Flexible and Affordable Computers

     Have you always wanted a computer to learn programming, surf the internet, check e-mail, or just for fun, but can’t find the extra money? In this week’s Tech Talk I will introduce you to an affordable computer that anyone with a flat screen TV can afford. It is called a Raspberry Pi and can be found online for as little as $35.

Raspberry Pi single board computer from the 

Raspberry Pi Foundation.

     I know what you are thinking: a $35 computer can’t be that great. I personally own three of them and they work great for small everyday things, like checking your e-mail online, watching You-tube videos, viewing most websites and even word-processing. It makes a great media center device connected to your TV for watching videos and listening to online music and radio.
     First let me give you a little background on the Raspberry Pi Foundation. The foundation was formed in the UK as a charity that focused on educating people in computing and creating easier access to computers primarily for educational purposes. In 2012, the foundation launched the first version of the Raspberry Pi for $35 and found very quickly that they could not keep up with the demand. They have partnered now with several manufacturers and can do production runs of 4,000 computers a day.
     They are now in production with the latest model 3 which is roughly four times more powerful than the original system, and they have a goal of keeping the price the same, at $35 or less for every new release.  They even have the Raspberry Pi Zero which is only $5. I would say they achieved their goal as people all over the world use the Raspberry Pi to learn programming, build projects, do home automation, and even for use with industrial applications.
     The nicest feature of the Raspberry Pi is the integrated GPIO (general purpose input/output) pins and controller that let you connect and control external electronic components. This is not possible with your laptop or PC without spending several hundred dollars for additional equipment. One other thing to note is that all the software that runs on the Raspberry Pi is free.
     The Raspberry Pi 3 B+ is a single board computer system with an ARM Cortex-A53 1.4GHz processor, 1GB of memory, 300Mbps wired network connection, WiFi controller and Bluetooth. It runs the Raspbian operating system based off of the popular Debian Linux Operating system.
Over the next several weeks I will cover some Raspberry Pi projects and give you ideas on how you can learn computing with the Raspberry Pi. If you want to follow along and complete the projects, I will provide a list of things you need for the next week. For next week, you will need a Raspberry Pi, with a power supply, keyboard, mouse, HDMI cable and a TV with an HDMI port. If you have questions about what you need, you can come by The Licking Publisher@TheLickingNews.com.
News Office or email me at
     Next week’s lesson can also be done on your computer. Just download from Python.org the Python 3.7 software and follow along as I teach you how to get started with some basics of computer programming using Python. I must give a word of warning about the column over the next weeks. Programming can become very addictive; once you learn how to control the computer, you may never want to stop.  Computers, even inexpensive ones like the Raspberry Pi, can do some pretty amazing things. With a little instruction and practice, you might create the next best thing in technology.

Impacts of the Global Positioning System

     The Global Positioning System (GPS), in operation since January 6, 1980, was designed to broadcast date and satellite identification information used to determine the position of the receiver on the ground. The position of the receiver is extrapolated from the timestamp of the received signal from each of satellites that are within view of the receiver. Once the receiver knows its exact distance from at least four satellites, it can use geometry to determine its location on earth in three dimensions. As you can see, the time stamp of the signal from the satellite provides critical information for determining your location.

By United States Government

A GPS Block IIR(M) satellite.

     There is a reason an article about GPS, which many of us use regularly, is necessary at this time. In the original design of the system, a week number was included as part of the time stamp to reduce the size of the information packet from the satellite. This was done to improve the overall performance of the system. The week number was set up as a 10-bit binary number, forcing it to roll over back to zero at the end of 1,024 weeks. This happened the first time on Aug. 21, 1999, and there was minimal impact to the system. This roll-over will happen again on April 6, 2019.

     Most of the GPS receiver manufacturers understand what the roll-over means and have software verification code in place to insure that the date remains correct and the equipment can operate without issues. However, if equipment is not running a proper version of the software when the week rolls over on April 6, unpatched GPS receivers will roll back in time to August 21, 1999. This is not expected to be a problem for newer GPS receivers, but older units may experience very unexpected behavior.

