Light your star

    Despite the terrestrial race for MHz, GB, nm, the number of cores and pixels, there are much more interesting events in space. One of the most spectacular is the birth and death of stars.
    Thanks to progress, a person can take part in the life of a new class of space objects - supernova short-lived stars.
    1. Open the text file . File Name: Toll Free Number. Call the star!
    2. The birth, short life and death of a star is observed at the address indicated in the second line of the file.
    3. At the end of the text appears the last digit of the phone number from which the star managed to ward off.

    Notes.
    1. To increase the throughput, the call rings off - it is free.
    2. The full number is not displayed.
    3. Any SMS is indicated by a dot. Write any desire, all messages burn out in the star and possibly come true! Due to delivery delays, it’s hard to understand the authorship, so the number is not shown. But there will be a real starfall - a triple flash! SMS is paid like regular messages, but you can not enrich the mobile operator by sending them over the Internet.
    4. In reality, when a real “Star” flies in space, a person will see a flash simultaneously with the “hang up” signal in the phone. When watching an Internet broadcast, the video comes with a slight delay due to the low speed of the communication channel.



    The idea arose several years ago and gradually grew to a working breadboard called the Star.
    Video of star flares in space and the process of creating a layout are shown in the film “Light your star!



    For the first time this thought came to a person in the distant 1914. Then there were no microcontrollers, Tsiolkovsky only developed the theory of flights into space, and therefore Mayakovsky spoke about the idea in poetic form:
    Listen!
    In principle, After all, if the stars are lit,
    then does anyone need this?
    So - someone wants them to be?
    So - someone calls these spitters a pearl?
    And, tearing himself
    in the snowstorms of midday dust,
    bursts into God,
    fears that he is late,
    cries,
    kisses his sinewy hand,
    asks - there
    must be a star! -
    swears -
    will not bear this starless flour!
    And then
    walking anxious,
    but calm outwardly.
    He says to someone:
    “Now you don’t have anything?
    Not scary?
    Yes?!"
    Listen up!
    After all, if the stars
    are lit,
    then does anyone need this?
    So - is it necessary
    that at least one star light up
    over the roofs every evening
    ?!


    And now almost 100 years have passed, Mayakovsky’s dream is close to realization.
    A star is a device containing a cellular modem, a controller, and a flash - call indicator.



    It can be located anywhere and anyone can call the star. Like many modern people-stars, she behaves appropriately: she beats calls and SMS from annoying fans, flashing every time with joy.

    The idea was aimed at the contest described in the article “ Startup for a million dollars ”.
    There were probably many inhabitants of the Habr planet in this contest, so it’s interesting to find out how everything was with them.
    The official result with the list of winners is still not visible, although they promised before October 15.
    My result: another not won international competition. Once again, the phrase “Do not entertain yourself with illusions!” There is nothing to brag about, therefore this story about the next unsuccessful performance.
    Pulse electrolysis at the Google Science Fair ”was done by my daughter, now it's my turn.
    As a rule, a competition is the result of some activity. To offer something, you need to have something already.
    Therefore, you need to study, study and study again, and then work, work and work - something like this was said by one famous grandfather.
    In general, two projects were sent to this startup competition (I do not like this foreign word, even Word blushes when it is written): “Lamp & Ray Time” and “Light your Star”. The competition is American, so forgive me for my english.
    Lamp & Ray Time ” - development of the idea of ​​“Lamp of time”. From the new one were presented photos of the ray of time in Paris, work on a spaceship andvideo of a one-color version of the “Lamp of Time” on the Moon. This is also an interesting direction, but not the topic of today's story.

    The project "Light your Star" proposed to place a star on a spaceship.
    As expected, an application form was filled out, which provided links to the Executive Summary (project summary, if I understood correctly) and the presentation “ Light your Star ”.
    According to immodest calculations, when implementing this idea, a good profit was obtained, which was supposed to be directed to the development of space programs.
    Figures for comparison:
    1. About $ 2.5 billion was spent on the creation of the Curiosity rover.
    2. NASA's SpaceX contract provides for 12 flights to the ISS for a total cost of $ 1.6 billion.
    3. The A380 airliner costs about $ 390 million.

