Recent updates on the CompuPhase pages

Twinkler "starter set" is now available

The Twinkler is a bright (low-power) RGB LED mounted on a miniature circuit board together with a controller and a provision for a light pipe. It is designed for (effect) lighting in scale models, interactive maps, star ceilings or other special displays. We now make available a complete set of all products and tools needed to fully evaluate the system.
This page is also available in Dutch, in French and in German.

Update of the Termite serial terminal

The functionality to log all received data to a file has been moved to a plug-in filter. The plug-in filter has more options than the old built-in functionality. To save the current contents of the reception window to a file, there is a new option to the "right-click" popup menu. Minor changes in the user interface make the utility easier to use.
The article has a new section on port or protocol analysis, using a virtual COM port (more precisely, a null-modem emulator).

Update of the SvnRev utility (for developers using Subversion)

A software developer uses SvnRev to include version or revision stamps into his/her compiled programs. Version 1.10 of the SvnRev utility adds support for C# and adds an automatically increasing "build number" if SvnRev detects changes in the source code that are not (yet) commited to version control.
SvnRev is an open source product.

Updated article and library: minIni - a minimal INI file parser

The programmer's library "minIni", to read and write "INI" files in embedded systems, is now at version 0.9. minIni takes little resources and can be configured for various kinds of file I/O libraries. New in this release are support for trailing comments, automatic wrapping and unwrapping of strings in double quotes (when needed), improved portability, and updated documentation.
minIni is an open source product.

New product: the SYLT Editor

The SYLT Editor is a self-contained utility to create or modify SYLT frames in an MP3 track (or, more accurately: a SYLT frame is inside an ID3 tag, which in turn is prefixed to an MP3 track). A SYLT frame contains text (e.g. the lyrics of a song) plus time-stamps attached to each line, word or syllable. Versions of the SYLT Editor are available for Microsoft Windows and for Linux.

Anthology of our recent projects

We added a few projects to our list of selected recent projects.
This page is also available in Dutch, in French and in German.

New product: Twinkler - versatile RGB LED with controller

The Twinkler is a bright (low-power) RGB LED mounted on a miniature circuit board together with a controller and a provision for a light pipe. It is designed for (effect) lighting in scale models, interactive maps, star ceilings or other special displays.
This page is also available in Dutch, in French and in German.

PaletteMaker version 1.5 released

This new release of PaletteMaker brings support for storing output images in PNG format, and support for alpha channels in Photoshop PSD and TGA (Targa) images. Handling of "transparent colours" was improved as well.

Update of the Termite serial terminal

The basic Termite program has not changed (it is still at version 2.3), but two plug-in filters were modified. The "Hexadecimal View" filter now has a dialog to enable/disable the entry and/or the display of hexadecimal values. The "Status LEDs" filter signals "break" conditions on the RS232 line, and also allows you to generate a break condition.

New article: Candela, Lumen, Lux: the equations

There are various measures in use for quantifying the light produced by a light source, such as a LED. This article gives a brief overview of the more important measures and how they relate.

H0420 programmable MP3 controller/player: firmware update version 1.8, Build 4110

The most recent firmware update for the H0420 programmable MP3 controller/player is version 1.8, build 4110. You may wish to install this update if you purchased your H0420 MP3 player before 25 June 2009. Devices purchased after that date already contain this latest firmware release.
The most recent version of the pawn development environment is also present in this download.
This page is also available in Dutch, in French and in German.

Update of the pawn embedded programming language (release 3.3.4127)

This update of the pawn scripting language" brings minor features and bug fixes. There is a minimalistic IDE for Linux, called wxQuincy. Pawn's license is now the Apache License version 2 (instead of zlib/libpng).
pawn is an open source product.

Updated article and library: minIni - a minimal INI file parser

The programmer's library "minIni", to read and write "INI" files in embedded systems, is now at version 0.7. minIni takes little resources and can be configured for various kinds of file I/O libraries. New in this release is a C⁺⁺ interface and a read-only capability.
minIni is an open source product.

Update of the pawn embedded programming language (release 3.3.4097)

This update of the pawn scripting language" brings minor features and bug fixes. Quincy is significantly improved in the area of auto-completion and balloon help. The pawn compiler now supports "templates" with definitions specific for a platform (memory configuration, pre-include file).
pawn is an open source product.

