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category: Computer --> programming --> MongoDB --> morphium

Morphium version 5

2022-11-15 - Tags: java mongodb morphium

originally posted on: https://caluga.de

Targets of the rewrite
Rewrite bottom up
migration
Current status
plan

Morphium V5

Morphium originated in 2017 and has had 4 major releases since then. Now it's time to update some more and tweak some internals. This update is a major one, so parts of the internals have been completly rewritten while keeping Morphium itself sourcecode compatible.

Targets of the rewrite

The aim is to cut off old "braids" and update the code. It should remain as compatible as possible so that migration is easy.

Furthermore, the complexity should be reduced, there are some features in Morphium that are certainly rarely used or not at all, such as "optimistic locking" with the use of automatic versioning. These "features" are removed and the code is streamlined.

Furthermore, Morphium should remain compatible with the older versions. That means the changes to Morphium itself will be limited. The concepts will not change either, at most they will be tightened up a bit. So Morphium is still the linchpin of the API and every write access will continue to run via Morphium and every read access via Query (exception: aggregation with the help of the aggregator). In short: the use of Morphium essentially does not change.

JDK 11

The JDK used should also be updated during the refresh. Morphium V4 stays on JDK1.8, from V5 we will support JDK11 and later. Of course, the code should also use the new features of JDK11.

Morphium Object Mapping

In current tests, the Morphium Object Mapper is still one of the fastest and most feature-rich object mappers that we have found. Compared to 'Jackson', the higher performance and the features for handling lists and maps (handling 'Generics') have to be mentioned in particular - this makes the MorphiumObjectMapper really indispensable.

During the rewrite, however, some features that are also reflected in the object mapping were removed, which simplifies the code and makes it easier to maintain.

Morphium Cache and WriteBuffer

Morphium had declarative caching as part of the system from the start. This continues to be a key component. The cache implements the JCache API and could therefore be used for other purposes as well. The other way around, you can also use a JCache in Morphium for caching.

During the rewrite we will adapt the code to JDK11 and improve the structure of the code.

Morphium Messaging

Another key component is messaging. Particular attention will be paid to messaging to improve stability and reduce load. Specifically, by efficiently using the Driver API and WireProtocol. Another change will be the connection handling in messaging: currently messaging uses Morphium itself as a connector to the mongo. Since none of the features of Morphium are necessary for messaging or are sometimes even more of a hindrance, the messaging will communicate directly with the MongoDB in V5. In the current V5 implementation, the messaging uses a dedicated connection to the MongoDB for the push notifications (Watch) and a dedicated connection pool for the connection to the mongo. This means that the messaging is a little more detached from Morphium, generates less load and can be configured separately. This is implemented and the tests show, that the performance increases whereas the load on mongo is reduced.

MorphiumConfig

This "thing" has also grown a little over the years and is currently hardly usable with the 100s of getters and setters. The settings have to be split up a bit and used in different categories. In particular, because Morphium's own wire -protocol driver requires different settings than e.g. the InMemDriver.

Focus on Community Edition

However, we only implement this for the Community Edition. This means that the enterprise features are not considered in the rewrite. It can also cause the drivers not to work properly with the Enterprise MongoDB version. The same currently applies to the Atlas MongoDB implementation, which will certainly be the first to be submitted. Support for the Enterprise Edition features may also be implemented in one of the following versions if required.

Rewrite bottom up

The rewrite is done from "below", i.e. first the Mongo driver (see below) was implemented, which implements the Wire protocol (currently only usable for MongoDB from V5! For older MongoDB versions please use Morphium V4.x!).

The necessities and the structure of this driver is mainly determined by the MongoDB and propagates the architecture "up". On the way there, unused features are removed (e.g. auto-versioning), others are improved simply by adapting them to the new drivers.

In the end, a Morphium should come out that is almost 100% source compatible with the old version, but much more modern, slimmer, more beautiful!

Morphium driver

Morphium is more or less a replacement for the existing mongoDB driver with a lot more features and in some places significantly more security and / or performance.

Currently (i.e. in Morphium V4.x) there are 2 drivers: MongoDriver and InMemDriver. The MongoDriver in particular creates a bit of overhead because it is based on the official MongoDB driver, which unfortunately is now not just a driver, but also an object mapper. Many functions of the driver are not required at all, but some others are missing. So the aim is to introduce our own WireProtocol[^1:WireProtocol is the protocol that MongoDB uses for communication] driver, which is optimized for the needs of morphium. This can result in a significant performance advantage (currently between 10% and 20%).

2 drivers are implemented in V5:

SingleConnectDriver- a driver that only keeps a single connection to the MongoDb, but monitors it and also implements a failover if necessary. This is used, for example, in the new messaging substructure (see below)
PooledDriver - a full featured cluster connector with connection pooling and automatic failover.

InMemory Driver

Strictly speaking, there is a third driver, the InMemoryDriver, which makes it possible to run Morphium with an "in memory" mongo. This is particularly useful for tests. We use this as a TestDB in some projects and it is also comparable to other databases implemented for test purposes. The InMemory database should be (nearly) feature compatible to a real MongoDB installation. We're not 100% there yet, but we've reached a good 90%. Most features are already working, but some things take a little longer and might come later (such as "real" text indexes).

Why not the MongoDB driver

This question is asked more often and I would like to say a few words about it:

Features of the driver

The official MongoDB Java driver is not only a driver, but "embedded" in the driver is also an object mapper. This is probably super useful for many applications and completely sufficient.

Unfortunately not for us, because we want to configure some things rather than program them (declarative indices, etc.).

Two different ways of thinking collide. Which in the example of the MongoDB driver and Morphium has repeatedly led to... discrepancies. Some changes to the driver API have been a lot of work in Morphium.

The MorphiumDriver project has been around for a few years. It was brought to life because we had problems with the official MongoDB driver, especially in the area of failover. Also, some features of the driver are at least a little questionable in my opinion.

These features, especially the object mapping, make access via Morphium a bit unwieldy. And some things happen unnecessarily twice. And that's exactly why we want to try to develop our own driver that does exactly what we need - and nothing more.

When accessing the Mongo in the stack trace, there are currently a good 20 calls within the MongoDB driver. With the new driver that's a maximum of 5!

new feature: InMemoryServer

Morphium in version 5 got its own server, which is also based on the InMemory database. This is naturally intended exclusively for test purposes and does not offer any security or anything similar. However, it is always helpful for testing a (simple) in memory mongodb (with the limitations of the InMemoryDriver). If you want to test it now:

java -cp morphium-5.0.0-SNAPSHOT.jar de.caluga.morphium.server.MorphiumServer

The MorphiumServer understands the following command line options:

-mt or --maxThreads: maximum number of threads in the server (= maximum number of connections)
-mint or --minThreads: minimal number of threads (kept ready)
-h or --host: which host does this server report back as (in the response to the hello or isMaster command)
-p or --port: which port should be opened (all network IPs)

I would like to reiterate that this server is purely for testing purposes and is certainly not intended to be a replacement for any MongoDB installations.

migration

Migration should be relatively easy since Morphium's API itself hasn't changed. However, the configuration has changed:

the class names were removed. It makes no sense to include your own query implementation. At least we were not aware that anyone had done that. The same applies to the defined factories etc.
The drivers are no longer referenced via the ClassName, now the DriverName is specified. Valid drivers currently are: InMemoryDriver, SingleConnectionDriver, PooledDriver, MongoDriver. Unfortunately, the MongoDriver is currently not working and it is not 100% certain that it will remain part of Morphium
direct access to the driver - in case someone did it - is still possible, but the driver API has changed significantly. That's why you have to reckon with major renovation work here.
the optimistic locking feature has been removed. Unfortunately, everyone who has used this feature currently has to find their own implementation

Current status

Currently, at the end of August 2022, Morphium V5 is available as an 'ALPHA' version in Maven Central and can be used for your own tests. However, some features are not yet 100% implemented. This is how Morphium works only with MongoDB versions 5.0 and later. Also, the transaction feature is currently not working.

plan

in the coming weeks these things will be addressed in this priority:

Test stability / failover etc and adjust if necessary
Implement auto retry read/write everywhere
Finalise InMemoryDriver - add missing features, increase performance.
Rewrite MorphiumConfig and remove old settings, adapt new ones, possibly make them more modular.
Implement transaction handling (at driver level, morphium has supported this for a long time)
Complete or remove MongoDriver.

category: global --> E-Mobility

tesla model y as company car

2022-08-04 - Tags: Tesla ComanyCar E-Mobility

situation

Leasing of the Model3 is running out, the current leasing company would almost double the leasing rate if I took the same vehicle again. Because of that and because of the experiences with Tesla and electric driving, it's a good moment to look for alternatives.

Experience with Tesla

Yes, I was and am actually quite satisfied with the Model 3. Unfortunately, I also had some not so nice experiences with Tesla. As far as service is concerned, it's really a bit difficult. A lot was rebuilt and changed at Tesla, restructured and some things improved. But all of these changes naturally took some time to take effect, leading to "teething troubles" and "birth pangs" - unfortunately almost all of them to the detriment of Tesla drivers.

All in all it's ok with Tesla because normally you don't need any service at all or anything like that. According to Tesla it would be ok to do a service after 4 years, but it is not necessary. In contrast to the other manufacturers who force you into their workshop at least once a year.

Still, the whole thing gives you a "weird" feeling. But I also wanted to include this point in the calculation and wanted to document my decision-making a little and to compile my assessment of the various criteria.

candidates

Since leasing has become significantly more expensive and there are still a few problems with the Tesla service, I also want to take a look at other vehicles - fortunately there is already a small selection in the electric vehicle segment. And yes, I wanted to stay with Elektro. On the one hand, because I think I get more car for the money and because it's also nice not to leave exhaust fumes where you drive. In my opinion, the fact that you only visit gas stations to have your car washed is also an advantage.

The candidates that could be considered as successors should of course be "similar" to the Model3. I paid particular attention to driving pleasure, suitability for travel and the driver assistance systems / software, which is why candidates such as a 'Renault Zoe' or a 'Mini E' are ruled out for the time being... The price is of course also an important factor that influences the decision. In order to be comparable with the Model3, the "large" equipment variant had to be used for comparison in almost all vehicles. Very often there are also cheaper options, but it should be similar in terms of range, performance, etc.

Delivery time was also a problem, the leasing expires in June 2023 and then a vehicle should be there again. Surprisingly, this is now a serious factor in August 2022 - some vehicles are eliminated due to delivery problems (Volvo, for example).

I've given a few very subjective ratings here. This is my personal opinion on the subject and everyone can come to a different conclusion. In particular, the weighting of the individual categories will differ for one or the other.

Valuation

As already mentioned, the evaluation is very subjective and, above all, comparative. This means that if a vehicle has more points in a certain category than another, it only means that it was subjectively better in this comparison. This is not an absolute statement! Please keep that in mind when looking at the reviews.

I award 0-100 points in each category, although this is really only a subjective assessment.

Each category has different weights for me. Since I value driving pleasure more than e.g. range, these points are counted twice.

So when I put it all together, I come up with the following weightings:

Category	weight	Remark
driving fun	2	Acceleration, sportiness
Services	1	Workshop, maintenance etc
Reach / Load	2	Charging power and duration on road trip
Driving Assistance	3	Lane Departure Warning / Cruise Control etc
Software	2	Over The Air Updates, Navigation, Infotainment
Place offer	2	How much space in the car itself, trunk, frunk
Optics	2	The appearance, personal taste

Road trip calculation

For the vehicles discussed here, I also calculate a (theoretical) value for the time that would probably be needed for charging on a 900km trip.

I assume that the real range is not really reached at 100% when charging during the trip, but you do start with 100%. Then each of 10-80% loads and progresses accordingly.

Example: with a theoretical range of 500km, you would probably get pretty much exactly 450km before the battery only has 10% left.

Then you would have to load up to 80%. Let's assume that this takes 30 minutes. Then you would try to continue driving, since you have only charged to 80%, you only have a range of approx. 350km (you don't drive to 0, but to 10%).

Then there are still 100km missing, which you could reach again by charging - in this case you would have to charge again for about 10min for the remaining 100km. But then you would probably arrive with 0% SOC, which is normally not wanted. In other words, to arrive at the end with at least 10%, you would probably have to charge for about 42 minutes on a 900km trip.

Of course, this assumes that there are no fluctuations in consumption (differences in height) or similar factors, this is a purely mathematical value that can probably not be achieved in reality. But it clarifies a little how the charging speed and the range (and thus also the consumption) in combination influence such a trip.

Range/Load

Because the WLTP range in itself says little and the total charging time on our road trip described above may be somewhat misleading, I generate a point number for this point "range / charging" from the normalized product of charging time on the road trip and maximum charging power ( because the latter is an indicator for good charging electronics for me).

So the range is the real range listed on ElektroautoVergleich and the average charging time listed there for 10-80% and the average charging capacity of 10-80%.

Put together, these values then result in the rating for range / charging.

Vehicles

Polestar 2

I was really looking forward to the Polestar 2. The car looks great and I think it's really nice to look at. The space in the trunk is good, at least larger than the Model 3. But of course there is a "but": I found it super "stocky" in the vehicle. The very wide center console in particular (according to Polestar, this is only due to the combustion engine base) was really annoying. For me as a driver it was too narrow and uncomfortable. The rear seats are quite roomy and ok so far. But the Polestar 2 is really super sporty to drive, it performs well and is also good around corners. The software is a bit "strange" - I found Android Auto (which is the operating system used there) surprisingly unintuitive and I got "lost" in the menus. In the meantime we had 2 navigation systems running, A Better Routeplanner was installed on our demonstration vehicle and ran in the background, together with our own Google navigation. That would be ok so far, but the two had different destinations - and we didn't manage to switch off either of them for a while.

The driving assistance is ok so far, but the lane keeping assistant has a problem finding the "middle". Sometimes it drove too far to the right, sometimes too far to the left... then it wanted to turn off on the Autobahn. I had no real faith in the thing.

The "smart" cruise control was ok so far, although it's very weird that the Polestar recognizes the speed limit but doesn't automatically set the cruise control!

The Polestar cannot really score points when it comes to charging technology either, because 1. its consumption is too high with a good range (486 WLTP and approx. 395 km in real terms) and 2. it charges too slowly on average. On the ElektroautoVergleich page, an average charging capacity of just over 100kw was measured - that's a bit low. But loading from 10 to 80% is done in just over half an hour with 32 minutes. Nevertheless, the Polestar (purely arithmetical) has a pure charging time of at least 74 minutes for a 900km trip.

The price is worth mentioning, in the Model3-comparable equipment we are around 71000,-€. However, leasing is a problem. Polestar couldn't offer a corporate lease without a down payment, I phoned umpteen people, pestered the salesman in the branch. Everyone said it couldn't be done. At some point, a supporter wrote me an email saying I had to "submit an application". That was the amazing thing: contrary to what the sales staff in the Polestar branch said, it does work, but only as the last step in applying for leasing for the vehicle, which works 100% online, similar to Tesla! The service was once again the real problem.

Unfortunately, I have to give the Polestar lower marks:

Category	dots
Driving pleasure	85/100 pts
Services	50/100 pts
Reach / Load	50/100 pts
Driving assistance	60/100 pts
Software	85/100 pts
Space offer	85/100 pts
Optics	88/100 pts
Total	73/100 pts

Volvo C40

You would have to compare it to the Polestar, since both are built on the same basis. There are actually only major differences in the built-in infotainment system, which - from what I've seen - is a little more confusing than that of the Polestar. Unfortunately I couldn't drive the car and unfortunately it wasn't a real alternative for me due to the delivery problems. The Volvo has a slightly shorter range than the Polestar (448km WLTP / 350km real), but probably the same charging technology. In purely arithmetical terms, the car takes about 92 minutes to charge on a 900km road trip - that's surprisingly bad, only the Mach E is slower.

Category	points
driving fun	89/100 pts
Service	90/100 pts
Range / Charge	42/100 pts
Driving assistance	80/100 pts
Software	80/100 pts
Space	80/100 pts
Optics	88/100 pts
Total	78/100 pts

Hyunday Ioniq 5

The Ioniq was also one of my favorites, it looks really futuristic, offers a lot of space and with Hyundai you would think that they can do electric cars. They can too, the Ioniq is in a great position when it comes to charging performance.

Unfortunately, I found a few problems in my tests - the driver assistance systems in particular were more dangerous than helpful in my case. Apart from the fact that the lane departure warning system had trouble staying in lane, it simply switched itself off without an audible or any visible warning! However, the cruise control remains activated, i.e. you do not notice at all that the vehicle is now simply driving straight ahead. In the display in front of the steering wheel (an advantage) there is an icon that shows whether the driver assistance is on or off. When it's off, the icon is gray; when driver assistance is active, the icon turns light green. With changing light conditions, it's almost impossible to tell the difference! I'm not the only one who noticed this. There are also some videos on youtube about it. Unfortunately... If such an assistance system is installed, then it must be safe! The excuse: That's just a "normal" car, doesn't apply.

What is also a real problem: the navigation has no integrated charge planning. If you also want to use the vehicle for longer distances, this is really rather impractical. That should actually be standard in 2022.

On the other hand, the built-in entertainment system supports Apple Carplay and Andriod Auto, so you can make up for a few small problems (strangely enough, the cordless version is only available in the "smaller" model variants).

Charging performance is really where the Ioniq can shine. Super fast 190kw is loaded from 10-80% on average, this is the fastest in this class! But unfortunately the range is a bit lower, it is given as 481km WLTP, in real terms it should be around 390km. On a 900km road trip, you would only need to spend around 40 minutes charging the car. Still undefeated!

And in this class, the Ioniq is the cheapest vehicle at just over €66,000

Category	points
driving fun	85/100 pts
Service	80/100 pts
Range / Load	94/100 pts
Driving assistance	50/100 pts
Software	92/100 pts
Space	95/100 pts
Optics	85/100 pts
Total	81/100 pts

Genesis GV60

Genesis is Hyundai's "luxury" brand, so the GV60 is the closest comparison to the Ioniq 5. The charging technology is identical, but the vehicle is a bit sportier and a bit smaller! So there is less space here. However, the infotainment system is structured differently. There are lots of gimmicks here too. The Genesis also has a lot of power, especially in the sportier version, and can even drift! In terms of fun, it is probably unbeaten in this price segment, but unfortunately 1. not available and 2. relatively expensive at €78,000 (for the sports version). Unfortunately not so interesting in leasing because the residual value is set relatively low.

What I found amazing is that the maximum power is not just available here, but you have to press a stupid button and then the power is on for 10 seconds or so. Feel like a crutch, especially in 2022.

Category	points
driving fun	85/100 pts
Service	80/100 pts
Range/Load	91/100 pts
Driving assistance	80/100 pts
Software	70/100 pts
Space offer	85/100 pts
Optics	80/100 pts
Total	82/100 pts

Ford Mustang Mach E

One of the most expensive here in the ranking. If you take the configuration with the large battery, all-wheel drive, the price is around €74,000.

The Mustang Mach E is really fun, it's a really good electric car. The infotainment system supports Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, bypassing the Ionity binding in the navigation system. Battery preconditioning is not supported anyway, so there really is no need for the car itself to know the route you are driving.

