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This time I’m talking about a good Open Source software I found.When you come to electronics you eventually find micro controllers which have all the components in one chip which is in a computer,that means it has RAM,ROM ,etc.these chips become very useful when you are prototyping specially, as I found when I was designing my first robot in November 2008.But micro controllers need programming and it’s main language used to programming is assembly but currently many people use high level languages for it.However there are many brands,capabilities,types of micro controllers but i’m talking about Microchip PIC micro controllers..Although I was good in electronics I wasn’t good at programming and I was an absolute amature.Now Ktechlab come into my rescue as I was running out of time to the exibition I was planning to participate with the robot.

Ktechlab is an electronic simulator and a microcontroller IDE. Speciality of the IDE is that you can construct a program by flowcharts, and it can be converted to .asm Assembly, .c (C source code), microbe (a basic version for micro controllers) or to a hex file which can be directly programmed to the micro controller or upload the program to the micro controller.However the IDE currently support PIC micro controllers made by Microchip, however when you made the program you can simulate with the circuit simulator with the components in your design which is enebled by a component in electronic simulator called “PIC” and when you got it just load the program the box become to a chip with pins,then you can add other components to the circuit and I did my whole robot in Ktechab :),also I’ll add a new post about the robot as soon as I can.If you are good at programming then no worries, you can just ignore flowchart methord and you can debug a well as simulate the whole circuit with this!

Links for some photos,Due to my  busy life i’m unable to fix them to the post but hope you enjoy 🙂

Ktechlab snapshot 1

Ktechlab snapshot 2

Ktechlab snapshot 3

Ktechlab snapshot 4

Ktechlab snapshot 5

Ktechlab snapshot 6

Ktechlab snapshot7

About 3 weeks or a month ago I recieved a Toshiba L300-1AS laptop.See this page to get full list of specifications.After I got the laptop from in a morning first I just see work of the laptop and did some exploration.The most freaking part is that Windows Vista is worse than I expected as well as the OEM installation is full of bloatware (as i heard most people say) anyway after doing some work with it I was planning to install GNU/Linux which i had been planning even before the laptop’s arrival.So as Ubuntu is usually ok for easy installation ,etc I got a kubuntu CD (kubuntu has KDE instead of GNOME) and booted with it then for surprise X-server wasn’t working correctly,and I later found that it’s a problem with graphics driver which mean the configuring  tool didn’t got my graphics (intel) correctly so after several tries I gave up and then I got an Archlinux CD to install Archlinux which is my favourite GNU/Linux distro and installed Arch flawlessly within 15~ minutes (base installation) and I put the laptop to download the required things of me like KDE,etc and slept.On the next day’s morning I got the downloads done and configured X-server and started kde without any problem to my pleasure.On the same day I reinstalled arch but this time 64bit version which seems almost like 32bit version,however there are packages missing due to problems with the 64bit build of them ,anyhow I managed to get work done!Actually i didn’t knew that installing GNU/Linux in the laptop will be this ease as in laptops there are many manufacture specific things ,etc but i managed it! Now my laptop is free of Vista, a useless Operating System and I replaced the vista sticker with a sticker printed by me after finding the image of arch case sticker which you can buy from schwag of archlinux and did some gimping to get it to size I wanted and printed in photo quality to a sticker paper and did single side lamination.I managed to do quite impressive work with the laptop also I can prove big windows fans the power,flexibility and almost (I think no need of this)security invulnerebility of GNU/Linux!!!.Here i will add some images of the laptop when installing packages in Terminel (command line) of arch and some pictures after I got gui and I have latest snapshots which show the new release.

Before Vista removal!

After Vista removal and archlinux installed while downloading packages

After vista removal and on Archlinux

In this december i got rid of GCE (O/L) exam and I was happy these days after nonstop headaches and crazy days with one sad day on mathematics paper,(second part) and the crazy educational officers are holding the mathematics part two(second paper) again 😥 on 17th of January 2009 so the new year begins with horror.However I think the paper will be easier as the earlier paper gave us less time to work.

 I started using KDE 4.0 from about a week after it was released as i was fed up of kde 3 (vanilla,not kdemod) and those days KDE was full of bugs,including file conflicts ,library problems and many more.but after sometime (about 4 months) KDE was better and my opinion is now it can be used for daily work!

These are snapshots of my desktop , 

     

When switching from desktop (1st one ,it’s a rotating cube) to other using compiz-fusion!   (Zoom)                  

     

Some other effects. (Zoom)

     

Best Alt+Tab window switcher! (clearer than others)  (Zoom) 

     

When a window is clicked and hold (the window bar) the                                                                         transparency increase (Zoom)

I started using the computer really in grade 9 (2006)which had Win 98 after some time 98 got it’s file system damaged and i was a total geek those days and finally i was told that formatting the hard drive Will be the solution and i did in the geekiest way with imagined commands (most were success).Finally when i completed that i had to find drivers,in this way i changed to Xp and i got to know about Linux and i managed to find CDs and install Linux including OpenSuse,Ubuntu,Knoppix,etc.I didn’t have real understanding using GNU/Linux and I switched to windows until i got the ADSL Internet connection.Then I downloaded knoppix and Redhat.After that I installed redhat which unfortunately haven’t got good driver support 😦 .After this incident i was finding a person who know using GNU/Linux and found Yasith (his blog) and as a bonus I also met his twin brother Rajith (his Blog) Their suggesion was installing Debian.I installed Debian accepting their suggesion.Debian was easy to use than other distros.(when installing it in GUI) and was the most stable distro I ever met.After using debian for about 3 months (in last year) Yasith told me that he’s going to use Archlinux.After hearing that i immidiately downloaded Archlinux and started installing without a guide.That was the most craziest thing done when installing Archlinux.Finally i obtained the bginner’s guide (Beginner’s guide) and it was easy as a pie with a guide (got assistance from Yasith) still i’m running Archlinux.

Hello this is my first blog!I’m Darshana Sanjeewan Adikari a 15 year student living in Gampaha, Sri Lanka.I’m interested in almost all open source things like linux also DIY things(Do It Yourself) and some more! Unfortunately i’m unable to send a picture of me as my camera is broken down 😦 .Finally I think that you will be interested in my work.