Category: Featured⭐️

  • 2022-25 Stunt Rally 3 🏁

    2022-25 Stunt Rally 3 🏁

    ⏱️Overview

    The continuation of our Stunt Rally game using latest Ogre-Next rendering engine.

    📂Sources

    Available here.

    Forum topic with key progress steps and few screenshots.

    SR website has Videos, Gallery, Download, etc.

    ✍️Motivation and progress

    Intro

    Well it’s probably time I write something about how this goes, it’s been months already.
    I took about 5 years break from old Stunt Rally. I was occasionally playing and enjoying it, but also ignoring any flaws, and thinking hard not to get into developing it again more (well that’s also the way for any commercial software).

    Forum Q&A👥

    In January 2022, I started thinking of checking out the new rendering engine Ogre-Next and posted on Ogre forum my topic with many questions to get more knowledge about it’s state.
    I has been developed (and used) since years (probably 2015 or so) but I haven’t seen few key features like: Gui, fog, old plugin for grass, no demos for particles or water etc. Old Ogre had plenty. Ogre-Next had many, but not the very broad palette of game related components.

    Terrain Demo⛰️

    Shortly after I gave it a try and started a small demo (sources here) with nature scene. I was quite surprised by performance, how high and smooth Fps was with lots of vegetation. Contrary to old vegetation plugin we still use in old SR, which was also the worst thing, causing lags and delays while driving. But back then even fog wasn’t part of engine and had to be added with some knowledge. Luckily new Atmosphere component for fog and sun was made not long after.

    No Gui

    Since there was no working MyGui fork (was earlier) and all else was difficult, I didn’t move much further.
    Even though Ogre-Next is still technically Ogre, about half of everything in code changed. Even using terrain was completely different as the system was new. It was good since it has better performance but it also meant a lot more trouble to use it and later port Stunt Rally stuff into it, and we have an editor for it too and own custom blendmap I made with noise.

    Continued

    Half a year later in October 2022 I got back to my terrain demo, which was based on Ogre-Next terrain sample.
    Sources for it are there and I even made a gallery, it looked cool.

    Gui🪟

    I also managed to build MyGui with Ogre-Next (forum topic) and with some help continued its fork, after some trouble later, it was fixed and started working well. This was likely the key point to start porting SR, while also knowing particles work, and my demo works smooth with better Fps and no lags for vegetation.

    SR3 start🚗

    I then started porting SR still in Oct 2022 and calling it SR3 (3.0 was also latest Ogre-Next version). First by disabling almost everything in old SR code and making it build with Ogre-Next. Then by slowly restoring stuff one at a time and I mean really slowly.

    Restoring stuff🌐

    It took months and literally almost everything was causing trouble or not working at first in Ogre-Next. It’s like normal developing, I mean I code then test and fix it to work (yeah the old way, no unit tests, seriously). On top of that, there were few annoying new bugs due to how Ogre-Next works and needed something extra to fix, what was already working normally in Ogre before.

    Fast forward⏩

    In Feb 2023 MyGui started working and could be used in SR3.
    Worse still, during my endless forum topic we found many bugs in Ogre-Next too. It’s like half of my problems end in one. A bit disappointing TBH, but that’s the way with software nowadays. It’s buggy and needs updates constantly. Which brings me to support aspect. If it was great I wouldn’t mind. And mostly it was, but lately I’m waiting 1-3 weeks for response and have many ongoing issues and unanswered questions. It’s a pity that it’s just (putting all contributors aside) mostly a one man’s project. Kind of like with SR too, especially after that one year when there were more programmers.

    Water🌊, Effects

    Last major features were: water and effects (like SSAO), probably the biggest thing. Worse still, it wasn’t developed by me, but mostly by scrawl (and others) back in 2013 or so. So I had to redo another thing in Ogre-Next by myself now. It was difficult but good learning experience. HLMS shaders, are big, complicated, have lots of code and variations, and yeah it’s much more difficult than just using a shader editor and putting together blocks or just installing a water add-on.
    We still are missing a few essential ones like: soft particles and HDR with bloom, that old SR had around 2013 already.


    📊Other engines

    Well this section might be of use and have some info. Not just SR3 history like above.
    Meanwhile I did think about other engines and shortly looked at 3 of them. There is a big list on wiki too. And I did recently write a tutorial page on CG graphics its Engines section could be better too.

    This is my personal view, and let’s keep in mind that I did look at them after SR was already made (took 5 years) and it has its own track / map editor made by me. It is FOSS too.

    Unity

    Bit older than UE I guess but also a huge hub for commercial stuff. Even the tutorial mini game had paid crap one could buy for it. That’s really the first thing that pops out instantly for me. I do hate commercial stuff. I guess you could find something “free” but its like looking for free money in city, roughly for me. It will only be a free commercial for paid stuff.
    Sure you can find stuff made already like rivers, vegetation and what not but given that this has a price, it’s instantly not for me. And it never has any other license than “you can only use it for Unity”.

    UE5

    This thing certainly got on my nerves. Turns out I don’t even have a PC for it.
    I started by trying to download. Nope, you need to get full sources with deps and then build them on Linux. I tried few times before I realized this needs over 100GB to complete IIRC. Yeah my SDD with OS is still just 128GB and the one new I got has just 512GB and doesn’t really have that much free space.

    Whatever, the next thing was a real killer for me. When it finally started (after building for hours) it showed a tiny logo with a tiny text showing that it needs to build shaders, over 4000 of them. I can’t even. And it did compile them on like 6 CPU cores for 30 minutes. Seriously WTF.. and I don’t even use this term. I don’t know for sure, but it wasn’t just once that it had to do this. I remember few times that “building all shaders” time waste, possibly even on each new project created or so.

    Well then I realized my PC (with 12 year old CPU) isn’t even in same era, UE5 would need you to first spend a lot of money for PC with latest hardware.. to probably still take a long to even start.
    Needless to say it is also a huge hub for commercial add-ons etc.

    If we look at SR which has over 200 tracks already and on average 1 of them is just 5MB, not GB we can see the huge gap. One demo in UE5 was 100GB.

    Godot

    I was pleasantly surprised to find waterways plugin for rivers and also seeing it’s MIT license. Feels like the proper way of doing stuff for FLOSS software and games like SR3. Would be nice to have it in SR for sure, but at least I can learn from it and even use sources if I ever find the time for this.
    Well, getting back to Godot, it’s big, I don’t have much of experience. It has its way of doing things and may be even extended. But let me sum this all up next.

    Common

    So let’s end this quick look around. Each game engine has lots of stuff. And I can’t even judge how long would I need to learn it, to estimate how long it would need, to port SR to it (any engine). And how would loading tracks look in it, or how much more complicated editing them would be. I’m pretty sure it’d be a waste of time and effort.
    As for game simulation, I guess I could build as a DLL or something to run in it, but that just doesn’t feel right at all. I mean what for, so that I could use engine’s features sure, but I’d need to waste a lot of time (in total) for starting it, clicking everywhere, etc. Lastly learning its issues and their solutions. Every big engine has something specific to it and problems with some things for sure.
    Meanwhile I already had a lot of code written to do what and exactly how I wanted it to be, e.g. editor for creating SR tracks.

    🟢Ogre-Next

    ❔Is it good for you?

    Obviously it depends. It is a rendering (by rasterization) engine only. So contrary to the game engines listed above, you don’t get anything beside rendering, i.e. no physics (e.g. bullet), no sound (e.g. openal), GUI, scripting, network etc.

    It is for advanced users / programmers.
    This means you need advanced programming skills to use it fully. Right now I also believe it means you need to find bugs in it yourself too. Surely there are some still and the more I use it the more I find. And I’d expect it to have none OFC, sadly that’s not possible.

    There is documentation for it, but I can’t say it is covering all topics you might need. Some features I needed later had solutions that needed to be found in older forum topics. This wasn’t easy since they’re old and I don’t know if it’s still valid and there is also plenty of unneeded text in posts.
    And support? Yeah it’s nice and great when it happens but otherwise you’re left alone with it.
    I also can’t say it’s popular. Seems it was much more earlier around 2010 and also the Ogre 1.x version is still more popular.

    Good things last, it surely has many features, modern ones too like few types of GI, HLMS shaders, etc. It is low level, meaning it can give you more control and optimization. But I don’t have any comparison here, I haven’t used any other just older Ogre.
    Surely there are others, eg. bgfx.

    ✅Why I use it

    The biggest reason is really simple. I made SR in Ogre so moving to Ogre-Next sounded like least effort. Surely old Ogre changed and I got myself stuck to shiny material generator which again scrawl wrote back in 2013 or so. Meanwhile RTSS shaders got better in Ogre, and lately even got auto instancing.
    I decided to skip all that and make a bigger step, biggest possible for better hardware and that was using latest Ogre-Next. Even with few things or components missing. It also featured auto instancing by itself which I liked most, secondly the new terrain has less batches too (more performance).

  • 2024 Unreal Engine 5 tryout

    2024 Unreal Engine 5 tryout

    ⏱️Overview

    I’ve spend over 1 month in total, exploring the Unreal Engine 5.3 on Linux and gathered some opinions about it. I’ll say upfront: I don’t really like it and this version is not even fully working on Linux. And no: I will not make or port Stunt Rally to it, I know for sure now. This isn’t a strict tutorial, but my gathered experience, many complaints, with some useful links.

    📂Gallery🏞️

    Short gallery with showcase here.
    Long gallery with many more things shown and including visible bugs.

    ✍️Motivation

    Well I have been using Ogre rendering engine since about 2007. Over a year ago moved to OgreNext, which is even less popular. I can simply say there is just one person (the developer) who is able to, and does usually answer my questions, or fixes issues.

    Naturally at some point I wanted to get at least a basic knowledge of other engines. Since they’re so highly popular and have big forums and communities. And get my own opinion, also regarding what’s best for Stunt Rally (rendering only since we already have simulation and even own track editor).

    I made 3 initial choices due to highest popularity: Unreal, Unity, Godot.
    I did already check them in 2022, and wrote a little in my Rendering “tutorial”. But ultimately for me, Unity died a sudden death due to their freaking license changes (which shocked lots of developers and made them move). I did check out Godot and so far its best demo for terrain and nature, and it didn’t seem too great at performing there. Which seems also a popular opinion that it doesn’t handle big 3D scenes that well.