The software is really good compared to what else is offered. If you like, you can get lost in the settings menus and adapt every important and unimportant little thing to your own needs. It's really nice and there's always something to "play". Even a small app to pass the charge time was thought of - a sketch app with which you can paint small pictures (Tesla sends its regards).

The navigation system is also really good, shows everything you need, especially the charging stops and how long you have to charge where and with how much SOC you arrive. Unfortunately, you are tied to Ionity charging stations, which is a problem. Because after one year you lose the free customer status with Ionity and have to register there for 12€ a month in order not to pay 79ct/kwh. This is a no go. But as already mentioned, you can circumvent this quite well with the integration of AppleCarPlay.

Unfortunately, there is also no heat pump, which reduces the range, especially in winter. As far as that is concerned, the Mustang is doing quite well with WLTP 540km (in real terms around 430km). Unfortunately, the average charging power is rather slow at 86kw between 10-80%, it is by far the worst in this comparison. Above all, there is the fact that the charging curve in the Mustang breaks down very strongly from 80% - sometimes to less than 22kw!

Arithmetically, you would have to allow at least 93 minutes for loading times for a 900km road trip! That's really a lot and here in comparison with the slowest.

However, the driver assistance systems are really ok, the lane departure warning system was really good and kept the lane well, the cruise control works well, does not brake too harshly and does not drive too close. The only vehicle I've tested where I could build trust in the driver assistance systems similar to Tesla!

A special feature of the Mach E are all the 'gimmicks' - you can set it up so that there's an engine noise in the cabin when you accelerate (it sounds a little like a V8 - but really only a little). The Mustang also lights up when you approach it in the dark with the key. And a Mustang logo is projected onto the road! Really nice gimmicks - everyone has to decide for themselves whether that justifies the additional price. Not for me.

The space available in the Mustang is relatively good, although not really outstanding in comparison. Although the Mustang is not built on a combustion engine basis, there is still very little space inside. The "floor" of the vehicle is relatively "thick", which takes away the depth of the whole thing, and you can also feel it in the trunk. In comparison one of the smaller trunks.

The frunk has a nice feature though: there is a hole through which water can drain. This is good in that you can easily wash out the frunk. Ford gives the example that you can store ice in the front so that drinks can be chilled. Nice gimmick, really.

Tesla Model Y

If you're a Tesla driver and familiar with the system, there are no surprises with the Model Y. The Tesla is relatively cheap in comparison (€67,370.00), and is also one of the cheapest in leasing because the residual value can also be set relatively high (anyone who has ever tried to find a used Tesla knows what I mean).

The special feature of the Model Y is - in my opinion - better optics and the significantly better space. According to the manufacturer, the trunk with a volume of more than 900l (if the rear seat is not folded down) is twice as large as, for example, the Ford Mustang (of course, the numbers are typical American embellishments, but Fords too!).

The seating position on the Model Y struck me as very comfortable. You don't sit as sportily deep as with the Model 3 and yet you still have the go-kart feeling. The fact that the higher seating position is good for me may also be due to my advanced age 😉 . Nevertheless, the chassis has really gotten better and compared to my Model 3 from 2019, the Model Y (even the Performance variant) feels much more comfortable. In general, it has become much quieter in the car. The wind noise could be heard very clearly in the Model 3, especially on the motorway. Which is why you didn't want to drive so fast 😉 . But with the Model Y it's much quieter, hardly anything to hear. And compared to the other vehicles I've tried, there really isn't much of a difference.

If you now examine the numbers more closely, the Model Y is the second fastest "loader" in this list (shares the place with the other Teslas 😉 ). Charging from 10 to 80% takes just under half an hour in 27 minutes, a really good value. Together with the real range of approx. 435km, we get a total charging time of 53min on a 900km road trip!

Tesla's software is the most mature and best to use. There are no problems with the navigation, there are no problems with the settings or anything. Yes, you could say the Tesla is a "computer on wheels" - that doesn't have to be a disadvantage. Especially since the driving experience is largely due to the infotainment system and its appearance.

The binding of the navigation to Tesla's own supercharger network could be seen as a disadvantage. But that's not really the case, as Tesla has more charging points in Europe than the rest combined. I.e. I don't have to load somewhere else. And that's one thing, especially when it comes to the price: Ionity charges "non-members" 79ct / kwh - if you don't want to pay that, you have to pay a fee of €12 per month. This is really a stupid way to retain customers. In addition, you can find other charging stations in the app of the Tesla, but they are not included in the route planning - unless you add them manually.

At Ford, the connection to Ionity is more of a disadvantage, because they have many charging stations, but not as many as would be necessary in some areas. Tesla's charging network is clearly a very big plus point, which you can see in the rating under Range / Charging - 10 points are added for the super easy-to-use charging network.

And that is exactly the advantage of Tesla over everyone else here: I can get into my car at any time, with any charge level, tell the computer to please navigate me to XYZ and I don't have to do anything else. With the other vehicles, no matter which one, I always have the problem that I need authorisations, cards, roaming etc. for the charging stations on the way. This is really unnecessarily complicated.

And yes, that advantage is fading as Tesla wants/needs to open up the charging network to other non-Tesla vehicles. But then these are certainly not stored in the navigation systems and using them is just as stupid as with the other providers: download the app, use the payment method, activate the charge station, etc.

One "downside" is that Tesla doesn't support Android Auto or AppleCarPlay. With Tesla, however, I only noticed this a little negatively, since the functions of the on-board software are sufficient. Apple Car Play is particularly helpful if your own system doesn't offer all the features (like the Hyunday) or isn't that great in itself.

If you mention the software at Tesla, the most important non-driving-related features should not be missing:

You can pre-air-condition, or just let the air-conditioning run when you get out
There is a "dog mode", then a little dog is shown in the display with the text "My owner will be right back" and the air conditioning stays on. Great feature
there is a sentry mode that records when someone approaches the vehicle.
there is a game box in which a number of triple-A games are also available. This is a great way to pass the loading time
and if you would like to watch a little film: Disney+, Youtube and Twich are also available in the car (of course only when you are not driving)
Spotify is available directly in the car and with it you can listen to almost anything you like.
I have the vehicle unlocked with a credit card or with my cell phone, normally I just have to have the cell phone in my pocket and open the door.

Speaking of the software. This can not only be found on the vehicle itself, but also in the Tesla app. And that's something special. Not only can I control the air conditioning, see what the battery level is, open the trunk and frunk, unlock or start the vehicle. I can see where the vehicle is, I can even "remote control" the vehicle (in Germany you have to be nearby for this to work). And all of this works super easily and quickly. You can even use the app to schedule service appointments. The app is a great feature!

I'm currently awarding 50 points for service because it really wasn't that great. The whole thing is getting better, but planning via the app is actually not that much of a problem. The problem is the processes and the people behind them. I hope Tesla gets this under control. But since you (hopefully) hardly ever have to go to the Tesla service, it doesn't matter that much.

Category	points
driving fun	90/100 pts
Services	50/100 pts
Range/Load	77/100 pts (10 point bonus for the charging network)
Driving assistance	90/100 pts
Software	90/100 pts
Space offer	100/100 pts
Optics	85/100 pts
Total	86/100 points

Here you also have to make a little difference between the performance and the normal variant. The performance variant clearly looks better and offers clearly more driving pleasure... that's why several points are awarded here. When charging, the Performance model only has to plan 5 minutes longer on the 900km trip than the LongRange model. So the two are about the same. On the other hand, the performance model looks a lot better than I had previously thought. The car is kind of weird in that context. It doesn't look that great on the internet, but in real life it's a super nice car to look at, especially the performance variant!

Category	points
driving fun	98/100 points
Services	50/100 pts
Range/Load	74/100 pts (10 pt bonus)
Driving assistance	90/100 pts
Software	90/100 pts
Space offer	100/100 pts
Optics	95/100 points
Total	88/100 points

Tesla Model 3

In this comparison, my current vehicle should not be missing in the new version. Since I am concentrating here in particular on driver assistance systems and software, the Model3 comes out with almost the same rating as the Model Y - with deductions in terms of space and appearance (a matter of taste).

Unfortunately, the Model 3 LR is also a little behind because it is significantly more expensive to lease than the comparable Model Y.

The charging time for a 900 km trip of only 44 minutes is also interesting here! That's really a good value - and despite the significantly lower average charging capacity of 124kw, the Model 3 LR is on a par with the Genesis GV60 Sport, which can offer a charging capacity of 190kw, but unfortunately has to stop to charge more often because of the shorter range!

Category	points
driving fun	90/100 pts
Services	50/100 pts
Range/Load	86/100 points (incl. bonus)
Driving Assistance	90/100 pts
Software	90/100 pts
Place offer	70/100 pts
Optics	70/100 pts
Total	79/100 pts

The comparison to the normal Model 3 (i.e. rear-wheel drive, no long range) may also be interesting here. With the same calculation basis, this takes 61 minutes to load on the 900km trip.

Category	points
driving fun	75/100 pts
Services	50/100 pts
Range/Load	57/100 pts (incl. bonus)
Driving Assistance	90/100 pts
Software	90/100 pts
Place offer	70/100 pts
Optics	70/100 pts
Total	75/100 pts

By the way, the Model3 Performance only needs 49 minutes for the trip - and according to the comparative evaluation scale it is clearly ahead.

Category	points
driving fun	100/100 pts
Services	50/100 pts
Range/Load	81/100 pts
Driving assistance	90/100 pts
Software	90/100 pts
Space offer	70/100 pts
Optics	75/100 pts
Total	82/100 pts

Audi Q4 Etron

Unfortunately, I was not able to test drive the Audi, i.e. these values here come from online research and friends and acquaintances that I asked. I've driven other Audis and I can make sense of things I've found on the internet.

I find the strange "castration" of the charging capacity of the Audi astonishing. If you take the small battery, you can only charge with a maximum of 100kw. That sounds a bit as if this were one of the first electric cars ever. All the more astonishing, because with the big e-tron they have shown that things can be done better.

The large battery charges with a maximum of 125kw and the top speed is 160 or 180 km/h. Funny concept too. However, what is really strange is the performance that you only get in full if you press a button before and then only for 10 seconds max. Why?!?!? I find that unnecessarily cumbersome.

Well, based on what I read there, the Audi was eliminated from the start. As an electric vehicle in the Tesla squad only in terms of price - approx. 69000€ in the Tesla-like equipment and the leasing was one of the most expensive of those listed here.

Also on our 900km road trip, the Q4 Etron is only in the middle. At 47 minutes, it's not the worst (that's the Mach E), but it's not really up there either. The reason behind this is the low charging capacity (on average 103kw of 10-80%) and the relatively poor range of reel 385km.

I also don't find the car attractive, but that's my subjective opinion.

Category	points
driving fun	60/100 pts
Services	80/100 pts
Range/Load	51/100 pts
Driving assistance	80/100 pts
Software	70/100 pts
Space offer	80/100 pts
Optics	60/100 pts
Total	66/100 pts

Skoda ENYAQ

The ENYAQ is the most sensible of the vehicles tested here. At least it looks like a sanity car. Unfortunately. There's no real fun with the tame look. The driver assistance systems and the software have probably been taken over by the ID3/4 and not the best in the ranking (albeit better than with the ID models). For the road trip we would have to add 67 minutes pure loading time, which is really one of the worse values here in comparison.

Category	points
driving fun	60/100 pts
Services	80/100 pts
Range/Load	57/100 pts
Driving Assistance	50/100 pts
Software	90/100 pts
Place offer	90/100 pts
Optics	50/100 pts
Total	66/100 pts

##BMW iX3 I was really disappointed with the BMW. I thought that the people of Munich would manage to put up a great electric car, especially after their experience with the i3. Unfortunately this is not the case. In terms of design, I think they have galloped a little too.

The iX3 is by far the most expensive to lease, the slowest to charge (80min for the 900km road trip) and offers the least power. However, I assume that the software is typically BMW good and easy to use.

Category	points
driving fun	60/100 pts
Services	80/100 pts
Range/Load	57/100 pts
Driving Assistance	50/100 pts
Software	90/100 pts
Place offer	90/100 pts
Optics	50/100 pts
Total	58/100 pts

VW ID3/4

Our industry leader, so hyped by the media, now also makes electric cars. Yes, unfortunately just "also". Unfortunately, the software in particular is a real weak point in the ID models. It has been improved (fortunately there are OTA updates), but compared to Ford, for example, Volkswagen still has a lot of homework to do. But there seems to be some hardware issues here too: looking at it, I'd say the CPU/GPU is undersized, as lame as the screen builds up at times. Seems like they have clearly saved money at the wrong end!

There is virtually no vehicle in the same performance category as the Model 3, so the comparison is a little unfair. If I rate the driving pleasure relatively poorly here, that's because I could only configure the ID4 with a maximum of 256 hp. So it's not really a competitor in that area either, because from 0-100 it's almost 4 seconds slower than the Ford Mustang (and the Model 3 is 3.5 seconds to 100!).

Here, too, you are tied to Ionity in the navigation system, with which you can probably charge cheaper for the first year - but again from the 2nd year then 79ct/Kwh or 12€ per month.

For our virtual road trip, a total of 72 minutes to charge needs to be planned, because of the charging capacity of just 100kw.

It could also be better in terms of space. Neither the ID3 nor the ID4 offer a frunk that could be called that. Also, both are based on VW's combustion engine platform, which wastes space. The trunk is comparable to that of the Ford Mach E. This is far from "THE car".

Apart from the fact that I find the car to be quite boring in appearance. However, I wanted to list it here for the sake of completeness.

Category	points
driving fun	30/100 pts
Services	80/100 pts
Range/Load	57/100 pts
Driving Assistance	50/100 pts
Software	90/100 pts
Place offer	70/100 pts
Optics	80/100 pts
Total	67/100 pts

Conclusion

It will probably be a Tesla again. And yes, I can almost hear them shouting "You fanboy, why didn't you check out the car XYZ". And yes, there are many other electric cars out there. I intentionally wanted to stay in the same/similar price and performance segment. But the air is already getting thinner.

And yes, Tesla's minimalist design isn't for everyone, I get it. But I'm fine with it. For those who don't have enough screens etc., I can warmly recommend the Ford Mustang.

But of course, these are all SUVs. If you don't want that, then maybe you should give preference to the Model3.

however. I tried to rate the categories from my point of view. And I can truly say that I was open to all of these vehicles. And my personal favorites are the Model Y and the Ford Mustang Mach E! Both super great electric cars, no question.

Here is an overview of the evaluation points:

Vehicle	percentage rating	Remark
Tesla Model Y Performance	88%	amazingly cheap leasing
Tesla Model YLR	86%
Genesis GV60 Sport	83%	too expensive
Tesla Model 3 Performance	82%	became more expensive
Genesis GV60	82%
Tesla Model 3LR	81%
Mustang Mach-E	80%
Hyundai Ioniq 5	80%
Volvo C40	78%
Tesla Model 3 SR Rear	75%
Pole Star 2	73%
VW ID4	67%	out of competition, another performance class
Audi Q4 e-tron	66%
Skoda ENYAQ	66%
BMW IX3	58%	far too expensive, loads poorly

category: global --> keyboards

The Keyboardio Model 100

2022-06-20 - Tags: tastatur keyboard model100

Difference
Whats in the box
layout

The Keyboardio Model100

I've already written here that I consider the Model100 to be a worthy successor to the Model01. And now it's finally arrived. Due to the problems in China and of course Corona, there was quite a delay in delivery. But now it's finally here.

Difference

Spoilers: It's really a worthy sequel. I'm currently typing this text on the Model100 (with Kailh brown switches) and it feels much more stable. You don't want to go back to the "old" Model01, because typing is much more comfortable here.

the switches

I installed the 'Kailh Brown' switches here. These switches are quiet and have a very comfortable pressure point. Of course everyone has different preferences. But I also think the Kailh brown are of a much higher quality than the Matias previously installed in the Model01.

Fortunately, with the Model100 you are not limited to certain switches, as was the case with the Model01. Because the switches are all hot-swappable, you can switch at any time.

Because the keys feel "tighter" on the switches, typing is also much quieter. The "sound" of the keyboard is very pleasant, a soft "Thog" can be heard, but it's also really suitable for large offices!

Actually, you would now have the opportunity to use your own keycaps. Unfortunately, that doesn't work because Keyboardio's keys are specially shaped. This is actually an advantage because it makes the buttons very easy to reach. But it is a disadvantage for customizing - unfortunately you are then dependent on Keyboardio.

Whats in the box

the packaging was really an experience in itself - 2 black boxes arrive, in one is the travel case with the two halves, in the other the feet for the halves arrive. Everything looked very classy and unpacking was an experience. Really great.

The keyboard itself

Looks very classy, especially with the darker wood (personal taste). From the outside there is hardly any difference to the Model01, but when you use the keyboard it feels completely different!

The travel case

A practical extension is the travel case, in which the Model100 is delivered. You can stow the two halves in it very well - however, the Octo-Stands do not fit in, they have to be taken separately. It's still a useful addition, even if I don't really need it.

A screwdriver...

... and so much more. There are, for example, shorter connecting cables for the two halves, one (or two) rigid plastic connectors with which the two halves can be firmly connected. Then there is a keycap or keyswitch puller, i.e. a tool with which you can remove the switches or keycaps.

The so-called Octostand, a kind of "sloping stand", was delivered in its own package.

layout

Finally you have more storage space available to really give your keyboard all the features that are useful. My normal layout for the Model01 is pretty close to the limit at 94%. The Model100 has significantly more space and not only can I use my layout, I can also add extensions and plugins without any problems. That wasn't possible before, I had to limit myself. That's why there is now a branch for the Model100 for my firmware in the Repository on GitHub, which was appropriately named model100 😉

Conclusion

I don't regret the purchase, although I admittedly wasn't 100% sure beforehand, since the model01 and the model100 are very similar. But the typing feel is noticeably different, in favor of the Model100.

And yes, that really matters. Especially if, like me, you work on the computer every day and also spend an hour or two on the computer at weekends. So having a cheap keyboard might reduce the fun you have even on an expensive computer.

Everyone who has not yet enjoyed split keyboards, but intends to do so, should hurry. The Model100 can currently only be pre-ordered via Indiegogo, and it's definitely worth the price in my opinion.

Update

I just tried out the swappable keyswitches. I ordered a set of Kailh Speed Copper switches at CaseKing. Now I have a somewhat "louder" keyboard, but not as loud as the Cherry MX Blue were. I like the clicky sound to it, although I am thinking of adding O-Rings to make it a bit smoother.

At the moment I am quite fond of those switches and they are awesome when working at home. But for the office this is not a good Idea, it would probably drive everyone around crazy 😉

The best thing: if I get bored by that sound, I can easily switch back to the Kailh Boxed Brown switches. Never thought this feature of hot-swappable keyswitches is so much fun!

category: Apple --> Computer

IOS / Mac Mail Clients

2022-05-07 - Tags: email security

Email and Security
MacOS emailclients
IOS
GPG/PGP on iOS

Email clients for iOS and MacOS

Every once in a while I take a closer look at email-clients and see, if there is a good replacement for Apples Mail.app. Spoiler Alarm: this search was not really successful, but at least for MacOS I have a solution. On my mobile devices (iPhone / iPad) things are not so nice...

