Almond 3 in Malaysia

i bump into Almond 3 while shopping for Amazon Echo Dot. It is a smart router with a touch screen that can support Alexa. Price at below US$140 per unit (cheaper if you buy those 3 in 1 package), it can double up as a DIY home security system. With its ZigBee support, one can try out various home automation project with it.  i actually bought what it terms as Used-slight imperfection on box

I have set my unit up today, connecting it to a LAN cable. the setup is very intuitive and browsing is really a breeze. When it is idle, it will become a clock.

 

it comes with a stylus at the upper right inside corner of the unit. with touch screen it is so easy to find out the settings

next step:
link with Alex
do some DIY hardware that connect to Almond 3.

Setting up Amazon Echo Dot and Using Alexa in Malaysia

I have purchased my very first Amazon Echo Dot last week at USA. Here are my small findings about how to set it up for usage in Malaysia.

Firstly, use your pc browser to go http://alexa.amazon.com . Now, i find that i cannot do the installation from phone based app as it requires a USA based account. on my iphone i tried change my region to USA but it still doesn't work. So, do go straight to pc based to set it up.
Follow the screen instruction to setup. I choose English (USA) instead of UK. Upon successful setup, i discover only USA region is supported. this makes my calendar query (yes, it works out of the box and can detect my not so US-English slang)

I will spend some time playing with it and post more findings in coming days. If you do want to buy echo dot, it doesn't ship to Malaysia. But while if you are at US, remember to signup for prime (free trial 1 month) and ship for free. The only thing is the 2 days free shipment sometimes is not 2 days (one have to take into account weekend)

Long time no write

it has been almost 2 years since my last blog. Ever since then i have picked up trail running, take up more engineering work. But the excitement has caused me not writing any post. I have also lost interest to write on stock and believing more on passive but positive earning investment. It works, by the way. I concentrate my energy exploring other matters, mostly still engineering and outdoor related. This week i am at Boston, just a river across the famous MIT. Perhaps the location has triggered me to think again my engineering life. I have got to do a cool engineering feast. Well, the past few years i have engulfed myself with work, work, work. I might have lost my inventorism, makerism, hobbyistism. Somehow a purchase of Amazon Alexa Dot , and the subsequent related products have helped reignite my makerism. Now my mind is toying with some small projects with it. It is late night now i got to sleep, but next morning the first thing to do is to buy more Alexa Dot Echo Dot (2nd Generation) and a cool wifi router known as Almond 3Securifi Almond 3 (Pack of 3)
I will write more about them later.

Osmeda Peak to Kawasan Falls hiking with Endomodo GPS track

I spent almost 5 hours hiking from Osmeda Peak to Kawasan Falls.
i started my journey by taking a 3:58am bus from Cebu South Terminal. i got down at Dalaguete just after sunrise and took a motorbike to a starting point nearby to Osmeda Peak. The bus ride is PHP 120 while the motorbike is PHP 200 (which looks expensive to me). It was an effortless 30 minutes stroll to the peak from my motorbike drop off point, while i stopped for photographing and eating some Piaya as breakfast. The view from the peak is spectacular. A 9 year old offered himself as tour guide while i was enjoying my view from the peak. i had to decline his service as i had really planned to complete the adventure without a guide. However, the problem started there. There were many paths from the peak. i asked some campers at the peak but they also don't know how to get to Kawasan Falls. i decided to go on northern trail, only to turn back 5 minutes later as i bumped into a farmer enroute who told me Kawasan Falls was on the other direction. By the time i turned back, the camper group seems to have hire a tour guide so i was lucky to just trail them. The route follows a south western direction from Osmeda Peak. In fact i wasn't too sure whether they were heading to Kawasan Falls as initially one of the camper told me they were heading elsewhere. Anyhow, by then i have made up mind just to get down from the peak to any point on the main road. It turned out that the campers were heading Kawasan Falls direction after all, as i asked farmers along the way for direction and it seemed we were heading to the same direction. Anyhow, after some stops and some a small town, i broke off with the campers and went solo. The mountain are inhabited and i felt i could ask for direction on my way down.
i met a group of hikers from Cebu city about 3 hour on my track. They were doing without a guide and i followed them instead from there on. They were very friendly and i felt happy to have meet them.
This is my first hiking at Cebu and it won't be the last.

2 apps and one FPGA project in 24 hour

Yesterday till today is a busy but fulfilling day for me

after finished appointment with customer way till lunch time yesterday, a few more hours are spent on replying work emails.

anyhow, towards end of the day, i manage to sign and submit 2 of my previously completed BB10 webworks apps and submitted to blackberry vendor portal. 2 tricks that really has been haunting me for the past few days are,
a) we have to select QNX as the platform when we want to target BB10
b) some confusion on how to get the .bar file generated and how to submit it via vendor portal

i seriously think blackberry should improve the documentation, like tutorial step by step video
now this is the best i have found
http://hangoutindia.org/uploading-bb10-apps/

http://developer.blackberry.com/html5/documentation/signing_your_app_1920008_11.html
 
at night, i brought my kids for shopping. my daughter is having her small birthday party this Sunday
so we let her choose her gift and cake. my son piggy back on it and got a more expensive toy along

by midnight, i started to work on my Xilinx Vivado HLS certification material. i have less than 13 hours, without sleeping, to complete the material. The portion that killed the most time was creating my input c files and the self-checking test bench. i really crack my head and rush with time to come up with an averaging filter design. I have made used of MATLAB to do the modeling and creation of the c code. this is really a new small milestone which i have achieved in less than 24 hour

now, with 2.5 hour more to go for my certification, i can finally relax a bit while waiting.

blackberry webworks for BB10

try to use the webworks and load HelloWorld from my file system but fail
https://developer.blackberry.com/html5/documentation/accessing_a_local_project_in_ripple_1948645_11.html

eventually find that have to start the Ripple service from Chrome

solving the heroku windows permission denied (publickey) problem

i spent quite some time solving this heroku permission denied (publickey) error on my windows machine.

i have read this post (which i think still helpful)

http://www.gmarwaha.com/blog/2011/05/18/heroku-trouble-with-windows-and-ssh-keys/

but couldn't solve it. i have also tried to create key under different name and use heroku keys:add to add in those custom named .pub file

eventually somehow my solution is to amend my ssh key generation by overwriting the id_rsa file
so it means i simply have to accept the default key name