    So, the goal was not really to move SR to any of them. It was to assess if that’d be even reasonable, and logically prove that it’s not (even only for rendering purpose). Last and quite important reason was to learn “the other side”, new effects and technologies, and know what would be possible to achieve in SR too (someday).

    📜Earlier try

    I did try UE on my old PC. Back then in 2020, UE5 had to be built from sources on Linux. Took me like 50 GB of space to download. And few tries to finish, as there was no info (and I had a small SSD). Then few hours to even build. Lastly at start it took 30 min to compile over 5000 freaking shaders. So ugh, yeah, clearly my PC was too old for UE5. I did try later after I bought a new PC. It does still need 5 min for shaders now. And that’s needed when major options are changed.
    Still, my impression is that most people would need to buy a new PC to use UE5, unless they already got a new gaming PC. It is really demanding on hardware.

    🔍Observations, Issues

    Of course, these are specific to me, using it on Linux. Also to what I was testing: for Stunt Rally try, so in 3D, mainly for driving cars, on gravel and for stunts.
    Also I didn’t spend years using UE just maybe over 1 month total. I could be wrong, or assumed something using my anti-commercial logic, or just didn’t care to investigate longer.

    I list here all my issues I had using UE5.

    • UE is a big commercial hub, feels like a shop. Not for true FOSS projects. Lots of assets, meant to be used for Unreal projects only. Nothing is CC Licensed. They also have own binary file format for everything, only .ini readable for options. I did import e.g. trees from .fbx (which can be exported from Blender) but that needed more work, making materials later.
    • Aimed at Windows and making big profits. Obviously if someone paid for Windows, they’re more likely to pay for its software. Linux is the least popular so least supported.
    • Not meant to be used on Linux only. Nothing can be downloaded, as this needs the freaking Launcher application which has only msi installer. Even their demos don’t support Linux, e.g. this and that. Thus IMO they don’t fully support Linux, just wanted to add it to platforms list, as only the engine works but not the rest of their ecosystem. The Quixel Bridge is also not working at all. I don’t care about that integration, to add assets directly to project content. I’m a fan of simple download buttons or repositories. But big companies progress by buying other companies and so “improving”, which is also a way to be more monopolistic.
    • Editor GUI. IMO it’s utter garbage and a mess. I wouldn’t enjoy using it daily. There is a “magical” way to scale whole GUI. But no real options to choose font sizes, icons, themes or other visual stuff. Seriously, in such a big editor, used by so many people every day? Sounds like a joke to me. I can’t take seriously any* programs which don’t allow user to (at least) change their theme and font size. *even small, but except my own. I have made my own themes for every software I used for longer.
    • Tons of properties, written in same tiny, plain text, no idea which important, no icons for settings or e.g. even colors or bigger fonts for more important/significant ones. No way to bookmark properties or settings to know which I want to remember easily. Should I like write them on paper or something like in middle ages, or remember all that? Some have tooltips (white) with decent text, some very little. At least the worst stuff is bottom in properties usually. And the (rhi) statistics texts are even smaller and less readable. I made my own Fps and statistics bar in SR and it has few detail modes now, medium size font, and even coloring from value, if it’s red that’s bad.
    • Editing terrain. Seriously cumbersome. If you ever seen or used Stunt Rally Track Editor, it should be pretty clear what I mean. Sure, I wrote it myself so it has what I find best already. I mean using just mouse wheel to adjust brush size and force. Also having keys that increase those. Then plenty of terrain brushes to choose from. All brushes using floats and computed for needed size. I could go on. We made over 200 tracks just using those tools. Seems like UE doesn’t care much about such tools. There are some other software programs (big and commercial too) that will make a terrain which you can import instead of editing. BTW I saw no way to import raw float heightmaps which we use since years for best quality.
    • Gizmo. Well it may be my personal hatred for that thing. But how am I supposed to drag that one axis if it’s covered by another. Probably need to focus, rotate around or use ctrl, meh. We don’t have a gizmo in SR editor, yes it may not be obvious how you’ll move etc, but you’ll always be able to do it, directly from anywhere.
    • Physics. I’ve seen some opinions on internet that it got worse in UE5 (has Chaos), from UE4 (had PhysX) if I got it right. So far I had plenty of sudden car jumps because of what looked to be normal wheel force from contact, getting weirdly high. Also had some sudden object jumps, flying far very quickly. All not looking good or real, seems like an unstability. I did increase substeps and decrease interval to get better simulation at high speeds, and I did surprisingly fix that wheels wobbling suspension. I could drive even over 600 km/h in big glass pipe loop and 450 in smaller one. That’s probably the only thing better than in SR with Bullet physics, but I’m still using old version and didn’t try new in years.
    • As of UE 5.3 which I tried, I was not able to turn on Nanite at all, and neither HW ray tracing. And those are UE’s biggest, prominent features. I used Debian 12 and AMD GPU with Vulkan. Saw some post that 5.4 could fix it, maybe.
    • Lumen software reflections. Man, those look laughable. I guess most would use HW ray tracing now or in few years. But I’d rather have my own cubemap rendered and used for other parts too. Instead of looking at Screen Space Reflections (a recent disease) or those blobs (done by Lumen software reflections) when screen space didn’t cover. Plus I’ve never seen car underside reflected properly here. Lastly I tried adding reflection captures and thoses didn’t work. Could be my fault, whatever.
    • Many effects are iterative, updated partly over time, and so they work best when not moving. E.g. volumetric fog lit from car lights, is moving inside car when driving. Reflections also have some noise, changing pixels. Global Illumination with Lumen, also does fluctuate and spread unevenly over time. Sure, it’s new technology and best if it didn’t melt GPUs doing impossible today. But it feels to me like these are just targeted for those indoor furniture designs and static shots, not games.
    • Many things even vehicle parameters need that Compile pressed after changing, then running to test. Really not convenient. The default vehicle simulation is completely nonsense. I guess it could be good for basic arcade games. That’s to be expected. Can’t touch dedicated C++ code for vehicle simulation like VDrift or even RoR with deformation. I found an older UE4 vehicle simulation, whole made with blueprints. Is good to learn from, didn’t feel great to drive though, but I’ve spend not much time with it.
    • Lots of thins are still done from console with typing commands. I guess no need to add them to that pile of unrecognizable settings list yet, probably translated though. But on the up side, there are plenty of options to customize for sure.
    • Crashes. Last but not least. IDK if it’s just because I use Linux, or Vulkan, or AMD, or their drivers. Doesn’t matter, either way I had many UE crashes. Luckily I didn’t loose much, seemed to be at end mostly. Still, not a good sign, not for stable software, not for daily use. Also seems to me like UE is favoring NVidia GPUs or maybe they have better hardware ray tracing, IDK and don’t have time to investigate. Ah and trying to start profilegpu did reset my PC instead.
    • Whenever you change key options it will be building over 5000 shaders again, which takes for me 5 min. And Package project at first takes like 30 min, but later it does much faster even less than 1 min. There are slow downs of like 5-15 sec whenever you save a material etc, there are structures in UE that need to be rebuild and this a slow delay when editing.

    🎛️Blueprints

    I’m kind of in the middle with this topic. Both good and bad.

    Quite a lot of stuff can be done using Blueprints. There are games made just using them.
    But then you’ll be dependent on them, which means no full control over what’s happening, and just doing what others tell you to do their (commercial) way. There is no avoiding blueprints, even with C++ code.
    Another thing is that the list with blocks in blueprints is again huge. Here even a video with main ones. So usually you’ll have to type more to find a block. Even if + or * etc is enough to get simple operations, that’s still just ridiculous for me as a programmer to put a block and connect those lines to it, instead just typing + in code.
    But yes, they’re easier to understand for non programmers. Still, I felt like I didn’t know how to do anything at all, when I was starting with blueprints. So it’s not like those were easier to start, just less to set up (no external IDE, compiler).
    Lastly big, complex games would require a lot of code, which in blueprints means few times more clicking connecting, picking blocks, to me it feels like slow playing with toys instead of developing. And then area is huge, also hard to find stuff, lots of moving around and zooming. Sure there are comments, same as in code. But much more code can fit in text editor. And it doesn’t go both vertical and horizontal (when done right). Doesn’t need zooming. I find code easier to navigate (definitions, references) too. All can be done faster by keyboard.

    There is a cool webiste with lots of blueprints here.
    One good part for blueprints (similar to scripts) is their safety, since they show errors, won’t break, etc. While code can crash, corrupt memory, loop infinitely etc. And could take more time to build and test too.

    ☑️ Good parts

    At least at start, because I seem to end them with a view that’s not good.

    • A lot of stuff working already. But as the saying goes: if something is good for everything it’s also good for nothing (i.e. not great for anything particular). Also if you wanted a change in their sources then it’s a huge amount of it to even grasp (like 50 GB total). And more games using UE will mean more will look the same due to its technology.
    • Plenty of (free) Plugins. Even fancy things like Niagara (3D smoke and fluids simulation, rather not for my/current hardware). But Water is still Experimental (yet essential), and I had some bugs with it (underwater fog was bad at times, even white flashes, then after publish it was at random level above sometimes). Very many plugins are also in Beta and version 0.1. Seems like it’s still too early. IDK maybe UE5 is still too young. I’m obviously only considering free plugins.
    • Useful modelling tools included. E.g. video. Can quickly edit and draft a scene with basic models, already inside UE. For me not needed, as we already have our assets, and tracks made.
    • Many possibilites to generate and place stuff (meshes, vegetation etc) with PCG. Still, those are rather new UE features. Which I’d expect much earlier. E.g. someone using UE4 didn’t have them, years ago. And frankly, in Stunt Rally we had automatic vegetation placing and road generation with LODs since the beginning in 2010.
    • Can move camera with W,S,A,D and Q,E, that’s cool, even bookmark places. But I didn’t find a way to change the speed by keys, and sliders don’t allow any values just predefined, IDK.
    • Plenty of debugging view modes and visualizations. Well the rendering engine is very complicated and “heavy” (high HW requirements) so these will be needed to optimize, probably even if you don’t want to. A very good (but older UE4) video series pipeline bottlenecks, passes.
    • Seems like Visual Studio is again default for C++ but at least VS Code is supported. So my setup with clang and VSCodium won’t work. And OgreNext supports clang officially. UE C++ is also in its own style. Quite old, not even similar to new C++ versions. All variables used and methods use big letters. Video here. Yes it’s a matter of preference (or getting used to) but yeah I dislike this too.
    • Many resources to learn from. Still those are commercials for Unreal and their addons etc but if you filter this out and ignore, then there can be plenty of useful, or universal information to learn in general.
    • UE is definitely huge and complex. With high popularity and big community it’s easy to find solutions to problems. But that doesn’t mean less problems. Actually I found many topics on forum which didn’t solve anything and seemed like unnecessary distraction, like from people not knowing English not only UE. Surely it was easy to find out why I got gray models after Packaging, but why on Earth weren’t shared wrap samplers the default, causing this issue. I think there is a lot of detail to be known to get UE working for any project.

