D3100 (DisplayLink) and XPS 13-9343 with Ubuntu

I’m delighted with my XPS 13-9343 running Ubuntu from nearly 2 years now.

Few months ago I decided to buy a D3100 docking station to connect my two 24” monitors to my laptop. That was risky because I read a lot about the bad support and low quality drivers for the DisplayLink chipset. But I took the risk.

I installed the drivers from DisplayLink website, but nothing seems to work. After several tries and forum diving, I get some usable system.

I’m running kubuntu 16.10 with the last kernel (4-8.0-45 generic x86_64)

Here my steps:

  1. Install drivers from DisplayLink website
  2. Try it! Maybe it starts working fine to you, lucky you! If it is not working, or you have a very low speed monitor or some windows are displayed oddly, follow to step 3
  3. Try to open a console and run “Xorg :1 -configure”, copy the generated xorg.conf.new file to /etc/X11/xorg.conf
  4. Edit the file and add ” Option “PageFlip” “off” ” to the Device sections
  5. Reboot
  6. If you’re lucky your screens will be working fine!

My results are:

  • glxgears on HDMI displays show ~5000 FPS!!! (on laptop screen shows ~60 FPS)
  • almost everything is well displayed except:
    • systemsettings
    • dolphin

I get the information from DisplayLink forum (here, here, and here)

My xorg.conf file

Updated 1st April: System is stable. I can watch Netflix on Chrome and it is very smooth (I don’t know the exact FPS). CPU usage is about 50% DisplayLinkManager and 30% Chrome

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Fix for new Touchpad using elantech driver (linux)

The new kernel versions already include this patch! So your system should work fine with last kernel versions. 🙂

 

I’ve recently bought  a ASUS s301l laptop. This laptop seems to have a new version of touchpad that elantech module cannot detect (kernel version 3.15.4). Because of that, touchpad is detected like an PS/2 and it lacks most of the funcionlities (two fingers gestures, etc.). The error that psmouse driver is giving is: psmouse:elantech_detect: psmouse serio4: elantech: Elantech version query result 0x46, 0x1f, 0x14. psmouse:elantech_detect: psmouse serio4: elantech: Probably not a real Elantech touchpad. Aborting. This detection is performed in elantech_is_signature_valid function. This function compares one of the registers read from the touchpad controller to a set of numbers . If the value of the register matches one of the numbers, the detection fails. (I don’t know the reason of all of this). My touchpad controller returns one of the forbidden values (0x14) so I’ve tried a quick hack: removing the  offending value from the list in that function. After compiling and loading the module, the touchpad is recognized (good!) and it is working (awesome!). If you are in the same problem with your laptop, this is the line you may change in elantech.c module: // static const unsigned char rates[] = { 200, 100, 80, 60, 40, 20, 10 }; static const unsigned char rates[] = { 200, 100, 80, 60, 40, 21, 10 };

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Add nepomuk tags with command line

De hace tiempo que uso nepomuk en mi entorno de trabajo basado en KDE4. Yo lo uso etiquetando (poniendo tags) a los ficheros que quiero poder recuperar luego rápidamente. Luego en el gestor de ficheros Dolphin (o también en krunner) con solo buscar con la etiqueta recupero todos los ficheros con ese tag.

El coñazo es etiquetar uno a uno los ficheros con Dolphin (entornos gráficos…) así que me he hecho una aplicación en Python para etiquetar desde la línea de comandos (Link a GitHub). Como verás, mis conocimientos de python son más bien escasos, así que cualquier comentario será bienvenido.

Por cierto, parece que la próxima versión de KDE (la KDE 4.13) cambiarán el motor de búsqueda semántica por defecto, ya veremos qué pasará.

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The Internet of Things

Article originally posted at Worldsensing webpage

RFID tags are cheap. Sensors are dropping in price. Many factors are aligning to usher in the Internet of Things.

Factors Feeding into the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) covers all different objects that are capable, at the very least, of identifying themselves in a digital format. It means that every tool, box, device, computer or object that can send its identification to other devices belongs to the Internet of Things. Of course, an object can send more information than just its identification: sensors (temperature, light, humidity, vibration, etc.); its status (a trashcan warning it is almost full); or even receive commands to react to the environment (a valve closing off the water supply, a heater system beginning to heat your house before your arrive home).

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A class to Log them all

A good way to retrieve information of what is happening in our SystemC simulations is to generate a log file with the information that we need (module name, simulation time, what phase is going on, etc.).

The most elegant and easy way to do that is to create a special class for that task, that the other modules in the simulation can use to send their information and to be stores in disk. This can be achieved designing a singleton type class. This design pattern restricts the instantiation of a class to one single object. In our case, it will cause that all modules use the same object and log file.

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How to configure Eclipse to use TLM-2.0

Today I tell you how to create a project in eclipse for work with TLM-2 and SystemC, it’s very easy!

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Loosely time and temporal decoupling

This coding style works with 2 timing points in each transaction, one in the function call and the other in the return for the b_transport function (using the base protocol these points corresponds to the start of the petition and the start of the response). We can put these two points in the same time to mark that the transaction is not using time.

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Interfaces, sockets, DMI y more

Sorry, this entry is only available in Español.

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Coding Styles

TLM-2 lists modeling 3 different modes (called Coding Styles in official documents): untimed, Loosely-timed and Approximately-timed. Each serves a specific purpose, and to model different types of systems. We must also take into account the cost of each simulation mode (untimed less expensive, Approximatelly-timed more expensive).

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Welcome

I start this blog with the intention to talk, discuss, inform, learn about the SystemC-TLM-2.0 world.

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