     You might be wondering what the impact of a failed time stamp roll-over would be. There is a slight possibility of major impacts to the electrical grid as a result of the inaccurate time information coming from the satellites. How does GPS affect our stationary electric grid? It may seem odd, but the grid depends heavily on GPS for time synchronization of all the control systems in order to keep all the critical components of the system in sync. Currently these systems rely entirely on the timestamp signals from the GPS system that identifies the current week and second within the week. The signal is then converted to a proper date by the receiver. 

     Essentially what is going to happen on April 6 is a reset that will cause the satellites to send a signal of week 0, which is the week beginning August 21, 1999, instead of Week 1025, April 6, 2019. The receivers are responsible for making the adjustment. The electric grid uses these time signals as part of the Phasor Measurement Units and the North American Electric Reliablity Corporations’ (NERC) requirements use these Syncophasers, along with the GPS systems to get real-time snapshots of grid performance to adjust the power levels at the power plants in real-time to create a more stable electric grid. These changes in technology have greatly increased the chances of the GPS rollover event impacting our electric grid.

     Operators of these mission critical systems have been notified of the forth-coming event and been given guidelines to circumvent any problems. Notifications were sent January 25 to all power companies, airline industries, and other critical use industries.

     If you have an older model GPS receiver, now is the time to call your manufacturer and find out if you need to perform a software update, or you might just travel back in time to 1999 on Saturday.

Cecilia Payne, the unsung hero of astronomy

     Cecilia Payne was the first female astronomer to be granted a professorship at Harvard and the first female department chair. Her doctoral thesis was a study on stellar spectra. Stellar spectra refers to the spectrum of colors of light reflected from stellar objects. By measuring the stellar spectra and comparing it to the light reflected from known elements, Payne was able to determine the chemical composition of the stars.

Cecilia Helena Payne Gaposchkin (1900-1979),

astrophysicist at Harvard College Observatory,
 known for her research on stellar spectra.
 Photo from Smithsonian Institution Archives
(Acc. 90-105 – Science Service, Records, 1920s-1970s)

     Payne’s research was in direct conflict with the pre-eminent American physicists of her day. Geochemist Frank Wigglesworth Clarke had written a book comparing the strong spectral lines of the sun with his comprehensive sampling of minerals from the earth’s crust. Henry Norris Russell and Henry Rowland believed that the elemental abundances on the earth and in the Sun were nearly identical. Rowland’s opinion was because the spectra of the stars and the Sun were similar, that the relative abundance of elements in the universe was like that in the Earth’s crust.
     Payne had a stronger knowledge of atomic spectra than most astronomers at the time and disagreed with Rowland. She applied research by Meghnad Saha that indicated temperature had a large effect on the atomic spectra.  Payne used Saha’s equations to show that only one in 200 million of the hydrogen atoms in the Sun existed in the excited stat
e that gives off the signature spectra of hydrogen. As a result, she went on to show, the Sun as well as the stars were primarily formed of hydrogen and helium. The currently accepted values for elemental abundance in the Milky Way Galaxy (74% hydrogen, 24% helium, and 2% everything else) completely support her results. 
     Payne’s discovery brought a new view of the universe, much like the giants Copernicus, Newton, and Einstein. However, Payne was relatively unknown in the field. Many attribute this to the fact that she was a woman in the field at a time when women were denied many opportunities. Her obituary read in part, “Cecilia Helena Payne-Gaposchkin, a pioneering astrophysicist and probably the most eminent woman astronomer of all time, died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on December 7, 1979. In the 1920s she derived the cosmic abundance of the elements from stellar spectra and demonstrated for the first time the chemical homogeneity of the universe.”

Happy Birthday World Wide Web

     It was March, 1989, when Sir Tim Berners-Lee, a researcher at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, released a paper titled, “Information Management: A Proposal,” which outlined a method of interconnecting related documents for sharing research. His proposal was originally rejected as “Vague but exciting,” and was rejected for funding. However, Mike Sendall, Tim’s supervisor, gave him permission to work on the project unofficially.

