555 timer based water level controller

There is a sump in ground floor where water is stored and an over head tank from where water is supplied to the entire building. A motor is used to pump the water from sump to overhead tank whenever water in the tank is 'empty'. The motor is switched OFF once the overhead tank is 'full'. If the sump is 'empty' motor should not be turned ON as it causes 'dry run' of the motor. Manually monitoring the above conditions to operate the motor could be painstaking. Hence an automatic controller system is built to switch the motor ON and OFF as per the conditions above. The controller also provides a 'manual' mode to operate the motor manually.

A simple, single chip (555 timer) circuit can automate the operation. Such a 'controller system' will need following:

1. Sensors which can detect the water levels in tank and sump.
2. An electronic circuit (herein referred to as controller) which turns the motor ON and OFF based on the sensor information.

Two types of sensors are used for this system:

• NO(Normally Open) sensor - opens the circuit when water is below the sensor level and closes the circuit when water is above the sensor level.
• NC (Normally Closed) sensor - closes the circuit when water is below the sensor level and opens the circuit when water is above the sensor level.

Two types of sensors are used to avoid a NOT logic that will be otherwise required in the circuit. The details of the sensors are provided at the end of this blog.

Controller requires following 3 sensors to be installed:

1. tank_low: This is a ‘NO’ type sensor installed at a lower height in the tank to detect the 'empty' level of the tank. This sensor is connected to Pin 2 of 555 timer. When water in overhead tank falls below this sensor, the sensor circuit is 'open' and motor is turned ON. (Refer to controller circuit diagram).
2. tank_high: This is also a ‘NO’ type sensor installed at an higher level in the tank to detect the 'full' condition. This sensor is connected to Pin 6 of 555 timer. When water in overhead tank reaches above this sensor, the sensor circuit is 'closed' and motor is turned OFF.
3. sump_low: This is a ‘NC’ type sensor installed at a lower height in the sump to detect the 'dry run' condition. This sensor is connected to Pin 4 of 555 timer. When water in the sump falls below this sensor, the sensor circuit is 'closed' and motor is turned OFF. Since this sensor is connected to the Reset pin (Pin-4) of 555 timer, the motor is turned OFF when water is below this sensor irrespective of the water level in the tank. Only when water is above this sensor, 555 timer is out of reset and hence will respond to the information from tank sensors.

Advantages of this controller system:

• Single chip (555 timer and some resistors are required) solution and hence low maintenance.
• Inexpensive as both the sensors and the controller circuit is built with inexpensive parts.
• The circuit can be powered by the AC mains (using a 5V DC adaptor). When AC power is off, circuit is also switched off and no current is drawn to un-necessarily latch the electro mechanical relay
• The operation of sensors is independent of conductivity of the liquid (here water). Hence this system can be used for any liquid level controller systems

Sensor mechanim:

Sensor is made up of a wooden base, which can float on water and two sensor leads that are connected to controller circuit. A metal strip is attached to wooden base as shown in pictures below. In 'NO' type sensors, when water is below the sensor level, wooden base floats below the sensor leads and hence the sensor circuit is open. When water level reaches or crosses sensor level, wooden base floats and touches the sensor leads closing the sensor circuit. In 'NC' type sensor, wooden base is mounted above the sensor leads as shown in the pictures below and hence the operation is reversed with respect to 'NO' type.

Poem about me!

Like us mortals, you see him in the day,
At his desk, working away,
But once from office he leaves,
Gets on his wheels,
And grips the handle rod,
What to say, he FEELS LIKE GOD

(by Parikshit Basu, my collegue at Ittiam, on my completion of 5 yrs @ Ittiam)

Gas trouble! :)

No, I am actually talking about domestic LPG gas :).

I recently applied for an LPG connection at a HP distributor in my locality. According to the rules, you need to pay deposit for cylinder and regulator only while getting a new connection. However, all the distributors, irrespective of the company - HP, Indane and others, force you to buy accessories like lighter, gas hose, stove etc. This particular distributor insisted me on buying pressure cooker, iron box, mixer, apron etc! Since I had all these appliances already at my home I didn't agree to purchase any of them. I was promptly denied a connection though I had all the required documents like ration card! They even said its company rule and they have to follow. Please note that the purchase of accessories is OPTIONAL irrespective of what they say.

Since I was in no hurry to get a connection, I thought I will try some alternatives. I wrote to HP on their website. To my surprise, they replied in less than 24 hours! They also me asserted that those things were indeed optional. You can check the complaint and reply from HP at http://jihaan.hpcl.co.in/booking/Search.aspx. (click 'Track complaints' at bottom left and enter the reference number: 09019740 and email id: ranjith(dot}kagathi(at}gmail.com. You might have to do this twice some times as their website seems to have some bugs :)) I showed the print out of the mail communication to the distributor and they sanctioned the connection without any more hastles immediately!

So if you are planning to apply for a gas connection, don't pay any extra fees for unnecessary accessories.

Lost a 10 years companion

I dedicate this post to a recently lost companion...

I was 16 when I first saw you,
To be frank, I didn't fall in love with you at first sight,
But I did like you for what you had to offer me.


I was a bit shy to go around with you in the beginning,
My friends and relatives did comment about us,
Some of them even wondered I was a bit too young for such things,
But I desperately wanted you to be with me.


Very soon you became an inevitable part of my life,
You were around me all the time,
I learned to see the world through your eyes,
In fact, without you, I wouldn't have seen the world the way it was.


