Adam Royce's blog

Was up 'til 2am this mornng getting the Matrox TripleHead2Go running on the Viz Lab's three screen (and very old) ViewStation 36. These are three of those old heavy projectors with the CRT guns (red/green/blue) that display side by side to a single screen. The Matrox product worked pefectly, but aligning those CRTs was quite painful. Anyway, now we can display Google Earth across the entire display. Very cool.

Remember the 'big equipment' I alluded to? Well, so far this morning, I have seen GM's hybrid trucks that have 2400W power supplies in them. You wouldn't even know they had this power capability, as the outlets are under the drivers seat and embedded in the wall of the pickup bed. Ruggedized, and I am told by Cindy Svestka, GM Integration Engineer, Two-mode Hybrid Energy and Drive Quality, that the performance of the vehicle, even with the added electrical system, is identical to its non-enhanced counterpart. As long as the engine is running, there are four standard 120V outlets for use. And this is just the morning!

For me, the day was fairly light. Groove had some hiccups, but nothing I had the power to resolve. A known problem involving relay servers, that eventually fixed itself.

Still more hardware coming in, and I am told some of the heavy stuff, the really cool stuff, comes in tomorrow.

Saw an interesting technology today. Special cell phones had been programmed to broadcast their locations via their internal GPS systems to the internet, and then one could watch as the phone moved from location to location. Most modern cell phones are GPS capable, but the companies who supply the service disable the feature. Most phones can also send data, in addition to sound, and it was this data line that was used to transmit information to the Internet. Once on the net, a specially designed site coupled to Google Earth was used to display the phone's location. The site would then update every couple of minutes. It was amazing. You could even see when the phone was inside a building. Only downside I could see was that since the data signal was sent every couple of minutes, the phone was ultimately broadcasting all day. This would decrease battery life. Small price to pay to track the kids though...

My creative side has rebelled against me, and refuses to come up with any more spiffy blog titles. The date it is.

Yesterday saw more equipment coming in, but not too much. Still waiting on the bigger stuff.

I brought in my Matrox TripleHead2Go so we could display on three screens from the output of one video card. If three screens are connected to multiple video cards, any image that uses 3D acceleration will only display on the 'primary' card. This is because multiple video cards do not share the same RAM, or to be more accurate, the same frame buffer. By outputting from a single video card (which typically has only two outputs anyway), a single frame buffer is used. Coupled to Matrox's way cool product, 3D acceleration can occur across three screens.

Learned more about Groove yesterday. Got to see the server side of it. Very cool.

Had to figure out how to connect an IP camera connected directly to a PC. Used a USB to RJ-11 adapter I had laying around, with a cool adapter that turns any standard CAT5 cable into a passthrough cable. Finally connected to the camera, but had some difficulty doing dynamic DNS.

The inventory system is now fully up and running, which allows us to track all the goodies we are using during SAIII. There is a checkout system, so everything that is checked out is tracked to specific individuals.

Though SAIII starts next week, yesterday was the beginning of the command staff coming to town.

Felt good to put faces to names, getting to know the leaders of this exercise, and trying hard to be useful.

Took some pictures of some cool technologies (attached), something I will do the entire event.

Seabotix rep Sean Newsome showed us the 'bumblebee', a remote controlled modular submersible with a grapple. John Graham worked a way to remote control it from the Viz Lab. Hope I can see it in action.

Then David Ahlgren, brought in a portable unit that uses a battery during the night, solar during the day to receive inputs from remote sensors, and then transmit through wireless. Uses off-the-shelf hardware, packaged into a small hardened briefcase. Think it is being used by geologists right now as the nexus for a sensornet in a cave.