Sir Tim, the creator of the World Wide Web, arriving at Guildhall
to receive the Honorary Freedom of the City of London.
Used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
 International license. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons)

     Tim began work on the project in September 1990 and wrote three fundamental technologies that remain the foundation of World Wide Web. The first of these is HTML, the HyperText Markup Language, which consists of “tags” that allow one document on the web to link to other documents, or even other sections of the same document. The second is the URI, a Uniform Resource Identifier, which you can think of as an address for locating a file on the web, it is also commonly referred to as a URL (Uniform Resource Locator). The third and final is HTTP, the HyperText Transfer Protocol, which is the method by which the documents are shared across a network, allowing files on different computers throughout the world to link to files on other computers.
     Tim also wrote the world’s first web browser and web page editor, as well as the first web-server. The web-server is the computer where the shared files are stored and runs the HTTP services so that you can read the files. The web-browser is the application on your computer, smart-phone, game-system, or television that lets you view the files or “pages” that are stored on the server. Tim felt that it would not be right for a single entity to control the code and processes to make the web available and convinced CERN to release the tools on a royalty-free basis, forever. This made the web the first truly open-source free software. The decision to announce the public availability of the web was made in April, 1993, and sparked a wave of creativity.
     Prior to this, work files were shared via Bulletin Board Systems (BBS), which were files stored on personal computers connected to phone lines. In order to share files, there were “known” but not well advertised phone numbers that you could dial in with your computer and get a list of other computers and files with other phone numbers. Basically you had to make several phone calls to get files from what is now called the web. Tim’s system simplified the process of knowing where to find the files and created a centralized repository of file links. In 2003, companies banded together to create a new standards committee that kept the web royalty free, and in 2014, two in five people globally were connected and using the web.
     This month we celebrate 30-years of the web. None of us involved with the web in the early 1990s ever dreamed that it would be used for online interactive gaming, teleconferences with live video and even holographic-like augmented reality systems. We were just happy we didn’t have to dial multiple phone numbers and figure out which files we wanted based on people naming things the right way. Tim’s work allowed us to separate the eight character file name from the title or content of the file so we could link documents without caring what the file was named. Many times in the early days, files on the web were called file001, file002, etc. Without HTML and the URI, we would have never been able to figure out what a file contained without reading it.
   
In reference to sharing research information, Tim said, “In those days, there was different information on different computers, but you had to log on to different computers to get at it. Also, sometimes you had to learn a different program on each computer. Often it was easier to go and ask people when they were having coffee….” Just imagine having to pick up the phone and call someone every time you needed a piece of information instead of saying, “Okay Google.”

Tiny radios in your pocket

     Did you ever wonder how that hotel room key card works, when it never enters a slot and doesn’t even have to leave the cardboard sleeve? It is a technology called a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag.  An RFID tag is really a tiny radio that can both transmit and receive data that is stored in a memory device on the card. 

Photo by Scott Hamilton RFID tag from laser printer toner
cartridge used to track cartridge life.

     The RFID tag is less than a hundredth of an inch in size, and usually has an antenna attached that is around a tenth of an inch in size. Sometimes the antenna is larger to make it possible to read the card from a longer distance. RFID tags can store digital information much like a USB drive or computer hard-drive. The real difference is that they are much smaller, cannot store very large amounts of information, and can be read and written to without a physical connection to the reader/writer.

     Most modern hotels use RFID cards to secure their rooms because they can modify the code on both the card and the lock randomly for every visitor to the hotel, greatly increasing the security of the rooms. Other uses of RFID tags are product tracking and security, inventory, and theft prevention. 

     The technology used in these products was originally created to assist large cattle ranches in tracking and identifying cattle. It is now used to track products in every industry and may eventually replace the bar code seen on products today. The main advantage of RFID is that a system can read multiple tags simultaneously without physically making contact with or seeing the tag. 

     RFID tags can make the future of grocery store checkout as simple as walking through a gate with your cart full of groceries and your debit card. The gate is a large RFID reader that will seemingly instantaneously read the tags in all the products in your cart and the tag in your bank card. The system will charge your card, e-mail your receipt, and you are on your way.

     RFID technology has been around since 1970, but only recently has become inexpensive enough to produce that it has come into wide use. The early technology used inductive coupling, which basically means that it used complicated metal coils that reacted in a specific way with a magnetic field, creating a specific current, or radio signal. This technology was difficult to manufacture and every tag had a unique shape and design. 