You have shared quite a few moments with me,
you have seen me rising my eyebrows at life's surprises,
you have silently observed my tears at times.


I never gave you the due respect you deserved, you never complained,
I took you for granted, you took utmost care of me,
I broke up with you for few months and then reconciled,
you accepted me as though nothing had happened.
But, I hope I took enough care of you for you to take enough care of me.


As all the good things come to an end,
Its the time we separate,
'May you rest in peace'...
Adios amigo...


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.:) :)

Preparations for engagement

Since marriages are made in heaven, we decided to arrange the engagement ceremony at Bangalore. The most important decision towards engagement ceremony is whether to have it in the first place! On enquiring various relatives and friends, I only got mixed responses. There were many opinions about the scale and timing of this ceremony - should be a very private affair with only close relatives attending, should be held at bigger scale only if there is long gap between engagement and wedding, shouldn't be too early before wedding etc. Eventually my sister's choice to have it and groom's preference of having it in Bangalore overrode all the survey polls :) Once the decision to have engagement ceremony is finalized, there are only few things to figure out - do you want to book hall separately and give away catering contract or do you want to book hall in a hotel who can also serve food. I chose the latter as it will be easy to manage the logistics that way and also I might get a better deal. And since most of the hotels are very particular about maintaining their reputation, you can be assured of good service. Checklist for engament is: Hall, food catering, decoration (stage and entrance), photography/videography, engagement rings, tamboolam, gifts to bride/groom, gifts to guests (optional).

Preparations for sister's wedding

It all started last week when my sister okayed a proposal after much thought. My parents had already decided affirmatively and were just waiting for my sister's decision. Thus a majority vote was achieved in the family, if not consensus, towards the decision. And as per previous understanding, this was sufficient to move the bill :)
A lot of preparations towards the wedding had to be made and being trained in IT industry for last 4 years, I was naturally mapping the whole affair to a project that I had to execute. There are T0s, project phases (engagement, reception, muhurtham), checklists, budgeting (BoM cost :)) etc. I was surprised to find a lot of checklists and wedding planner tools available out there on internet! The wedding preparations will occupy my mind space for few months to come and I will keep blogging my experience related to this.

Retreiving lost e-mail contacts

Last month I faced some trouble with my yahoo webmail account. There was a virus attack in my mail box and it sent some random product promotional mail to all the contacts in my contact list. This was lesser of the problem as I only had to send a follow up mail cautioning every one in my contact list about the virus attack. But after a week or so, all my contacts were deleted from my contact list! I had never backed up my contacts and hence this was a jolt to me. However, I was lucky to find a copy of the mail sent by the virus in my sent items folder. This mail had all my contacts in the 'To' list. There were well beyond a 100 contacts which I had to manually enter in my address book. Yahoo supports contact imports only from specific formats like .csv etc. The problem was to enter the contacts from the sent mail to .csv file so that all the contacts can be imported at one shot. So I used the following trick:

1. I copy-pasted everthing under 'To' list to a text file. This will have one long line of all the contact names, there mail ids with < > and separated by a comma
2. Opened this text file in Textpad, a very useful text editor.
3. I had to get all the contacts in vertical order in a column format to be copied into a .csv file. So I recorded a macro in Textpad to search for comma and replace it with Enter key. Now I played the macro until all the contacts moved into new lines. This resulted in vertical (column aligned) ordering of my contacts. (Note that you can not use Find/Replace function to replace any character with new line!)
4. Some slight adjustments had to be done for which I copied this ordered contacts into a Microsoft excel and used 'Text to columns' function to achieve them same.
5. Exported my contacts from yahoo as .csv which gave a blank csv file as all the contacts were deleted. Copied the ordered contacts into this .csv file and imported into yahoo contacts. Boom!!! My contacts were back :)

Line following robo... mooshik

Though it has been 3+ years since I have passed out of the college, the hang over still continues. I was very enthusiastic about building circuits and participating in various hardware contests in the college. One visit to techfest at IIT-B in my 3rd year engg, changed my perception of these hardware contests. I was particularly fascinated by the robotics - maze solver. After that I tried to build a robo in my college but didn't succeed. The opportunity came last month when we organized a techfest in Ittiam (the organization I work at). I teamed up with my colleague Anil Ram who shares similar interests and in fact had successfully build a robo in college days. After spending few weekends on it we finally could build Mooshik - the line following robo. Video below

ಪಠಾಣ್ ಬ್ರದರ್ಸ್

ಯೂಸುಫ್ ಮತ್ತು ಇರ್ಫಾನ್ ಪಠಾಣ
ನೋಡಿದಿರಾ ಅವರ ಅಮೋಘ ಆಟಾನ

ಬಾರಿಸುತ್ತ ಚೆಂಡನ್ನು ದಣ ದಣಾ ದಣ...
ಕೊಟ್ಟರು ಸಿಂಹಳೀಯರಿಗೆ ಭಾರಿ ಕಾಟಾನ

ಭಗವಂತ ಅವರಿಗೆ ಎಂಥ Talent ಕೊಟ್ಟಾನ...
ಮುಂದುವರಿಸಲು ಭಾರತದ ಗೆಲುವಿನ ಪರಿಪಾಟಾನ

PS: composed after Pathan brothers led India to a miraculous win against Sri Lanka in T20 match on 10th Feb 09.