    ⏳Summary

    Well definitely you can learn a lot, not only from using UE in practice, but also from that big number of videos either in their playlist, or lots of other videos from creators around UE. There is also a decent amount of documentation. This can help when starting or using UE, but also for getting information on various subjects around rendering or games etc (just at a smaller fraction).

    So it was a cool experience, completely opposite to mine. I mean using an advanced rendering only engine, built from C++ sources. Not just installed, and already with most needed tools. There is a gigantic gap or difference between those. And not only in software size and thus difficulty, but also in the community. It’s a complete opposite too. In UE (or Unity, Godot etc) you can simply even put your question in youtube and find a video (or few) with answer. When I was searching for UE vehicle tutorials there were even few playlists with that.

    Still, it’s not reasonable to change rendering or game engine far in production. Only possible at start. And SR is and already was far in production, having my own coded features, even when those engines weren’t available, that popular or so feature full. So clearly just because of that I won’t really be able to change engine. And neither would I have patience to spend 2 years or so, right after I’ve spend over 1 year to move “just” from Ogre to OgreNext.

    UE is big, and very commercial, so Windows, NVidia, Visual Studio are default, if not only option here for all things to work. So definitely not for me as a Linux only developer. I think they also use some telemetry, I’m not sure, but I saw urls, sent to their website from UE, as warnings in log, when I didn’t have internet.

    Lastly there are plenty open source engines, e.g. listed here, or new list here, also tools here, and a big collection of engine related links here with lots of libraries and sources.

  • 2022-24 Terrain Demo ⛰️

    2022-24 Terrain Demo ⛰️

    ⏱️Overview

    This is a project I started to learn and test newer version of Ogre rendering engine: Ogre-Next.
    Later I moved Stunt Rally 3 to use the engine too.
    Now also a showcase for nature scene rendering using the engine.

    📷Gallery

    Screenshots here.

    ▶️Videos

    Are here: new, old.

    📂Sources

    Available here. Licensed: MIT.
    Unlike my other projects, where I choose GPLv3 that requires releasing modifications, under same license.

    It has no Gui or other dependencies and should be easy to build.

    🔍Details

    At first it was a project to test Ogre-Next and code needed to get things done in it. Surprisingly half (or more) is done different way than in Ogre. But I am also surprised by better performance and optimizations done by the engine.

    It is also a good tool to test and fix bugs in Ogre-Next, e.g. many for planar reflections used for water.

    Recently I also updated it with some media from Stunt Rally 3 to make it look better and be a showcase.

  • 2020-22 cAmp2 ▶️

    2020-22 cAmp2 ▶️

    ⏱️Overview

    New implementation of my audio player, based on my older cAmp.
    Works on GNU/Linux (and should on Windows).
    Now using SFML for graphics, and ImGui for the new GUI. Still using (not FOSS) bass for audio.

    📂Sources

    Available here.
    Now with CMake and newer C++17 syntax.

    📷Gallery

    Screenshots here.
    Starts with normal playlist, find, track backgrounds explanation with time coloring, tabs adjust, later 3 visualizations, their themes, and rest of Gui windows.

    ✍️Motivation

    Old cAmp was WinAPI and DirectX only and had bad style, old C++03 too. It was still one of my last college projects.
    I did once try moving it to SFML, and almost succeeded. I had no pressing motivation until I started moving to Debian GNU/Linux instead of Windows which required this new version. I made things differently this time and with more experience, hence the Gui and visible options.

    Missing Features

    The old cAmp was using GPU shaders and cAmp2 doesn’t use them yet. Seems not that needed. And it doesn’t even have hotkeys or threads implemented here. Well there is always something on my “to do” list for this project, like for any other.

    📊New Features

    Apart from most of the old features (with few important missing) it has some new ones too.

    Most notable addition is the Gui with few windows having controls for changing view parameters, adjusting with sliders or showing info. Since ImGui is such a joy to use it was also easy to implement bindable all program keys list and move all options to Gui.

    Other new features:

    • Colored tabs, sliders for their background and text brightness. Empty tabs as separators.
      Can be seen on screens. I find it quite useful, e.g. for now I have 4 rows, first is for Trance style, 2nd for older trance, 3rd for rock, 4th for metal genres (about 31 playlists total).
    • In between markers. E.g. if I filter tracks so that playing cursor or find matches become not visible then it draws a shorter marker still, to show they are between those visible. (It’s best shown on 2nd screenshot also 3rd and this).
    • New visualization type (screens, parameters): FFT above and spectrogram below.
    • Visualization themes and sliders for adjusting colors.
    • Rebindable all key shortcuts list with filtering. And help for mouse actions.
    • Queue tab(s). Any tab can be set as queue. It will be marked in 4 corners. Then you can add tracks with one key (E) to queue end. Good for temporary playlists or “best of” ones.

    ⌛Conclusions

    Well it is definitely useful. It’s one of those key programs I need to have at start of any OS (first is my DoubleCmd fork, then this player, 3rd is Firefox with many add-ons).
    Yet it’s still missing one crucial feature like moving (reordering) tracks. Kind of funny, but I still don’t need it that much. I just delete whole playlist and add its main folder again to refresh once a while, and keep order in my filenames and subdirs. There are few other features missing too from previous version. But if I’m doing bigger projects (like Stunt Rally 3) or smaller and more interesting ones, then I don’t have time for this nice useful program which I still use every day. If we count the older one too, made in 2009, this would be the longest used program I made.

  • 2004-22 My PC with WC 💧

    2004-22 My PC with WC 💧

    ⏱️Overview

    I described here my PC and its water cooling (WC).
    It also features my own fan controller, which motivated me to finally create this page.
    Obviously, I’m using my own firmware in heavily modded keyboard with my PC.

    📷Gallery

    Final version pictures here.

    💧Water cooling history and observations

    History intro

    I got my first PC in 1992, as seen in my very first post here. I had many more since then. I’ve put my full PC history in last chapter, at bottom.

    Until 2004 I had no big issues with PCs and their noise. Those had 2 medium fans (about 9cm), one on CPU other in PSU. Surely those weren’t quiet (just cheap) and were mounted firmly so their vibrations were even amplified.

    Before WC

    In 2004 I bought a new Pentium 4 and decided that I had enough of that noise, “a PC should not be heard” I said. So I first started buying “quiet” fans:

    • Well the small 9cm: Zalman CNPS7000A-Cu wasn’t that great, was full copper (whatever, too heavy), and with so little space between fins it was great at gathering a lot of dust, but it had a nice knob regulator.
    • Years later I found a good one: Scythe Grand Kama Cross 2 for next CPU. It’s big but not very heavy, and has a 14cm fan which actually makes it way quieter. It’s still used in my mother’s PC.

    Well that was rather a waste of money. Not very expensive, but not very quiet either. Yes until now, I’ve spent much more for WC in total, but it was used in 3 PCs already. I’d even say it was more universal than those “quiet” PC fans dedicated to some socket or one GPU type only.

    WC Kit

    I bought a WC (not to confuse with ?) kit from a local company Cpc/Hydrox. Needless to say they changed company name like 3 times, didn’t last long etc. But sometimes their parts still appear on auctions. I even sold my surplus once this way.
    To put it short, their cooler was crap, their WC PSU plain garbage (cheapest and also had a loud fan), water pump is just a cheapo for aquarium.
    So a kit was really a bad way. But water blocks were cheap and really good.

    My PC evolved the most since 2004, when I bought that Pentium 4 and started water cooling it. My current PC still has most of the WC parts from that time (water blocks, 6mm (~1/4″) tubes, water reservoir and pump).

    My choice for that kit and 6mm was its low price. Seriously, whenever I tried looking at other water blocks after (thinking I could maybe improve mine), all were 10 or 12mm (~1/2″) diameter and literally 3x more expensive.

    PC WC Modding Rant

    Back then, once a while, I was looking at pics of modded water cooled PCs, with “style” and plenty of lights too. How do I put it, just IMO OFC, let’s just say that’s the most illogical (retarded) thing to do with a PC. It’s the same approach as in modding cars. It’s a huge profiting business, a hype and really nothing more IMHO. Apart from water cooling, which is the most logical way of cooling, but for PCs it is way overpriced. Modded PCs are the culmination of commercial stupidity, visible from a distance and eye catching (i.e. self promotion).

    For me it was a matter of how loud my PC still is, best measured in acoustic dB. Just like I said: “a PC should not be heard”, I also add: “and should not emit any light” or otherwise be visible even.
    Of course, since my PC is on floor under own desk, I do have some white lights to make it visible when needed.

    And it also mattered a lot more for me to have other modifications. as described in next chapter.

    Radiator

    I changed the radiator from kit, to a decent (got it used) copper for one 12cm fan. It was too small as it turned out. Water was heating up, fan didn’t manage to cool it when CPU was at maximum. At some point I had two such one fan coolers. I think it still wasn’t enough, definitely not for CPU and GPU, and too much tubing trouble.
    So at that point I bought a 3 fan radiator Black ICE GT Stealth 360 and I’m still using it today. It isn’t very deep and it’s easy to vacuum clean the dust from it. I do this like once in 6 months.

    After moving my PC to WC (water cooling, right), I surely hated every CPU stock fan, especially those loud, stupid, cheapest Intel vibrating fans. I once even just cut off that fan of radiator and mounted a quiet Noctua 9cm fan above it, this worked well and was way quieter.

    Fans

    At some point I searched for quietest fans. After I think 4 tries I settled for Noctua. It actually varies from model to model. And the downside is their ugly, distinct color, which I didn’t spray black, I don’t want to risk damage.