Email is the means of communication not only for business. Having the right tool for the job is definitely a good idea. Apples own email client is not really bad. But it could be better. There are some features a good email client needs to have:

data privacy. That’s the most important thing! You use emails for everything on the internet now, so the one knowing your emails, knows you! So it is generally not a good idea to have your emails routed through some kind of notification service or (even worse) have your credentials stored at some server, which downloads, filters and processes your emails
standard imap/s support
support for exchange (on MacOS this is not really necessary, as you can still use DavMail)
support for GPG and/or S/Mime
working with flags. OSX Email and most of the other allow for up to 7 different flags for each email. Best would be, if you could easily mark an email as TODO or IMPORTANT.
markdown support (especially for OSX, for typing on iOS it does not really help if it is markdown)
support for polling intervals
notification options on a account basis
gimmics like "Know your from address by the history of communication with the specified contact" or "send later"
rules and automisation

Some of those things are part of apples mail app, but definitely not all of it. Other features you can get by using some plugins or extensions, like GPG support. Some of the things can not be added directly to the MailApp, but to the system - most of the time not in a really good way (like markdown support).

So, there are a lot of Email clients in the App Store, I tried a couple of them. And the result is really sometimes disappointing.

I took a closer look at email clients on OSX and iOS and compared them with the featured listed above. I did not have a closer look at Email clients not supporting standard imap, because those are my primary accounts. So this list is definitely not complete, and it shows my personal experience and my opinion!

Email and Security

Since this is such an important topic for me, let's quickly make a small digression about how email works and what email security is all about.

The emails we use today look very colorful and styled, but they are based on a protocol that dates back to the last millennium. Encryption was not thought of at the time and was of course not implemented. Strictly speaking, there are three protocols:

SMTP: the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is a plaintext protocol used to send emails. The security of the protocol has been increased somewhat by tinkering around with 'SSL', which is also referred to as 'SMTP/S'.
POP3: the Post Office Protocol 3 is also a plain text protocol, which is used to read emails from the server. Still in use, even if it's quite limited in functionality. This is also secured with SSL. Then the communication to the client is at least encrypted.
IMAP: the Internet Message Access Protocol is a more "modern" version of POP3 and offers many more functions. With IMAP, the connection to the server remains permanent and the server can, for example, "let you know" when an email arrives (push). There is also an SSL-encrypted variant (IMAP/S) here.

What's the problem now? In principle, communication with the client is encrypted when SSL is used. This is a good idea per se and nobody should retrieve emails without encryption.

But the big problem lies on the server side, all emails are usually stored in plain text, as normal text files. That's not tragic per se, but then I have to trust the server admin 100%!

And not only them - the server admin from the sending server and from the receiving server, because normally the email arrives on both in PLAIN TEXT¹.

And that's not enough either, because sometimes emails are also sent via relays, then I have to trust the admins of those relays as well.

And I don't just have to trust the admins, but also their ability to secure the servers. Because for hackers, that's just what they're looking for: easy access to a lot of personal informaytion - and you get a lot out of a person's emails...²

Email encryption

You could store the emails encrypted on the server side. Sure, but then the server would have to be able to decrypt the e-mails again and then pass them on to the user in plain text (if you want to read the e-mail at some point). This means that the server process must be able to decrypt these emails. And that in turn makes it insecure, because any hackers would then probably have access to this key. The emails are therefore simply filed AS-IS.

Since the protocol for sending emails is plain text and they are also saved in plain text, we have a problem here. But due to the great popularity, it was not possible to roll out a completely secure new communication method just like that. Hence the idea came about to solve that using encryption mechanisms.

Of course, I can simply encrypt the emails and send them to the recipient. But how does he get the key with which he can then also read the mail? Do you want me to email this too? Probably not... so what then?

Luckily there was something called "Public Key" encryption - it creates 2 keys, a private key that hopefully nobody will ever see, and a public key that you can send anywhere.

If you encrypt a message with the public key, only the owner of the private key can decrypt the message. This protects it from third parties, even if admins or hackers have access to the emails.

In the 1990s this was published as a system called 'PGP' or 'Pretty Good Privacy'. Server infrastructures were created where public keys could be stored. You could then search for the recipient email and use the appropriate public key to securely communicate with that one recipient.

As I said, this was created in the 90s, but was super cumbersome to use. PGP was not a real success, but with the open source movement there was soon an "open" implementation to replace PGP - GnuPG or GPG for short.

In the end, there is not much difference between PGP and GPG, and it was just as cumbersome to use. Which didn't lead to a "real" breakthrough for GPG either.

There were alternatives that tried to circumvent this. Especially managing the keys, finding the right key to send, then decrypting and making everything safe. The other approaches have tried to shift the problem to a server so that the user no longer notices anything about encryption etc. The "problem" of communication between the servers was addressed, so to speak. But that wasn't crowned with success either, because it can only work if all my receivers also have this technology.

Currently there are somewhat simpler approaches, in the end you no longer use SMPT. The client talks to a server. My email to be sent is sent there and the server takes care of the encryption. And when retrieving to decipher.

Ok so far, but - again the "problem" that the emails arrive at the server unencrypted at least sometime. No end-to-end encryption. You can also tackle this by not using SMTP almost completely and establishing your own email system. But that's kind of a chicken-and-egg problem: it works when there are a lot of people using it, but they only come and use it when there are already a lot of people there... So you need a bridge between the new encrypted email traffic and the old existing one, somehow. Even that wouldn't be the problem, but now you have another data protection problem: for this to work, this server has to have access to my emails. This usually means that I have to store my email accounts somewhere on this server. And now we have the problem again. There is a server that accesses my accounts... No GO!

Ok, a willing troll will tell me then, but the providers encrypt and decrypt the emails on the end device and therefore only store them in encrypted form. That's right, at least in most cases, but doesn't it make the servers particularly interesting for hackers? There is a server whose operating company advertises that the emails are only stored in encrypted form. So explosive information should be found there... A honeypot for hackers.

Actually, it would all be so easy if the clients could, for example, support GPG/PGP. These standards have been around for ages and are easy to send using the SMTP standard. Receiving via IMAP or POP3 is also no problem. Unfortunately, it is very rary that the implementation is really useful.

What does a good and useful GPG implementation need:

The main thing is a useful key manager. I have to be able to import keys, maybe also delete them. And maybe create them. Send them to others and so on.
Connection to one (or better several) KeyServers, i.e. you can search for keys for your email recipients
Encryption and decryption should work more or less automatically (you will probably have to enter a password for the keys, but that should be it)

And what mail client does combine all those features into one neat software: none! Fortunately, on MacOSX there is the GPG Suite, which I would like to warmly recommend to everyone. This is good key management in an external tool then.

Email clients that support PGP or GPG encryption are very rare. The few that exist often implement their own key management, which almost always entails some problems (it's no different on iOS). Only MailMate supports GPG Suite³

Email encryption should become much more standard. But unfortunately the email clients that support it are really rare.

One problem why GPG and PGP haven't really caught on is that you can't just search emails "like that" anymore. IMAP servers usually offer a server search, i.e. the server searches the emails for specific content. However, if the content is encrypted, this is not really possible. This can be avoided using a local index (i.e. the most important information about the encrypted mail is saved locally after decryption). However, this is only helpful to a limited extent and also reduces the security of the data (again, something is lying around somewhere in plain text).

However, this only refers to the content of the email - all headers and fields that an email brings along (the best known probably: SUBJECT, TO and FROM ) remain unencrypted! So the notorious metadata is still in plain text and can also be read "just like that" on the servers.

Sign emails

It should also be mentioned for the sake of completeness. It's about recognizing whether the email has been altered in any way. One could imagine that someone takes the email, changes the content and simply forwards it to the recipient. To prevent this from happening, emails can be cryptographically signed.

Actually this process is quite simple: the sender creates a checksum of the email and encrypts it with his private key. Anyone who has access to the associated public key can display the checksum and check whether it is correct and the email is therefore unchanged.

Most of the time, signing and encryption are used at the same time - better safe than sorry 😉

what about S/Mime

This was another attempt to implement a standard for email encryption. This standard is supported by more email clients than PGP/GPG, but has its drawbacks:

you need to get the Certificate from some vendors in the internet. Most of the time you need to pay them
those certificates are usually signed and approved by some certification authority, just another whoop you need to jump
installing thos certificates is a real pain. And even if you succesfully installed them, they are not always working. On iOS
I never got it to work properly, although the integration in AppleMail ist quite good. I could not encrypt an email to myself, although the keys were known.
for properly using S/Mime you need infrastructure and server, otherwise it is just a pain.

MacOS emailclients

Standard Mail.app

Actually this mail app is not that bad, it has most of the features listed above. Usually you can do everything necessary with it. There are some minor things missing though. Markdown support only via the Service-Menu if you have markdown installed. You could set a key combination for that, but that is not really convenient: first, type your Markdown text, then mark everything, type your combo, wait a couple of seconds and then you see the formatted text. If you did a mistake, you need to undo it. Then edit your text, mark everything etc...

The GPG Support is good. Install GPG Suite and you're good to go! No hassle ther👍

Privacy - no problem here. Apple is not getting your credentials or anything else. Even if they got some, Data is not Apple's core business (compared to other companies). And Apple is always stressing out how much they honor the privacy of users and how much they protect the data. And this makes everybody take a closer look at what they do with data and what might be a violation of their own statements. So, I feel quite ok with that.

The support for rules and automated processing of mails of Mail.app is ok, could be better though. Unfortunately there are no such gimmicks as "Know your from address based on history" or something like that. There were some plugins (feingeist.io) that somewhat did that, but they changed their business model to a subscription based thing for their new tool called MailButler. It is worth a look though.

Here a list of useful tools for the standard Mail.app:

GPG Suite - must have, even if you are not planning on using GPG in Mail.app, this is useful (other clients like MailMate depend on that being installed)
MailButler - well, can be useful. Is too expensive for my taste and I don't like the non-optional online registration, where all your "actions" are being tracked and maybe billed. I liked the tools feingeist created when they were stand alone plugins. This now is not my cup of tea. Also, MailButler has a lot of features, but I was only keen on the SendLater functionality and the matching of sender addresses.
Markdown Service - not a plugin for mail per se, as it is available anywhere on your mac, but a must have if you want to write markdown. available here. Install multimarkdown support for this to work using brew: brew install multimarkdown

feingeist.io also had a tool called SendLater which was a simple little plugin only for adding this functionality to OSX Mail. Unfortunately they decided to integrate that into MailButler- so you cannot buy SendLater anymore. Really a pity..

MailMate

This has been my favorite email client in recent years. It is still actively developed and has a great community. This client is very versatile and can be customized in hundreds of ways. It has one of the best GPG integrations for any email client and only works with iMap accounts. Granted, it doesn't exactly look "sexy", but it's very useful 😉

Only support for IMAP is a minor issue as it also means you cannot access your Exchange account directly. You must use a tool like DavMail.

MailMate offers different views, a special feature is e.g. the view called ThreadArcs:

You can see the progress within a discussion thread and select individual emails directly. In the screenshot you can also see the seamless integration of GPG.

Another special feature is the display of statistics. Any header value can actually be used as the value for the statistics. A statistic regarding the email clients used is certainly interesting:

And, as you can see there, the dark mode of OSX is of course supported - it seems that it can't work without it anymore 😉

MailMate is not very convenient in some cases, especially when defining your own keyboard shortcuts. To do this, a .plist file needs to be created and specified in the settings. But in this file you have all the options to choose from. Some configuration examples:

With one keystroke the selected email can be marked as spam and moved to the spam folder
Send with key combination CMD-Enter
added a delay for sending emails of N seconds (this is done via defaults.write, not with the plist file)
Switch between different layouts
Jump to a specific folder/account

One of the best and greatest features of MailMate is the search functionality: you can specify searches for more or less any field and also define complex searches:

This is really a special feature and no other e-mail client I know of offers such search options.

If that is too complicated for you, you can simply use the general search slot at the top of the window. With the syntax "NAME: value" you can also search certain fields there. You can also use abbreviations for some fields, so you can use s test to search for emails whose Subject contains the text test. with t me@home.de all emails that were sent to the given email address are displayed.

And best of all: You can save these searches as a "SmartFolder", which then appears in the navigation tree on the left side of the window.

So I set up a SmartFolder there that shows me all emails including the emails that have been sent. So I always displayed the complete correspondence.

PostBox

PostBox is based on Thunderbird (whether this is an advantage depends on the user). Normally, the extensions for Thunderbird also work in PostBox.

However, the PostBox team has built its own extensions and added a few new functionalities:

Unified Inbox: show all mails from all accounts
Good search function, which can also be restricted to a few fields
Text clips when creating emails (including variables in the text)

Unfortunately no support for GPG and no Markdown editor (you can install it later via an extension, but in my tests it was only partially successful) and no support for Exchange (unless you use [DavMail](http:// davmail.sourceforge.net) or the Exchange server is also configured for iMap)

AltaMail

This is a very capable Email-Client, has great search functionalities and a ton of options. It is the macOS pendant to the iOS-version discussed further down.

One very good feature of Altamail is the special support for Work-Life-Balance settings. There you can define only to be informed about emails depending on time and/or place. cool thing.

Other than that, I hade my issues with it:

it would not always update, when there 's new mail. MailMate works more stable in that regard
I had problems adding my Exchange account to it. Would not work. On iOS no problem.
It hast overwhelmingly many options to check. This is sometimes a disadvantage, because the setting you're looking for is hidden behind several Layers of menues
Thread handling is not working well. When there is a new Mail, the whole thread is marked "unread" - which is fine! - but you have to click on the one unread mail to get rid of the marking.
It crashed several times during my tests.
sometimes Mails in the inbox would be shown as duplicate. Cannot tell, why. All other emailclients I tested never had this problem.

AirMail

Looks the best of all tested.

Has fairly good Markdown support. No later sending. But it is currently one of the best mail clients. The functionality is really good and the integration with the reminders app and the calendar is really good. There are also features such that individual emails can be "paused" and reappear as new in the inbox after 5 minutes. Nice feature.

What bothered me the most about Airmail was the very poor search function! There you cannot restrict the search to fields. Also, there is no way to create something like SmartFolder.

Furthermore, there is no real GPG support in Airmail. There is a plugin that is supposed to retrofit this function, but it is probably not actively being developed further. I couldn't get it to work.

All this, and the fact that it was not able to display the right number of unread mails in my test until the end, made me decide against AirMail.

Another plus is that Airmail has an equally nice client for iOS. So you have all the features on all devices. However, there is a catch with the iOS version - you have to use Airmail's push service, which must at least raise concerns. I have to pass on my login data to Airmail. that's a no go.

You can certainly argue about the surface, it looks very nice, but I personally find it sometimes really confusing. The look is definitely a plus and I've been trying to really use Airmail for several years now. Unfortunately, it doesn't work, because just looking pretty doesn't help much at work.

The input function is great, you can do a lot with the e-mails, but the functions offered should then also work. Unfortunately that doesn't work.

The imap support leaves a lot to be desired and random directories are created on the imap server (to express certain "flags" of the email, like ToDo. Why not use the functions integrated in IMAP? Tags?), what the heck This means that emails are simply "gone" in other clients and have to be searched for (e.g. in Mail on the iPhone)

And if, for example, there are serious errors when accessing an account (wrong password, network error), the icon around the account representation simply gets a red border... nothing more. I didn't notice for hours that I didn't have access to one of the mail servers. And then not even an error message or information is shown why the access does not work. You have to rely on rates...

Then I have never successfully managed to receive the same number of emails (via Imap) in Airmail and OSX Mail/PostBox/Thunderbird/MailMaite. Airmail just doesn't load some emails... Airmail crashed several times while loading...

What I have already noted in some reviews has still not been corrected: the sometimes hair-raising and often misleading translations of the interface. The best way to use Airmail is in English - that's about right.

But the most serious thing is actually that the features are not up to date. The "Intelligent Folder" can be saved with a search, but it can't really do much. And/or combining links didn't work for me in any way.

The same applies to the rules. The criteria that can be searched for are ok, but there should be a lot more. Also, you can either apply rules to all accounts or just one, which doesn't make sense either (you have to duplicate the rules if you have multiple company emails, for example)

I also find the lack of support for current encryption technologies (S/MIME, GPG, PGP) shameful! It has to be like that these days. and the available plugin, which is supposed to deliver it later, doesn't work at all.

So I can't really recommend Airmail for professional use. Pity

There is one star for the good email editor, the prettier and more modern display and the support of themes.

Now, for this superficially pretty but technically rather questionable thing, money is also being demanded monthly... Honestly, I understand that software developers like to place subscriptions - but then I also expect something from the software but 3.49€ per month This "mailer" isn't worth a month or 10€ a year to me.

Summary:

Positive:

Interface modern and pretty with themes
Exchange support - big plus!
Markdown support, creating emails in general is great
Great features with the emails themselves, like follow-up etc.

Negative:

No encryption with GPG or similar
"Proliferation" of imap folders
crashes
Localisation is incorrect and partly caused by this "broken" layout
insufficient search function for smart folders and rules
Buggy
sometimes quite confusing

Canary Mail

Canary Mail is definitely one of the better email clients. Especially the really easy-to-use support for encryption and the fact that you can write emails in Markdown are an advantage.

The interface is nice, but it quickly becomes a bit confusing if you have multiple accounts.

It's also great that the settings can be synchronized via iCloud (and not some ominous third-party provider). And if even that is too difficult for you, you can use a QR code.

The dark mode works quite well, but sometimes it looks a bit stupid when creating emails. especially when emojis are inserted.

Some really cool features, like configurable swipe gestures (works great with the touchpad in OSX!), snooze function (so emails come back to the inbox later), pinning of messages and adding stars to messages.

One of the most important features is the support of PGP encryption directly on the device without having to rely on a server.

There is also the option of sending encrypted emails via the operator's own server. A slightly different approach is chosen here: your own email is not sent directly, but only a link to a page where you can then read the email. That's really only partially helpful. But a nice gimmick - not recommended from a security point of view, though.

All in all really solid, but there are a few things that could or better should be improved:

the search is much too limited. Above all, I'm missing a function to save searches or something like Smart Folder
PGP encryption is offered, but unfortunately you cannot download keys from key servers. There is a search function, and canary then searches somewhere but apparently none of the "big" key servers. Sometimes it just did work fine.
Especially if you have several accounts, it makes sense that the sender address is chosen depending on the past and not on the selected account. It often happens that you accidentally send a business email with your private address.
I would find it useful to somehow group the mail accounts and get a unified inbox, for example private vs. business
the Markdown support is quite limited. I never managed it to have a code snipplet displayed properly. For a developer, this is a showstopper.
the menubar-icon shows possibly unread emails, but not where they are. So in which inbox. It would be nice if you could configure that and then distinguish between work and private, for example
there doesn't seem to be any support for rules either. But that would be a really important feature, especially if you want to clean up several accounts

All in all really nice, but unfortunately some important features are missing, at least for me. Especially the lack of rules and smart folders or storable searches is a MUST for people with a lot of emails. The lack of support for code blocks in markdown is adding to this list unfortunately.