MANCALA - new game addiction

First time after a long time I am addicted to a game - Mancala, the ancient board game from Africa. It resembles to a very popular board game from South India (look at the pictures for hint) Mancala is a simple-easy-to-learn-fun game and of course there are computer games available. I have a installed a free game of Mancala from app store on my iPhone and very quickly realized that its an awsome game. For those who can't resist temptation will definitely fall for it and thats how I am addicted to it. More over, the creators of this app on iPhone, SMB Consultants, have provided an option to play on network. Any time you login to internet through this app, you will find hundreds of insane people out there to challenge you. The server does a very good job of searching the next available network player for you and arranges the match. All the 'moves' are displayed real time on either players' console. And with a decent internet connection, you'll only love this game and the app.
The next time you learn this game and master it against computer and looking for tougher opponent, login to the internet through this app... my internet name will be same as my blog 'adhyetha' and I will make sure I will make you run for your money :)

मेरी हकीकत

मैं शायर तो नहीं... आशिक भी नहीं...
आपके हुस्न के दीवाना भी नहीं...
नाचीज़ तो बिलकुल नहीं... आपका पुजारी भी नहीं...
आपको सबसे ज़्यादा चाहनेवाला भी नहीं...
आपकी यादों के गुलाम भी नहीं...
मैं तो एक झूठा हूँ ... और बस झूठ ही लिखा करता हूँ।

ಒಂದು ದನಿ

'ಅವಳ ದನಿ ನನಗೆ ಸಂಜೀವನಿ' -
ಇದು ಮದುವೆಯ ಮುಂಚಿನ ಮಾತು...
ಮದುವೆಯ ನಂತರ ಏನಾದೀತು?....
'ಎಲ್ಲದಕ್ಕೂ ಅವಳದ್ದೇ ದನಿ,
ನಾನು ಹೆಸರಿಗೆ ಮಾತ್ರ ದಣಿ' !

ಕಾಡಿನ ಪಾಡು

ಸಿರಿನಾಡು, ಗಂಧದ ನಾಡು, ನಮ್ಮ ಕರುನಾಡು...
ರಸಋಷಿಗಳ ಬೀಡು ಈ ಸುಂದರ ನಾಡು,
ಆದರೆ ಮರೆಯಾಗುತಿದೆ ತೀವ್ರದಲಿ ಎಲ್ಲ ಕಾಡು,
ಹುಡುಕಿ ನೋಡು - 'ಎಲ್ಲಿ ಕಾಡು?'

ಬೆಂದಕಾಳೂರು ಮುಂದೊಮ್ಮೆ ಆಗಬಹುದು ಬೆಂದ-ಕಾಡು...
ಎಲ್ಲರಿಗೂ ಒಂದೇ ಚಿಂತೆಯಿದೆ - ತಮ್ಮ ತಮ್ಮ ಹೊಟ್ಟೆ ಪಾಡು,
ಎಚ್ಚರಗೊಳ್ಳದಿದ್ದರೆ, ನಾನೀಗಲೆ ಹೇಳುವೆ ನೋಡು -
ಬಹುಬೇಗ ಎದುರಿಸಬೇಕಾದೀತು - ಸುಡುಗಾಡು...

ಮೊದಲ ಕವನ?

ಮಿತ್ರನೊಬ್ಬ ಬರೆದನೊಂದು ಸುಂದರ ಕವನವ
ಓಡಿಬಂದು ಜಂಭದಿಂದ ತೋರಿಸಿದನು ನನಗವ

ನಾನೇನು ಕಡಿಮೆ... ಅವನದೇನು ಗರಿಮೆ...
ನಾನೂ ಬರೆವೆನು, ನನಗೂ ಉಂಟು ಹಿರಿಮೆ
ಪುಸ್ತಕಗಳನ್ನು ನಾನೂ ಓದಿರುವೆ ಹತ್ತಾರು...
ಅಲ್ಲದೆ ಕನ್ನಡದಲ್ಲಿ ನನಗೆ ಅಂಕ ತೊಂಬತ್ತಾರು

ಅಂದುಕೊಂಡು ಬರೆಯಲು ಕುಳಿತೆನು ಮಂಡೆಯೂರಿ
ಯೋಚಿಸುತ್ತಾ... ಮೆಲ್ಲಗೆ ಮೆಲಕುತ್ತಾ... ಕಡ್ಲೆಪುರಿ,
ನೋಡಬೇಕಿತ್ತು ನನ್ನ ಮೊದಲ ಯತ್ನದ ಪರಿ...
ಆಗುತ್ತಿತ್ತು ಖಂಡಿತ ನಿಮಗೆ ಕಿರಿ-ಕಿರಿ

ಒಂದು ಪದ... ಎರಡು ಪದ... ಕಾಟು-ಗೀಚು...
ಕ್ಷಣಕೊಮ್ಮೆ ನೋಡಿದೆನು ಟೈಂ ಎಷ್ಟೆಂದು ವಾಚು
ನನ್ನ ಕೈಯಿಂದ ಹತಗೈದ ಕಾಗದಗಳೆಷ್ಟು...
ಕವನ ಮುಂದುವರೆದಿದ್ದು ಮಾತ್ರ ಅಷ್ಟಕ್ಕಷ್ಟು

ಕೊನೆಗೆ ಹುಡುಕಲಾರಂಭಿಸಿದೆ ನೆಪವನ್ನು
ತಪ್ಪಿಸಿಕೊಳ್ಳಲು ಕವನ ಬರೆಯುವುದನ್ನು...
ನಂಬಿದರೆ ನಂಬಿ ಬಿಟ್ಟರೆ ಬಿಡಿ:
"ಮುರಿಯಿತು ನನ್ನ Lucky ಪೆನ್ನು !"