    The idea of ​​the star is elementary and not expensive, so it can be implemented in one of the next expeditions to visit the ISS.
    The power of the station makes it easy to provide the star with cosmic (solar, i.e. stellar) energy.
    This little star will unite romantics and realists, lyricists and physicists, and will also allow you to raise funds (which modern managers like) to develop and popularize space research (which ordinary people like).

    Such a cosmic star will be convenient for the fulfillment of any dream. A desire is made, dialing is made, and then everything is as in antiquity. Result: “dreams come true” not only at Gazprom.
    Automation of the fulfillment of dreams will allow you not to wait for the arrival of the period of starfall. You can see the treasured flash on the next cloudless night. Not so romantic, but practical.
    It is very convenient to give a flash of a supernova to your loved ones - the result of the focus is guaranteed. At the same time, the trajectory of the spacecraft is being studied.
    For children, the idea is interesting in that it will contribute to the independent study of astronomy, since it was canceled at school, and there are few scientific and educational programs on television.

    Anyone can try to test this idea right now.
    There is no familiar astronaut in orbit, Takushi Tanakawill not have time to change the firmware of his device, so there are no flashes from space. But with the help of Internet broadcasting, it will be possible to observe flashes from the location of the layout, and in the file that is laid out in the public domain, you can see the last digit of the phone number that called.
    Since free resources are used, it is not known whether the experiment will last a couple of days, but in a real embodiment, the star should have high survivability and reliability.

    There will be no collection of money for calls during tests on the layout. SMS is paid, but you can not send them.
    Since the call instantly beats off, the throughput of the system should be extremely high, about 20 ... 30 people can call per minute.
    With this option, they are checked in work with a large load:
    - mobile operator;
    - Google documents in multi-user access;
    - video streaming channel;
    - cellular modem and controller.

    It is interesting to see which text will result from the collective creativity of many people.
    Uncle Fedor, a dog and a cat from Prostokvashino also jointly wrote a letter to dad and mom.
    In our case there will be only numbers. And if you translate them into notes or a picture, as suggested in one interesting article ?
    And can someone print the text presented in the film about the project?

    In the future, the star can be implemented on the smartphone in the form of a program that instantly discards the call and produces a flash on the screen. Programmers can do this pretty quickly.
    The idea can be used in various games and controlled toys. For example, it would be interesting to place a star on the top of a city spruce on a New Year's holiday. The device is cheap, calls to it are free - people have fun.

    Work on the implementation of the layout of the star was interesting.
    Directly translating the idea into iron took several nights of work due to the fact that there were ready-made developments.
    The circuit is assembled on a slightly redone board from the “ Time Lamp ”.



    The program for processing messages arriving via RS-232 was taken from a GPS-watch , telephone number processing - from a cellular security signaling device (no description yet).
    The “Fastrack M1306” cellular modem is used from a long-forgotten development.
    A little money has been put into the account: 300 rubles, which should be enough for a long time, because the handset does not rise.

    Underwater rocks.
    I was very worried about the situation with the behavior of the modem and the mobile operator during moments of heavy load.
    When a person has taken the line when dialing, for the next caller it will be busy. As a result, the exchange of the modem and the operator with service SMS of the type “such-and-such subscriber called you” begins. The situation will increase the number of star flashes, but makes the modem more and more inaccessible to callers.
    It was possible to get out of this situation relatively easily. After a short conversation with the operator, the service “They called you!” was disabled and interfering SMS ceased to exist.

    The next surprise: switching the active window on the computer. For the numbers to always be printed, the window with the text must be active. During the tests, there was a case when an antivirus program happily reported that several new updates were installed. At the same time, the notification service window offered to protect itself and its family with the new version and was installed on top of all windows, becoming active. Focus from the text editor disappeared, and the keyboard began to work idle. This point must be taken into account and try to exclude.

    When printing numbers, a checkbox appears with the name of my account, which is also not at all interesting. A little imagination, the generosity of Google, the fabulous spell “sim salabim ahalay Mahalai” and here you are: the checkbox “your last digit”.
    Sometimes when the Internet is working, the connection with Google documents is lost, but fortunately, it is automatically restored.