Unfortunately, I can't really use the app like this. Pity...

Apps for MacOS that didn't make the list

Outlook: unfortunately too much Microsoft, not enough cool features and not enough standards.
Spark: Only works through their server - No Go. And: how can this app get an award when the GDPR and privacy are ignored completely?
Blue Mail: on iOS it looks very promising, but on the Mac it just would not work. So many bugs when creating accounts, and the "Magic Sync" feature would not work neither.

IOS

With iOS you have to make a few compromises, for better or for worse, that are due to technical reasons.

Limitations

polling

Polling somehow only works with Apple's own app, all others depend on push notifications. But that also means that you will only be informed about new emails if you activate this service and somehow give it access to your own account. This is a no go in my opinion! Because the emails have to go through the provider's server so that they can show a preview in the push message. I really don't think it's necessary for Apple to limit it so much. The polling works with all mail clients here in such a way that iOS tries to "guess" (aided by AI) when the polling should take place. It may well be that it makes sense (at night when you're sleeping anyway), but it's quite limited. You get messages via email at odd times.

Actually, on iOS you either have to say goodbye to data protection or the idea that you are immediately informed about incoming emails. Basically, I don't think that's a problem anyway, since I don't need the notifications from emails. If someone urgently wants something from me, they should call or send a chat message!

Markdown

That's a real shame, I haven't found a mailer that supports Markdown on iPhone. Admittedly, that doesn't really make sense with the small keyboard, but it makes sense on the iPad with a "real" keyboard connected.

Apple Mail.app

Honestly - for 99% of users, Apple's own email solution on iOS is quite sufficient. It is well integrated into the system and retrieving emails also works reliably here, without credentials ending up on Apple's servers.

The search is also relatively limited here, you can actually only enter a text in a search field, which is then searched for more or less everywhere. If appropriate, suggestions are made, which may then go to certain fields (sender address, recipient, subject). But that's not particularly "powerful" of course.

Apple Mail on iOS is a solid email client that really just "works". Actually, the thing doesn't cause any problems, but it also doesn't offer a great many functions. If you are an email heavy user, this may not be enough and you would like to expand the feature set.

Blue Mail

BlueMail

Boxer

Boxer - Workspace ONE comes from VMWare and is a really good and nice looking email client. Basically, it differs only slightly from the standard mail app, but offers some functions to connect emails with the calendar. This is solved quite nicely, you have direct access to emails from the UI:

Another useful feature is the configurability of the swipe actions. I.e. you can specify which action should take place with a short or long swipe on an email.

With the wipe actions you can choose between the "usual suspects" (read/unread, delete, archive, move, spam, etc.). However, there are two special features: you can answer an email with the "Quick" action, then you can choose from ready-made, short answer texts. Another special feature is the possibility to click "Like" on an email. Your "agreement" will then be sent as an answer. To what extent this makes sense remains to be seen.

Unfortunately, an option called "Notebook" doesn't work if you haven't installed the appropriate app for it.

Another advantage is the direct support for Microsoft Exchange.

Overall a good email client, offers a lot of features and is a good alternative to Apple's own Mail.app. The app is free and really worth a look!

But: still too many bugs, e.g. exchange mails are not marked as read or the marking comes back?!?!? Similar errors also occur with normal IMAP accounts, but more rarely. Even more important: IT did change random emails to be unread! This is really not good.

Altamail

Altamail is quite respectable, but the amount of options quickly overwhelms you. Similar to the MacOS-Version discussed above.

In general, Altamail offers so many settings and options that it would go beyond the scope here. You can adapt the appearance to your wishes, configure swipe gestures similar to other mailers, a connection to a calendar is also integrated and much more.

Altamail gives you the option to use the Altamail push service - or not. I find it very pleasant that you are not forced to disclose your email accounts in any way. But there are certainly people for whom this is not so important and would rather enjoy the convenience. As a user, I at least have a choice here. I like it!

Unfortunately, the app is quite expensive: €0.99 per month, one year of use costs €9.99 and a lifetime license is at €49.99.

Altamail is the only email client for iOS that also supports more complex searches and even has its own spam filter. It is also possible to store your searches as a smart folder. That's worth some pluses!

Unfortunately, Altamail does not provide any encryption or GPG support.

Airmail

Airmail is the iOS equivalent to the MacOS version described above and is one of the prettiest email clients from a purely visual point of view - Of course, this is also a question of your own taste.

However, the iOS version still has some disadvantages compared to the MacOS version: Another major shortcoming and unfortunately an absolute NoGO is that the IMAP credentials (username and password) are stored on THEIR servers in the USA for the push notification. In addition, the mails must (of course) also be read in order to be able to make a push notification with content. The advantage is that the mail arrives on the iPhone (or the notification about it) the second it arrives on the mail server. That's fine, but really not necessary for emails at all! if you turn off the push notifications, the credentials are not packed on the Airmail servers, but unfortunately no emails are retrieved either - only when you open the app. Unfortunately, none of this is really contemporary anymore. Maybe you want to give your passwords to other companies, that's ok. But I would like to have a choice. It's enough for me if I only get my emails every 15 minutes. It is not possible to poll the emails, i.e. to query them at certain time intervals (such as Apple Mail does). Of course, this is also due to the restrictions that Apple imposes on app developers. But I would have liked to see this polling that other app manufacturers offer here. That's really a shame, because I actually find all the features of Airmail very appealing. But I'm not allowed to use my company address in Airmail because of the problems mentioned above - and then Airmail is unfortunately unusable for me. Many others will probably have the same problem with business email addresses. Unfortunately too immature for the professional approach and not recommended "thanks" to the GDPR.

And currently you have to take out a subscription to be able to use all the functions.

I was hoping that with Airmail I had found a good mailer that would also serve reasonably well on the desktop with Airmail. Getting both from one "source" is really nice. But unfortunately, similar to the desktop version, the joy is marred by a few annoying bugs and shortcomings.

Also the positive: - the optics are great - the mail editor is easy to use and offers great formatting functions - if you use Airmail on several devices, you can have the account settings synchronized via the iCloud

What is really annoying is the basic functionality. I no longer even see some emails if they have already been read on another device, only when I manually press the sync button. This should actually happen automatically at least once an hour (at least according to the settings) - but it doesn't!

Then I have the problem again and again that the filter functions in the list view do not work properly. If you go to "Threads", all emails that belong together are grouped, but they are not sorted correctly in terms of time, so that my threads with unread emails end up "somewhere".

What exactly this "smart" sorting is supposed to do has not been revealed to me. Airmail is really full of nice ideas, which unfortunately (once again) were implemented more or less half-heartedly.

Too bad, because Airmail really has the potential to become something really good. Not a bargain, but really ok. If you don't mess around with multiple devices on your email accounts, the problems mentioned above shouldn't occur. What doesn't work at all these days is that encrypted emails that you might want to decrypt with another app cannot be decrypted with Airmail. Airmail is unfortunately not able to recognize the "encrypted.asc" attachment, which is created when encrypting with GnuPG, for example. So you can't send it to another app to decrypt it.

Canary Mail

This is not just the equivalent of the MacOS version above in name. But Canary-Mail is one of the few iOS email clients that also supports encryption with on device PGP/GPG. That works relatively well.

The encryption and security features are great, no question. But unfortunately the app feels "unfinished". Always annoying bugs. For example, no emails were marked as read today. Or if you wanted to answer an email, the editor stays black and you can't see what you're typing. (I tried to use this App for about a year now, most of the bugs are still there)

The interaction with the Mac app is great, I really appreciate that.

By default, both apps send a code that sends back a read a "Email was read"-Notice. This is done via the server from the manufacturer. I would have liked to see that noted a little more clearly somewhere and not behind several clicks in the detailed terms and conditions.

All in all, I can't recommend the client on either iOS or Mac - especially not for the price! You're constantly being interrupted in your work because something doesn't work or Canary just can't do it (such as more complex searches). Unfortunately.

I've tried using Canary several times now, at intervals of several months. But again and again bugs are annoying and some things just don't work. Still not.

Apples own Mail.app

Apps for iOS that didn't make the list

Tutannota: nice mail app with encryption, but only via their server
Aurora Mail: again a provider for encrypted mails, but only over the infrastructure.
SecureMyEmail: also only usable with an account with them
Private email: same
Spark: same as for MacOS version - privacy nightmare!
heyMail: Need to create an account on their server
1&1Mail: of course, only works when logged in to 1&1
MyMail: should work with iMap accounts, but it is not possible to enter a proper login
Newton MAil: you need an account and their server needs access to your emails
polymail: again centralized login on a company server
Chuck: could not get imap accounts to work.
Nine Mail: need an account
edison: might be nice, but again all your email needs to go through their servers. And they have a history of security issues...
TypeApp: did look good from it's website and appstore page, but unfortunately due to an error in their implementation I could not get it to work

GPG/PGP on iOS

PGPro

There are some apps trying to bring GPG or PGP to iOS. One of them is the app PGPro the whole thing is an open source implementation and can be obtained free of charge from the app store. This allows you to create and decrypt encrypted content relatively easily.

Unfortunately, the presentation is somewhat very technical. The content of a decrypted email looks something like this:

Content type: multipart/signed;
boundary="=02C7-4FD6-B953-8BA4427B5CC0_=";
micalg=pgp-sha256; protocol="application/pgp-signature"

This is an OpenPGP/MIME signed message (RFC 3156 and 4880).

--=02C7-4FD6-B953-8BA4427B5CC0_=
Content type: text/plain; markup=markdown

Just testing....

see how it is going

That's just hard to read. And it gets even worse when the message is also signed. Then the cryptographic signature "hangs" on the text.

It's a crutch, but unfortunately probably the only way to use GPG on iOS at the moment.

iPGMail

tool, similar to PGPro but has some more features and can directly send encrypted emails.

Encrypted attachments can be sent directly to iPGMail (similar to PGPro).

iPGmail does have a basic keyserver search implemented:

Tessercube

Tessercube is very much similar to PGPro and iPGMail. It is used in conjunction with some other email client to decrypt incoming mails or create an encrypted version of an outgoing mail.

This is as cumbersome as with the other two candidates, but works as expected and has a nicer look to it. The workflow is similar to all the GPG-Tools above: you select the encrypted file, you got via email (usually called encrypted.asc) and try to open it. Then you can choose from the actions and apps... here choose tessercube and it opens here.

When adding a key or keypar, tessercube only takes keys from the Clipboard. That is a bummer, there is no keyserver integration whatsoever.

Conclusion

It is really hard to find an Email-Client that ticks all the boxes, you probably will have to make at least some compromises. On Mac I found an email client that ticks all by boxes, MailMate works great, has a good markdwon support, exceptionally great search features and does encryption like a charm. I use it for quite some time now, and it never let me down. It has one drawback, it does not support exchange accounts - you need to install DavMail to have access to them. But then, it works fine. For me, on OSX there is no other choice in a mail client. But for iOS, most of them do not really work great and most of them do not support GPG.

I think, Boxer on iOS is a really good alternative, but I did not get it to pull any mail automatically on iOS. But it marks some emails as "unread", randomly. Not only locally, but also on the server: the mails look unread in all mail clients.

Also, Altamail is a great email client for ios, the extended searches and extreme number of features is just mind blowing. Same for the MacOS-version, they work nice in conjunction. But in some cases the Settings are just way to overloaded. And it is an expensive mailtool

So, what do we lern now. It took me some weeks to actually have all those clients tested, and it was fun... sometimes frustrating. So for me it will be like this:

on MacOSX I will continue to use MailMate - no other mailclient supports IMAP better, no other Mailclient has such great search capabilities (Altamail maybe) and it has a great markdown and GPG support - it ticks all the boxes 😉
on iOS things are more difficult. All tested email clients for iOS lack this or that feature, all do have some drawbacks or limitations. And all of them suffer with bugs. So, as far as I see it - I'd Stick to Apples standard emailclient and use tools like PGPro or iPGMail or Tessercube to en-/decrypt mails on the go.

I am doing this evaluation of mail clients every once in a while, but everytime I finish bein disappointed - but it seems to get better. At least there is an OSX-Version that supports all features (MailMate) and works stable. So there is hope left, that at some point there will be a good implementation for iOS as well. For now - it is still missing ☹️

Having the plain text on serverside helps with fighting spam. So the server can examine the content of an email and decide on that, if it is spam or not. When mails are encrypted, things are more complex and spam filtering could only take place on client side - BUT: Sending individually encrypted emails as Spam would make it more and more unattractive to send Spam mails at all.
↩
This explanation is somewhat simplified, but the facts remain the same: emails can be read by all admins of the server on the path that an email takes without any problems!
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To my knowledge
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category: global --> keyboards

Keyboards again

2022-04-15 - Tags:

Keyboards, again

Development continues
Model100
Moonlander Mk1
Glove80
The Sol3
Summary
Links

Development continues

The world keeps turning, there are new, ergonomic, split keyboards to admire. If you still want to read about the other keyboards I've looked at -> visit this post.

Model100

I'm the proud owner of a Keyboardio Model 01. But the guys from Keyboardio weren't lazy and packed the community's feedback into a new version, the Model100 via keyboard.io

Actually, the Model100 is almost identical to the Model01, at least on the outside. The most important changes¹

hot-swappable Kailh keyswitches. That was one of the biggest shortcomings of the Model01 (or is - even if you can only buy the Model01 used at the moment) - the switches quickly caused problems and produced errors. Double keystrokes or none at all - that happens quite often. Sure, that can be fixed relatively easily (by cleaning), it's always annoying.
Case made of walnut wood: looks very classy, a darker case.
the KeyCaps have been improved. The curved plastic is now a bit thicker, so they should also feel more valuable. In addition, they are flatter, so that the LEDs under the keys shine through better.
Baseplate and the so-called Octo-Stand have been improved so that the Model100 is even more stable on the desk.
A revised electronic design makes the Model100 a little less error-prone if a USB hub misbehaves. And it should be easier to fix.
Faster processor + more memory: Above all, I find more memory quite appealing. My layout occupies 99% of the available space, and it's actually not all that complex.

The rest remains as usual:

64 sculpted keys. This is both an advantage and a (small) disadvantage. These "curved" shaped keys make typing easier, the fingers rest better and you can find the right key faster. But due to this special feature, you cannot install any other keycaps. This is only a limited problem, because keyboardio offers its own KeyCaps to an affordable price.
RGB lighting under all(!) keys
NKRO - i.e. N-Key Roll-Over.
Open source firmware
the proven split design including the palm rest buttons

A nice improvement over the Model01 because it addresses the known problems and tackles them. It's also great that the Keyboardio Model100 now comes with a travel case (at least if you ordered it via Kickstarter).

The costs are about $289 US (currently about 265€, plus 19% VAT then about 315,-€²) at Kickstarter, later it will be correspondingly more expensive.

Moonlander Mk1

But there are other alternatives in the field of split, ergonomic keyboards. The Moonlander Mark I comes from ZSA - a small company that now belongs to Ergodox.

I was relatively close to getting this gem, but then the Model100 was announced 😉.

It seems to me to be a good alternative to the Ergodox-EZ, but it "only" has 72 keys compared to the 76 keys of the Ergodox-EZ.

So far I haven't had my hands on the Moonlander, but it seems to offer a lot to me and is available immediately. Unfortunately, I think the Moonlander looks a bit cheap and I'm not sure if it's stable.

The price is $365 US (roughly €330 plus VAT €392², depending on the exchange rate).

Glove80

The Glove80 is a very interesting project. The keyboard is round, similar to the Kinesis Advantage 2, but smaller and handier.

The keyboard has 80 keys, which is more than the Ergodox and the Model100 or Model01. Nevertheless, the keyboard seems to be quite compact. The price is somewhere beyond €300 (depending on the exchange rate to the New Zealand dollar and which variant you want, but at least €360 again plus VAT then €²).

Advantages:

portable similar to the Moonlander. It is very flat and can therefore be easily stowed away and taken with you
the two halves communicate wirelessly with each other and with the computer - no cables required (although I have my doubts as to whether this is an advantage, because it seems there is no way to connect the keyboard halves by cable)
an RGB option (Gamer Edition) is available. You have the choice of full RGB or just a few illuminated keys (similar to the Ergodox-EZ Glow).

Disadvantages:

the thumb block is not 100% usable in my opinion, the top row of buttons will certainly be difficult to use with the thumb.
the keyswitches are soldered, that's a bit "oldschool" because you can't easily replace broken switches. The developers justify it with the round shape of the keyboard, which would not work with hot-swappable keyswiches. You have to make compromises there
the RGB option ("Gamer Edition") costs extra - although this can also be interpreted as an advantage, if you do not need or want the RGB-Option(see above)
you can not adjust the inclination it seems. The inclination of the keyboard is fixed.

For all of these reasons I finally decided against the Glove80, even though I had been weak for a while. 😉

The Sol3

This is also a very exciting keyboard, fulfilling all the characteristics that I believe a good, ergonomic, split keyboard must support. And it also looks quite futuristic:

The special thing about it is that you have different options for almost every component (baseplate, frame, keyswitches, keycaps etc). And then the keyboard is assembled with magnets - really cool!

Basically, it is very similar to the Ergodox-EZ, even if it has fewer buttons (in the thumb cluster, the Sol3 has 72Keys).

Depending on the choice of components, you will end up with about 300-400€² but it is definitely worth considering. Technically, there is hardly anything to complain about, it should work for all areas of application. One could be tempted - a lot 😉

Summary

It's really nice to see what's happening in the market for ergonomic split keyboards. In my humble opinion, the split keyboards offer the maximum ergonomics and flexibility - although this requires touch typing (which is probably not a problem for someone willing to invest more than 300€ in a keyboard). Now you should just switch to a better keyboard layout 😉 - I wrote something about it here.

The time and money invested in keyboards is certainly well spent. As has been said many times, this is currently the input device for computers and it doesn't look like that's going to change anytime soon. Everyone who sits at the computer professionally and privately should really give it some thought.

Links

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-keyboardio-model-100--4/
↩
When importing the keyboards from non-EU countries, customs duty in the amount of VAT is added on top.
↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

category: global --> keyboards

Different keyboard layouts

2022-04-13 - Tags: layout adnw Tastatur Keyboard

Table of content:

There is more than QWERTZ
(a little) history of keyboard layouts
- How it all began
Disadvantages
DVORAK
NEO and NEO2
Aus der Neo Welt (translated: From the Neo World - ADNW)
Transition
- How to transfer
- Tips for the transition

There is more than QWERTZ

If you deal with the subject of ergonomics and keyboards, you can't avoid the keyboard layouts. At some point you realize that there is something other than QWERTZ or QWERTY (and the various derivatives thereof).

These layouts are getting a bit old and have quite an interesting history. I would like to share a few thoughts on this here. 😉 The story behind it is amazingly exciting and shows once again how things develop. And not necessarily to the optimum!

(a little) history of keyboard layouts

This is by no means intended to be a complete list. It should give a brief insight into the rather interesting history behind the things. In general, the keyboard layouts were by no means standardized at first, the manufacturers of different devices used different layouts that were designed for the mechanics of their product. This means that if you could type on one machine, you couldn't on another!