Parasailing

Somehow I have managed to spend the first month of this year with my new year resolutions intact. Parasailing came as a pleasant surprise when I found the event on BMC (bangalore mountaineering club's) portal. Along with Mayank, Ravish and his friends, some 6 of us finally reached Hoskote lake (dried up lake now good for parasailing kind of events :)). Few pictures from there...

New Visa ad

Recently I learnt that the new visa ad with a guy dancing in a weird fashion is inspired by a real story. In fact the guy featured in the ad is Matt Harding who had traveled places and had video graphed dancing in front of world famous monuments. He became so popular that VISA used the concept for their ad and asked him to feature in the video. His 3rd video in the series has gotten 17 million hits on youtube... embedded here for your quick reference...

Lalbagh flower show

I am repeatedly concerned about the growing population of India in general and Bangalore in particular (though, ofcourse, I am part of the problem :)) Look at the very long queue infront of the famous glass house at Lalbagh to witness The Republic day flower show in the picture above.

I couldn't enjoy much of the flower show because of the mad crowd there. Few of the interesting things I could capture on my iPhone below...

MTR, resembles a refugee camp!

Yesterday I visited MTR along with my uncle and cousin to have lunch . Just in accordance with Murphy's law we reached there bingo during the 45 minutes interval between 2.45pm and 3.30pm. Since it was only 20 minutes to reopen, we thought we'll spend time in the adjacent MTR sandwich and icecream parlor helping ourselves with some pastries and fruit juices. At 3.30 we decided to go to MTR to have evening snacks and this is what we saw infront of the closed doors of Mavalli-Tiffin-Rooms.


And once gates opened, people started rushing inside to occupy the ground floor and first floor tables. In no time the waiting hall in the first floor was crowded and ground was no different. See the picture of the waiting hall below.

Overcrowded, hungry people, people waiting for their name to be called to get food reminded me of refugee camps I had watched on TV. We were one of the first to get table reserved so comfortably got a place. But not all were lucky. We were sitting close to the doorway and I closely watched the people entering the dining hall after their names were called by the 'commanding officer' at the entrance who allots tables. I could distinctly notice a victory smile on almost everyone's face whenever they were let inside. There was an incident that one senior citizen was asked to change tables a couple of times by the 'commanding officer' and the old man really got irritated and left the place without eating anything. I pity him. It was really disgusting the way people were fighting to find a place inside.

I don't understand this: on a Saturday afternoon at 3.30 one has to wait once outside the gate to be openend and once inside the waiting hall for mere snacks - dosa, idli, coffe which will be served under not so great ambience (ambience at MTR is neither modern nor retro, its just has been left as it was few decades back 'coz there was no need to change anything as there are enough maniacs to keep the MTR hype going), by not so warm attendants, for not so reasonable costs and which anyway doesn't taste any divine. The food at MTR tastes good but then there are so many other places in bangalore, even in and around MTR where you get similar or better food. Since taste is subjective, there are these maniacs and fundamentalists claiming that taste at MTR is the superior most. With all due respect to the inventors of Rava Idli (MTR invented rava idli when the country was facing shortage of rice which was the main ingredient of the regular idli), I deny that claim. It definitely doesn't taste divine to attract this kind of attention. As my cousin correctly pointed out... "jana maruLo, jaatrhe maruLo"...

Meeting Raghu Dixit

Guess what, I met Raghu Dixit at Coffee Day, Cunningham road last thursday. I follow RD on twitter and saw his post asking if anyone wanted passes for his next concert at Bangalore. I was quick to respond and he asked me to pick it up from him personally at CCD. I went along with BK and it turned out to be a drama.
Because of my previous experience in RD's concert at Swagath Garuda, I went to CCD expecting that a lot of crowd around RD . To my utter surprise, there were only 3-4 guys along with RD and Gaurav. Me and BK collected passes from RD himself and then started chatting casually. I was asking all sorts of stupid questions like how long does RD typically take to compose a song/tune, what is the starting point for composing a tune etc. RD has a gr8 sense of humour and he puts it in a college kannada lingo that I am very much familiar with. Yes that includes #!@% words as well :) The turning point was when BK asked when will RD release his next album. RD didn't seem to be planning any as his first album didn't fetch him good money as more people preferred music piracy over purchasing the album. RD threw a googly at BK by asking whether BK has bought his album. The obvious answer was 'no' and RD started blasting people like BK who claim to be fans of RD but doesn't buy his album and how RD is pissed off with such people. Since RD was putting it in a very casual - humorous - college kannada, I was enjoying the new RD avatar I was unaware of. But BK took it very personally and was visibly upset. I was quite embarrassed with this situation and acted quickly by deciding to leave. We shook hands with RD and Guarav and bid good bye. While leaving I asked RD whether we could take picture with him which he promptly denied. BK got angry and left the place in a hurry. To end the scene on a funny note, I asked RD whether he will take a picture with us if we bought his album :) He said yes, and I have already placed an online order for his album. And also has left a comment in RD's blog about it asking for my well-deserved-picture with him. Lets see if he replies...

Twitter v/s blogging

I have been twittering a lot recently and that has taken a toll on my blogging. I twitter a lot now and blog a lot less. This blog is about twitter so as to create a harmony between twitter and my blogging :)

What is twitter?
Twitter is a concept of micro-blogging where you need to answer 1 simple question - 'what are you doing now?' how many ever number of times you want. But only one constraint - your text has to be limited to 140 characters (each alphabet, number or punctuation is a character) per post, hence the name micro blogging.

