• Going to m.minousoft.com now serves as a shortcut to the condensed mobile version of the site. However, you don’t necessarily need to use the “m” subdomain - this is simply for convenience. Going to minousoft.com from most mobile devices will trigger the mobile site automatically.
• Unused files, scripts, and databases have been purged from the server, which could possibly provide a speed boost.
• Everything has been updated to the latest version and the spam filters have been cleared.
• Over the holidays, I built a brand new PC from scratch. The good news is that I will be able to work more effectively now that all of my performance-related gaming issues are gone. This allows me to develop using multithreading, x64 architecture, pixel shaders, HDR lighting, and all that good stuff… Unfortunately, this means I will have to purchase a new hard disk and move all of my old files over, so everything I was working on before is on hold for now.
• …which brings me to the next point. I remixed quite a few new tracks, but can’t upload them because they are stuck on my old hard drive.
• I made a cheap solid state hard drive out of two components. The first is a 4GB 133x CompactFlash (CF) card, usually used for professional digital photography, which I picked up for $20. The second is a Chinese-manufactured CF-IDE adapter which serves as a breakout board to adapt the CF card’s pins to the IDE interface’s pins. CF cards are electrically compatible with the IDE (PATA) bus, but the pins are in different sizes and locations. The adapter I used had 2.5mm pitch pins (instead of 3.5mm) on the IDE side so that I could insert it into a laptop with a dead hard drive. Laptop IDE connectors have built-in power pins, so for 3.5mm, you would need to plug in a Molex connector for power.. The laptop recognized the CF card and I was able to load Windows XP Pro onto the CF card leaving around 2.5GB left for programs and data. It boots up very quickly, but suffers from constant paging due to the low amount of RAM present (256MB). However, it works well, and is a cheaper solution than buying a normal laptop hard drive. One very important thing to note, however, is that operating systems like Windows use the hard drive as a paging file. Flash memory can easily wear out from all the writes, so it’s better to use an OS like Linux configured not to use swap space.
• I’m still looking for tabbing wire, ring terminals, and a charge controller for my 10W solar panel. I don’t want to drop too much cash on my solar project as I have a few other projects to work on as well. For the most part, my solar panel is about 80% finished. I have a complete frame made of aluminum, polycarbonate, and cardboard backing, and I have my battery, inverter, and cables pretty much ready. If you know where to get any of these for cheap, feel free to contact me.

For a while, I’ve been looking into building my own solar power system. I have experimented with tiny solar cells before, but this is different – I’m looking for enough power to run an appliance. This would be very useful for charging things like cell phones, media players, etc. without wasting energy off the grid. Additionally, I could power an always-on outdoor microcontroller project for free, without changing any batteries. And, if I was in an area with no power connections, I could bring a solar panel and battery, and have electricity. I could even mount the panel on an electric vehicle and have it recharge itself for free!

(Much more important information after the jump!)

But first, before I start: How do solar panels (aka photovoltaic modules) actually generate free electricity?»

In my quest for more information, I discovered several important concepts which I will discuss in this series of articles:

• Charge controllers
• Batteries
• Sun tracking
• Maximum power point tracking
• Energy losses and inefficiencies
• Assembling photovoltaic (PV) cells into panels
• Mixing-and-matching different photovoltaic panels
• Choosing used, broken, and cheap parts
• Buying cheap parts versus buying quality parts

First up is charge controllers. What’s a charge controller, you may ask? A charge controller is a device which goes in between your PV panels, your batteries, and your loads (aka appliances.) The charge controller mainly charges the batteries, but many different types exist. Some of them have extra features to intelligently handle the electrical power in different ways, and some of them are simplistic and just shut off the electricity flow from the PV panels when the batteries are finished charging. Some things to watch for when looking for charge controllers:

• The voltage and current input/output ratings of the controller must match your PV panels and your battery bank.
• The charge current(s) must be sufficient to charge the number and size of your battery bank.
• The maximum ratings should be picked with respect to future expansion, i.e. if you are adding more solar panels later.
• The controller must be designed to charge your exact, specific type of battery. You can’t use the wrong type of charger, or the batteries will explode. More on this later.
• The controller should have fuses/circuit breakers, over/undervoltage protection, and some switches to control everything.
• If using lead-acid battery types, it may be useful to consider a charge controller that does simultaneous desulfation. If a lead-acid battery is pushed hard, mistreated, or not charged for a long time, a layer of deposit (sulfation) begins to form on the surface of the internal battery plates, which prevents electricity from moving through the battery. A desulfation system sends a specially-tuned high frequency pulse through the battery which will actually cause sulfation to flake off and dissolve back into the battery acid, essentially breathing renewed life into a poorly-performing battery. If the battery is desulfated while it is float charged, any sulfation that forms during normal use will be dissolved soon after.
• Lead-acid batteries should be charged with a 3-stage microcontroller-based charger. This maximizes battery life and efficiency.
• A large PV system may require battery equalization features in order to balance any cells which are underperforming.
• Controllers with battery monitors built-in can make life easier if you don’t want to manually check the battery condition with a multimeter.

It’s important to select the right charge controller.

You can buy charge controllers, but as with just about every other part of a PV system, they tend to be expensive, and cheap units can have questionable manufacturing quality. Almost all of them are at least $100, and most are more than $250. The advantage here is that someone else has already done the math for you, and you usually get some type of warranty or guarantee for component failure. It can be well worth buying a good charge controller, especially for large PV systems.

