In order to scan and recognize Chinese pages, I was looking for an OCR on my linux distribution.
After several tests, I came to choose tesseract, which was originally developed… in HP Labs ! (now under Apache license).
Unfortunately, the Ubuntu package available was built for version 2.x, which does not allow Chinese support (need version 3.x)…
So I installed version 3.0 from scratch.
This is not too much difficult, but there are some steps to follow, and I propose to guide you there… Continue reading “OCR on Ubuntu ?” »
The very first question I get was: what kind of hardware are you using ?
In fact, I searched a little bit on the web, and I came to the conclusion that the simplest solution was to use Maxim 1-wire bus. This bus is very simple (2 or 3 lines are needed, despite the name), and the devices I need (temperature probes) are simple and cheap !
Let’s start with a nice project I implemented last week-end: setup temperature probes on my air conditioner and display results on an internal web server, using nice looking graphs.
Project is simple:
hardware setup: I used 1-wire temperatures probes, that I connected myself over a long long cable. This is my “analogical network”
analogical to numeric data converter, via a computer: I selected the wonderful owfs running on various OS (Linux Ubuntu for me). This software is giving you the possibility to query the temperature probes from the computer (and even from another computer over the data network), as simply as you would list a disk directory…
graph rendering: I turned to a well-known solution, RRDtools, installed on my local network webserver, querying information on temperatures over my data network
develop a little set of html/php pages to display the graphs provided by RRDtools (home made pages)
To make it short, a little drawing of the main principles of this project:
When I connect, via my computer/laptop, on my web server, I get this kind of page:
(yes, I built a solution with 7 temperature probes… right now, they are not in their final place, but grouped altogether in a pack, that I moved from one place to another, which explains the quick temperature variation you can see….).
It’s getting late now, it’s time to have a rest. This project description will be continued in a future article with details of each step above (next one = 1-wire network).
My first name is Thierry, I’m about 50 years old, married, 3 children, working near Grenoble (France) for a big computer company…
This is already showing you the major dilemma I’m facing: on one hand, my family situation is very time-consuming (and I love it !), and on another hand, I have plenty of temptations to spend even more time playing around.
Playing outside: Grenoble is located in the French Alps for those who don’t know… you can enjoy a lot of things in the mountains around (skiing, riding, … did I mention I’m a private pilot ?)
Playing inside: I’m a fan of computers and electronics, with a heavy background of role-playing gamer… And I’m not alone: many of my friends are suffering from the same symptoms (not easy to cure, according to doctors…) Continue reading “Bonjour ! Hello !” »
The very first question I get was: what kind of hardware are you using ?
Well… Another blog ? What for ?