How is answering a question related to blogging?
Though twitter expects you to answer just 'what are you doing now?', people have started posting anything and everything to that question. Sometimes I just post a T-shirt quote that catches my attention at a traffic signal. There are few news agencies which post news highlights as and when they get to know about it. So its fast growing as blogging where people instantly post their views.

How do I micro-blog?
Simple. Create an account at twitter.com. You can now start 'post'ing or sending your posts to your account via various channels -
1. Internet: Login to your account and post a message just like your blog
2. SMS : Register your mobile number with twitter.com and associate it with your account. Whenever you send a text message from your mobile to twitter number, the text message is immediately posted on your account
3. Internet: There are various websites, widgets, iPhone applications etc which provide you alternate ways of posting to your account.

'Twitter' has become synonymous to micro-blogging and also since its quicker to pronounce twitter than micro-blogging, 'twitter' is being used as a verb for posting. All the posts to twitter.com are also referred to as 'twitter-feeds' (similar to RSS feeds), 'tweets' and so on. I guess english is getting richer every day with new words :)

How does my friends read my micro-blog?
Just like any other blog, you can share an url of your micro blog that your friends can visit to see all your posts till date. For example, my twitter url is http://twitter.com/ranjith_ka (or www.ranjithka.com/twitter) Alternately, your friends can also create an account with twitter and start 'following' your twitter posts. Similarly, you can also follow anyone's tweets. The tweets of all your friends you are following will be displayed in a consolidated, chronologically ordered list for your reference. So you dont have to really visit all your friends' twitter pages to see their posts. This is very similar to RSS, and hence called Twitter-feeds.

140 characters are too less to express myself.
You can post a text larger than 140 characters but it will be posted as separate posts each of maximum length 140 characters. Its exactly similar to the SMS on your mobile phone with certain character limit.
Believe me, ever since I have started twittering, my communication has improved and I am able to express most of my views in less than 140 characters. Twitter helps you in refining your communication skills :)

What if I want to post more than text?
Twitter allows you to do lot more than posting text. You can upload a picture for your profile. You can also upload any pictures on twitpic.com and give a link to those pics in your tweets. Also if you ever want to share a really long hyper-link in twitter, you can create a 'tiny url' out of the hyper-link which is actually a compressed version of the really long link and share it in twitter so that you have space to accomodate in 140 characters.

Is there any other cool stuff I can do with twitter?
Yes. There are already a lot of widgets, applications on mobile phones developed for twitter with which you can do a lot of cool stuff. If you are a geek and want to do something on your own, twitter has provided an API with which you can build applications. This API is free of cost unlike the iPhone SDK.

Which is better - twittering or blogging?
I haven't yet figured that out. I might very well never be able pick one of them over the other. But I will list certain advantages and disadvantages of twitter compared to blogging.

Advantages of twitter:
1. Its instantaneous and you need less time to post
2. Since the character limit is well within SMS limit, you can just SMS to twitter
3. Lot of your friends will go through your twitter messages than blogging because its quicker to go through smaller posts (notice the length of this article :))
4. You can choose to get twitter updates from your friends as SMS to your mobile. So you'll always be updated about whereabouts of your friends, what they are doing, eating, thinking etc (ofcourse, provided they twitter :))
5. It can be a really good travelogue
6. Can be your online diary which you can update many times a day with small pieces of info instead of a consolidated post before you go to sleep

Disadvantages:
1. You can not provide a lot of information in tweets. For example I can not post an article like this in tweets
2. I can nott write a nice travelogue with accompanied photos on a single page
3. You will get addicted to twitter very quickly :)

Some tips:
In India, where public WiFi is still a dream and internet on mobile phone is expensive, the best way to twitter is through SMS. But SMS to twitter number in india (5566595) will be charged Rs. 3 per SMS. There are some websites which give you an alternate number to which you can post tweets. They in turn post those tweets to your twitter account using the twitter API. However, you need to share your twitter account details with them so that they can post to your account. So be careful. I have an account with www.vakow.com which gives me a local number to send SMS to.


Follow me at www.ranjithka.com/twitter. Happy twittering.

My new year resolution...

Being an engineer dealing with audio-video media on a daily basis, to me the word resolution, almost always, means the display resolution in pixels :) I don't believe in new year resolutions. Because a year is quite a long period to plan for :) So, I would rather prefer resolutions at micro levels - new month's resolution, new week's resolution or even better - new day's resolution. However, since the talk of the town is about new year's resolutions I thought of listing here few things on my mind.

To do list: frequent travels, one long break from work, cycling, photography, yoga, regular blogging :), atleast 1 good deed a day, atleast 1 new thing a week.

