longer appeared to be functioning properly from within Adobe Photoshop CS5.  Specifically, the pressure sensitive features on the brush no longer seemed to have an effect, and there was this annoying little "radar blip" that would form every time the pen would touch the surface of the Intuos.

A little online digging revealed this is a known issue, and apparently has something to do with the new pen tablet functionality integrated into the Win8 OS.  While Wacom works on a proper driver patch, implementing the steps below (pulled from here and here) followed by a reboot seemed to do the trick.  Note that these involve a few registry hacks, so the usual disclaimers apply about bricking your box if you step on a landmine while in the registry...

• Create the following keys using regedit.exe

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\TabletPC]
"TurnOffPenFeedback"=dword:00000000
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\TabletPC]
"TurnOffPenFeedback"=dword:00000000

• Modify group policy (GPEdit.msc) to disable dynamic pen options

User Configurations\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\TabletPC
Cursors- Turn off pen feedback set to "Enable"
Hardware buttons - Prevent Press and Hold set to "Enable"

• Modify the Control Panel | Pen and Touch settings

Ensure that 'Press and Hold | Right Click' is checked/enabled. Set the speed
to the longest possible setting (all the way right) and the duration to shortest setting (all the way left). Do not the disable press and hold setting, as you will get lag dragging and scrolling.

• Modify the Control Panel | Wacom Tablet Properties settings

Ensure that under Options, the Side Switch Mode is set to Hover Click.

• Modify the following keys using regedit.exe

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Cursors]
Modify the key ContactVisualisation from 1 to 0
Modify the key GestureVisualisation from 1F (31) to 0

After applying the steps above, the tablet now appears to be behaving properly...

Building a new workbench

The old workbench in my shop has served me well over the years, but ultimately was not what I needed to meet the needs of my upcoming 2013 project list.  A quick trip to Home Depot and I had all the parts I needed for a replacement.

• 1 - 4x8 sheet of red oak plywood
• 5 - 2x4s

I used some 2 1/2 exterior decking screws leftover from a previous project to hold things together, as well as recycled some casters to make the base mobile.  A few hours later, everything was cut/prepped/assembled.

At the moment, the desktop surface is just sitting on the legs;  I'll need to make another quick run to depot to get a few small 90 degree brackets to permanently attach it.

Repairing a NERF Vigilon

Santa brought the kids some NERF disc launchers for Christmas, and it appears that we received one made by one of his less competent elves.  The outside appearance was fine, however the trigger wouldn't budge.  We went through the steps in the instructions to clear a jam (although nothing was in there to be jammed, it was a new toy), but it ultimately had no effect.

After going through the normal set of engineering diagnosis steps (tapping the gun against the palm of my hand, pounding it on the floor, cursing, etc.), I decided to disassemble it and see if a repair was possible.  Once the outer shell was removed, it was fairly apparent that something was blocking the trigger mechanism.

I have no idea what the underlying problem was, but suspect that the assembly was missing some springs that were meant to keep the tabs in a lowered position.  I had no confidence that I'd be able to reassemble the internal shooting assembly if I took that apart (odds are that some little plastic part would break), so I instead decided to remove the offending plastic cylinders with a hacksaw.

After the tabs were removed, the trigger moved normally.  I reassembled the NERF disc launcher and everything appears to be work properly now.

Replacing a DVR Hard Drive

Every few years the DirecTV/TIVO unit driving the family room television decides own its own that it has recorded enough programming and deserves retirement.  It starts by spontaneously rebooting itself every few days, and near the end, reboots numerous times on a daily basis.  I know I should replace the DVR with a new HD unit, but I just can't justify the added expense (HD upcharges, DVR cost, etc) based on the quality of garbage on television these days;   Also, this unit has served me so well for so long that, well, its just hard to part with.

Over the last decade, this scenario has happened a few times, and I've found the replacement parts from weaknees.com to be reliable and reasonably priced.  The instructions included are simple to follow, and swapping out a hard drive could not be easier.  I also elected to replace the case fan, as the accumulated dust just refused to be cleaned any further.

As can be seen above, quite a bit of dust has settled on the system boards as well.  Its quite a mess, but nothing the mighty DATAVAC Electric Duster can't handle.  After a few seconds of air blasting the box, its as good as new.

Since its been a number of years since I last replaced the drive, SATA has taken over the market and retired the old IDE-spec drives.  Weaknees.com now ships a SATA drive replacement unit, as well as a small converter board to keep the old TIVO happy.

After reconnecting the new drive and reassembling the case, the new drive is fully functional and TIVO is back to normal.  I thought about taking the time to image the new drive before connecting it (with the thought that if the drive fails again, I can just burn an image to a drive purchased from Amazon.com and save a few bucks) but in the end decided the effort just wasn't worth the time.

Driving a simple speaker with an Arduino

Not that there was much to the project, but in efforts to bring some basic audio skills into my toolbox, an 8ohm speaker was purchased and hooked up to an Arduino Rev3 via a 100ohm resistor.  The parts are listed below:

[Mouser 253-CE405-RO] Kobitone 8ohm 1.57" Speaker
[Mouser 291-100-RC] Xicon 100ohm Carbon Film Resistors

Two 22AWG wires were soldered onto the speaker, making it ready for use.

The code used to drive the speaker is fairly simple as well; Here are links to the original material I used as reference:

Arduino Tone
Arduino Play Melody