    For the radiator I bought 3 Noiseblocker fans (to be cheaper than Noctua and black already). They also have those rubbers good for mounting on radiator. I’d say they’re okay at low RPM, but not when higher, I can hear some motor noise.

    HDD

    Naturally after having CPU and GPU water cooled and quiet, the next thing is PSU and HDD.

    HDD is easier. I used to wrap it in cloth, but this makes them too hot. So now I have one in some foam, covered by some old noise reduction foam, with the back being open to air.

    PSU

    I did try 2 noiseless fanless PSUs in 2004 or 5:

    • Yesico FL-550ATX, a heavy tank (big parts) that was always hot, but quiet
    • and Seasonic X-460FL, a light empty, too expensive, low power PSU, that wasn’t 0dB quiet, it had some high frequency hiss noise.

    After Pentium 4 for better GPUs, I needed more power but there were no such fanless PSUs. I made a very stupid thing and tried using both fanless PSUs in 1 PC. Just connected their grounds and I killed Yesico this way?‍☠️.

    Finally, some time later I found an awesome PSU: Antec CP-850. I even bought a 2nd one for my other PC, a year after.
    It is bigger then most though. Inside, it wasn’t freaking all cramped to still fit the old retarded dimensions from very first PC ATX PSUs. It is just stupid: airflow is chaotic, no space left, all big hot inductors are nearby big capacitors (which don’t like heat) etc.

    Bigger PSU is spacious inside and its design with components in lines is good for airflow, thus the 12cm fan is rotating very slow. BTW I eventually replaced it to a quieter one. There is a big surplus of power 850W, I’m probably using 130W to 300W. So it won’t heat up and suffer from it and/or make noise.

    Case

    Yes the Antec PSU is bigger and won’t fit most PC cases, at the time there were only 3 available for it, but that was just a stupid commercial for their products.
    PC cases are likely my last concern and I buy them as rarely as possible.
    I used this PSU outside of my PC case from 2008 for 15 years now. My other PC has it on top.
    Eventually I moved to even smaller PC case and I placed it inside, thus making it look like it does now, sticking out.

    🛠️Modifications

    Apart from water cooling things, I have many utility mods for (or in) my PC:

    • external relay 220V to power water pump, and DAC (earlier audio amplifier) when PC is on
    • for years I had just a simple analog knobs for PC fans, now I have my own fan controller
    • also my own firmware in heavily modded keyboard
    • external power switch
    • and HDD LED (actually not used, too distracting)
    • external 12V connector, to power my mini drill
    • 2 USB switch
      I use it to switch my keyboard and mouse between my PC and a laptop. Works like a charm, I can’t imagine not having this now.
      I did it on a universal PCB with relays, since I had them available, but they do use 2,5W when on. There are 2 USB input ports and 4 output USB cables: one pair to PC and other to laptop. There are 6 relays, for 5V, D+, D-, and GND is common.
    • external switch for monitor input, near keyboard
      This was a bit tricky. I had to disassemble my decent LCD monitor, get to the switch, solder some wires, and add a long 2m cable with external switch. It is extremely useful, I don’t have to lean to press and wait like that too.

    📜My full PC history

    Well this chapter is very optional, since it has quite nostalgic value for me, but otherwise it’s just mostly (ancient) history. Yeah, it’s almost 30 years since my first PC.

    Legend for the below table:

    ? – I’m not sure about exact amount or date
    💀 – Dead, it broke by itself. Obviously very undesired.
    🔨 – I killed it, so my fault. By bad overclocking @, or by accident otherwise.
    ♻️ – Sold it, eventually.
    🗑️ – It became electronic garbage.
    ☑️ – Still using it.

    YearCPU, MBCPU Freq. @OCRAMHDD, SSDGPUMonitorAudio, PSU
    1992PC XT8 MHz640 kB20 MB 💀14″ CRT EGAPC Speaker
    1994386, 486?33 MHz1?, 4 MB?260 MB 💀14″ CRT VGA 💀
    1996Pentium 1120 MHz 🔨@32 MB?1 GB 💀💀borrow Voodoo1?
    1999AMD K6-2300 @366 MHz32? 64? MB4 GB?borrow Voodoo3?
    2001Duron
    K7VTA3 📷
    1.0 GHz256 MBGF2 MX40017″ CRT
    Samsung 753dfx ♻️
    2004Pentium 4
    MSI 865PE Neo2
    3.0 GHz ♻️2 GB?40, 80 GB? 🔨Ati 960019″ CRT Samsung ♻️SB 128 PCI? 💀
    Yesico FL-550ATX PSU🔨
    2005Ati X800 💀21″ CRT Dell 🗑️
    2008Quad Q6600
    P5E Deluxe
    2x 2.4 @3.0 GHz4 GB? DDR3 1066 🔨@320 GBGTX 8800 512MB 💀24″ LCD TN Iiyama ♻️SB X-Fi PCIe Xtreme 💀
    Antec CP-850 PSU ☑️☑️
    20111TB? 💀GTX 560 Ti 1GB💀♻️
    2012i7 2600K
    P8Z68-V GEN3
    4x 3.4 @4.4 GHz ☑️8 GB DDR3 1333?2TB
    201424″ LCD IPS
    Eizo EV2436W ☑️
    202016 GB DDR3 21331TBRX 570 4GB ☑️DAC AIYIMA A5 PRO ☑️
    2023Ryzen 5 7600X
    B650M DS3H
    6x 4.7 GHz ☑️32 GB DDR5 60001TB M.2 Gen4 NVMeRX 6600XT 8GB ☑️

    ⌛Conclusions

    As a kid I didn’t have new PCs too often, they were also getting faster and obsolete quite often. Then after a brief period of having newer hardware (mostly GPUs) somewhat often, while most of them died too early I think I realized it’s not good to buy (they’re soon to be garbage anyway).

    Later I realized that since years CPUs don’t really get much better, yet they do cost same or more. Thus my CPU and MB is still from 2012 (happy 10 years man).
    I did have them overclocked for few years, but now I even don’t. It gets 30% faster, but uses 30% more power. So I’d rather have 100W (not 130W) at idle, when I just listen to music or watch something. I don’t need that extra 30% like I did when I was building C++ often, for Stunt Rally.

    After all PCs are just tools (and not just gaming like consoles) but for learning, creating and entertainment too. So naturally buying a PC is an investment, that has to be done rationally.

    Some time later I decided it will be better to buy (instead of new PC) a new ergonomic chair (for PC) and a bed. Those are similar priced but much better for health.

    ➡️End

    Well in Sep 2023 I bought a new PC, even with case, only PSU still same. Added it to history table. It feels way faster than my previous, like 3 to 5 times. It seems I’ve skipped a new PC (CPU+MB) somewhere along the last 11 years. I always aimed for new PC to be at least 2 times faster to not waste money and time for updating. It needs some time to update, like a week to choose right components, move OS setup, etc. I cleaned dust in this now old PC and moved to air cooling again, then set it up and gave to my mother. Replacing previous one, which was way too slow, nowadays even movies were not smooth. Yet still almost all PCs of mine drain above 100W at idle. Well it’s good to update and do stuff faster, but of course still a high cost for new technologies.

  • 2021-22 Fan Controller 🌡️

    2021-22 Fan Controller 🌡️

    ⏱️Overview

    This is a nice gadget I made recently for controlling speed / power of my PC fans (all are 12cm, 12V, 3 pin, with RPM output).
    It has way more features than my old & basic 3 knob regulator which I used for over 15 years.
    And since this is open source (and I wrote it), it surely has and can have any feature (commercially unavailable, not even thought of, or way too expensive).
    Obviously it isn’t badly needed, that’s why I made it after so long.

    📷Gallery

    Pictures here.

    📂Sources

    Sources for Teensy 3.1 or 3.2 are available here.

    I do not recommend Teensy 3 at all. All Teensy boards are quite expensive and aren’t that needed for a fan controller. I think a bluepill or blackpill would suffice and be much cheaper. More info and detail in my MCU tutorial.
    I simply used Teensy 3 since I had it available, doing nothing and I had code for it from my older keyboard firmware, so it was faster to adapt it.

    ✍️Motivation

    For many years I was using just the simplest LM317T voltage regulators with 3 knobs (for 3 fan sets).

    Obviously a basic analog fan controller is very simple and extremely useful. I had 3 knobs (5k logarithmic potentiometers) with LM317T (even with no capacitors or radiators), mounted in the 3½” floppy disk bay. It was working very well for years and I could still use it.

    I did try once a Gelid Speedtouch 6, wasn’t very cheap, and it was hopeless. Even worse, when I realized that I can make a better one myself, like usually.
    Additionally, after being rather finished with my keyboard features, I had some Teensy 3.2 boards left, lying around, doing nothing, simply asking to be used for something. Even better, I could use my older keyboard firmware for Teensy 3.2 and adapt it fast for this controller.

    So I finally got to creating it. I called it “Fancy” from Fan C(ontroller).
    There was something new to learn too. I even used a cool circuit simulator to find out resistors around transistor, wasn’t exactly the real value later though.

    And of course not everything went as planned.

    For example: I wanted to use thermocouples for temperature which I had few of already. I tried an op-amp with differential amplifier for them and used ADC to read voltage which seemed working on breadboard. But after doing that for real (and using bigger resistor values) something didn’t work and I saw noise. So after few days trying I dropped it and just used DS18B20. They are bigger (3pin package) but have more precise measurement (at higher cost too).

    Unfortunately I also killed one Teensy 3.2 board by accident. I’m not even sure how. I’m guessing some 12V was still left on capacitors and I could touch 3.3V pins with it.

    📊Features

    A shorter, bulleted list of all features can be seen in sources readme with more detail on electronic parts and schematic (image here).

    GUI

    It has a 3×3 keyboard and a LCD color display (diagonal is 1.8″, 4.5 cm). I did years ago my keyboards this way, so it also came with 3 levels menu (GUI), many options and even full screen demos (why not).
    Of course it permanently saves all settings, in EEPROM.

    📈Regulating

    The main advantage of my digital fan controller is that it allows lower RPM than analog, which then makes PC slightly quieter.
    This is because a fan needs shortly higher power (voltage or PWM) to start, but can have it lower after it started rotating (I don’t mean the power started rotating ?).

    Next, it monitors RPM (revolutions per minute).
    So a natural safety feature here is: stop prevention (or in general RPM guard). It can increase power shortly to start again, even if user picked too little power to spin, or something stopped the fan.