     The inductive designs were replaced by capacitive coupled tags, which used conductive carbon ink to create disposable tags that could be printed on-demand. This new technology used a microchip to store just 96-bits of information. This technology was not widely adopted and the company that developed it shut down in 2001.

     The latest innovations in RFID technology have combined the two methods to create a robust tag system that can either be constantly powered by an integrated battery (active); powered on demand with an integrated battery (semi-active); and powered by proximity to the reader (passive). 

     Active and semi-active tags are the most expensive and used to track expensive equipment like railroad cars and truckloads of inventory. They can be read from more than twenty feet away and are not considered disposable. When a product connected to an active RFID tag, like a railway car, is retired, the tag is moved to another product.

     Passive RFID tags are used in everything from your toll road pass sticker on your car windshield and your hotel room key to the bottle of shampoo you bought last week at the store. The tags can either be write-once-read-many, or read-write tags. You can get applications for your smartphone that can read, store, and simulate RFID tags. If you want to play around with RFID technology, old hotel room keys can usually be rewritten with card writer applications. You can then use them to automatically start applications on your phone, like turning on Pandora when it detects the tag in your car. You can also copy the RFID tag from your room key to your cell phone and use your phone as a room key. RFID technologies are coming en masse to our lives and I leave it to you to decide if this is good or bad.

Augmented Reality

     One of the uses of QR-codes mentioned in a previous article was Augmented Reality (AR). Anybody who has played a video game or watched a movie has experienced Virtual Reality (VR), where we get to experience a world that does not exist in reality. AR is the next step by placing virtual objects within the real world.
     AR uses a video camera and display to overlay digital content like videos, 3-D models, images, and text over the real world. It is still under development, and multiple engineers and technology companies are focused on improving the technology; but that does not mean it is not being used today.
     One of the most popular and well-known uses of AR today is for interactive game play. The most popular of these games is “Pokémon Go,” developed and published by Niantic for iOS and Android devices. A close second is the IKEA app that lets you see IKEA furniture in your room.
     Leap, one of the top companies in AR, produced a video of a whale leaping out of the water in the center of a school gymnasium full of high school students. They were showing in the video what a user of their Magic Leap AR glasses would have seen, as the students reacted on cue without seeing a thing. You can see the video on YouTube. 
     The ultimate goal of AR is to allow us to interact in new ways with our world. It may seem that AR is just a toy, but it is being used today for advancing research in medicine, weather forecast, chemistry, biology, archeology, and many other fields. During Hurricane Harvey, the National Weather Service used augmented reality to show the impact of the pending tidal surge by superimposing the simulated water level behind a reporter on the city streets. Sometimes seeing what a seven-foot storm surge looks like in your neighborhood helps convince you to evacuate. 
     AR is heavily used in movie and video production today, but it is not as new as many seem to believe. The first AR device was created by Ivan Sutherland and Bob Sproull in 1968. It was a head-mounted display called “The Sword of Damocles” and displayed primitive computer graphics. It’s hard to believe that AR was invented before the first videogame, “Pong,” in 1969. 

You will need a QR-Code reader application installed on your device to enjoy the example above.  Simply scan the image with your QR-Code reader and allow the website application to access your camera. You will see a 3-D globe floating over the image.    Along with this article is a picture with a QR-code; it will allow you to experience AR. It takes you to a website that runs a local script to overlay a floating 3-D picture over the image. Hold your phone sideways while viewing the image. Although the website does ask for access to your camera, it is not sending any video to the site. It is just using the camera to show the real world behind the virtual object.

 
It will be a long time before AR is widely used in newsprint media, but you may see The Licking News try it from time to time.

What is that strange square?

QR-code link to www.thelickingnews.com

   You may have seen these on products in the store, posters advertising concerts and events, or in magazines and newspapers. They are called a Quick Response Code, or QR code, for short. It was designed in 1994 in Japan for use in the automotive industry. The QR code is an improvement upon the standard bar code, which is typically used for marking p

roducts with a unique identifier often used for pricing and inventory control. The standard bar code can store two sets of 6-digits and is limited to number based information. The QR code takes this a step further.

The internal structure of a version 7 QR code
showing the various functional elements.