An impressive collection of historical typewriters can be admired here.

How it all began

the first mechanical keyboards did not initially have a QWERTY layout (contrary to general opinion) but an alphabetical one, which looked something like this:

3579NOPORSTUVWXYZ
2468. ABCDEFGHIJKLM

However, this turned out to be very error-prone, since the keys kept getting stuck when typing fast and you had to release this "hook" manually.

That was actually the biggest problem with the early mechanical typing machines: very frequent keystrokes (such as ei in German) must not be close to each other. That's not bad per se. Back then, the layout had a different goal.

After several "optimizations" of the layout, the QWERTZ or QWERTY, which has now been used for more than 100 years, finally came out.

Everyone should know this layout. But there have long been efforts to optimize it, but for some reason those "better" layouts did not make it.

Disadvantages

What are the disadvantages of Qwerz and Co? Well, the aim of the layout was to prevent the stop levers from jamming and has therefore packed all the frequent consecutive keystrokes as far apart as possible. You notice that with the e and the i e.g.

Letters that were relatively rarely followed one another could be filed together, such as m and n.

However, an ergonomic layout would have positioned the most frequent keystrokes more on the so-called home row (i.e. the middle row on the keyboard where the fingers are resting). This is sub-optimal with the QWERTY layout, to say the least (just pay attention to where you have to move your fingers when typing) and causes a lot of wide finger movement.

This can lead to problems such as RSI¹, especially for frequent typists. In theory, however, this can be minimized by adjusting the layout.

DVORAK

This was already clear to Prof. August Dvorak (and his brother-in-law William Dealeyund) in 1932 and he even patented the layout named after him in 1936²:

The aim was to be able to type faster and more efficiently by optimizing the layout. In addition, the layout should be easy to learn. To do this, Dvorak and his collaborators looked at letter frequency and also took into account the physiology of the hands.⁴.

Apparently, measured objectively, this was not crowned with particular success, in the 1950s investigations were made that hardly see any speed advantage with DVORAK. However, DVORAK still enjoys some popularity and is still used today.

NEO and NEO2

NEO was created in 2004 and arose from the idea of incorporating new findings about ergonomics into the layout. They also wanted to include the experiences that others had made⁵.

In 2010, NEO was then further developed into NEO2. Both layouts are also quite popular and used by many, especially as there is also widespread support.

Whether and to what extent you can type faster with NEO or not is still a point of contention. Unfortunately, there are still no scientific studies on this.

Aus der Neo Welt (translated: From the Neo World - ADNW)

The history of the creation can be read very nicely on the ADNW page and is very interesting. Here an attempt was made to calculate an optimal keyboard layout with the help of statistical analyzes and "weightings". It's super exciting and you get a sense of what's wrong with QWERTZ.

Personally, I find the ADNW-XOY layout⁶ to be best and is what I use alongside QWERTZ (sometimes - not good enough to use ADNW consistently yet).

The picture shows the layout adapted to my Keyboardio Model01 keyboard.

Transition

Switching to a new layout is difficult, very difficult! And takes time, a lot of time!

I type in QWERTZ at about 450-480 strokes/minute (in German, for English texts it's more like 380-400 strokes/minute). With XOY there are currently around 80-100 (German, English around 50)! This is super frustrating and nerve wracking. I've been trying to make the switch for at least a year. Unfortunately, I can't manage to switch to XOY permanently. I have to keep switching to QWERTY because otherwise things take unnecessarily long.

You have to relearn all the key combinations you have practiced, which is difficult and requires a lot of practice. It would be best if you simply used the layout and then it just takes quite a long time at the beginning.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to do it that way so far, because I (and my work colleagues) lack the patience.

How to transfer

It's surprisingly complicated, to be honest. Luckily, I had a programmable keyboard before I started thinking about the keyboard layout. I was fine with that, I was able to solve it on the hardware side.

Admittedly, this is also the best solution for this. Otherwise you really go insane. The solution in software is possible, albeit complicated. Depending on the layout, it's quite easy, because for NEO / NEO2, DVORAK or WORKMAN there is support for all operating systems in one form or another. Linux, Windows and MacOS. With ADNW and its derivatives it's more complicated, you'll have to help yourself with tools like Ukulele for the Mac (a keyboard layout editor). There is something similar for Linux, but mostly only for the graphical user interface. It's more difficult in text mode, but it's also possible.

Honestly - if you want to switch, you should get a keyboard and change the layout accordingly. That always works 100%!

Tips for the transition

Well... the blind man is talking about colors, but at least theoretically I can say something about it, because I haven't really switched yet either.

it is probably best if you simply change your keyboard / your OS and then try to live with the new layout
It's surprisingly exhausting when you're suddenly typing so slowly. Only perseverance helps.
Maybe the layout isn't the right one, maybe try a different one.
Attention, the keyboard shortcuts are now also different. I.e. CMD-Z is somewhere else - you have to learn the practiced "monkey grips" all over again!
Pages with typing games like 10fastfingers or typeracer help a lot
If you, like me, switch back and forth between the layouts, you have to be aware that the switch takes much longer!

But the most important thing is and remains to stay tuned and use your desired layout every day. For example when writing blog posts for your own blog 😉

Sources

category: global

in Hospital

2022-01-18 - Tags: covid hospital

Christmas in the intensive care unit

I was really lucky. And also really unlucky. Everyone wants to hear the story over and over again, so I'll tell it here now and then anyone who is interested can read it... It may also help someone who is in a similar situation or has friends/relatives in a similar situation to better understand.

Chronology

At the end of November 2021 I became ill. Had fever and cough, I was not well. First, all was just a bad cold, but after a week it turned out: I had COVID. - Great, I thought. It had to happen that way... It seems, I also got a so-called "superinfection", i.e. in addition to the infection caused by some bacteria, there was also an infection caused by the virus. I had to go to the hospital, my oxygen saturation was < 70%. I thought it wasn't that bad and I definitely put it off for two days, probably too long.
I was hospitalized on December 5th, 2021, they tried everything to get my lungs to work normally again. But that didn't work. So I had to on 6.12. placed in an artificial coma.
The superinfection was actually over after just under a week, the lungs had recovered so far that they wanted to wake me up again. Unfortunately, nobody noticed that I had 1. a swallowing disorder during the coma had developed (i.e. swallowing no longer works automatically, you choke on your own saliva) and 2. had developed paralysis of the duodenum. As a result, the artificial nutrition, which was fed to me via a stomach tube, was not transported "further" and I had to vomit when they tried to remove the tube.
That wouldn't be tragic, but unfortunately, due to the swallowing disorder, I didn't swallow the vomit as you would expect, but inhaled it, even though the tube was actually blocked. That means it wouldn't normally be possible to inhale something directly, but I still managed it because my lungs are very strong - great... => then I got pneumonia number 3: purulent aspiration pneumonia and back into a coma!
Again a few days later and after the administration of strong antibiotics, multiple suctioning of purulent secretion from the lungs, this was also over and done with they were able to free me from the hoses again. Unfortunately, the paralysis of the duodenum was still not noticed and I had to vomit again shortly after the tubes were pulled and inhaled vomit again => pneumonia number 4. => back into a coma...
Then a tracheotomy was made , because I didn't tolerate the tube well over my mouth. My throat is quite sensitive, and the ventilation via the hose bothered me greatly. They also wanted to prevent me from getting something in my lungs so easily again.
I wasn't awake during all these actions, I was on strong medication and I'm telling what I was told. I don't remember it at all. I can't remember at least 2 days before the coma either. For example, I don't remember how I got to the hospital.
after 2.5 weeks of coma I was woken up and from then on I can remember a little what happened.

Waking up in ICU

I can't 100% remember the moment of waking up. I do know, however, that a doctor was sitting next to me who spoke to me in a calming manner. It was scary all the tubes inside me.

Transit syndrome or medication?

What was even more frightening were the dreams and hallucinations I had during this waking phase and the days after. Some of those were horrible nightmares, which luckily I recognized as a dream while dreaming - but the dream didn't stop because of that. That was sometimes really intense. The cause of these dreams is not entirely clear to me. It must have been due to the medication, which is pretty intense. I must have had what is known as a transitory syndrome during the first few days, when the hallucinations were at their worst. Luckily it wasn't so bad that I got aggressive or anything. The worst part was that reality with the dream was "mixed up". For example, I dreamed in a dream that there was a clock hanging on the wall that didn't go to 12 but to 100 and I always had to convert the time in my head. I kept thinking for a few days after the dreams had stopped that the clock in my room really is a 100 hour clock and I had to do the math in my head every time I looked at it. But then I noticed that there was a 12 at the top and that it didn't make any sense. This is super scary that you can't trust your head anymore. Luckily that was only temporary.

Coma is not like in the TV

when you wake up after a coma like that, you're not squeaky alive like in the movies and you just walk out of the hospital. Not even close. The muscles have completely vanished, the musculoskeletal system is no longer able to carry you. I remember lying in bed and trying to scratch my nose with my left hand - I couldn't. Raising the hand was super exhausting and then I couldn't control it properly. It took me 3 days to get it done. The muscle strength was gone, the muscle coordination is missing.

Unfortunately that's not all. The left leg was so weak that I could not lift it, luckily the right one went with some effort. I've practiced that too and tried to get it right myself. After the coma, I was extremely weak, unable to sit or stand, let alone walk. My left hand was unusable, fortunately my right worked to some extent. I was tired all the time too...

I was constantly coughing because of the stupid tubes in my throat, so I couldn't sleep. I was given strong cough suppressants and sleeping pills to be able to sleep at all. Of course, that was not free of side effects (anxiety included). It was also not possible to sit down because my circulation was not used to it. I got dizzy in no time. That too had to be practiced. My endurance was practically at 0, my resting heart rate was > 120 beats per minute. I.e. the slightest exertion and I was completely out of breath and bathed in sweat.

Christmas and New Year's Eve in the intensive care unit

... you don't notice! Every day, every night is completely the same. I didn't really have the luxury of real sunlight either, always artificial lighting. Day and night were difficult to tell apart. There have been times when I wasn't sure if it was 8am or 8pm on the clock. Even Christmas and New Year's Eve could not be distinguished from the other days, as well as the patients had to be cared for just as on the other days.

Family

It was hard not being able to see my family. My wife was able to visit at first and was one of my most important supports and motivational aids. I couldn't have done it without her. But later a ban on visits was issued due to the Corona Pandemic. For a while my wife was still able to visit every 2 days, but that was no longer possible when I was moved from the intensive care unit to the "Intermediate Care" station (monitoring station).

Physiotherapy and training

In order to get my musculoskeletal system moving again, I had a physiotherapy session from time to time. Approx. 30 minutes on average. That was super complicated. We did have to practice sitting up at first, and even then that meant all the tubes for IVs, tube feedings, etc. had to be disconnected before practice could even begin. That alone took at least 10 minutes. And then I sat on the edge of the bed. Moved my left leg with a little help. A few days later and after a lot of left leg training while lying in bed, we were able to practice getting up. Then it went surprisingly well. We continued with the first cautious steps in the hallway and later the first steps. However, I didn't get very far, I was out of breath within a very short time.

The swallowing disorder

That was the worst. That stupid dysphagia caused a delay in the whole process. 'Cause I could've choked again could have inhaled something again that does not belong in the lungs (e.g. food). The doctors wanted to prevent that absolutely. The tracheotomy with the associated tube prevents something from getting "down the wrong throat". Unfortunately, this tube caused me to cough badly and severely disabled me. Getting rid of the swallowing disorder was a bit "diffuse". You just have to swallow, swallow, swallow. You have to practice that. Mostly thickened water, what would not be a problem when it would be sucked into the lungs accidentally - just water.

Unfortunately, these exercises took place only sporadically, if at all. That means I was on my own there. The nurses often took the time to practice swallowing with me. I found that really great. Sacrificing time for me in the overworked situation was super nice.

The swallowing disorder was then diagnosed as "resolved". This is determined with a laryngoscopy - you push an endoscope camera through your nose into your throat and see how the larynx swallows and whether there are residues where there shouldn't be any. But they still didn't want to pull the hoses...

Pulling the tubes / wrangling over responsibilities

The swallowing disorder had healed, and yet the doctors were unwilling to pull the tubes. I still had the air tube cannula (but hadn't been ventilated for a long time, it was only in there for "safety") and the stomach tube in my throat. Then the chief doctor of the intensive care unit came to see me and said that you can actually pull the tubes. But I was already in the monitoring station, i.e. the doctor there did not follow this recommendation, but left everything as it was.
This back and forth was nerve-wracking. On Saturday, my cannula could no longer be unblocked (i.e. once the cannula is unblocked, you can breathe and speak normally again "past it"), something was wrong. Then the last swallowing examination was brought forward and (Eureka!) the trachea cannula was pulled out. In the same minute I no longer had the urge to cough and I had significantly more stamina and was able to run much further. That was super liberating. The same tussle was also about the feeding tube. Luckily a doctor was "brave" enough and just pulled the thing out - in the hallway because she was annoyed by the scramble - and Zack my latent nausea was gone.

the "release"

It was all on Saturday/Sunday, after the hoses were pulled I felt much better and felt out of place. I should have been transferred to a normal hospital bed on Monday to wait for a rehabilitation place. But that was too stupid for me, I can wait at home. Also, I didn't want inpatient rehab, which would mean, especially now in Corona lockdown times, that I wouldn't see my family at all for weeks, maybe months. I couldn't have endured that. In addition, in inpatient rehab you are mainly busy waiting, since of course you cannot train 24/7. Since I am mobile and not dependent on care, outpatient rehab is clearly better for me. I have some training equipment in the basement and can do something for my body there every day. I have the motivation now. So for me outpatient rehab is clearly the better choice. I insisted on being released at that day, especially since the doctors (almost) all agreed that there was nothing wrong with it. The chief physician in pulmonology wanted to do a few more "final examinations", but I skipped those because, apart from the muscle atrophy, I no longer have any complaints. The chief physician of cardiology also said that from a medical point of view there is nothing to be said against dismissal. I was then released and just went home, am now busy with training and muscle building and endurance training, which will also take quite a while.

at home finally

I've been home for less than a week now, so far I'm fine. Sure, I'm still exhausted, I have to climb the stairs here and get up often - everything is difficult for me, but that's training. I walk a few steps every day, I can do 800m with a break in between now. It gets better every day. At least 2-3 times a week I go to the physiotherapy - there I am challenged in a completely different way and I am shown exercises that I can do at home. I do that at least once a day. There's still a lot of work to do, but I'm fighting my way back.

I can't really think about work yet, I'm often so knocked out from the exercises that I have to lie down. The concentration isn't the best either... everything drags on a bit. It took me at least a week to write this text. But this also gets better every day.

Basically, it's amazing how quickly I made it out of the intensive care unit and how quickly I'm back on my feet. The doctors didn't expect that and made it clear to me that it wasn't "normal".

So, in a couple of months all should be back to normal - I hope! Also thanks to the great support I have from my colleagues at work and all my family and friends! Thank you guys!

category: Computer --> programming --> MongoDB --> morphium

Morphium V4.2.13

2021-11-15 - Tags: morphium java mongodb

originally posted on: https://caluga.de

Morphium V4.2.13

We have just released a new version, which again contains some improvements and fixes:

Feature: EarlyProcessed - this allows incoming messages to be marked as "processed" before the listener is called. Standard behavior is only to be marked after a successful call. Useful for longer running processes
Feature: messageListener StatusInfo. If you send a message called `morphium.status_info ', all connected messaging systems respond with status information. Useful for debugging and monitoring. The feature can be deactivated and the name can be customized.
Fix: handling of entities with maps without generic definition - Fix: maps without generics, which could contain a list lead to a null pointer
Improvement: store() slowly becomes save() in order to better match the MongoDB commands
improvement: messaging shouldn't handle messages that don't have a listener either.
Adjustment of some tests
minor improvements

Installation

Morphium V4.2.13 is available via Maven Central and on https://github.com/sboesebeck/morphium

Morphium works with all Mongodb-java-drivers starting with V4.1.0. So it can easily be included into projects, that already have mongodb in use.

Maven

Include this snipplet in the pom.xml:

Morphium does not introduce new dependencies, you might need to define them yourself:

    <properties>
       <mongodbDriver.version>[4.1.0,)</mongodbDriver.version>
    </properties>

    <dependency>
            <groupId>de.caluga</groupId>
            <artifactId>morphium</artifactId>
            <version>4.2.13</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.mongodb</groupId>
            <artifactId>bson</artifactId>
            <version>${mongodbDriver.version}</version>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.mongodb</groupId>
            <artifactId>mongodb-driver-sync</artifactId>
            <version>${mongodbDriver.version}</version>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.mongodb</groupId>
            <artifactId>mongodb-driver-core</artifactId>
            <version>${mongodbDriver.version}</version>
        </dependency>

category: Computer --> Test of Tools

Passwordmanager: PASS

2021-08-24 - Tags: shell

PASS - the standard Unix passwordstore

I already reported on PASS when I looked at the password manager.

What I forgot is that pass is super expandable. Since everything is a bit shell-related, I will leave the explanations out here, but you can easily install extensions.

Useful extensions

The functionality of pass can be greatly expanded with the extensions. You can find a useful list of extensions here. and now one from me

pass-index

Unfortunately, searching through the entries in pass with pass grep was quite slow. This was mainly due to the fact that he had to decrypt every single entry, requesting the GPG agent every time, etc.

I created an index file with the extension, which contains all searchable fields. You only have to search through one entry, it runs about 100 times faster, i.e. the pass grep version.

pass-file

a very useful extension. This is how you get the missing "Attchment" functionality. The file is base64-encoded, stored encrypted and can thus also be read again. practically. There are two versions, I use the linked one

pass-pwned

This allows you to check whether your password is still secure or whether it has already been found somewhere on the Internet. No password is sent around the world, only the password's checksum. That's bad enough, but if you suspect it makes perfect sense.

Alfred Integration

There are still a few Alfred integrations, but they didn't go far enough for me. Most of the time you could just read the passwords, save them to the clipboard and that was it.

I addressed the problem and built a more sophisticated version that can also search (with pass-index)

The integration supports some keywords:

pass TEXT: a search is made for text, and matching directories as well as entries are displayed

pfind PATTERN: searches the passwordstore

psync: sync with git repository
pupdate ': update the index - if pass index` is installed
pgen path: generate a new random password

so you can use Alfred as a quasi GUI for pass. At least for the most important functions.

It is still planned:

some kind of integration into the browser
store user-defined fields.

category: Computer --> Test of Tools

Passwordmanager

2021-08-21 - Tags: tools osx

1Password

I've been using 1Password for a long time and I've always been happy with it. However, there are now some reasons that speak in favor of switching to something else (purely subjective, everyone can evaluate things differently):

The costs: you switch from the normal "I buy a software" model to the "I rent a software" model. Which is understandable, but the prices are increasing dramatically. the OSX version
There is no lifetime license. That means I have to take out a subscription if I want to use 1Password V8!
The two points would still be bearable if they weren't for the quasi-online compulsion. Sure, there is no compulsion, I can choose not to use the features that I paid for. : smirk: And to save my passwords, no matter where, online, together with thousands or millions of others? What makes this particularly exciting for hackers. I renounce ...
And last but not least, new "features" have been added that somehow just get on your nerves. The 1Password extension for Safari now shows an input dialog for every form - and most of them in such a way that the field can no longer be operated. That used to be better.