    Additionally PWM outputs can be used, for fans that allow it. Actually all of my old PC fans didn’t work with PWM, so I had to also make analog outputs (channels) for them at some point. I don’t know if it could be more universal, these channels require some other parts.
    So it can control analog fans (changing constant voltage) and PWM fans (changing modulated pulse width at medium frequency).

    Optionally, temperature is measured. It can be used as feedback to automatically set fan power. This is naturally useful if sensor is on (or near) the heating part which fan is cooling.
    Sure, this can be possible to do with some software, that came with PC motherboard, GPU or a separate program. But it may not work on Linux or have all of my custom features.
    During summer I had my fans set higher, also even did set them lower when I wasn’t using much CPU (e.g. playing games or building C++). So hopefully this feature will make controller do it now, not me.

    Since the display is 160×128 pixels, it can show graphs of RPM or Temperature over time. Even few smaller at once, but with less detail.

    ⌛Conclusions

    Well it was a cool project, not just with digital chips, I had to use transistors with other parts too. I’m glad that one of the boards I have unused got to do something everyday.
    I hope it will last long. After all, my old regulators were really basic and much easier to repair (which wasn’t needed).
    Surely this thing is heavy, probably has too many parts too, but it doesn’t matter. It’s not like my PC weight matters at all.

  • 2021 RC Drift car 🚗

    2021 RC Drift car 🚗

    ⏱️Overview

    At end of 2021 I bought a WLtoys K969 RC drift car. I will describe here all the modifications I made to it. Also with few review remarks about it, less important comments and rants are italic.

    📷Pictures

    In gallery here.

    ▶️Videos

    Video here. Drifting in empty office on carpet and kitchen floor (best of montage).
    Camera was just from old phone: LG K10 2017
    Car camera: Ion Snapcam LE, like mentioned below
    Software used to for video eiditing: Kdenlive on Debian GNU/Linux with KDE

    📜History

    I guess I should write this chapter here, since being almost 40 requires (an attempt for) an explanation ?.
    Well, as a child I only had a few (probably Russian) cars from 80s, Two did have a cable from controller, and the one that was radio controlled had only 1 button to go backward, which also made it turn. Yeah I also can’t even.
    As a teenager, at some point I got an RC car. It had rear wheel drive and used 27MHz. I think I drove it only 2 times. It was fast and meant to drive outside. It had rubber tires so it stuck to asphalt and would rather flip over instead of sliding. It seemed kind of hopeless (compared to today RC toys) and felt like something is missing.

    ✍️Motivation

    In the mean time I got interested in WRC and 4WD on gravel, played a couple of such games too. And finally made my own Stunt Rally. There was a time when I was a lot interested in tires and car simulation.

    Recently, once a while I was watching various videos about RC toys. Technology moved forwards a lot in them too.
    This way, I found out about RC drift cars of 1:28 scale, and after days of watching videos and researching what would be cheap, but still good for drifting at home (or office) I found this WLtoys K969 and saw how it drifts at home.
    I think I watched later other 1:28 cars (like Mini-Z, Mini-Q etc.), and realized that even thought they are much more expensive they aren’t much better. At least for me as a first car, I don’t intend to drive RC professionally or on tracks. There are also cars and people who prefer RWD only drifting (front wheels move freely), but I was never a fan of that.

    So I think this RC is a nice, real life example, even if in smaller scale. It surely reacts and changes direction much faster than real cars. But is certainly less complicated, has no: LSDiffs, torque curve, gearbox, central differential, etc. In this RC all wheels rotate the same, electric motors don’t even need gearbox, suspension has only stiff springs, and there is no flexibility in tires, since those are from hard plastic here.

    🛠️Modifications

    So the things that I changed and added first to last are as follows:

    • Moved the pin from servo‘s steering arm higher for more steering angle range.
      There is a video here where it was easy..
      But, a huge but here, as it turned out (for me) the upper hole for this screw is wider and I couldn’t just simply use the same screw from lower hole.
      Thus I had to go creative to achieve this. Since I soldered a lot, I came out with a solution of putting few wires together for right diameter, then soldering one end to a tiny PCB part (with 1 hole), and just bending 2 wires out of the other end. It still holds well. Visible on my last picture.
      I guess this isn’t that important but is very good to have. Without this, steering angle is lower, making wider turns, but you still can make tight turns by drifting with quickly spinning wheels to oversteer (lose grip on car rear).
    • Made throttle range adjustable. How to video here. BTW I recommend that channel, it has many good videos including for this RC car.
      This is actually the most important one. Without this it will be difficult to not spin out wheels all the time. For small rooms, throttle range needs to be even lower. Of course they made the car to be cheapest, and even didn’t add the most important adjustment to it, I didn’t need those side buttons, so why not having this instead. Meh, always have to make things usable myself.
    • Added more weight on front.
      I cut out a universal PCB (my favorite kind) and made a place to solder down wires holding extra weights, they fit well. I used 4 in total, 2 on each side. One weights 4.5g, so this is 18g added on front wheels. This made center of gravity to shift (like 6mm or so) towards front and made the car oversteer even more, it drives better. There were some videos on doing that, just gluing 10g weight.
      Isn’t crucial though, still can drift without this. My front PCB is also used for lights and wires.
    • Added front and rear car lights.
      They are good for better orientation of how the car is rotating and what’s its direction. I mean it is actually easier (for me) to tell this by seeing those lights on floor, especially if car is far.
      The only way of doing this is making holes in chassis and hot gluing LEDs to it.
      I’ve spent too much time with lights, first making them in car. This way anytime I hit something harder they would change angle, go loose or break off.
      I also made a second mistake and made holes bigger to have LEDs with cases. It turned out the cases were too big and so long that made wheels hit them, if chassis is low. I will cut them to minimum and glue again. Good thing about that hot glue is that I can actually melt it with soldering iron again when I change my mind.
    • Made the RF sender battery use a 18650 LiPo.
      I don’t get why they didn’t already (was probably cheaper). When full, 4 AAs give 6V, LiPo is 4.2V, but RF sender still works. I thought it would be more difficult, but it was really easy. Just throw out 4AAs compartment and place the 18650 or any other LiPo here. Doesn’t seem to use much power, I didn’t charge it for a month or more. I only don’t know if it maybe decreases range? But with all being digital it may not be affected.
    • Added bottom lights.
      I had some old LEDs lying around, now 2 are on rear before wheels and 2 on front before wheels. Their location with chassis holes makes this cool blue X on floor now.
      I had only two 3mm LEDs so I also used 2 SMD LEDs, which I soldered out from those LiPo chargers (who needs them, red when charging is enough, and were so bright that I couldn’t even?).
      Then I added two 5mm LEDs (too big, SMD are better) green on left side, yellow-orange on right, located right after and above wheels. This turned out to be useful to know even better how the car is rotated from distance. So later I added same (close) colors to front, behind wheels.
      I soldered all on small cuts of universal PCBs.
    • Changed to a bigger car battery.
      The included 400mAh battery allowing 30 min runtime is laughable. Yeah I can’t imagine drones with 15 or less minutes at all.
      It was cheap and light, which is why they made it, right. After all, the freaking top speed has to be highest, like it was important at all. It drifts at much lower speed already.
      My new battery is 1200mAh and allows 1h 30 min drive time (so 3x more).
      It was made from two LiPo 603450 batteries, each size: 50x34x6mm. Glued with tape, fits nicely in same place, is just much higher and it weighs 45g. Secured it with some cardboard and mouse pad fragments on sides and wire (with thick insulation).
      I just had to remove their protection, because with it, it would stop for few seconds when pressing throttle too rapidly (very annoying).
    • With new battery I’ve also done new electrics in car. namely:
      1. 4 pin socket for battery, normally plugged in.
      2. ON-OFF switch. I used a 6 pin Tactile Power Micro Switch (self lock on) 7*7mm to switch + from both LiPo batteries.
      3. 4 pin socket for charger, plugged in when charging.
      4. 4 micro switches for lights (on-off, one small package). I added 47Ω resistors at end of each. I call this a fuse box, their purpose is prevent battery short circuit if by accident some wires connect.
      5. 5 pin socket (3 used now) to connect chassis lights.
      6. 2 trimmer potentiometers 1kΩ, for dimming car lights and bottom lights.
      7. All this required access, so I made a “door” in half of car’s front windshield.
      8. In total, the boards with bottom LEDs and all electrics weight 27g. Seems too much, but whatever?‍♂️.
        Each LED has a 330Ω resistor before. LED calc can be used if needed.
    • Charger
      Made using 2 popular modules: TP4056 / TC4056A Lithium Battery Charger and Protection Module.
      Just added 4 goldpin connector for car socket and that standard 4 pin PC connector for 5V.
      It does charge the battery in about 1h 30min. I’m not sure if it’s too fast or okay. The 4056 chips are heating a bit too much (at start), so I’m using a small copper radiator on them.
      Besides of removing blue LEDs from chargers (mentioned earlier) I also reduced the red LEDs brightness, resistors are now 20kΩ (way more). I hate this approach of adding LEDs, even for “turned on” indication and making all LEDs as bright as it can be. I guess if they could they’d made them visible from space or neighboring countries, that would be the best commercial?.
    • Radiator for main motor.
      Having more time to drive showed that it heats a lot, especially in smaller rooms.
      So I used thermal glue and glued some small aluminum radiators (1 cut to match motor length) bottom to motor and side to car bottom, which is aluminum, so good for cooling too.
      I’m guessing an even better way could be using copper tape around motor and gluing that to car bottom? Not sure. Either way some cooling is needed and would be better to have it done already.
    • Added some rubbers (cuts from mouse pad) below chassis mounting points (I saw something similar in a video).
      And later some foam around the car, better late than never. This is to soften hard hits, those happen a lot at start when first learning to drive, especially without reduced throttle.
      Additionally, at home I do jumps sometimes, banked and U turns (up to like 80 degrees, on a bent sheet of metal I had in cellar) and flip overs can happen this way etc.
    • At some point while reversing I almost broke one differential end (those, like all parts are plastic). I only noticed when one wheel wasn’t driven. But I managed to put it together with a wire soldered around it, so it doesn’t fall apart completely and works, a bit uneven though.
      Parts are freaking expensive, probably few times more than their worth. I hate this approach. If someone bought all parts separately it would cost like 2 or 3 times more than the car itself. Plus the waiting for shipment takes time.
    • After some bigger hit, I broke the thing that holds chassis on front. It is filled with holes and plastic, so no wonder.
      I made something stronger (and heavier like all I did) from a metal part, M2 and M3 screws. Is more difficult to use but should last longer, if I don’t break the plastic part that it’s mounted to.
    • Added a mount for camera on roof.
      Camera is Ion Snapcam LE, it weights 28g, with its own battery. It even lasted longer than car drive. I didn’t yet make it lighter by using car’s battery. Not sure if I will.
      Unfortunately, videos are horribly shaking when driving, because of uneven wheels.
    • In total the car with camera weights now 288g. So it is a lot more (was 160g at start) and the front suspension won’t allow more. Without camera and extra weights it is about 240g.
      I think it still drives well despite the extra weight. But surely when lighter it was quicker and more responsive (less mass and inertia).
    • Now I’m waiting for new wheels, with aluminum rims.
      The default wheels on this cars are cheap, all-plastic and uneven. Even like 1mm difference in height when rotating. This makes the car shake a bit. Surprisingly it doesn’t affect driving somehow, and it wasn’t easy to spot. Only slow time videos showed it and those from car camera, which are rather unusable.
    • Maybe for future (not sure if I’ll try/do any of these):
      I was thinking of making the controller use IR distance detection for throttle (instead of potentiometer which I already once cleaned since dust made it go chaotic). Using a MCU (Teensy 3.2 which I have lying around doing nothing) with LCD, buttons and rotary encoder for a GUI that allows adjusting all ranges and offsets without potentiometers.
      I also had an idea about having a light MCU in car to use RF (e.g. NRF24L01 2.4GHz modules) to send some measurements to controller MCU, like: battery voltage (for remaining drive time), motor temperature, car acceleration, rotation and direction (from those popular new accelerometer chips), and making all car lights toggleable and dimmable (with PWM) from controller.
      Lastly very doubtful, but maybe if I used PC mouse optics and chip I could get real velocity and position on some surface.