     A QR code consists of black squares arranged in a square grid on a white background, which is readable by a camera, like the one in your cell phone, and processed using an error correcting computer algorithm to interpret the image. Data is stored both vertically and horizontally within the image and can be used to store any type of data, not just alphanumeric data like product names and expiration dates, but machine readable data like computer code, and in extreme cases entire documents.
     QR codes are beginning to become a standard in advertising because of the ease of sharing very large amounts of information in a very small space through the use of new smartphone technology. Typically, a smart phone is used as a QR code scanner with one of many QR code scanner applications to display the code and convert it to a human readable form, such as a website URL. The QR code makes it easier for print advertisers to connect with their customers because of the ease of use connecting print media to internet content. You will begin to see QR codes in The Licking News from time to time.
     A QR code can store up to 7,089 characters, which is larger than this article. Anyone can generate their own QR codes with free software available online as well as utilizing website-based QR-code generators. One of my favorites is https://www.qrcode-monkey.com which was used to generator the QR code that links to our website. You can overlay logos, adjust colors and customize the shape of the code as long as you keep the four corner blocks that store the information on how to decode the image, and the logo does not cover more than one fourth of the image.
    QR codes can be designed to send you to un-safe websites and install software on your device. You should never scan a QR code from an unknown source, just like you should never follow a link in an e-mail from a stranger. Risks include linking to dangerous web sites with browser exploits, enabling the microphone, camera, GPS, and then streaming those feeds to a remote server; analysis of sensitive data (passwords, files, contacts, transactions); and sending email/SMS/IM messages or DDOS packets as part of a botnet, corrupting privacy settings, stealing identity, and even containing malicious logic themselves such as JavaScript or a virus. These actions could occur in the background while the user is only seeing the reader open a seemingly harmless web page.
     You should also always use trusted QR code scanner software on your phone or tablet. A couple of options are the “QR Code Reader” by TWMobile for Android and “QR Code Reader and Scanner” by ShopSavy, Inc. for the iPhone. There are several out there to choose from, but be sure to read the reviews before installing one.

A New Thing

This week I started something new.  It took a little bit to get the first few posts up on the site, but I have started writing a local newspaper column called TechTalk.  Tech Talk is currently published in The Licking News, a local newspaper in the city of Licking, MO.  The tech articles from this publication will be published here on a regular basis, at least a week behind the print edition of the paper.  I would really like to encourage you to subscribe and help keep the home town paper locally owned and operated.  Your subscription helps more than you realize in keeping your hometown paper alive and well.

A New Life

So much has changed in my life since I last posted to this blog that I am not even sure I am the same person any more.  We are no longer in the children's ministry at Licking Pentecostal Holiness church.  We have not been there for a few years now.  We followed the new path the Lord had for us and began attending a very small community church closer to our home. "Happy Hollow Full Gospel Mission".  In the four years that we have been there, not only have we changed, but so has the little church we came to love. 

We have dropped the Happy Hollow from our name and are now simply "Full Gospel Mission",  we are going through some rough times at the church and hoping to see some new growth.  We just completed an addition to the church for new Sunday school rooms and a fellowship hall and then we began to have members leave, for various reasons.  Some because God called them on to other places, others because of personal reasons.  For now, we are staying and waiting.

I also have a new job, I am no longer at Missouri University of Science and Technology, but I am working from home for a French based International Company where I design High Performance Computing systems and travel to trade shows, conferences, and customer sites all over North America. 

Last summer we purchased a 46 acre plot of woodlands in central Missouri and began build an off-grid A-frame home.  We have been working on it as much as the weather will permit.  We are building it without debt, so it is taking a lot longer than we would like, but when it is done we will own it free and clear.  I should be installing our battery system for the solar panels in the coming weeks, which will give us permanent power instead of living off a generator.

I am planning on post a lot more regularly, not only about my personal life, but about ministry, work, and living off grid.  You might say the site is going to become the ramblings of a man with too much to do, but wants to remember it all and share it with others.

Please let me know if you are following my blog by dropping me a line in the comments.

God Bless,
Scott

Busy Life

I have been really busy lately with ministry, work, and kids. I have not posted anything to my own blog in months and apologies to anyone who was regularly reading. You can check out our ministry blog and http://lphcgeckos.blogspot.com.