But don't forget what's good about 1Password:

clearly the "prettiest" of the password managers
the operation is simple and the sync works flawlessly
good support in the browsers and also in iOS

Change to where?

So, it's time to look for a decent password manager. The following is important (to me):

Offline! He should put a file down for me somewhere that I can open even when the internet is not working. And ideally even without the software! This is practically impossible to find at all at the moment, as well as all password managers only work online.
Possibility to sync via e.g. iCloud, or DropBox or Mega - but encrypted please! If the password store is encrypted on the iCloud drive, that should be enough
Reasonably usable surface - although I also like to mean the shell (see below)
iOS client! And the sync should also work there.
and it should be possible to import the data from 1Password more or less completely. I have some data in here, not just passwords. That doesn't exactly make it easier.

Importing data from 1Password can work in more or less 2 ways:

export / import of the "1Password-Export-Format" named 1pif. This is recommended, as attachments are also included
export / import in CSV or tab-separated text format. Information can be lost in the process. In particular the attachments, but also with certain data types, the export becomes difficult.

The problem with the 2nd variant is that they strongly differentiate the fields between the different types:

a credit card has a PIN but not necessarily a password
A bank account has no password at all, but has an owner
A login requires a URL

The fields are therefore different and the import is therefore really difficult. The only reasonably useful solution is to export the categories individually with the fields that are important for this type and then assign them accordingly in the "recipient program".

candidates

With these prerequisites there aren't that many left, because I also exclude those who also have an offline mode. I can therefore assume that they will soon completely jump into the online bandwagon.

But a few are left after all:

KeePassXC

This is one of the programs from the KeePass family. They are all opensource and relatively powerful. However, also relatively ugly. Also, unfortunately, they can't do a lot.

The security features leave little to be desired, for example you can define a key file, specify the encryption algorithm, the bit width and and and ... this is really exemplary, albeit complex.

Most KeePass clients do not offer any import for 1Password files, with KeePassXC there is an import of" 1Password Vaults ", but I have no idea what I have to select for it to import something. I didn't get it going.

But there are also quite a few clients for iOS and extensions for most browsers.

The import of CSV files works and you come up against other limits: I didn't manage to import the different files that I exported into _ the same_ database. A new DB is created each time it is imported. I guess I'll do something there, but the bigger problem is that a lot of things can't be imported properly because everything is seen as a password.

You can theoretically create your own fields, but this is only possible for each individual entry and not e.g. for a group and not during the import. There you feel f...ed

Conclusion

Pro: security features, client diversity, open source Con: Looks from super gruesome to ugly, import of non-password data not really possible, import of 1 password not easily possible

Therefore, after a few days of trying around, I refrained from using KeePass. Especially because I just couldn't get the data in.

Enpass

I probably bought Enpass ages ago - and luckily, because as a former "Pro" user I can now enjoy Enpass without having to take out a subscription.

Basically, however, this is to be rated rather negatively, here too they switched back to the subscription model and just didn't want to scare away their existing customer base. Who knows whether it will stay that way and whether it won't change at some point. We also know similar statements from 1Passwort and a few years later it was no longer worth anything.

The costs with Enpass are significantly cheaper than with 1Password (about half) and there is (still) a lifetime license! Since Enpass works completely offline, it is definitely worth considering. I have also not read anything that they want to offer any online service that can only be used as a subscription. So in this respect it is still a good alternative, even if you are not a pro user.

As far as security is concerned, we are also at the forefront here, as a key file can also be used here, which increases security even more (for example, it could be stored on a secured USB storage device or something).

There is also synchronization. This does not work via its own server but via iCloud, Dropbox and similar services.

You can also create several "vaults", e.g. to separate work from private life.

And there we are already at a catch: for the synchronization via iCloud of 2 safes you need 2 iCloud accounts. This is a bit strange, but it probably has a technical background. This is not really important to me, I never used this functionality with 1Password either, but I can imagine that it is a no-go for some.

The import of the data from 1Passwort was ... complicated to say the least:

the export file in 1PIF format was not recognized by enpass. Something has changed, because these 1pif files are not files but directories (similar to the photo media library or something).
you have to copy the data out of the 1pif directory (right click -> show package contents), enpass then name the directory in which these files are located.
but that didn't work for me for everything ("found nothing to import"). I had to export all categories separately again, then it worked.

Now I have all the data from 1Password in Enpass, including the attachments and the bank accounts or notes!

Conclusion

Pro: Cheaper than 1Password, lifetime license, import of 1Password works including the non-password data types, iOS clients, good browser support, iCoud Sync Con: the look could be better, sometimes quite slow, subscription model - who knows how long the lifetime licenses will still work, strange iCloud connection to the account, sometimes extremely slow (search takes longer than 5secs)

Enpass is really worth considering and I'll be looking at the password manager for a while. But right now it's one of my favorites.

Secrets

Also a nice app, straight from the app store and also offers an iOS counterpart. The prices are one-time prices, not a subscription model. Secrets also looks quite appealing, is prettier than Enpass.

Secrets also works really fast, much faster than Enpass.

The sync with iOS went smoothly.

The import of the 1password data went smoothly, there is also a browser plug-in, the sync works via the iCloud. All in all, a really solid password manager.

However, there was little that I could find out about how secrets worked on the website. It appears to work completely offline and synchronize via the iCloud if necessary. How and which encryption is used is also not mentioned. The site has little information in general.

Conclusion

Pro: nice GUI, fast, easy to use, one time payment Con: a few entry types are missing, the searches are somewhat limited, the browser plug-in can fill out logins, but not save them

It's super easy to use, it's free in the app store and can be made "pro" with a one-off payment. The iOS app costs the same.

pass - Unix passwordstore

One is a "weird" among the password managers, but a really interesting one. pass is actually nothing more than a shell script. But one thing that has it all. But I have to go back a little.

GPG

the "Gnu Privacy Guard" was created a few years ago as an open source counterpart to "PGP" (Pretty good privacy) and is particularly popular when sending emails.

GPG or PGP rely on the so-called "public key" procedure. You don't have one, but 2 keys. One of the keys (public key) can be used to encrypt and the counterpart to decrypt. So everyone can get the one key (hence the name public key) and encrypt data / texts that can only be decrypted with the associated private key.

Pass now makes use of this functionality: it uses the commandline version of gpg to securely encrypt the passwords.

The passwords are encrypted with the public key, similar to an email to me. I am the only one who has the associated private key and only I can decrypt these password files.

The encryption methods on which GPG is based are still considered extremely secure even after years and are therefore superior to the other, symmetrical encryption methods (such as AES256) in this case.

So if you want to use GPG for the safe filing of important information, you can do it "like this" even without aids. The command line tool simply takes any text and encrypts it with the public key - this is also what the mailers that support GPG do.

These tools now use pass to store passwords securely. And that works amazingly well. But not only that. Because Pass "only" deals with encrypted text files, you can save any content. The only rule: the first line is the password, then you can enter fields in the format Name: Value. Multi-line values also go with:

Name: Line 1>
  Line 2>
  Line 3
OtherName: Value2

It is important to stick to this syntax, then you can also use the Pass-App for Ios. There are also implementations for Android.

For synchronization, pass uses thegit actually intended for developers. There are umpteen public servers, or you can create your own somewhere. If it is also secured via SSH or other mechanisms, it can simply be backed up. And is completely transparent. The nice thing about it is that you automatically get a history of the passwords and - if you are familiar with git - you can restore an old version at any time. It can also be used to share the password store with others. More complicated setups are also possible with several sub-Git repositories, e.g. to separate common passwords in the company from private ones, etc.

That’s what I like best about pass: it stores sensitive data and so it is only of course an advantage if it is based on standards that are known to be secure. And I have more freedom, somewhere else ...

In theory, with this approach, I can put everything down securely. And if I want, I put my private key on a USB drive and voila - nobody can turn it unless the USB drive is connected.

The operation in the command line is of course a bit cumbersome (but also practical if you need a password in the shell). But there are some tools that will help you enter the passwords. I myself wrote a Workflow for Alfred that helps you to pass and find the passwords you need.

Importing into 1Password was also something like that ... actually not possible. I also helped myself and wrote a small script that imports a 1pif file exported by 1password.

Conclusion

Pro: OpenSource, uses known standards, very powerful, iOS support, very flexible, very secure Cons: complex setup, not really easy to use, hardly any iOS support, no real GUI, sync infrastructure has to be set up first, without experience in the shell it is not advisable

You can say that pass is clearly not for beginners. But the technologies and the possibilities speak for themselves. I will also use pass for a while.

category: Computer --> programming --> MongoDB --> morphium

Morphium V4.2.12 released

2021-08-13 - Tags: java morphium mongodb

originally posted on: https://caluga.de

The latest Version of morphium (V4.2.12) was released a couple of days ago. As usual, the changes contain Bugfixes and improvements.

Tests were changed so that they run more smoothly in total, less side effects
Tests were simplified
BugFix: CamelCase Conversion did not work properly in some cases
BugFix: fieldNames were not used properly in some cases
added some Convenience methods
BugFix: updateUsingFields properly uses settings from annotation @Property and camelCasing
BugFix: Cursors sometimes were not closed properly at the end of an iteration
BugFix: handling of capped collection
Timeout adjustements for Mongodb5.0
BugFix: some fixes for typeID handling fix with serializing of entities in maps

the latest version of Morphium is available on github and maven central.

category: Computer --> programming --> MongoDB --> morphium

Morphium V4.2.8 released

2021-06-15 - Tags: morphium java mongodb

originally posted on: https://caluga.de

Morphium V4.2.8 was released including the following features:

FEATURE:basic support for Aggregation with the InMemoryDriver using Expr
FEATURE: Support for Expr in Qureries
FIX: imrpvoved Support for sharding
FIX: increased InMemoryDriver's thread safety
FIX: improved tests, reduced side effects
FIX: CachSynchronizer could cause a message storm in certain circumstances
FIX: set(Entity e, String Field, Object value, boolean upsert, Callback) does not need a multple parameter, does not make sense
IMPROVEMENT: increased number of tests to >900
IMPROVEMENT: refactoring of auto variable handling in MorphiumWriterImpl
IMPROVMENT: better error handling for index creation during startup
IMRPOVEMENT: code improvements for increased readablility, stability and/or performance. Added a couple of convenience Methods

morphium V4.2.8 is available on maven central, or on github.

category: global --> keyboards

Keyboardio Model 01

2020-09-26 - Tags: Keyboardio Model 01 Tastatur Keyboard

Well, I did it again. After I had my Kinesis Freestyle Edge Gaming for a while and wrote about it here, I went on and got another "keyboard endgame"

The Keyboardio Model 01! It has all I wanted to have in a keyboard:

split, ergonomic layout
ortholinear keys
full RGB support for all keys
a thumb cluster
fast processor for cool LED effects (this was very much a problem with the kinesis...)

This started as a Kickstarter project, but by the time I found out about the keyboard, It was already sold out. Even worse, the Model 01 was not built anymore, as they want to release a new version of this. With Corona I think this will still take some more time now unfortunately.

So I got two used Model01 for cheap (one for home, one for office) a couple of months ago - before Corona forced us to do homeoffice all the time.

This is, what it looks like (Image is from the keyboardio website):

Yes, It has a unusual look but feels AWESOME!

little review

so, lets me write some words about the keyboardio Model 01 that I used for about 4 months now. Spoiler: its really great!

The look and feel

There were a couple of things, the Ergodox-EZ could have done better, for example the connection cable between the two halfs. The solution here is an RJ45 cable, which you can very easily swap out with whatever Ethernet-Cable you might have - works like a charm.

The wooden enclosure gives it an awesome look and feels... natural for lack of a better word. Really nice.

The keys are sculptured to make it easier to type on the corresponding position. This is a bit strange at first, but makes total sense, when you think about it. Having the keys in ortholinear position is one thing, but still the fingers are different, why are the keys on all other keyboards all the same?

Here every key is sculptured for best usablility on it's position. At first it feels a bit strange, but after 5minutes going back feels weird.

the obvious disadvantage is, that you cannot use standard keycap replacement, you have to get them from Keyboard.io directly. I have 2 different sets: one translucent white set - looks really cool with LED effects. And a set of symbolic keycaps, that gives the keyboard a great matrix like look, especially, if you switch your LEDs to green

the RGB Lightning

This is also really cool, all keys are lit.The programming is free to do whatever you want. There are Plugins with cool LED-Effects. But the standard, that supports the Software Chrysalis for editing your layout and LED configuration usually is enough.

The most important thing, the KEYS

I was a bit sceptical at first, Keyboardio uses Matias switches. I was used to cherry switches and loved those.

I had a "loud clicky" Model 01 and one with "silent clicks". I already read about the loud ones having issues. And that was true. The keys sometimes felt stuck and hence had a total different actuation force than others. This would kill my typing. In addition to that they were really extremely loud - I'd say a lot louder than the Cherry MX blue ones I have in my Ergodox-EZ.

But the silent clicks are awesome! Feel like Cherry MX Browns but really silent, even more silent than Cherry Keyswitches with dampening O-rings. Matias - those are awesome!

So I switched the keys from my loud model01 to those "Matias Silent Click"... and it works great! (the Model01 does not support hot-swapping of keyswitches, but you can manually replace the mechanical parts, if you want to. Its a bit of a stretch, but works).

the Software

This is also something really nice, the software is called Kaleidoscope and is opensource. But As I understand it, you can also install QMK to the Keyboardio Model01 if you want to.

But the concept of that Arduino based approach is appealing. With having a GUI to configure your board and the possibility to add / compile plugins for your specific needs is just awesome.

Building the software is very similar to QMK, the code actually also looks alike. But it is WAY better than the software support of the Kinesis KEyboard. They should really open up there, its a shame...

But having an arduino based system also gives opportunities: The keyboard can talk back to the system, there is a serial IO that you can use to, for example, switch on / off certain leds. And if you use tools like Keyboard-Maestro or some other automation on the mac, you can actually have the keyboard react on the currently open app or so. Really Awesome...

the Elefant in the room - Palm keys

yes, there are two keys, that are operated with your palm not with fingers. This is a brilliant idea for a programmable keyboard! You can easily switch layers with that or use at as shift or whatever...

This makes it almost natural to use layers in your layout, and in my case it switches on a function layer where I have my T-Shaped cursor key block and Media controls.

This is really cool to use!

Is it the "endgame"

Keyboard enthusiasts talk about and "endgame" in keyboards, the Ultimate Keyboard that exactly fits their specific needs 100% eliminating the urge to get a new keyboard.

Well, I guess, this is impossible. There will be cool new gimmics you'd like or so. But I really think, this one is not too far away for me.

category: Computer --> programming --> MongoDB --> morphium

Morphium V4.2.0 released

2020-09-14 - Tags: java mongodb morphium

originally posted on: https://caluga.de

We just released Morphium V4.2.0 including a lot of fixes and features:

Feature: new MongoDB Driver 4.1 is used and so we do support mongodb 4.4 now
Feature: direct support of all aggregation stages
Feature: Expr-Language
Feature: Collation support
Feature: improved Geospacial searches
Feature: iterable aggregation
Feature: sending of exclusive messages to a list of recipients
Fix: centralize id creation
Fix: improved handling of fields, which have concrete list or map implementation as type (like HashMap or ArrayList)
Fix: InMemoryDriver throws an Exception, if a feature is not possible inMem
Fix: added lots of tests
Fix: Sequences more stable now
Fix: InMemoryDriver handling of $in on lists

in addition to that, tha documentation was improved a lot. It is available as .html and markdown in the project it self (on github) or here.

category: global --> drones

Giving up Drones and FPV

2020-08-31 - Tags: drohne drone

I guess you already realized, that there were almost no new posts about FPV or Drones anymore here on this blog.

That was a fun hobby, for a while. After almost a year of not flying at all I think it's time to admit, that I am not really in to this hobby anymore...I quit my insurance last week. So I cannot fly anymore even if I wanted to...

First and foremost is the lack of time. I just cannot get out a couple of hours to go flying just that easily every week or so. I'd have to have my lipos charged all the time, which is not really wise to do. So... I did not fly quite some time now.

it was fun, to build something at home, go outside and try if it works as hoped. In my case, I was often going to fly alone. But FPV alone is not possible anymore according to the new regulations. You'll need to have a spotter in all cases - even when flying a toy of 30g.

The upcoming regulations are nuts! It kills the fun of the hobby, if you think you are in trouble because of something you missed about those regulations. This is real nonsense if you built your drones yourself. All Pilots will have a lot of problems with that. This is a pollitical topic and I do not want to get into details here - this will not be a political post. But every year the rules and regulations for drones and pilots got more strict, not for safety, because having a License on your drone does not increase safety for example. Those regulations are in my opinion installed by people not knowing the topic and filled with fear from the unknown. And the "terror" aspect of drones is just deception: I cannot think of a terrorist who will add a name plate to his bomb filled drone!

The people and bystanders are just unfamiliar with that topic. So the repeat, what they read and hear in the news. Drones are dangerous, they interfere with planes etc. And thus I get weird looks, sometimes weird speeches. I do not want to be an ambassador of that hobby anymore, if the hobby is treated like that.

I just need to clearify that rules for drones are a good thing! If the rules regulate the right problems. Like not flying over people is increasing security - cool! Flying near an Airport is forbidden, also increases security. Not flying near traffic or accidents, also fine. Why is a spotter needed in all cases when flying FPV? In my case it actually decreases Security, as I am a much better pilot with the glasses, than in Line of Sight. Why is it not allowed to fly higher than 30m when doing FPV? How the heck do you check that?

So, this is why I quit!

PS: Thanks a lot as long as it lasted. I do not know, what I will then post about here in future, but I hope it will be interesting for you as well.

category: global --> keyboards

keyboard nerd

2020-04-18 - Tags: mechanical ergonomic

Am I a keyboard nerd?

Obviously I am in addition to building drones or multicopters, general computer / Apple in particular and the service desert in Germany also very much in to the topic (mechanical) keyboards. And apparently this is a topic that also concerns others, which is why I got some feedback on my post about Kinesis Freestyle Edge RGB vs Ergodox-EZ.

So here are a few thoughts on the subject ...

Keyboards ... why is that an issue

In IT business we work on the computer far more than 40 hours a week. And the keyboard is the most important input device for these devices today. I hardly think that this will change in the foreseeable future, because voice input is far too inefficient for e.g. programming.

I've been working with computers and keyboards for almost my entire life. And I've now noticed that the choice of keyboard is important. Apart from the fact that you can get so-called RSI (pain from repetitive movements) if you work non-ergonomically, efficiency is important. If I type something 100000x per day (keystrokes) and get that faster by 0.05sec per keystroke, that'll save an entire hour!