    ⌛Conclusions / Review

    I personally can’t imagine having fun with an outdoor, fast / touring car, with rubber tires. Neither with a smaller car that doesn’t have 4WD and drift. And those big RC cars that can slide on gravel (and jump up few meters) are quite big, very expensive (I seriously would buy a new PC instead) and require a big area or a track. And outdoor and indoor tracks aren’t close, are likely paid per hour and have other people. Plus parts for more expensive cars are of course more expensive.

    To summarize, I would recommend the WLtoys K969 car, especially as first RC car for indoor use, with more fun because of drifting. But with a few remarks.

    I don’t really recommend driving this car without modification 2 (throttle range adjust). I did it at start and it was chaotic. Some say modification 1 (more steering) is also crucial.

    Another thing that many say, is that the 2 smallest gears wear out rather fast. Those that drive each differential, both from plastic again. Why on earth aren’t all gears from metal.

    Well as I mentioned few times already, nearly all parts are from plastic, which can be a problem. Surely is for small gears. Later if you drive on uneven surfaces or jump, etc. then mountings for suspension will wear out or break (since closest to floor and from plastic).
    Still (and maybe that’s why) there are many metal upgrade parts and kits, but I don’t recommend any, at all. I have seen too many negative comments from people who say that those don’t even fit together, are bigger, leave less clearance etc. So they just look cool, and that’s it.

    The rest of my modifications were optional and just an easy hobby, that lets me spend some fun time, but not with my PC as usual.

  • 2020-22 K.C.4 Controller ⌨️

    2020-22 K.C.4 Controller ⌨️

    ⏱️Overview

    This is my newest keyboard controller software (based on my previous one) used in my keyboard CK9 (upgraded CK6), running on Teensy 4.0 with a 2.8″ color LCD display (320×240, ILI9341 chip).

    📷Gallery

    Album with pictures here.

    ▶️Videos

    Here are videos of keyboard CK9, showing most of K.C.4 on its display:

    • View – Short video of keyboard and closeup at display.
    • Demos – Showing all demos (in auto mode): Plasma, 3D Polyhedrons with diagonals, Wave, Fire (meh), 2D waving CK Logo with shadow, and old Rain.
    • Features – A detailed look at features, no voice or commentary though. Editing mappings, sequences, testing etc.

    Link to my channel with all keyboard videos so far here.

    📂Sources

    My firmware sources are on github.
    It’s called K.C.4 (“Kacey”) simply from Keyboard Controller and 4 from Teensy version.

    The readme with all key features is visible on github. Here is more practical description.
    At end of page I wrote a comparison from my previous version (for Teensy 3.2) and quickly with other controllers / keyboards.

    📊Features

    The current code features are (and were mostly present in my previous K.C. version):

    • Display with menu, where you can edit everything possible.
    • Mapping (key binding).
      So which USB code will the physical key send to PC when pressed. There is a pick list with all common keys (and internal functions, sequences, etc) to choose from when binding. It has group colors and group filter for easier orientation.
    • Keyboard layout drawn on display.
      Shown when editing mappings (for currently chosen layer). Has a cursor to move around between keys. It’s also possible to jump to a key by pressing it.
    • Layers.
      If you hold a key, whole keyboard layout changes giving you other keys. Kind of like the Fn keys on laptop but much more useful and customizable. A common feature of custom controllers.
      Locking layers is also possible, either by lock/unlock key, tapping layer key fast or holding it for longer. Of course can be disabled and delay parameters are changeable.
    • Mouse keys.
      Keys that will move mouse, press mouse buttons or scroll mouse wheel. Also featuring acceleration with parameters for it and speed in GUI.
    • Sequences aka Macros.
      Basically any key combinations (for key shortcuts) and any sequences of key presses (for e.g. passwords). I am showing sequence previews where possible too, so when editing Mappings (for a sequence key), when picking a key from list or Testing pressed keys (if a key runs a sequence). I am also showing in sequences View, all mapped keys that run selected sequence.
    • Sequence commands are just a further extension.
      • They are special commands (beside sequence keys), that e.g. wait for few seconds (0.1s resolution), or change how slow the sequence will run (1ms resolution, useful e.g. for putty).
      • Others allow putting comments (for sequence purpose), and hiding sequence from preview (e.g. for passwords).
      • There is also a command to run other sequence(s) from this one. Also a repeat command that will do sequence (keys) continuously, until interrupted. This is e.g. useful e.g. if you want to watch a video faster, skipping parts with arrow keys after a short delay or take screenshots while watching etc. Normal keys can be used when a sequence runs too.
      • All mouse actions are available as commands too. So for example you can press a key (for a sequence) that will press button or move mouse etc. I have this way a mouse gesture done.
    • Internal functions.
      Keys to e.g. dim brightness, toggle GUI, toggle LED light, quit sequence, lock/unlock layer, change default layer etc. This a direct way, faster than adjusting parameters in GUI.
    • Testing and Setup pages.
      Useful when developing and to check if everything is working properly. Scan setup is advanced and adjust which strobe delay, scan frequency, debounce time I need. Matrix page shows the 18×8 keyboard matrix, with my anti-ghosting code working and any issues from too low strobe delay.
      It now also features X marks on keys that are available in matrix but not present on layout, this makes locating new extra keys very easy.
    • Demos and Game.
      Were already present in previous version and even on the first tiny display I used (128×64 mono). Since I have a display, and a powerful MCU, they show their drawing possibilities.
      They got extended to new resolution with few added extras. Best shown on videos, links below.
    • Clock.
      With date (uses internal RTC, needs 3V battery).
      Also showing Temperature, read from attached DS18B20 1-wire sensor (optional).
    • Statistics.
      Clock also displays (on its extended pages) keyboard use statistics:
      • Uptime.
        Time since power on or plugged in USB.
      • Late hour background.
        Will start slowly showing top of display orange at 22:00 and every 0:30 min going more visible, being yellow after 0:00 (midnight). This is to notify and motivate me to go to sleep when I sit too long at night.
      • Active time.
        I.e. how long I use keyboard without a break (at least 5 min, can be adjusted). Changes color from value.
        This is helpful to know if I’m doing something too long on PC. After all, it is recommended to take 5 min breaks every hour, it is healthy for spine and hands.
      • Inactive time.
        The opposite. Useful to know how long was I away from PC (keyboard). Also changes color when over 1 hour. Meaning I probably should have turned it off, to save power.
      • Press/min.
        Typing frequency, so how much key presses are done every minute. A colored value on left, going e.g. red at 120, yellow starting at 50.
        Also a second value below with total average since power on, with slowly changed value. So it is useful and directly corresponds to how tired will hands be. It’d be great to keep this value below 50, but sadly writing any text (e.g. chat, email etc.) or playing a game makes it go even above 150.
    • Graphs.
      As a part of clock, they show history of using keyboard (key presses/minute in the past hours). Second one is for temperature history. There are 320 points on display width and parameters for how often a value is added to graph.

    ⌨️Keyboard CK9

    I upgraded my 2018 keyboard CK6 with this bigger display and K.C.4 and it became CK9. I also added tiny extra keys, lots of them. Above Numpad, 2 rows of 8 or in other words 4 groups of 4. Surely will come handy for e.g. internal functions or could be extra F13-F24 keys for OS.
    The keyboard has visible tear on few keys already, well I use it since 2016 (was CK3 first). Nothing yet, compared to the 14 year old one (CK7/4/2).

    ✍️Motivation

    My previous version of KC and keyboards with it were quite useful and the 1.8″ color display was good too. The keyboard drawn on screen was minimal. Keys with one letter/digit/symbol had a 5×7 font, but 2 letters needed a tiny 3×5 font. It worked, but didn’t look great.
    So the new display is bigger 2.8″ and has about 2x resolution (320×240 vs 160×128).

    The main reason for this upgrade though was the new Teensy 4.0 with a MCU that runs at 600MHz. It seems to be the fastest one available (on a board with USB, ready to use). And is even way faster than all previous. I already didn’t like Arduino in 2014 when I got interested in MCUs (again), seemed like a stone age relic compared to Teensy 3, but today I can say they probably have computational power of a rock, when compared.

    The result is constant 45 frames per second almost always. This is what 600MHz MCU with SPI set at 60MHz for this display does, while using DMA for transfers and double buffered drawing (one buffer is being sent by DMA to display, while MCU draws new frame in second buffer, at the same time).

