Monkey Town

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Took these photos a while ago, but for some reason today decided to go through them and neaten one or two of them up. They were all taken at Monkey Town, just off the N2 near Sir Lowry’s Pass Village. It’s really cool to go look around, and they’ve got a huge variety of monkeys/primates and whatever other categories such types of animals fall into. They’re all caged, which is completely understandable, it does however make photography tricky. In the first place trying to convince autofocus not to focus on the fence, and secondly how to still make a photo where you have agrid laying infront of your subject.
These are just a few of the photos I took, I can’t recall any names.

Busiest & Best

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This last semester has kept me busier academically than I’ve ever been before with the main culprits being our two large design projects as well as skripsie. And when i say busy, I mean spending hour after hour through weekends and public holidays in labs working to ensure that projects are complete. The thing is, is that I was having fun. Well to an extent. There were many times where tiredness and frustrations got the better of me, but the moments of joy when something worked were incredible.

The Mechatronics project was interesting, but not my favourite. In theory it was quite simple, but a bit more tricky in application. In essence we were told we needed to take 2 tanks and then have user inputs allowing one to set the desired water level and temperature in both tanks. We were limited by only being able to pump fresh water into tank 1, and only being allowed to place a heating element in tank 1. Our end setup comprised of a kettle as our first tank which we pumped fresh water into. The second tank was placed at a lower height to allow water to flow from the first tank to the second tank. Water could be pumped into tank 1, and then solenoid valves were used to allow water to flow into the second tank, or allow water to flow from either of the tanks back into the reservoir.

Floats were connected to potentiometers to give us a height/volume reading of the water and supplied thermocouples gave us accurate temperature readings. The entire system is then linked by a Schneider Electric Modicon momentum Soft PLC and Tutorbox. During the term we were given tutorials on how to use Wonderware’s InControl and InTouch software to control the PLC. The project does rather throw one into the deep end though. The training for the PLC doesn’t really explain it’s functionality and very little focus is given on actually programming in the software. Instead we’re taught to make use of RLL programs to control the system.

But the scope of our project was far too complicated to rely on RLL programs. Instead we chose to figure out how to use the other supported Structured Text Language instead. We downloaded some tutorials and beginners guides, but so many of the things we tried gave us compiler errors in the software, so in the end we resorted to a trial and error method, hacking our way through. Till now I’ve only ever really coded in Objected Orientated programming languages, which I don’t really feel STL complies to. This amongst with many other small nuances lead to me hating the programming side of this project. Fortunately one of the group members took to it with vigour.

Our final demo went reasonably well, everything worked to an extent and the “judges” seemed impressed even if the system didn’t run as smoothly as we had hoped.

And onto Digital Design. The basic story is that we were building remote controlled gate units. We had a main board which comprised of a 16 character LCD screen on which we displayed a menu controlled by 5 push buttons. There was a serial->USB converter to communicate with a computer, some EEPROM to store some data a PWM controller to control the “gate” motor, an optical sensor for determining the state of the gate, a triac to turn an AC driven light on/off a buzzer to annoy people and an IR receiver.
We then had a remote with an IR diode for transmitting data, 2 buttons and its own EEPROM for good measure. Both units were based around the Renesas R8/C27 microcontroller programmed in C via Renesas’ HEW software. Fun with that spawned this fan group page. Apart from a few resistor values that had to be calculated, the component design aspect was pretty much handled for us, the big issue was understanding how these components worked, and then getting them to play nice with the rest of the components.

We were given the components every 2nd week or so, and built up our boards slowly as we acquired and programmed each successive piece. In the end we had a board on which each component worked by itself, but then it was time to pull everything together and get the software programmed to work as required. Quite a challenge. This was truly the subject which has taught me the most, or in which I feel I’ve learnt the most. It was work that I hadn’t ever really done, but had always interested me, and although it really is a tough course, and a bit of a trial by fire, I’m glad how it turned out.

As an interesting fact, last year somewhere close to 50% of 4th year Mechatronic Engineers failed the subject. And I can believe that. Although we are given some preparation in the form of a semester of Electronics and 2 semesters of Computer System, the work we do is completely new and requires a different way of thinking and time dedication second to none.

A friend of mine described the subject like this: “Ontwerp n hekmotor en remote. Hier is so 3 bladsye se totally vague instructions, ons sal julle een keer n week kom se presies hoe ver julle agter is. O ja, hier is 6000 bladsye se inligting waardeur jy moet soek vir een pin se default state. Rinse and repeat so 30 miljoen keer. Elke dag”. Roughly translated it is: “Design a gate motor and remote. Here are 3 pages of completely vauge instructions. We’ll come tell you once a week exactly how behind you are. Oh yes, here are 6000 pages of information that you have to search through to find one pins defaults state. Rinse and repeat about 30 million times. Every Day.”