If you check your typing speed on sites like typeracer, 10FastFingers or the Typing Game z-Type its If you test speed, you quickly realize how important the right keyboard is. To make matters worse, I have had problems with my elbows and wrists since my motorcycle accident a few years ago. Typing on a normal keyboard quickly leads to pain because I have to "bend" your wrist.

Egonomic keyboards

This is a wide field, because unfortunately many think a curved keyboard is ergonomic. But that's far from enough.

For me, a good ergonomic keyboard must have the following properties:

It must be possible to get to the keys comfortably with both arms, straight from the shoulders. At least with my stature, this is actually only possible if I can separate the halves of the keyboard and make at least 10 cm space in between
this way in between I can put the trackpad so I have much less "way" to reach the mouse.
The keyboard halves must be tiltable so that the inner side is higher. This minimizes the twisting of the hands. Some even set the keyboards to 90˚ so that you can type with your thumb "upwards" .
Ideally, I can adjust the inclination of the keyboard in the other direction, i.e. front / back. It would be best if I could raise the back end a bit.
The keyboard should be "ortholinear". This staggered layout of the keys on today's keyboards still comes from the old typewriters. At that time there were levers on every key and for mechanical reasons they couldn't be "on top of each other". So there were mechanical optimizations, that drove the design. In general, the QWERTZ layout is designed precisely for this - not for ergonomic typing.

So, to sum it up. It is important that you can put your arms down as naturally as possible and start typing. Without kinking your wrists or having to bring your elbows too close to your body.

Mechanical vs. "Spongy"

Then there is a difference in the keyboards between mechanical keys and non-mechanical. Most keyboards available today use so-called rubber domes. These are small rubber domes that are pressed down while typing and then make contact. Or they use a membrane System (that actually works similar to rubber domes). These things naturally feel spongy, it's hard to say when the contact is really made. But they are quiet

Apple and some other manufacturers have the "scissor mechanism" on their keyboards. It feels a little better, but it hardly gives you any "travel" and typing feels a bit like typing on the iPhone screen. Mechanical keyboards have a mechanical switch with spring for each key.

There are many ways to influence the typing experience. The hardness of the spring, how is the switch closed (loud, quiet, tactile, linear ...) And that's where I have to mention the keyboard that keyboard nerds almost think is sacred: IBM Model M. It was the first keyboard with an audible and noticeable "click" when you typed.

This keyboard has spoiled me after using the IBM Keyboard once I only wanted to have such keyboards. The click was only somewhat suitable for work in the office, it was loud. But at the time, those keyboards were not really easy to find, actually.

There are a lot of manufacturers of such keyboard switches nowadays. First and foremost the company Cherry, which has probably made it a little famous. The switches are supplied in different "colors", each color has other typing characteristics and so by color you can exactly tell what the switch should feel like.

cherry mx blue: noticeable, hard and loud bump when typing. Very similar to the IBM Model M
cherry mx brown: a little more noticeable bump when activated, a bit quieter and therefore more suitable for the office
cherry mx red: linear switch, no bump, relatively quiet All other manufacturers actually refer to this.

Manufacturer, wich also play some role in the market are Kalith and Matias

There are many more switches available, lots of other "colors" and such. But those are usually only variations of blue, brown and red.

Examples of keyboards

Oh boy ... I've tested a lot of keyboards in my career, I'm sure I won't be able to list all of them here. I will highlight the special keyboards:

The strangest keyboard ever: Fingerworks Touchstream LP. Actually no keyboard, because it has no keys. The whole keyboard is a touch surface, and with two fingers you could move your mouse! That was the first way ever to make gestures and move the mouse cursor with fingers. The company was then bought by Apple and the technology was probably a basis for the modern IPhones
Siemens Ergonomic Keyboard ... that was kind of mechanical, but more like Cherry MX Linear. Also rattled extremely. It felt quite good, was extremely expensive for that time (that was in the late 90s)
In between I had a lot of "normal" rubber dome keyboards. But probably changed them on a weekly basis None of these were ergonomic keyboards. I remember I owned some forerunner of the Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard, though.
Razer Blackwidow Chroma - my first RGB keyboard. However, it was anything but ergonomic. Apart from the fact that the thing on the Mac hardly works at all, it was not my brightes idea to go for a non-ergonomic keyboard in regards to my condition with wrists and ellbows - here I learned things the painful way.
My favorite and the keyboard that I have used the longest is the Ergodox-EZ. I have already talked about it here.
currently in use: Kinesis Freestyle Edge RGB. I also wrote a review here

The last keyboards were all mechanical ones, with Cherry MX Brown or Blue switches. These are the keyswitches I prefer to type on. And I'm pretty consistent with that.

but as you can see, I was not 100% satisfied with the keyboards - thats why I switched so often. Most of them did not break (apart from the very latest from the Ergodox EZ), but were simply exchanged because it was "time" ... or because I was fed up or there was simply a better / cooler keyboard.

In the early days of computing, it was actually just a necessary evil to get a keyboard ... you just took a keyboard for a few marks, it doesn't matter anyway, they're all the same anyway ... Oh boy...

A little bit of history

This is an intersting topic. We have achieved so many things in technology and yet we have hardly developed the keyboards in the past 120 years. Sure, there are no longer any levers that practically stamp ink on paper, the mechanical effort has become significantly lower. But the design criteria have actually remained the same. The well-known keyboard layout is still based on the layout for the first typewriters and was optimized in such a way that the mallets do not cross easily when typing and thus cause jamming. And, even though we no longer have levers or mallets, we still type on keyboards that look pretty much the same. Further details are also available [here] (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tastaturbellassung#Geschichte).

Therefore, the keys are not arranged "straight", but rather offset or staggerred. Because, back then there was no other way, there was one Lever underneath each key that went in the direction of the paper. Therefore it was not possible for mechanical reasons, e.g. to place the 'e' just above the 'd'.

Why are we still doing this today ?! well ... on the one hand there are a few standards that have been agreed upon and I am sure that there are laws somewhere that refer to them. But ergonomically that doesn't make sense ... Not only the arrangement of the buttons, but also the "distribution" of the letters, as already indicated above, is designed to get as little "jamming" as possible. So ergonomics has never been a priority.

Alternative keyboard layouts

If you take a closer look at the topic of ergonomics when typing, you will eventually find that QWERTZ is not the best choice regarding ergonomic typing. There have been some alternative keyboard layouts for a long time, such as DVORAK and alike. But my favorite is actually ADNW and there the variant XOY. I also find the optimization for straight (= ortho-linear) keyboards with thumbshift interesting - if I put shift on the thumb cluster of the ergodox, this layout would have been an idea.

Despite practicing the new layout from time to time, I have not yet managed to switch 100% to it. Well ... As soon as I type with the new layout, my typing speed drops from approx. 400 keystrokes / minute to less than 100 ... that feels sooo slow ... I'm going to do something about that, and I will write about it if I can do that in the new layout.

The right keyboard

Before ergodox-ez came onto the market with the keyboard via Kickstarter, the keyboard nerds had to build their own keyboards. When my Ergodox said goodbye, I wanted to familiarize myself with the topic. I can solder, tools are there ... But etch circuit boards? Milling the housing ... Nah ... that was too much work for me.

But this DIY community is the basis of the open hardware layout for the Ergodox keyboards. I can only hope that there are more companies that jump on this train and hopefully bring many innovations in the field to market.

future?

Something is happening in the area of keyboards. The Ergodox keyboard was certainly one of the first good ergonomic, split keyboards. Ergodox-EZ then brought it to the mass market. There will be many other keyboards in the area.

However, the current trend is to make the keyboards as small as possible. Ergodox-EZ now also has one "mini" keyboard. It is not ergonomic. and with only 40 or so buttons, you have to use everything multiple times ... no idea why people think it is so great ... I hope the trend goes in the other direction again. With a mini-keyboard like this I couln't work 8 hours a day. And I will not be the only one.

Sure, the 105-key standard keyboard certainly has had its day, but why build a 40-key keyboard, where every key is assigned twice ...

Well ... How many keys are the "sweet spot", the best mix between size and ergonomics, because the smaller a keyboard is, the fewer distances the fingers / hands have to travel to reach the keys. But if you double-assign each key or just get the umlauts in German with a kind of shift key, then it slows down typing a lot. I think the sweet spot is certainly somewhere in the 60-70 key range, that could be a good compromise.

Not like with the Ergodox keyboard. Because there are actually enough keys, you cannot reach them easily, especially the lowest row of keys. There are a good 14 keys to drop.

My optimal keyboard

I have in my layout for the Ergodox-EZ e.g. the bottom row occupied with all sorts of double modifier assignments. Something like CTRL-Shift or CTRL-ALT ... I hardly used it because the keys are almost directly under the palm of my hand. I should change that, it's actually pretty nonsensical.

That is now better with the Kinesis, because there is no "hidden keys", there are only CTRL, ALT and CMD and Space ... standard. However, it is better to be a little exaggerated. The buttons are just not superfluous. : smirk:

The problems with kinesis are now of a different nature. Your fingers cover further distances before you hit the right key. There is a key for everything and it is a lot closer to the normal standard keyboard, but unfortunately the keys are staggered here again and not ortholinear. I think it's a shame that there is no thumb cluster at all. It was good that I could map backspace and space for my two thumbs, but one more key would have been cool.

No matter how you do it, apparently there is no optmial keyboard, unless you build it yourself. But, what would be the optimal keyboard ...

mechanical switches
split, so that I can pull the halves apart enough
ortholinear
at least about 60 buttons, which should all be easily accessible (or most of them)
RGB lighting of the buttons, because it is cool and I think the feedback is useful
and: programmable with several layers! This is the only way I can really switch between layouts, from ADNW-XOY to QERTZ, then another one Game Mode etc. Especially double assignments should be possible, they are often annoying, but sometimes also very practical.
Tenting must be possible
an easily accessible, meaningful cluster of thumbs
a pleasant palm rest.

So, where could I get such a keyboard? The Ergodox Infinity keyboard mit fit best. but it is currently no longer available and I would have to build it myself. But even the individual parts do not exist, and I would even have to etch the circuit board myself ... that is too much effort for me. And I've never seen a tenting kit for that.

There are a few others, but they all go the way to drastically reduce the number of keys.

When I rate my keyboards according to the above criteria, it looks like this:

normal Apple keyboard: I have used it for a long time and also applies to other normal keyboards ... does not meet any of the above points. Programmability only about the operating system, there is no tenting, not shared etc. 0/10
razer blackwidow chroma: the keyboard is programmable and has RGB LEDs, but that's about it. The software is crap on the Mac, although it has a great feature, the automatic switching between profiles, depending on the open program. That's what I call practical. There's still an extra point for that, but I still can't get over 6/10 points.
ErgodoxEZ: can do almost everything, RGB backlighting and the associated info channel is missing (unfortunately also in the current models), the thumb cluster is only of limited use. For this, the software is super customizable. tenting is also possible, the palm rest could be more pleasant (just a lump of hard silicone). So the keyboard gets 8/10 in my scale
Kinesis Freestyle Edge: can do a lot, especially there are more keys. However, the thumb cluster is missing, programming is a bit too easy, features are missing. But typing is great. So I would also set it to 8/10, but because typing feels a bit better, there is 8.5 / 10: smirk: You can see that the Kinesis Freestyle keyboard is not ideal either.

Somehow I will have to keep looking and / or build something for myself. And to answer the initial question: I think I'm a keyboard nerd!

category: global --> keyboards

Ergodox EZ vs Kinesis Freestyle Edge RGB Gaming

2020-03-21 - Tags: Ergodox Tastatur

I'm a big fan of the Ergodox EZ keyboard and have already written a hymn of praise here. I type a lot, in my free time (e.g. here) or at work. Since I actually spend 75% of my time on / in front of a keyboard, this is an important topic for me. The Ergodox-EZ was the first keyboard that I really used for years and it showed me what is really important when it comes to keyboard for my daily use.

Ergodox Review

I've been using the Ergodox-EZ (s) for more than 5 years now and I really can't complain so far. Because the keyboard is split, you can adjust it to your needs for your personal work - that's great and also indispensable for me. Because this also significantly reduces the strain on the wrists and shoulders. This is important for me, as the use of "normal" Keyoards caused paint (the motorcycle accident a few years ago left its mark).

The build quality is really good for a Kickstarter project. I got Cherry's keyswitches and they are really beyond any doubt, although the "color" must of course correspond to personal taste. I my opinion the "Cherry MX Brown" offer a good compromise, so that you also can use it in the office without getting everyone upset due to the noise.

However, there are a few minor "problems" (complaining about first world problems here ) that annoyed me:

The small number of buttons - I always miss one or the other. I would particularly like to have cursor keys in "inversed T" shape and that is unfortunately not possible here I now notice that I use the cursor keys a lot more on the Kinesis Freestyle than on the Ergodox where I always switched to mouse / trackpad when I wanted to place the cursor. It's somehow easier now.
Because you don't have "enough" keys for the entire German layout, you often have to assign keys twice. In my layout, CTRL and y are on the same key, if you type briefly, if a y is typed, if you hold the key, CTRL is pressed. That doesn't sound bad at first, if you then need CTRL, you have to wait a bit. Especially when working in the shell, you often need CTRL-A or CTRL-E - and you have to wait a few hundred milliseconds before you can press the 2nd key so that this is recognized correctly. When typing those keystrokes in the shell, this often leads to errors and it somehow feels "slowed down".
You have to get used to it if you use a "normal" keyboard again - which leads to strange mistakes there
The "Thumb Cluster" (the buttons that can be reached with the thumb) is ineffective - well, most of them. There are 6 buttons in total, but you can actually only reach 2 of them comfortably with your thumb. The others are strictly "useless" and are not used.
I think its strange that the "Wrist Rests" are separate, they slip again and again and you fiddle with things all the time. It would be better if they were attached to the keyboard
The tenting of the keyboard is good, stable metal, it is well made. But why the hell is it only 3 feet? So I can't really tilt the keyboard very far (maybe about 7 °) without a corner hanging in the air and then everything starts to shake when I type. It feels really uncomfortable. Again: good start, unfortunately not thought through to the end.
If you play a game from time to time, especially with first-person shooters or alike, the layout of the Ergodox is a bit of a hindrance. The defaults of most games cannot be used comfortably or things just do not work (like the double assignment for the y/ctrl key). That is why a separate layer is necessary so that you can adapt it to some extent. However, this may lead to the fact that you can no longer type normally ... a vicious cycle ...: smirk:
by having up to 32 such layers, you get confused about which switch is which

I would have liked a little more feedback for the last point, e.g. through LEDs, preferably RGB LEDs under each key...

Ergodox-EZ recently built something like this with the RGB LEDs, but only roughly. With the Ergodox Glow you can only "illuminate" the "normal" letter keys in the US layout. Unfortunately, for a German layout, those that are not backlit are also assigned normal buttons, e.g. the ä and the ß. I find that - frankly - stupid. I also don't understand why this is done so half-baked. The Ergodox Infinity keyboard sports LEDs on all keys. Unfortunately, it was only available as DYI-kit and the individual parts for it are currently no longer in stock anywhere.

I really think the Ergodox-EZ is a great keyboard, but this is a bit annoying.

In general, I think that they have held back a lot with innovation. There are now three variants of the Ergodox-EZ, the normal one, the Shine (has an LED strip on the back that you can program ... looks like ambient Light) and the Glow, which has RGB LEDs for part of the keys.

In addition to that they have now released the Planck keyboard: this is much smaller and anything but ergonomic. The thing is about the size of half an Ergodox EZ. This is practical to carry around, but what for? It sells somehow, but I don't think it's great.

The biggest "innovation" is that there is now a fantastillion number key switch types you can choose from. And that these switches can also be replaced on the board. Wow ... that's great when one's broken. But otherwise it doesn't knock my socks off. Sure, there are a couple of keyboard nerds who will go crazy if WSAD has other keyswitches than the rest of the keyboard ... it's not really important for normal typing.

Then a few words about software / firmware. This is not 100% "good" either. You can download the qmk firmware and create and compile a layout in C yourself. This gives you the most opportunities and flexibility. But in addition, that not anybody is capable of doing that, it's really annoying! Everytime you have to reinstall your computer you first have to install a GCC and cross-compiling environment, before you can change something on your keyboard. That is fun at first, but grows awful soon.

Ergodox-EZ has now released a web based configurator that you can use to configure your keyboard. However, there are a few features missing, which are very important imho. Such as:

Macros support - completely missing
The configuration is quite graphical, but sometimes cumbersome. In addition, support for German Mac layout is missing, which leads to strange effects
Some functions of the firmware are also completely missing, e.g. Leader Key (pressing the Leader Key followed by a certain combination of other keys within a certain time triggers a certain action) or Tapdance (pressing a key several times does something different than if I only press it once).

I used all of these functions in my layout, and so I am stuck to the QMK sources. That is not really a problem for me, but it is already cumbersome ... unfortunately.

Many of the functions are real gimmicks. For tap dancing e.g. I can hardly think of a practical use.

However, QMK solved the switching between the layers superbly! There are many different ways: as long as you hold a key, or toggling on / off, or if you type something, its normal, holding the key switches to another layer and and and ... This ton of options is really great. Some of those are also available in the Configurator, but - of course - the most complex ones are missing.

As I said, first world problems .

A special feature of QMK is that the layouts can overlap each other and are "stacked". For example: I have a default layer and in the next active layer only some changes are defined. The other buttons remain as they are defined in the default layout. So if I change the default Layer, all subsequent layers, that do not change that specific key, also get that change.

This is awesome when you can "stack" more than one layer. On the default layer, you add a layer for changing some keys for number keys, and then an additonal one to have an inversed-T cursor clustor somewhere else. But I do not have to have them both on at the same time.

Unfortunately, there is no "stagging" of the layers in the configurator either. But at least the fallback to default layer 0 remains.

Since one of my keyboards is starting to act crazy (after more then 5 years of heavy usage that is), I had really thought about ordering a new Ergodox EZ keyboard. But because some things are not 100% - at least for me - and because that thing is really expensive, I took a look around ... and after a lot of research I end up with the relatively new Kinesis Freestyle Edge RGB keyboard.

Kinesis Freestyle Edge RGB

I couldn't find a review on the internet that compared an Ergodox to Kinesis' Freestyle Edge. So, here is a review of Freestyle edge RGB by an Ergodox user.

Actually, RGB (i.e. LEDs under each key, which can shine in 16 million colors) is not absolutely necessary, but a nice gimmick, at least for the home office and to recognize the layers mentioned. with the Freestyle, however, it is quite helpful, because otherwise the different layers/profiles cannot be recognised at all.

Prices

Kinesis offers a similar keyboard without RGBs (Freestyle Pro), but that would have been more expensive, for whatever reason. Is 100% the same thing, but without LEDs. With the WristRest and the Tent Riser you end up at about 5 € more (depending on the shop and shipping costs of course, but you won't get it cheaper)

But the Ergodox Glow would currently be a even more expensive: you'd have to ship it from the USA (there is no reseller in Germany), so you have to pay import tariff. The base price with tent kit and palm rests is $ 354, - about 325 € + import tariff 62 € + processing fees, shipping etc then makes this about 425 €. There the Kinesis Freestyle Edge RGB with approx. 310€ including the tent kit almost sound like a bargain.