You can also build your own charge controller. This is not for the faint of heart. You will require intermediate DIY electrical engineering skills. The advantages to this method are that it can be cheaper, easy to repair, and more customizable to your needs. If you are inexperienced, you might be able to get away with copying someone else’s circuit design, but you risk dealing with unknown ‘glitches’ in the circuit when it is actually built.

Next time, I will be talking about batteries and how they are important for your PV system! If you enjoy these articles, show your support by subscribing to our blog, bookmarking us, sharing this article with your friends, or donating. Any comments, questions, or suggestions you have would be greatly appreciated.

Next article >>

Current status:

• Design:
  
• Physics:
  
• Gameplay/mechanics:
  
• Optimization:
  
• Testing:
  
• Overall:
  

Notes:

• Design: I still have to clarify a couple of game design issues, and I have yet to even design the artificial intelligence. Many of the other game elements have already been designed, however.
• Physics: I spent a very large amount of time on the custom-made physics engine, and it seems to have paid off. Occasionally I will find a little glitch in the engine, but I don’t expect too many modifications in this area in the future.
• Gameplay/mechanics: I need to work on the gameplay because at the moment, Polaris is just an engine. I also have to fix the bugged resource system, and create a better management interface for everything.
• Optimization: Polaris hogs a huge amount of resources right now. It’s mostly in the CPU department, but occasional load occurs on the GPU.  My own aging PC struggles to keep the framerate up when many ships are created. I’m probably going to add more checking for objects that are too far away, and replace their calculations with faster, more granular approximations. Another idea is to actually freeze processing on objects that can be ignored. However, some progress has already been made with optimization; for example, objects in the game that are far away are not drawn, or things like small graphical effects which require extra CPU time are not drawn. Additionally, I found several ways to ‘recycle’ some expensive physics calculations that were being called multiple times, which increased speed quite a bit.
• Testing: Most of the features have been tested extensively, and debug interfaces have been added, so future additions to the code won’t take long to test thoroughly.
• Overall: I’m halfway there, and it’s pretty much downhill from here.

On a side note, I’d like to thank Chris Walden for his generous donation of $10!

If you happen to have any GMod Lua or Hammer skills, I would like your help with this little project.

On a side note, if I get this project completed, then I will look into purchasing a public GMod server. The problem is, game servers are expensive, there isn’t a return on my investment, and I won’t be playing on the server a lot, so I will have to get donations and ingame sponsorship for it to work.

If anyone is interested, comment below or use the contact form.

I have been developing a new game, mostly to test some interesting game design ideas. The game revolves around the player being as stealthy as possible – one of the key elements is to leave no evidence that you were sneaking around corridors. (Screenshot after the jump!) Another element is the fact that you are unable to see what lies ahead if it is too far away to hear or see. If you do not have line-of-sight to an object, it becomes much less visible on the screen. This has the interesting side effect of enabling the game to completely ignore unneeded objects that are far away from the player. I’m currently trying to add a dynamic artificial intelligence system to the game – because of the complex network of rooms, doors, and hallways, it is difficult to get an AI to properly navigate the game. I’ve decided to go with a node-based approach rather than an A* algorithm approach, as nodes allow the AI to act more intelligent. Nodes are placed at every possible place the AI can walk, and the AI can only move to a node that it has direct line-of-sight to. This allows diagonal movement. The AI decides what its long-term movement goal is based on what it is doing, i.e. if the AI is supposed to be patrolling an area, it will select the nodes of the rooms it wants to go to, and use the nodes in between to go there. If the AI encounters evidence that the player is nearby, it will deviate from its instructions and try to go to the node closest to where it thinks the player is.

Lastly, three new remixes have been added to the Media Player by request:

• Geisha Dreams (Ringtone)
• Moonlight Sonata
• Fullmetal Alchemist – Melissa

Enjoy, and make sure to follow us on Twitter!

Also, some minor updates…

• A couple of bugfixes have been made in Polaris. Not much progress has been happening with Polaris lately, and it looks like it’ll take a while before it’s ready for release.
• I’ve been working on several ‘experimental’ apps lately. I might post one up sometime soon.
• Some previously unknown 404 and 403 errors on the site have been fixed.
• The server software and hardware is being improved. No downtime is expected at all.

• The user interface is being enhanced, and most of the selection system has been worked out.
• Modules and ships now have ‘properties’ panels which give information about selected objects.
• New module types have been added and old ones have been tweaked; notably the Mass Driver, Science Module, Armored Module, and Cargo Capsule.
• Improvements have been made to the Ship Builder, but it isn’t finished yet.
• Some previously unknown bugs from 0.23a have been squashed, finally.
• Parts of the game have been redesigned to improve efficiency.

New content has finally been added to the Media Player:

• Caramelldansen (Remix)
• Sonic – Flying Battery Zone (Remix)
• Final Fantasy X – To Zanarkand (Remix)
• Final Fantasy 8 – Force Your Way (Remix)
• Azumanga Daioh – Soramimi no Cake (Remix)

A couple of small bugs in the site itself have been corrected, but an accident while editing the shoutbox has erased all of the shoutbox comments and the CSS template for the shoutbox itself.