    ⚖️Comparisons

    Of course, there were many projects of using a big display with slow MCU even. A MCU not having enough RAM for screen buffer. But this means very low refresh rate (low Fps) and flickering (blinking when redrawn).

    There are few open source keyboard controllers, I think none of them even have a display, and some still use ATmega 8bit MCUs. Their requirements for program and RAM (memories of a MCU) are minimal, way lower than mine. And the price will be lower too. But the main flaw coming from it, is having to compile on PC and upload to MCU after any change. This is a big nope for me.

    📢Rants

    So for me, this is now the present (not the future anymore). And well honestly, whenever I see a custom keyboard picture I’m just asking: “where’s the display?”. In addition, seeing Cherry MX or any switches turns me away immediately.

    Because there is one more very important thing that is the light press modification. All my keyboards since 2005 have it and it’s just the default for me. Sadly all commercial keyboards are garbage in this matter and people continue to produce keyboards that have a tactile feel, 4mm travel and around 50 gram force to press. Well for me this is the middle ages era. This can cause injuries (Carpal Tunnel Syndrome). And I guess it feels awful for those having pain from using such keyboards.

    For my modding process (of reducing rubber dome keys press force and travel) pictures are in this gallery and I made a video of it recently (it is CK5).

    ✅Summary table

    For reference, here is a table with current status of all my keyboards, since start until present day:

    NameAssembly yearOriginal keyboardKeys actuation
    [gram force]
    Notes
    CK3 > CK6 > CK92016 > 2018 > 2020A4 Tech KX-10023 gCheaper, bit wobbly, but more keys
    CK2 > CK4 > CK72005 > 2016 > 2018Logitech Ultra X Flat33 gStiff foil, old, extra keys
    CK5, CK5b2015, 2020A4 Tech KV-300H9-18 gThe lightest foil
    CK12004Logitech Ultra X Flat25 gFirst, old, had extra keys,
    now only for testing, 1 row dead 💀
  • 2019 DoubleCmd Fork 📂

    2019 DoubleCmd Fork 📂

    ⏱️Overview

    This is my modified version (a fork) of Double Commander (DC), a two panel file manager. I first forked it in 2017 and in 2019 I finally moved to using it daily instead of Total Commander. I will describe few aspects here.

    ℹ️How to start with DC

    Here is a short paragraph upfront, for those who didn’t use a commander or are new to DC and want to start using it (or give it a try). I recommend the main website (for download and support) and the documentation (help) about how to use its functions.

    Double Commander

    DC is cross platform, so it runs on Windows and GNU/Linux. It is inspired by TC. There are of course many other file managers, (some even in text mode like MC), but I think DC is perfect for me and I highly recommend it.

    The best features of DC though (for me), are being Open Source (FOSS, this gives Freedom) and still developed. What it means (especially for me) is that I can learn how it works and can change it myself. Or even add new features, including those that only I will use. And I can contribute to the project.

    📜My History

    I started using a file manager as a kid, already on my first PC which had DOS. It was Norton Commander (NC, in text mode). I quickly got to using it daily, as my main program to do all file and directory operations. I didn’t even know how to do them using DOS commands for a while. Well I barely started learning English and wasn’t able to read any documentation too (it wasn’t needed BTW).

    When I was moving to Windows 98 (around 1999), I naturally wanted a similar program. I didn’t like Windows Explorer at all or even windows in general (I was still sometimes going back to DOS). Fortunately there was a similar program, at the time simply called Windows Commander (WC ?). It was later renamed to Total Commander (TC). Using NC in Windows was possible, but not always, since DOS had short file names and Windows has longer.

    WC was better than NC, my favorite feature probably being that it could color file names by extension. I think it’s when I started adding my colors for file extensions I got to work with.

    Naturally, when I started using Kubuntu and later Debian, I wanted something like TC.

    ⏳Before I started

    I actually reported a couple of bugs that affected me the most and honestly prevented me from using DC. I was also too inexperienced to even try fixing them myself. Lastly those weren’t easy things to fix.

    These were:

    • Very slow File Filters. It took 4 seconds of delay to view 24000 files in a directory with my settings having 123 file filters. Directories over 1000 files were already entered with noticeable delay. And yes, my file extensions list grew and became something that I enjoy since years. Surely not something that I would throw away and just not use it.
    • Freeze on entering unreachable network paths. It happened often at work (where I had to use DC not TC) and also for more people. Application froze for nearly a minute. So quite an inconvenience to kill the process every time someone accidentally tries an unreachable path or a tab with it.
    • Compare by Contents not Implemented from Search result and archives. A simpler bug for a useful feature.

    After a few months the first issue was fixed. So I started making my own program to deal with my file extensions list for both DC and TC. I had a lot of them 96 in 2017 and 239 in 2019, this is just the count of unique colors (file filters), though I split some for readability (e.g. for Stunt Rally track sceneries).

    The program has its own page and is called Crystal Color Center. I’m sharing it with my list included. It allows an managing the list on an even higher level, with features like: groups, search, quicker editing (with R,G,B sliders) and of course import / export for both DC and TC. Thanks to it, moving my list from TC to DC was easy and any changes to it is fast and conveniently done in my program.

    The second bug was fixed after a year (still, I can’t complain since I didn’t do it earlier). But earlier it became not that needed anymore for me.

    After that it was probably the time, when I realized I should fix the rest of my issues with DC. I mean just missing things from TC that I got so used to. It also turned to a nice learning experience and woken up old memories from Pascal.

    ✍️How I started

    Well the start is the hardest part of any software (program or game) or even any project in general. To start, the page Building from source is crucial. And I believe it’s probably the most important page for any FOSS project. Of course beside a good documentation for users. Fortunately the instruction is not long or difficult.

    Sources are surely different, because DC is written in FreePascal. Lucky for me, I knew Pascal since DOS and later Delphi in Windows. So I had some start and the rest is nicely explained on internet and in language documentation and wiki. But basically I prefer to just search on internet for particular problem. It doesn’t matter where I land (doc, wiki, forum, stackoverflow, etc.) to read the solution or hints.

    At first I was building just from command line. After installing packages for Lazarus IDE (a bit more trouble) I could develop in it. Naturally I created my own color theme for Lazarus IDE as a result. And I also saw that weird build “Internal error 200611031″ plenty of times (well count – 1 too many).

    FreePascal

    The DC code is quite big and it surely requires time to get a hang of it. Learning FreePascal adds even more time. But it is a very nice (almost funny) language which also reminded me of my earliest years of programming (at college I moved to C++ and later also C#).

    Pascal language doesn’t use so many symbols, making other languages look more like a forest. Pascal code looks more like a book. Not a phone book, a novel. An English book where people write what should happen. Assuming that comments are written in English too, which I recommend always.

    Well let’s have an example, I have cut and pasted few very readable lines here:

    uses
      Forms, Controls, Dialogs, Buttons, Menus, Classes;
    
    procedure LoadSettings;
    function GetOptionsForm: TfrmOptions;
    function GetAName: String; virtual; abstract;
    destructor Destroy; override;
    
    const
      allowed : set of char = [ '-', '.', '_', '~' ];
    
    var
      I: Char;
    begin
      for I := #0 to #255 do
      begin
        case I of
          '_', 'a'..'z', 'A'..'Z', '0'..'9': Identifiers[I] := True;
        else
    
    implementation
    
    if not Assigned(Operation) then Exit;
    Operation.Execute;
    
    with Operation as TMultiArchiveCopyInOperation do
      begin
      if cbEncrypt.Checked then
        repeat
          ..
        until sPassword = sPasswordTmp;
    
    finally
      Free;

    ⚖️Pascal vs C++, quick rants

    Well I can’t say I’m finally free yet ?, but surely many things from Pascal are great and make it very nice to read. E.g. that uses statement at start, compared to #include each in own line in C++. Or the with do statement that shortens a whole block below.

    C++ is a horribly unreadable at start. And just to mention, some terrible mistakes made by just one symbol, like if (i = 0), instead of ==, that compiles fine. But I did like { } brackets for blocks, instead of begin and end, how many times did I spell them wrong.

    I also remember my favorite thing from Turbo Pascal: F9 key to build project, if there is an error it jumps to it in code. Far too many times in Visual Studio I pressed: F1 to show error list, Enter to go to error and Shift-Esc to close that bloody thing. I can’t even ? (and those are my own shortcuts, just Esc won’t work).

    It is much better with C# where it compiles in background and underlines bad expressions in code already.

    One great thing in Lazarus IDE is that it makes tabs for each search you do. Why on earth can’t VS do it??

    I could go on. But the point is, it was really nice (for a change) to code in a completely different language. I think I’d put Pascal after C++ and before C#. Okay then, that’s it from off topic.


    📊My version

    Now we finally arrive at the main and most interesting part (at least for me).

    After I was able to use Lazarus IDE and felt good with Pascal (again), I wrote new features and customized DC to my liking. I also made source patches for some features on DC BugTracker.

    📂Sources

    Full list of my changes (in commits) can be browsed here (or locally after cloning with Git).

    Here is what I changed and why:

    • Undo Close Tab
      I simply can’t imagine having dynamic tabs anywhere without this. We’ll see if it gets into final DC release, and when.
    • Multi Rename tool
      More compact look and new functions listed here. Probably the biggest update.
      I use this tool a lot at home, e.g. dealing with thousands of screenshots, deleting later half or one third of them, re-enumerating them with this tool and doing it again.
    • Status bar
      New look, visible on screenshot above.
      I really like to have a different status bar (text and color) for when anything is selected.
      I once had selected files, not visible at cursor, forgot them, wanted to delete a file at cursor and deleted them all.
    • Size colors
      Next, why shouldn’t I have different colors for different sizes (K, M, G etc)?
      Sure for some it’d be too much color. But I’m using the same idea in my audio player (cAmp), coloring track times and I find it informative.
    • Gradient for cursor (blue) and selection (orange).
      Also visible on screenshot above. I think it’s nice, more futuristic.
    • Follow links to destination.
      With Ctrl – (Left,Right or Up), quite a useful thing.
      I have few dirs with just such links (.lnk files) and use them as my starting point e.g. when developing one of my projects.
      And BTW a quick feature to use Ctrl-Shift-S on cursor to make a link to it, without asking.
    • Find Files results, Color by file types.
      Another useful extension. Seems natural for me, to have any list of files use coloring by file type (extensions) especially when I have so many in my list.
    • Some smaller things.
      Not very important, but definitely nice to have and a cool exercise to find it in code.