    Most of the time took two new (for me) directions:
    1. Work with a USB port.
    Entering into the computer the last digit of the caller’s phone number is implemented by simulating a click on a USB keyboard. The keyboard is controlled by a modem with a controller, which isolates the last digit of the number and “presses” the desired key.
    Before starting work, open a shared document, select a font with the same character width, set the cursor to the beginning of the text. We connect the telephone-controlled keyboard to the computer, and let's go!
    During the experiments, I managed to name a couple of lines, but looking at the same number is not at all interesting, I want variety in the text - go for it!
    The USB HID keyboard is better implemented on the same controller that controls the cellular modem. But by now I have a white spot in this area with a black hole, so the standard numeric keypad “Porto KP-01” was taken.
    Using a “crutch” in the form of a register-latch and optronic assembly, the digital keyboard was connected to the controller board.



    As a result, the work was done clumsily; in the future, it is necessary to spend time on a detailed study of the USB protocol.
    For a real cosmic star, this fragment of the circuit is not needed, in the layout it is made in case of the absence or failure of the video broadcast channel.
    According to the result of the experiment, in the text document the last digit of the number is printed almost instantly after the call.

    2. Uploading videos to the public.
    There is no experience in organizing video broadcasting. After reading all sorts of things, he stopped at three options: Ustream, Bambuser and Ivideon. The first option did not like the advertising line in the image, flashing at random times and flickering a lot of different information around. The second one is that when using the same camera, the image was not awful (most likely I just didn’t figure it out). As a result, Ivideon was chosen as a simple and understandable option.
    Here, too, things did not go smoothly: when viewed via the Internet from another computer, the flashes on the screen lagged behind reality, and the delay was significant. The result was a time machine: the flash had already passed, and its image could be seen in many seconds. Moreover, this problem manifested itself for all three services under consideration and actually served as the reason for the search for a working option.
    Another problem: sometimes the camera is not available from the first request. After transferring the system engineer to a constantly awake state, the problem disappeared - no need to sleep while working.
    I began to read articles about video service. As it turned out, the founder of this project is a Russian developer, habrovets and an interesting writer. In addition, the young man who inspires confidence for the intellectual future of the country is not all lost!
    As a result of reading articles and comments, I realized that in my case the image is delayed due to a weak channel for returning to the Internet. The speed was only 0.5 Mbps. It turns out that the video from the camera is recorded on the computer, and cannot be transmitted to the video service server with the viewing speed, that’s the whole secret of the “time machine”.



    I began to think.
    First, it’s a natural struggle for speed. I contacted the provider and identified the problem.
    While they were thinking something, I decided to write a letter through the habropost to the founder of Ivideon. He should be well versed in his field, all the more so - the Habrovian habrovts will always help! No, it’s better this way: the habret will always help the habretz!
    And I had several suggestions (except for increasing the channel width, of course):
    1. Make a completely black background, in which there will be only a flashing dot.
    2. Transmit not a color, but a black and white image.
    3. Change server settings:
    - quality (HI, MID, LOW);
    - video format (MPEG-4 or H.264);
    - bit rate (0.5 ... 4 Mb / s);
    - frame rate (2 ... 30 frames / s);
    - disable encryption when transmitting data over the Internet.
    4. Reduce the size of the image from the camera to 640x480.
    5. What else?
    Vladimir correctly and in detail answered all points of the proposals and said that a new version of Ivideon Server is expected to be released, in which there will be a lot of new ones.

    Meanwhile, the provider called. The guys from the technical support service were wise on their side and the speed increased to 0.75 Mbit / s. They also said that we had a good line and advised us to turn on AnnexM on our modem.
    After its inclusion, the speed increased slightly, only to 0.95 Mbit / s.



    Since the result was unsatisfactory, the provider promised to change the modem, but not quickly. This “non-quick” escalated into further technical impossibility due to the lack of free lines.

    There is a theory that the universe is infinite and has no boundaries.
    In the second half of the 80s, a computer with the simple name “BK-0010” appeared, and it was equipped with a large power supply, which had a black plastic case.
    Here the acquisition of the boundaries of the "Universe" took place. The web camera for broadcasting video flashes to the Internet, and the constellation Ursa Major in the form of holes on the plate through which light from the LEDs penetrated, were perfectly placed in the case from the distant 80s. The blackness of the vacuum filled all the remaining free space.



    Now power supplies are doing less and the Universe is more difficult to place in them.
    There is only one constellation and a new star in the layout, but what happened to the one who created everything?