Not to do list: Not to regret if any of the above is not achieved this year :)

Since I have revealed my list publicly, I am hoping I will feel compelled to achieve a good number of these this year :)

A visit to innovative film city bangalore

After a lot of (mis)communication, some 7 of us finally set out to visit innovative film city (ifc) near bangalore. Its located near Bidadi off the Bangalore-Mysore highway. There is a deviation to film city at around 3 kms from the Wonder-la gate. We initially planned to be there before the gates open at around 10.30 am. Since we had planned the visit on a Saturday, the morning started for most of us at around 10 am. We almost cancelled the plan since we were late according to our plan. But finally the enthusiasm overtook our lazyness. I had stayed back at Harish-Adi-Rajashekar-Mudit's (HARM) place previous night after celebrating Rajashekar's birthday at Leela palace. Varun, Modi and Ravish came over, everyone had some breakfast at HARM and we were all ready on bikes and the car by 11.30.
The Mysore road was as usual busy till the Rajarajeshwari gate and then it was quite smooth drive. After witnessing a road block due to a very strange accident (we still are not sure how the accident could have occured), we finally arrived the the ifc at around 12.30. We had only an afternoon to enjoy everything that ifc boasts about. There are two kind of entry tickets to ifc
1. The basic Rs.50 ticket which is just the entry and tickets have to be bought inside for individual museum/activity
2. The VIP pass Rs.699 which includes the ticket price for all the entries inside.
Without any second thought we opted the 1 st option of entry only and selectively purchased the entry tickets inside.

After a couple of snaps at the entrance we entered what is known as the main street. Its supposed to be a shopping street but at the time being only Bata showroom is up. We had read the reviews of ifc before hand so we knew what exactly to visit - wax museum, 4D theatre, mirror maze, Ripley's belive it or not (which was unfortunately closed for maintenance that day). Wax museum was good with most of the statues better than what we had expected it would be. More or less real life sized (we weren't sure of the real life size of those celebrities :)) You can have a look at these pictures on my online photo album
The next was to watch the 4D movie. Most of liked it, Modi didn't feel it was worth 100 bucks though. The 4th dimension is there are nozzles around to spray water, release air/smoke. Harish and Adi even felt some tickling tentacles near their legs. Others didnt feel it... we finally concluded it was because of our thick trousers that we didn't feel it. If you want to feel every 4th Dimension, a thin trouser is recommended :) Overall, its a must watch. There are some good video games in the same complex.
Had some lunch at the food court - there are options though not very good - udupi anand bhavan, pizza corner, some kabaab centres, north indian thali etc. Had a filling lunch and it was time for the mysterious mirror maze.
We had read very good comments about the mirror maze and hence had saved it for the last. It was indeed good. Ravish suggested hide-and-seek and it turned out to be good fun. Not very easy to distinguish between real and virtual images. The best at IFC.
We didn't have anything else planned but had around 2 hours to spend. Thats when we spotted the roller skates indoor stadium. We quickly decided to give it a try... Modi opted out and without any choice he had to gaurd all our belongings while rest of us were in the arena! We were all geared up in next 15 minutes will rollers, helmet, knee cap etc. As soon as I stood up after wearing all the gear I fell down (I was on rollers :)) The next 1 hour was fun. Varun and Adi had previous experience and were all over the place. Harish fell atleast 3 times. I never left the side railings and hence didnt fall. Ravish and Rajashekar were visibly tired within minutes and quit. Modi had the last laugh staying outside - photographing, video graphing and making fun of us... saala. But if you haven't tried the rollers yet, its a very good place. No time limit, 50 bucks and unlimited fun.
Since we had read the reviews, we didn't even thought of going to Fossil museum. There was some fossil search competition going on. Varun was constantly searching around one pretty girl there throught the search.
There was one singing contest at some booth. You can choose the song you want to sing from a huge database. The lyrics appears on the TV screen and there is background music. You need to sing looking at the lyrics. Only trouble is you voice will be heard on a loud speaker and hence we thought its a risk :) Finally we convinced the organizers to sing as a group. We chose the hindi song - 'Pyaar hame kis mode pe ley aaya' since its relative tune-less :) Unfortunately they didnt have it in their database, but still let us sing. We started off and we pitied the people around us. The organizers must have felt sorry for the audience and one of their DJs joined along with us to sing. Modi, however, restrained from making any sound on microphone :)
Finally we visited the miniature city - totaly waste except one artificial water falls. It has the film city's name on a small hill shaped rock in the hollywood style. Didn't good good pics there because of poor lighting.
We left the ifc at around 7pm. Had dinner at a dabha midway and reached home at round 10pm.
Overall, the ifc is a good 1 day outing. Don't expect too much of visual pleasure. It is still incomplete yet a very good outing for a day. It doesn't even cost you much - around 500 bucks including the lunch.
I did a crazy thing there at ifc. There is a cricket game. A machine shoots tennis balls at you and you need to bat. If you achieve some target score, you can play few more overs for free. A couple of balls came out of the practice area and one of them got stuck in a bush there. Modi pointed it out and I flicked it :)

iPhone in iNdia

After a long wait, Apple has finally launched the iPhone in India through Airtel and Hutch outlets.
Though Apple has launched the new 3G phones in India (2G iPhones are now out of production), there is no service provider in India supporting 3G services yet. There are few things one might be wondering about iPhone in India.