Update of the Termite serial terminal

Termite version 2.3 enable plug-in filters to create toolbars (with buttons or status messages) in the Termite frame. There is a new filter (displaying the status of RST/CTS & DTR/DSR) that demonstrates this functionality. The new version also comes with an installer (Termite does not require installation).

Updated article and library: minIni - a minimal INI file parser

The programmer's library "minIni", to read and write "INI" files in embedded systems, is now at version 0.6. minIni takes little resources and can be configured for various kinds of file I/O libraries.
minIni is an open source product.

Updated article: Axonometric projections - a technical overview

Since its publication in the book "Advanced Game Programming", the article was updated (on request) to also contain the equations for the inverse mapping. At the same time, the equations have been converted to jsMath and a few other editorial changes were made.

KeyTrap: end-of-life notice

We have stopped the distribution en further development of KeyTrap. The KeyTrap product page gives the details.

H0420 programmable MP3 controller/player: firmware update version 1.7, Build 4045

The most recent firmware update for the H0420 programmable MP3 controller/player is version 1.7, build 4045. You may wish to install this update if you purchased your H0420 MP3 player before 1 January 2009. Devices purchased after that date already contain this latest firmware release.
The most recent version of the pawn development environment is also present in this download.
This page is also available in Dutch, in French and in German.

Switch to jsMath for equations used at this web site

We have now switched to use the jsMath package for typesetting equations on this web site. Not all pages have been updated yet, though. For an example of jsMath, see the article on colour metric.

New article: LED current source

For LEDs, not the voltage, but the current determines its brightness. This article presents a simple circuit that keeps a constant current over a wide range of applied voltages.

New article and utility: Spool - send print files directly to a Windows printer

Spool is a small Win32 console utility that sends the contents of a file to the spooler of a Windows printer, bypassing the printer driver. The purpose is to send a raw print file, such as one produced by the "print to file" functionality of Windows and many DOS programs, to a printer.

Update of the pawn embedded programming language (release 3.3.4026)

This update of the pawn scripting language" brings minor features and bug fixes. For state machines, pawn now also supports "exit" state functions, which are automatically (and implicitly) called when the automaton leaves a particular state. Quincy's ease of use has be augmented with dynamically updated balloon tooltips and user-configurable code snippets.
pawn is an open source product.

Update of the Termite serial terminal

Termite version 2.0 has a plug-in interface to intercept and process both received and transmitted data. Termite calls these plug-ins "filters", because their primary purpose is to filter the data that is exchanged in a communication, or to modify how the data is visualized. Two filters are provided as well, with full source code: "Timestamp" is a simple filter that adds a time stamp to all received data, and "Hexadecimal view" displays the received data as hexadecimal (and it allows to send hexadecimal data as well). Other changes are improved auto-completion, text search in the reception window, and printing of the transmitted/received data.
Termite is freeware.

New article and library: minIni - a minimal INI file parser

minIni is a programmer's library to read and write "INI" files in embedded systems. minIni takes little resources and can be configured for various kinds of file I/O libraries. minIni provides functionality for reading, writing and deleting keys from an INI file, all in a tiny and easy to port library.
minIni is an open source product.

Updated article: Playing files sequentially

Due to its event-driven architecture, many functions and instructions in the H0420 MP3 controller are "non-blocking". Instead of waiting for some activity to finish, you catch the event that signals the completion of the requested command. This article gives an example and an explanation.
    Note: the section on track separation has been removed from this article. There is a separate, in-depth article on this very subject: see below.

New article: Track and artist separation

When playing tracks that are picked at random (see the article Playing files sequentially), you may want to avoid the same track to play twice in (close) succession, or even to avoid a track by the same artist or band to come close behind the recently picked track. This article discusses both track separation and artist separation.

New article: EGO network protocol

The EGO authoring system provides high-level and low-level network functions. The high-level functions let EGO transfer data between an EGO client and an HTTP or FTP server, whereas the low-level functions allow two EGO clients to exchange data in a peer-to-peer, group-wise mode. This article discusses the low-level interface, focusing on the protocol.