    In the experiment we used the webcam “Defender GLory 1330HD”, such a ball on a stand. To indicate the inclusion of the camera, a blue LED is used, which illuminates the object with a bluish tint. In addition, the camera is afraid of the dark, therefore, at dusk, its built-in intelligence includes four white LEDs, which, together with blue, “fill” the artificial night sky with its bright light. Black night fails.
    I had to conduct a trepanation of the skull of the camera and turn off the intracranial LED education.



    It was deep night. The stars that migrated to the layout became visible in the sky . And of course, one new one was added!



    It remains only to fix the supernova located just above the Dipper of the Dipper, and connect it to the galactic control circuit. Now people will be able to control this supernova. In the layout, the star froze in one place. In reality, it is better to place a star on the ISS, as the most interesting object in the near outer space.
    As a result, the solution to the problem of flashing LEDs will rise to hitherto unknown cosmic heights.

    During the experiments, a new candidate for live video broadcasting arose. “Google+” provides the opportunity to arrange a direct video call on the Youtube channel.
    I tried it , but the delays between real flashes and in the image via the Internet were also significant and reached up to 20 seconds.
    I changed the settings for a slow Internet (voice activation), the delay remained .

    I realized that it would not be possible to organize a live video, and I would have to limit myself to demonstrating the last digit of the phone number in a Google document, which is not entirely complete.
    And here comes the response from Vladimir with a new modified version of Ivideon Server. Nevertheless, it’s great when communication takes place in the native language. Thank you so much to Vladimir for your help and good luck with his project! In my example, I felt what kind of work and time are behind the changes in the thousandth position in the version build number and what real user support is.
    Watching a video is more interesting than watching only a set of random numbers in the text.
    And you will have to think something with your ISP. Fortunately, now there are a large number of alternative options.

    Ideas for the further implementation of the project “Light your star!”
    The project site is being created.
    The site displays and automatically calculates the funds received on the project account.
    Absolutely transparent system of cash receipts and expenditures.
    Anyone can see how much has been collected and what space projects have been spent.
    The star is installed on the ISS, as one of the options. To begin with, the experiment can be performed directly from the station, the “Dome” module allows this.
    The phone number is published in the media and on the Internet.
    Despite all the tricks, when making a call, the cellular channel is “engaged” for a short time and makes the star inaccessible. To solve this problem, it is possible to organize a flash through the project website or install a multi-channel telephone to increase throughput. But the maximum frequency should be limited by the distinguishability of individual flashes.
    The site publishes the current location of the star, the trajectory and calculation of the location at any time of the day.
    The points at which the star burst was made are plotted on the orbit of the spacecraft.
    It will be interesting statistics on which countries have produced more outbreaks. Since countries have different sizes, you can use an indicator, such as the number of outbreaks per kilometer of flight.
    Optional, but desirable part: on the site you can see the video from the ISS. In this case, a flash is visible against the background of the Earth. Thus, a person will be able to see the flash of a star not only above his head, but also above any point on the planet (within the orbit of the ship), send greetings to a friend, conduct flash mobs and other actions.
    When ringing a star, “pick up” the handset and “hang up”. The call cost is small, for example, 1 dollar.
    Each bell produces a flash of a star visible from Earth.
    The call time and the last digit of the number of the dialer is recorded on the site and the call author can verify this.
    When sending any SMS, a triple flash is produced, the last digit of the number and flash time are also recorded on the site.
    The cost of SMS, for example 3 dollars, which is also available to many people.
    If you send an e-mail address in the SMS text, an automatic letter with a letter will be sent to the box where you can express gratitude for the contribution to the development of the Cosmos and confirm that a flash was made in honor of this contribution at an altitude of XXX km above the Earth's surface when the ship was above such a place, and had the following coordinates ...
    A man will be pleased.
    In this case, the cost can be made 5 dollars.
    For people who have left their email inbox, it is possible to organize a voting system on the directions of new space projects for which money can be spent.
    Those who pay the costs have the right to choose what they will go for.
    You can make it possible not only to make a flash in the sky, but also to “show your name” in SMS on the project website. In this case, the cost of the message will be already $ 7.
    Another option: pre-order the time or place of the flash via the Internet or SMS.
    In any case: $ 1, 3, 5, or 7 will not be burdensome for people, and everyone will be able to contribute to the development of space research.