I heard that new iPhones costs $199 (8000/-). Why is it sold at 31,000/- in India?
The previous version of iPhone (2G version) actually costed $399 for 8GB and $499 for 16GB. But Apple slashed the prices of the latest 3G iPhones selling them for half the price - $199 for 8GB and $299 for 16GB. But there is a catch here.
Apple changed the strategy with 3G iPhones. Sell them cheap but collect a premium every month. The service provider AT&T for iPhone has increased the monthly tariff by about $10. For a mandatory 2 year contract that iPhone comes with, this increase will account for $240 increase for 24 months. Also the free SMSes (upto 200) provided earlier will cost 5$ now (for 200 SMSes) This will cost another $120 over 24 months. Together the tariff change will cost the iPhone user an additional $360. This explains the $200 reduction in iPhone prices. This is not a new way of fooling the customer but this is the typical way mobile businesses operate in the US. Most of the service providers provide the phone for almost nothing. Few of them sell very high end mobile phones like Palm Treo for as low as $50 if you subscribe for certain service plans. Apple is following the same model now.
But, unfortunately in India, things work in a very different manner. The post paid connnections are not very popular here. There are many cases of defaults and hence even service providers promote pre-paid connections. So the plan of selling the phone for less but charging higher tariff later will not work here. One example was Reliance's 500/- phone where Reliance had sold mobile phones for throw away price of 500/- but charged a rental every month. Reliance faced huge losses due to that. Airtel and Hutch must have learnt a lesson from this. Hence they are charging higher upfront price when you buy the phone without depending on monthly rentals.
In India 8GB costs 31,000/- and 16GB costs 36,000/-

Can I buy the phone from US at cheaper price and bring it here?
This was possible earlier with 2G iPhones. Those phones could be bought at an Apple store and could be unlocked using certain softwares to be used in India and other coutries outside US. But you can't but 3G iPhones in Apple store without subscribing to 2 year AT&T service plan.

Can I subscribe to 2 year AT&T contract at Apple store just to buy the iPhone and later break/cancel the contract? I am ready to pay some nominal charges in the process.
I am not very sure about how the cancellation of a contract works, but otherwise it is very difficult to do so because of the following reasons,
1. Since the 2 year contract is similar to a post paid connection, they will verify your credit worthiness which will require few documents including Social Security Number. If you are not a citizen of US, you might not be recognized as credit worthy customer and hence the subscription might be denied.
2. Even if you get your US citizen friend to buy the iPhone and the contract for you, either you have to pay the monthly charges every month unnecessarily or pay the penalty for breaking the contract.

What are the advantages of 3G over 2G?
There are a lot of new features supported in 3G. Also one major difference is that 3G is lot faster than the 2G. But currently no service provider in India is equipped with 3G service. Though your phone supports 3G, you will be limited by the 2G service from the service providers. It is like buying a Ferrari or Bugatti to drive on Indian roads :) By the way, BSNL has announced 3G service to be launched by the end of this year. Lets wait and see.

Why will iPhone fail in Indian market?
I feel iPhone will not make it big in Indian market because of the following reasons
1. Its quite expensive by Indian market standards
2. Many of the iPhone's killer features like 3rd party applications and Web apps require WiFi connectivity which is not very common in India yet. Even the hacker forums provide applications to be downloaded via WiFi only.
3. Handling iPhone requires some amount of computer knowledge and a lot of geeky knowledge.
4. The media - video and audio files can't be exchanged via bluetooth - which will be a major disappointment for the Indian market.
5. Consumers in Indian market are not ready yet to buy/rent media through iTunes by paying large sum of money (Each movie on iTunes store can cost around 50-150/- Each audio album can cost around 50-100/-)

Samosa Chat - A humbling Experience

This incident happened sometime back around Diwali 2006...

I love samosa chat, particularly at Krishnasagar (near Divya Shree chambers opposite to Karnataka State Hockey Stadium near Nanjappa circle near... thats it if you want to know the exact address call me :) near my office. I have had around 100+ plates of samosa chat in about an years time. That explains all the extra weight I have put on. The guy who prepares the chat over there became to me. As soon as I enter the restaurant that guy used to greet me with a warm smile and just on a nod from me he would understand I was there for chat. Even before I could get the coupon for chat from the counter he would start preparing the samosa chat and customize it for me with extra curd and with no onions. I have treated few of my friends on numerous occasions there...with a samosa chat :)

I park my bike across the road opposite to the restaurant. From there you get a very good view of the hockey stadium. I would stand there watching practice matches, sometimes the real inter-club matches and sometimes even stood there just to watch the sprinklers watering the turf. On a couple of occasions I had noticed one interesting bike there - it looked like a standard bullet 350 modified as a retro looking bike. Thought the design looked like the ones in '80s with separate seats for the rider and the pillion rider, a vertical number plate on the front wheels mud-gaurd etc, I was sure it was a new bike modified for retro looks. It beared the vehicle registration number starting with KA-0... series. In '80s the numbers used to be CAT, CAE CAS etc. I even know some of my friends who bought an old shogun just for the fancy registration numbers! So, I always wondered the bike owner must be a stud with a lot of style. The third time I spotted the bike there, I also found the owner of the bike beside it. He was a mid 40's guy with a shining silver tooth! I started a conversation and he mentioned that the bike was a '99 model standard bullet and he had spent around 40k for modifying it (to look like 2 decade old bike!). Naturally my curiosity aroused about the guy particularly what he does for living if at 45+ age he was spending so much money in modifying a bike. He introduced himself as the co-owner of Krishnasagar! I spoke casually for a while and did mention that I was a regular customer there. From a distance, I even pointed at the guy who prepares the samosa chat and praised him for his skills. After a week or so I visited Krishnasagar again for obvious reasons. The guy at the chat counter greeted with his usual warm smile. And when I went to him to collect my order, he told me something which has made this entire krishnasagar episode very humbling experience for me. The contrat agreement of this guy with the restaurant was supposed to get terminated that month. But because I had spoken to the owner (the bike guy) appreciating his (the chat guy's) skills, the owner had offered him to renew the contract! After 1 and a half years since then, even now I visit Krishnasagar for the same obvious reasons. The guy at the chat counter still works there and he still greets me with the same warm smile and I have not seen that retro-bike much after that...

iPhone

Disclaimer : This is not another iPhone blog where you can keep track of the latest developments on iPhone hacks. This blog is in response to a lot of queries that I have recieved from my friends ever since i bought the iphone. If you are new to iPhone or if you don't have enough time to search the web and collate the basic details then this blog is ideal for you. If you are already a vivid follower of iPhone developments, then the details here will look as old as 10000 bc :) - in which case I would recommend you to skip this blog. I am not even planning to update this article but will point to some useful resources at the end of this article for the latest updates.