    Another thing of mine is file and directory rating. I use it constantly since years too. This is visible on screenshot above as symbols ` ^ ~ + after name. It makes it easy to spot more interesting files/dirs and makes them change color (usually intensity). It is also an internal feature of my player to apply the symbols to filenames.

    ⚙️Contributing (in general)

    There are a few different change types to software, that anyone can report, contribute, or have on own fork.

    • Bug or issue reports.
      This is relatively easy to do as user. And is surely a good thing to receive as a developer. With more features in project and more systems where it can run, it is difficult to catch bugs. I didn’t like those reports as a Stunt Rally developer, but without them it would be a more buggy game.
      But still, there is probably nothing worse than a post “help, it doesn’t work”, without any (not to mention all) data required like version, OS, steps, etc. In that case it’s better not to post.
      There is a general guide for “how to report a bug” and some project have specific ones.
    • Bug fixes.
      Like those above, but better. They requires programming skills though. It’s when you fix a bug yourself and submit it (to developers).
      In Git that would be a pull request (from your fork, name is surely misleading). It is less trouble to merge and test, also more convenient to discuss (on website Codeberg, GitLab, Github, Bitbucket, etc.). But sometimes a patch is enough.
    • Ideas.
      Well that’s just the worst IMO. Everyone has them, just having is not much worth. Discussing them could mean wasted time on development. And developers have usually their own ideas and vision of project. Having more doesn’t help. But, I guess, it could be some help for starting projects, with not set vision yet.
    • New features, implemented.
      That is way better than just having ideas. Being able to turn them into reality. One can submit those to developers. But there is a catch. Not all will be attractive to put into project. Having too many features makes a project more difficult to test and more bugs are possible. And could make it more cluttered in GUI or Options (wasn’t an issue in my projects).
    • Custom own features.
      This is why I have so many forks. I do have plenty of ideas, I implemented them and I’m pretty sure nobody (from the developers) would care or want to add them (reasons above).
      Additionally, since I have a lot of preferences, it is natural to keep them in my own forks. This way I can keep up to date with upstream (main) project versions and have my stuff too. Priority for me is to keep my stuff.
      But merging upstream versions is needed too (once a while) even if it takes time. If not done, it would at some point accumulate too much, making upstream update too time consuming. Sometimes in that case, it could be possible to apply (merge) own changes (only if not too many) to a fresh upstream version.

    ⏳Conclusions

    My move to DC was surely long and took many steps. But I’m glad to use FOSS, not just as an alternative to commercial, but to prove that it’s simply the only logical way for me. It was obvious already earlier, when I created my own audio player (I use it everyday).

    If you’d ask me why I didn’t yet move to GNU/Linux (from that Windows crap) it is because of all those steps needed. DC was one of them. Rewriting my audio player for GNU/Linux is next. There are few other programs I customized and got used to (Video player, Image browser, etc.) but those two (DC and my cAmp) are crucial.

    I think I also showed some aspects of FOSS and the great things it brings. In particular, opportunities to: learn, express creativity and adjust to own needs.

  • 2017-21 Build Console C#

    2017-21 Build Console C#

    ⏱️Overview

    BuildConsole (BC) is the program I created and developed at work*, using C# (syntax here), in WinForms.
    Specifically to visualize output from build process. It surely is my biggest and most useful C# project so far.
    Unfortunately I can not open source it’s code because of that*. But I can share my experience from this process.

    📷Gallery

    Screenshots here. Starting with latest version from 2021 and its features, then with older until first from 2017.

    ⚙️How it works

    At its core, BuildConsole replaces the Windows cmd.exe command prompt (terminal) and will run any command too.

    It does so, by creating a process and redirecting its output, error and input streams.
    For the core part, it was quite useful to browse ConsoleControl code and many stackoverflow answers as usual.

    The main needed part of creating process is located here with redirecting (all 3 RedirectStandard*).
    It is also using BackgroundWorker classes (e.g. outputWorker) that run on own threads and read those redirected streams, to show output immediately when it comes.

    Textbox

    I used the richTextbox control (included in WinForms) since the beginning. It turned out to be garbage for this purpose.
    It makes few easy operations really too difficult:

    • Centering view to a line not even possible.
    • Adding a text line, is slowing down the more lines it already has.
    • View always jumped a little (jittered) when adding lines.
    • Having a user selection while adding text was a PITA, got it almost working.
    • Had to be unfocused before browsing text above.
      Otherwise new added lines would jump to end (even if turned off).
    • Finding text needed a lot of code. Mark all was painfully slow.

    So I recently found and adapted BC to use the FastColoredTextBox control instead. Which is on the other side of spectrum. It is so feature packed (almost like a real IDE) that I probably only use 10% of it.
    Still, it is way faster at drawing text, has all needed features and even some extras already (like bookmarks). It needs using only fixed width fonts though (I used variable before). But it is understandable that e.g. selecting text (block mode too) was much easier to implement because of that.

    ✍️Motivation and rants

    Well everybody in company was using just cmd.exe to build (nearly all) projects, with a custom .bat file. I can’t post how it looked like exactly, but I can surely tell that at some point, it looked like a black and white TV noise. It happened when building with VxWorks started, using GCC (which is awesome). But here, it was outputting full build command, for each file, with all include paths too (like 8 lines of junk). In other words, it seemed like somebody was shoving a black and white sand at my face. Well I couldn’t even ?.

    About 6 months after I started working there, I was building a project very often, to test an upmerge of some stupidly outdated branch. This required to look for build errors in that white text sandbox. It is when I realized I seriously can’t look at this trash and I simply can make a program, that filters out and colors this junk (firstly errors).

    So after asking and getting approval, I started implementing it. Then after about 2 weeks I had a first working release. It was pretty basic, but already way more useful. It still had a couple of bugs, which I fixed later.

    Screenshot

    Now I can’t provide a real work example (also because of that*), so I’m including an artificial example on the screenshot (above). Output is similar to real and more general.
    The good part is that it has like 1 to 3 lines of each common message. Normally there are many similar lines on one screen, but only few unique. This way screenshot shows the whole process on one screen with already most of line types included.

    📊Features

    Here is a list of all program features from current version. Starting from basic, first implemented and ending with additional extras, added much later (not essential, but useful). I am describing them in place.

    🔨Basic

    • Changing font on Settings tab.
      Zooming already present, with Ctrl-Wheel or Ctrl-Num+
    • Unlimited buffer scrollback.
      cmd.exe has very small default value, and even doesn’t allow more than 9999 lines, in settings.
    • Settings in a XML file, saved in user folder.
      I’d say a standard thing. Holds both user set options and all line rules (find text, color, skip and more).
    • Combo boxes for user paths and commands.
      With buttons on left to add, delete, set as default.
    • Filtering (skipping) useless lines.
      There is a lot of rubbish, e.g. coming from MSBuild (also visible in Visual Studio), like:
      “Compiling…”, “Generating code…”, something up to date, lines with just “Microsoft Visual Studio” (a greeting commercial) and more.
      With a simple xml option to skip a line, the final output becomes cleaner and to the point.
      There is a textbox with last line present (just below console) that shows those skipped ones too.
    • Coloring lines
      By regular expression (RegEx), more info on its syntax here.
      • Later replaced (and extended) by simple find (String.Contains).
      • Advanced RegExes
        Use groups and replace (change) the incoming line (to make it cleaner and shorter).
        Still doing a simple string check first, to make the whole process faster.

    ⚙️Utility

    • Progress list. On right, it has just key build steps.
      Copied from output with time since start. It shows only 0:00 here because this test was fast.
    • Double click on a line in progress list jumps to it in console.
      This was pretty easy with FastColoredTextBox and it also centers (impossible and awful in richTextbox).
    • Find.
      Searching for text in console, with:
      find next, previous, mark all and clear marks.
    • Program icon turning green when idle, yellow when running, red when build has errors.
    • Saving current console output to a text file.
      Loading saved files into console, to view them later, in same colors.
    • Log file, optional.
      Auto incremented for more program instances.
      There are checkboxes for disabling line skip in log file or in console.
    • Tooltips with info text for nearly all controls.
    • Icons for most controls, also in menu.
    • Help menu with full documentation in about 10 chapters.
      Also Changelog and nice About dialog.
    • Opening VS solution and VxWorks with workspace
      By button (all with hotkeys), you could open the project in path quickly.
      There sometimes were more in one path, so new settings were added in xml.

    🛠️Advanced

    • Auto loading settings.xml file when it changed.
      Open by button on Settings tab, and on save in editor, program already loads it.
      Useful with many instances, all will do it. Also if one saves settings, other will load it too.
    • Queue.
      Ability to run a command in a number of paths sequentially. Done in settings.xml.
      Main thing here is that if a build fails in path the queue will quit, leaving the failing project path in combo.
    • Actions.
      Ability to start or kill a process, at command start, end or fail (build error).

    💡Observations

    So first, just as a warning, this is my point of view.

    There is a number of things I realized here, some I still don’t get and can only suspect.

    It is certain that I made an extremely useful tool. What bothers me here, is that nobody did it, in like 10 years. Well, I guess I’m the one guy who could create it so far and that is rare.

    Next, which is even more odd, some people still don’t use it. I can only suspect a few factors here, they:

    • Don’t know of it.
      It is obvious for me that even the best software (FOSS, well made and useful) will go unnoticed without promotion (or commercials) and spreading information about it. That’s why I am always announcing each new release in local emails and some also further.
    • Are too lazy to try.
      Sure all programs have a learning curve, but this one is easy and well documented.
      Sadly that can happen, even worse if it takes years. I guess I can’t really expect ability to change especially from people who work for too long in one place.
    • Are so addicted to old methods, that they can touch the future. Actually the present, for nearly 2 years. That’s for me even worse than laziness.

    ⏳Conclusions

    Whatever the case, it doesn’t matter that much.
    A software engineer has to deal with users. Sometimes even those who “didn’t even try turning it off and on again”.
    Also, developers need to balance listening to already users (wanting something) versus shouting at not yet users (to gain new ones).

    Lastly, I’m glad I could develop this tool, because otherwise I would hate building even more (now it is nice to look at, just old and inefficient). Also I’m glad if anyone found it useful (beside me).