    One of the problems for providing live broadcasting from the ISS is the lack of a complete coverage area for radio communications.
    We all heard the phrase “a spaceship is out of range of tracking systems of ground systems”.
    To increase the coverage area, the network of ground stations is expanded and the ships of the Marine Space Fleet are launched into the oceans.
    And this happens "at a time when our spaceships plow the expanses of the universe."
    One of these spaceships are geostationary communications satellites. There are no 10 degrees of free space in orbit. To organize direct communication, you can use these satellites or create a network of your own if the technical ability to connect to their channel is not available. Switching from satellite to satellite, the spacecraft provides itself with uninterrupted communication with the Earth. A roundabout connection will have a larger coverage area than a direct connection.

    As for the interesting ideas on which it will be possible to spend the money collected after the implementation of the project “Light your star!”, I have a proposal that will interest many people, but more on that another time. First you need to light a star.

    Roscosmos, NASA - AU! Halloo!

    Documentation of the “Star” project.
    1. Presentation of the project “ Light your Star ” - description of the idea, photo of the breadboard, calculation of income.
    2. The electrical circuit .
    3. The flowchart of work .
    4. Work program .
    5. The film “ Light your star!”
    6. A text file with the last digits of the called numbers.

    Addition 1.
    The first glitch was revealed, this is my flaw.
    The program on the controller takes the 11th digit of the number after the plus sign and displays it. But as it turned out, in some cases, the region code has a larger number of numbers and as a result, 12 digits are obtained. In this case, the text will have the penultimate digit of the number. Perhaps there are more numbers in the room. Then the processing algorithm should be done like this: wait for the eleventh digit and continue to read the number until the quotes appear or the numbers run out. Then the program will work correctly for any number of digits in the number.

    Supplement 1. 1
    Fixed the program. Now the last digit of a phone number having more than 11 digits is displayed correctly.

    Appendix 2. First conclusions.
    1. There are quite a few curious people, and it pleases. After 2700 views of the article, 100 calls were made (one line of text is exactly one hundred digits). Some probably called several times, I did not count my test calls.
    2. The video broadcast channel is confident.
    The cell modem also seems to work, at least there are no reviews, which does not work.
    Google disappointed, unfortunately.
    On the computer where the layout is connected and the document is opened in author mode, everything works perfectly, the numbers appear immediately after the flash of a star (LED). The number of other readers does not exceed 49.
    On a computer that is in reading mode (that is, everyone reading this document), the following appears:
    This file seems to be very popular! Too many users are working on it, so some tools may not be available. Please try again later. Skip.
    Moreover, if the figures in the author’s document have already appeared, then the readers do not. They will appear only after refreshing the page.
    The caption “It looks like this file is very popular! Too many users are working on it ... ” closes the name of the file with the phone number, so the star’s phone is duplicated in the second line of the document.

    Supplement 3.
    On November 1, from 22:00 to 9:20 on November 2, at 11 hours and 20 minutes, the Internet connection was absent or interrupted.
    In the age of continuous automation, the provider has no means of instantly detecting emerging problems. This is another identified glitch. Everything had to be decided by personal presence and phone calls.
    If the device was on the ISS, then everything would work perfectly.
    In this test, the cellular modem continued to beat off calls, and video flash and text with phone numbers were not available.
    On November 4, from 2:00 to 10:00 there was also no Internet connection. Calls were rejected, but there was no text and video at that moment.

    Addition 4.
    On the night of November 7-8, an interesting glitch in Google docs occurred.
    The cursor independently moved to the beginning of the text and the numbers began to “type” in front of the words “Flash video”. I had to manually move the 5555566 sequence typed in the morning to the end of the text.

    Supplement 5. End of the experiment.
    11/14/12 at 10:20 the experiment was completed. It was launched on October 31 at 17:14.
    During this time, the star received 946 calls and 111 SMS.
    The highest message intensity was observed in the first two days.

    The equipment worked flawlessly. The Internet connection was lost several times due to problems with the provider.
    The broadcast channel from Ivideon showed itself perfectly.
    Google Docs generally worked without serious problems, restoring their work after the appearance of an Internet connection. The only drawback: a couple of times the connection with the Google server was broken and the cursor, after automatic recovery, stood at the first position of the text, where the numbers continued to be printed. I had to transfer these fragments to the end of the text manually.

    Many thanks to everyone who took part in the experiment!

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