For the in uninitiated, iPhone is 'ipod+Internet device + mobile phone'
from apple as described by Steve jobs...

All the following details are true as on April 23rd of 2008...

Where to buy?
iPhone is available only in USA and in some European countries. Though the launch of iphone in India and Asia is rumored to be very soon, Apple has kept it secret in its typical style.

Price?
In US, 8GB version costs around USD400 and 16GB version costs around USD 500. 7-10% tax is applicable depending on the region of purchase. You can purchase it either in Apple store or AT&T stores. You can even place an order online on Apple online store but will be shipped only to an US address. I got a 8 GB version last September through my coleague at Ittiam and I am lovin' it ... (I hope McDonald's won't sue me for this :)) Price is slightly higher if you buy it from Europe. Check the Europian prices here...

How to get it working?
Iphone is sim-locked with the carrier partner of Apple in the repective countries where it is officially launched (unfortunately it is not yet launched in India/Asia yet). As a result you won't be unable to use it without unlocking it. You need to unlock your iphone before being able to use any GSM sim( Airtel, Vodafone, Spice - are all gsm services). I use Vodafone sim on iPhone.

You will come across a lot of jargons like - jailbreak, unlocking, virginize, bricking etc on the web. Don't bother if it sounds alien. Hacking community has worked hard to make things as simple as possible for you. You can unlock the iPhone in 4 minutes flat (yes its just twice as long as preparing 2 minutes maggi :) ) the best part is the software for this is available free of cost for download.

ZiPhone is an unlocking software that does everthing (jailbreak, unlocking, installing installer.app for your iPhone) required to be able to use any GSM sim. It can't get simpler than using this software to unlock iPhone. It's a single-click-wait-for-4-mins-until-the-'completed'-message-is-displayed solution for unlocking. And the best part of it is you can do it all by yourself without any fuss. However you'll lose the 1 yr warranty from Apple as soon as you unlock it.

What's the big deal if I lose warranty?
Basically, nobody will service your mobile if hardware fails - no replacement of battery etc - you are completely on your own. But don't panic - you need to be a little disciplined in using it. I have added few tips for iPhone maintenance at the end. If you are still apprehensive about unlocking on your own, you can buy one from one of those gray markets at a 3-5k premium. I have even heard that few of them provide you some additional service in case you manage to spoil anything. All said and done - as I said earlier you are on your own and nobody to be blamed once you unlock it.

Pros of iPhone
Multi touch touchscreen
Amazing UI - User Interface experience . I bet, you can't get better than this
A lot of 3rd party softwares are available free of cost
Huge screen
Amazing Internet based applications
High resolution camera - 2 MP. (Don't equate this with other 2 MP cameras. The photos taken by iPhone camera are much better even when viewed on a PC compared to other 2 MP cameras)
8GB and 16GB is quite a memory
Very good display quality
Value for money @17k INR for 8GB 16 GB costs around 22k INR
A sure attention grabber :)

Check out this demo tour video on Apple site.

Cons of iPhone
Not launched officially in India
Warranty is void as soon as it is unlocked
No service provided in India.
No video recording
No copy-paste
No optical zoom
No digital zoom
Can't share files - songs/videos/photos/contacts through Bluetooth
Can't forward an SMS
Can't use iPhone as a portable USB drive
Only way to transfer files is - syncing through iTunes (software provided by Apple)
Can't sync from different PCs (this is the most painful. You can
transfer files only from one PC!)
Even if you manage to sync from a single PC every time, there is a problem. If some file is missing on your PC but is avialable on your iPhone the file gets deleted from iphone when you sync with the PC !!!
The loud speaker is not really that loud
No FM (A hardware limitation)
No support for office files - doc, xl or ppt. You can only read them if you receive them as attachments in your mail.
Not a very great organizer
Internet connectivity is only through WiFi or EDGE. No GPRS

All the software limitations above are in the default iPhone software.
Most of them are already resolved by 3rd party applications. Few of
them can be expected to be updated by Apple itself in future
software/firmware updates.

Tips for maintenance
- You have option to recharge the battery through USB or direct AC. Avoid charging through direct AC whenever possible, as voltage flucuations might damage your battery.Use only USB mode of charging.
- In cases where you have to charge it through direct power use a voltage stabilizer. I might sound a little wierd here but I follow this whenever I go to my hometown where I don't have access to a PC. It will save your dear iPhone.
- Don't upgrade to new firmware releases from Apple unless you find out that it can be unlocked.

Overall experience
I would rate it 9/10. ( I know this number doesn't make any sense as my rating is not benchmarked:) but still it gives you a feel for it) Watch the demo video

Useful resources
iphone hack blog: http://iphone.unlock.no/
iPhone hack site
Apple site
Lot of videos on Youtube
and....
My blog :) - just kidding - don't expect me to update this article any further