Although a bit dramatic, it quite often feels like. Nothing has frustrated me as much as the unproductive hours spent on this project. We’re busy compiling a report on the project to hand in on Monday, so will post some schematics and pictures then.And then it’s on to exams for 3 weeks, a bit of holiday/skripsie work for 2 weeks, vacation work in East London for 4 weeks and back to Stellenbosch for my last undergrad semester.

Of Cake and Disappointments

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Portal 2, the sequel to one of the most humourous and fun puzzle games ever made, Portal, released this week. This week Tuesday, a few days before planned launch. This was good news for me; see Portal 2 is the first game I’ve ever cared enough about to bother preordering. Quite a while ago in fact, back in February. And as such I preordered it for my PS3, my PC lacking the necessary gusto required to play modern games.

In any case, the early release ensured that I would get the game before the long weekend, giving me plenty of time to sit around and finish it, leaving next week open to work off my backlog of work. And as it sits I played, thoroughly enjoyed, and finished the game. The single player mode in any case, see Portal 2 comes with a bunch of extra co-op missions for you to play with a friend. And I have such a friend, with a PS3 and sharing the enthusiasm for the new game.


Sony and Valve both had to work a bit here, as Steam games had never previously been available on the PS3. As such, a nice overlay was created with the ability to link your PSN (PlayStation Network) account to your Steam account. The PS3 version of the game even comes with a CD key allowing you to activate the PC version of the game on Steam as well.

So it was with much enthusiasm that I tried to connect to PSN and get this process going. But alas it failed, with some obscure error code. Searches online linked only to router options, proxy settings and port forwarding. And so I sat down, sifting through my router settings, one by one, trying to find the source of my problem. Fortunately I was saved too much effort by a message from mentioned friend, informing me that he too can no longer login to PSN.

The joy of this is that if you can’t login to PSN, you can’t multiplay. The obscure error message has since been replaced by a notice informing us that the servers are down for maintenance. The PSN website and twitter feed inform us that it’s probably going to be down for a few days, and they’re not really sure what’s wrong.

As far as I know, this is the first time that something like this has happened to PSN, and I can’t but wonder if the link with Steam has somehow caused this issue. In the mean time I’ve started following the official PSN twitter feed in anticipation of it’s return. I’m also making headway into my work, ensuring time in the future to enjoy the benefits of Portal 2 co-op.


With reference to the SP game itself though. It was as enjoyable as the first, and with the addition of various new game mechanics made for a truly great experience. Excellent casting, especially of Wheatly (Steve Merchant), and an ending equalling the predecessor’s. The story followed on nicely, with constant references to other games and previous events keeping one listening intently to what was happening.

Update: PSN has been haxxored. The official words are: “An external intrusion on our system has affected our PlayStation Network”. So they’ve shut it off while they conduct an investigation. No estimate as to how long it’s going to be off.

DSTV and flashing lights

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EDIT: For some reason I’m getting a lot of hits on this page at the moment, it only addresses one element on one decoder. If you have any other hassles with your decoder check out this link.

I went home this evening for a family get together and walking into the TV room I noticed an annoying flashing orange light on our Multichoice DSTV decoder. Although others had noticed it, no one knew anything about it. While browsing through some channels my sister pointed out a small “letter” icon which had popped up in the one corner of the screen. Going to the menu and opening the “Mail Messages” option gives one a brief notice about new terms and conditions relating to Multichoice. It also stopped the flashing light.

Mentioning this to my Dad, he told me my Gran had been complaining about the light too, quick phonecall to her and problem solved, along with a set of instructions she was to pass on to her friends.

Now I like the way that Multichoice have integrated this feature into the system, it’s just a pity that I doubt anyone actually knows about it. I’m also very curious to know how many phone calls the service centre got about this flashing light that just started randomly last week.

So for anyone wanting to get rid of the flashing orange light:
Turn on your TV and Multichoice Decoder. Take your remote and push the bottom left “Menu” button. A menu should come up on your screen, scroll down to the “Mail Messages” option (if I recall it was option 4) using the cursor/arrow buttons, and use the select button to go into the Mail Messages. It should display a message with regards to the new terms and conditions. Once read, the light should stop flashing and you can press the white “Exit” button once or twice to resume your viewing.