In contrast to the fantastic number of key switch types at Ergodox, you can only choose between 2 key types for the Freestyle Edge RGB: Cherry MX Brown and Cherry MX Red. The latter are gaming switches that have little tactile feedback but more speed. Oh yes, speed ... the freestyle has a response time of 1ms - I haven't been able to find out what that is with the Ergodox EZ, but as some keyboard manufactorers point that out quite loudly, it seems to be something good

If you compare the two keyboards, the Freestyle Edge RGB seems huge and looks as if you had sawed through the middle of a "normal" keyboard without a number pad. Only the keyboard has a few more keys - in particular the macro keys on the left side of the keyboard (11 in total, of which 2 are already programmed for with LED on and FN) are noticeable. You have full blown row of function keys F1 to F12 (which I really missed during programming) and cursor keys in "Inverse-T" alignment - and they had me: smirk:

The palm rests are very comfortable and well padded. In contrast to the dust magnets that come with the Ergodox. They really attracted the dust extremely. And feel really hard in direct comparison. The wrist rests on the Kinesis Freestyle Edge RGB are firmly attached to the keyboard. So they don't slip and you don't fiddle around all the time.

Advice: If you want to buy a freestyle edge or the freestyle pro, buy it in any case with the "Kinesis Edge Lift Kit" (unfortunately subject to a surcharge). Without that, the keyboard is only half as good!

The keyboard has a total of 98 keys, I think - have not found the number now, but at least significantly more than the 76 of the Ergodox EZ ...

build quality

The Kinesis board feels better than the Ergodox-EZ, it all feels valuable. This is particularly noticeable with the cables - with the Ergodox there are normal cables. They look like they were bought in the next craft shop around the corner. They look somehow cheap. Simply mini USB and a "stereo headphone cable" to connect the two halves. After all, the cables are removable and not soldered.

With the Freestyle Edge, the cables are braided and by default 50% of the connecting cable between the halves is stowed in one half of the keyboard. If necessary, you can prolong the cable up to 20".

Disadvantage: the cables are fixed and cannot be removed. Which is a bummer, it would be more flexible. But the quality is still much better than with the Ergodox EZ.

Keys and functions

There is a key cluster that sits on the top right half.

These keys are probably not mechanical - at least they don't feel that way, and you can't change the keycaps that easily. They are not lit either. There is a total of 4 buttons: Profile, Macro, Remap and a button that has a gear symbol printed on and is called the "SmartSet" button.

You can change the currently active profile by pressing the Profile button. There are 2 small white LEDs above the profile button, which indicate which profile is currently active. Anyone who knows the binary system knows that with 2 LEDs you can display a maximum of 4 different values - 9 profiles and only 4 I can tell from the LEDs. The RGB lighting is almost imperative! The Profile button actually makes no sense for this, especially since you can only switch between the first 4 profiles with the button anyway.

With the Macro button you can easily define macros on the fly. With Remap I can directly change the mapping of the keyboard. The most important thing is this SmartSet button.

Attention: those makros and remapping is stored on the keyboard and it won't reset. This is a bummer... so you more or less only have permanent macros.

The SmartSet button, used in conjunction with F7-F12, numbers or the Profile key, then offers the following functions.

SmartSet button + Profile button: Reloading the current profile. This is very useful if you tweak the configurations (either using the software or by editing the file directly) and profiles and want to see / try it out.
SmartSet + F7: Status output:

FS Edge RGB
KBD Firmware: 1.0.98.us )4MB=, 09-04-2019
LED Firmware: L1.0.4-R1.0.4-BL1.0
Profile: 1 Reactive
Remaps: 16
Macros: 18
Macro Sped: 5
Game Mode: Of
NKRO Mode: On
Status Sped: 4

SmartSet + F8: This enables the so-called V-Drive, which is the internal storage of the keyboard, which is simply mounted as a drive via USB. And that's where the layouts and settings are stored - simple text files that are just as easy to edit. If you want to work with the SmartSetApp, the Vdrive must be mounted.
SmartSet + F9: Set playback speed of macros
SmartSet + F10: Switch on/off N-key rollover.
SmartSet + F11: Game mode - deactivates the Windows key ... no matter what the key is is mapped to
SmartSet + F12: reset! Reset all.
SmartSet + key 1-9: activate the corresponding profile.

But we are already at a difference. There are no profiles at Ergodox-EZ. There are up to 32 layers. The Kinesis Freestyle Board has only 2 layers, but up to 9 profiles ... Well, actually there are always 9, they just do not differ. So that makes 18 layers in Ergodox terminology - just a bit more than half.

Well, who needs so many layers, you don't use that many anyway. And that's probably true. A total of 4-5 layers would be sufficient for most cases. But for switching between the profiles and layers on the kinesis, you are unfortunately pretty fixed. you can only switch between the profiles with a certain key ("profile") or by pressing the "SmartSet" key with one of the keys 1-9.

The button for changing from the normal to the "FN" layer (this is what the second layer is called) is freely assignable (thank god) and the switch can either be a toggle (so press it and you are in the FN layer until you press it again) or similar to Shift (i.e., FN Layer is active only as long as the key is pressed)

But you are not nearly as flexible in configuring the Kinesis as you are in Ergodox. But that doesn't have to be a problem, because you have enough keys available. And that is exactly the big advantage over the Ergodox - but also a small disadvantage, because it all takes up space on the desk. And you have to get your hand / fingers to those keys somehow. One tends to move more with the kinesis board.

The "problems" mentioned above with the Ergodox EZ do not exist this way with the Kinesis keyboard, but there are a few things that work differently:

There is locally running, dedicated software for the configuration (Windows and MacOS). The configuration itself is stored in "simple" text files on the keyboard. So you could also correct your mapping via vi. : smirk:
oh yes, you can change the mapping directly without the software using the keyboard. There’s a "remap" button that I mentioned above. This allows "on the fly" keys to be reassigned (e.g. very nice if English is accidentally set again instead of German to swap the y and z). But this changes the on board stored file, so this change is permanent.
You can also store predefined macros via the software
You can also define and play macros on the fly (those are added to your profile)
Unfortunately, you cannot put the switch to a profile on a specific key
there are no German keycaps from Kinesis directly ... This is not so tragic if you can touch type (like me), but it also irritates me. I got a replacement set from directly from USA (Maxkeyboard.com), without labels, but translucent to the LEDs. I left the special keys as they are now. Also the F keys ... because they are not assigned twice (as with the Ergodox), they can stay that way. The two space keys cannot be replaced at all, I have not found a shop offering keycaps with a width of 3.5U. So in the end it looks quite exciting ... and futuristic.

This is how "Translucent blank keycaps" look like on the kinesis freestyle edge rgb:

The whole thing requires a little getting used to in any case. No matter if you come from a normal "Ansi" keyboard, or from an Ergodox.

Details and review of Freestyle Edge RGB

I'm not quite through with the configuration, but as far as I can tell that I got almost everything working:

the most important: the two space keys are configured differently. As with the Ergodox I have space on the left and backspace on the right key. That makes so much sense, I don't want a keyboard without the feature anymore.
Since I have a few problems switching the layers, I had to be stick with FN a lot. I got the "Special" layer of the Ergodox layout (there are all brackets on the right half of the keyboard, helps a lot with programming) by just assigning the keys in the FN layer. The LEDs also highlight these buttons, which really improves orientation. I can also use ˚ and ^ to achieve what would have been a pretty monkey grip.
I have now saved the number keys in profile 3. on the ergodox I could switch to those with just hitting another Layer Toggle key. But on the Kinesis, I need to switch profiles for that. This can be achieved quite simply by pressing the "Profile" button twice. The LEDs corresponding to the number keys are then highlighted by the LEDs
I used Layer 4 for ADNW-XOY. I noticed a bug: when switching profiles the Tap'n'Hold keys do not work properly at first, they still show the behavior of the previous layer. You then have to select the layer again to get it working.
The configuration is really a bit cumbersome but good brain jogging. The software works exclusively with the English/US layout. That would not be much of a problem, but if you e.g. if you want to store a macro, you have to enter the characters as if you were on an American keyboard and type it in. For e.g. a text smiley :-) results in something like </( - not really intuitive
The software supports the dark mode of MacOS inadequately, because the macros are then displayed with black writing on an almost black background - not really legible.
for some reason you can't put macros on the modifier keys (CMD, Shift, CTRL, ALT) ... no idea what the reason is, but it's a shame. Funnily enough, I can assign "normal" keys
Unfortunately there are no German or OSX keycaps directly from Kinesis - at least not just like that. But with the blank keycaps from maxkeyboard.com it actually improved a bit as the keys are sculpted.

All in all, the software feels somewhat unfinished. Some things don't go the way you think. Sometimes messages pop up, telling you that Tap & Hold does not work on FN and when the same key as it in normal mode ... ok ... where does that come from?

In general, newer features of the keyboard are still a bit buggy. Tap & Hold e.g. has only been added with the latest firmware version. And in the "Reactive LED scheme", which highlights the pressed key a different color for a short time, does not work with keys, that have Tab'n'Hold enabled.

For example, you cannot enter Hyper in a tap & hold action via the software - however, directly in the layout file (with Vi: smirk :)

It all feels a little unpolished, unfortunately. The limitation of the keyboard to 9 profiles is probably due to the fact that it was not possible to assign more keys to it (switching is only possible with a SmartSet key + number - for the first 4 also with the Profile key).

What is also striking is that the keyboard is probably a little under-powerd in terms of computing power. When I press a button that changes Layer and therefore the the LEDs of several buttons (number cluser or something like that), I can almost watch the LEDs light up one after the other. Either this is programmed quite inefficiently, or the hardware is underpowered.

You can see that in some other places where the keyboard feels a bit "lame", especially with macros etc. I can hardly believe the 1ms response time here.

I expect more for that price tag and I really hope that they will improve here. You should be able to switch between the profiles on any key, defining it yourself. That would give the thing a real added value.

Then you should leave out the stupid profile button right away, because I cannot use it to call up profiles over 4. Conceptually makes no sense. or give it some additional useful functionality - or make it programmable, so that you can decide, what it should do.

The build quality is really extremely good. Nothing rattles (apart from the buttons :smirk :), even better than with the Ergodox EZ.

Typing feels surprisingly different than on the Ergodox, although both use Cherry-MX Brown switches. The typing feel on the Kinesis keyboard is "firmer" and I find it more pleasant.

Conclusion

Was the change good or bad now? Honestly, after a couple of days using I think so. At the moment I think it's all very good, I just have to get used to it.

I will probably play with the Freestyle edge RGB for a few more days / weeks, then let's see how it feels and post an update here.

But I can already tell: Typing feels more valuable, but the software still has problems.

But I would also like to put this into perspective: in comparison to the grotty software from the Razer Chroma keyboard, the SmartSet app for the Kinesis Freestyle Edge is a revelation! Razer's software force you online. Your keyboard does not work properly when you are not online. And a lot just didn't work as it should, especially on Mac OSX. And it was not really intuitive to use neither.

Just the automatic change between the profiles for the Razer Chroma is a feature that should also somehow find its way into the software of the Kinesis Keyboard. It would need some kind of API or something ... If they could build that in ... a dream.

So even with the perceived incomplete software, the Kinesis is clearly the winner in the sector against Ergodox EZ, even if the EZ offers significantly more features in programming. If it weren't for the price difference of at least € 125 and the poorer build quality (cables - although you can buy replacement) and less suitable features for international users (LEDs only on the US letter keys), the two would be probably really equivalent.

So I have to say that the Kinesis Freestyle Edge RGB offers the more attractive overall package and you get more for your money.

Nevertheless, I miss the "thumb cluster" on the freestyle board. I really thought that the Ergodox was great from the idea, only the execution was rather poor, because - as already described - half of the keys in the thumb cluster cannot be used as intended.

One point that I have not mentioned above is the "ortholinear" layout of the Ergodox board. Since the keys are not staggered, as on a normal keyboard, but directly arranged one below the other. (The staggered layout was developed for typewriters).

Typing on an ortholinear keyboard is better, the keys are more "ergonomic", it seems. This is something where kinesis should have had more courage.

The bugs in the software and the missing functions are also a problem. Something has to be done by kinesis there. The best thing would be to install QMK.

Apparently the 100% keyboard just doesn't exist for me ... the question remains: what is the best compromise?

category: Computer --> programming --> MongoDB --> morphium

Morphium messaging vs messaging systems

2020-02-23 - Tags: morphium java messaging

originally posted on: https://caluga.de

Morphium can also be messaging ... wow ... right?

Why do you still need such a solution? how does it compare to others, such as RabbitMQ, MQSeries etc.? Those are the top dogs ... Why another solution?

I would like to list some differences here

Conceptually

Morphium Messaging is designed as a "persistent messaging system". The idea is to be able to "distribute" data more easily within the MongoDB. Especially in connection with @Reference it is very easy to "transfer" complex objects via messaging.

Furthermore, the system should be easy to use, additional hardware should not be needed if possible. This was an important design criterion, especially for the cluster-aware cache synchronization.

Features

Morphium is to be understood as a persistent queue, which means that new consumers can be added to a cluster at any time and they also receive older, unprocessed messages.

Because Morphium persists the messages, you can use every MongoDB client to see what is happening purely in terms of messaging. there is a rudimentary implementation for Morphium messaging in python. This is used to e.g. display a messaging monitor, a status of what is happening right now.

Morphium is super easy to integrate into existing systems. The easiest of course, of course, if you already have Morphium in use. Because then it's just a three-line:

Messaging messaging = new messaging (Morphium);
messaging.start ();

messaging.addMessageListener (...);

To e.g. To get RabbitMQ a "simple" producer-consumer setup, more lines and setup are necessary.

in the concept of Morphium, an "answer" was also provided. This means that every MessageListener can simply "reply" a message as a response. This message is then sent directly to the recipient. Something that is not easily achieved in other messaging systems.

An important feature is the synchronization of the caches in a cluster. This runs via annotations in the entity and then all you have to do is start the CacheSynchronizer, and everything runs automatically in the background.

Messaging msg = new messaging (Morphium, 100, true);
msg.start ();
MessagingCacheSynchronizer cs = new MessagingCacheSynchronizer (msg, morphium);

Morphium also provides a solution to "reject" an incoming message. Every listener can throw a MessageRejectedException. The message is then no longer processed in the current messaging instance and marked so that it can be processed by other recipients. This also happens in particular if an error / exception occurred during message processing.

JMS

Morphium also supports JMS, but there is a bit of a logical and conceptual "breach" ...

JMS sends messages e.g. in topics or queues ... in Morphium there is no or only a limited distinction. In this nomenclature, each message can be either a topic or a queue message.

If you send a message in Morphium Messaging that is marked as "non-exclusive" (default), then it is a broadcast, every participant can receive the message within the TTL (time to live). This is only decided based on whether you have registered a listener or not.

Every Morphium messaging listener can get topics, queues, channels, and direct messages. That is more or less determined by the broadcaster. The sender determines whether the message

to be sent directly to a recipient (direct messaging)
to all listeners (usually for a certain message name) - i.e. a broadcast (default)
or to one of the listeners, but no matter which one (exclusive message, similar to the topics in the JMS)

Empty message-queue = healthy message queue

This is what you e.g. reads again and again about RabbitMQ. That is not the same with Morphium. The messages remain in the queue for a while and delete themselves when reaching the TTL. If I put a broadcast message in the queue with a lifespan of one day, then this message can still be processed within a day. And will it too, e.g. when new "consumers" register. (replay of messages).

This does not apply to exclusive messages, as you explicitly don't want to process them multiple times, i.e. the message is deleted after successful processing (only until V4.1.2 - after that, messages are only deleted when TTL is reached).

A Morphium message queue is always filled to a certain extent with this and that's a good thing.

Conclusion

Morphium messaging does not want to and cannot be a "replacement" for existing message systems and solutions. That was not the direct goal in development at all. There was a specific problem that could be solved most easily and efficiently.

Nevertheless, the areas of application of Morphium messaging are similar or overlap with other messaging systems. But that's in the nature of things. A migration from one system to another should definitely be possible in finite time. Morphium supports e.g. JMS, both as a client and as a server. This allows cache synchronization to be implemented using other, possibly already existing messaging solutions without having to forego the convenience of Morphium annotation-based cache definition. Or integrate Morphium into your own architecture as a messaging solution via JMS.

comparison table

Description	Morphium	RabbitMQ
runs without additional hardware	X	-
nondestructive peek	X	-
high speed	-	X
high security	X	X
simple to use	X	depending on the use case
persistent messages	X	not mandatory
get pending messages on connect	X	-

category: Computer --> programming --> MongoDB --> morphium

fieldbased encryption in mongo using Morphium

2020-01-09 - Tags: java

originally posted on: https://caluga.de

There will be a new feature in the next version of Morphium: automatic encryption and decryption of data.

This ensures that the data is only stored in encrypted form in the database or is decrypted when it is read. This also works with sub-documents. Technically, more complex data structures than JSON are encoded and this string is stored encrypted.

We currently have support for 2 types of encryption AES (default) and RSA.

here is the test for AES encryption.

    @Test
    public void objectMapperTest() throws Exception {
        morphium.getEncryptionKeyProvider().setEncryptionKey("key", "1234567890abcdef".getBytes());
        morphium.getEncryptionKeyProvider().setDecryptionKey("key", "1234567890abcdef".getBytes());
        MorphiumObjectMapper om = morphium.getMapper();
        EncryptedEntity ent = new EncryptedEntity();
        ent.enc = "Text to be encrypted";
        ent.text = "plain text";
        ent.intValue = 42;
        ent.floatValue = 42.3f;
        ent.listOfStrings = new ArrayList<>();
        ent.listOfStrings.add("Test1");
        ent.listOfStrings.add("Test2");
        ent.listOfStrings.add("Test3");

        ent.sub = new Subdoc();
        ent.sub.intVal = 42;
        ent.sub.strVal = "42";
        ent.sub.name = "name of the document";

        Map<String, Object> serialized = om.serialize(ent);
        assert (!ent.enc.equals(serialized.get("enc")));

        EncryptedEntity deserialized = om.deserialize(EncryptedEntity.class, serialized);
        assert (deserialized.enc.equals(ent.enc));
        assert (ent.intValue.equals(deserialized.intValue));
        assert (ent.floatValue.equals(deserialized.floatValue));
        assert (ent.listOfStrings.equals(deserialized.listOfStrings));
    }

    @Entity
    public static class EncryptedEntity {
        @Id
        public MorphiumId id;

        @Encrypted(provider = AESEncryptionProvider.class, keyName = "key")
        public String enc;

        @Encrypted(provider = AESEncryptionProvider.class, keyName = "key")
        public Integer intValue;

        @Encrypted(provider = AESEncryptionProvider.class, keyName = "key")
        public Float floatValue;

        @Encrypted(provider = AESEncryptionProvider.class, keyName = "key")
        public List<String> listOfStrings;

        @Encrypted(provider = AESEncryptionProvider.class, keyName = "key")
        public Subdoc sub;

        public String text;
    }

    @Embedded
    public static class Subdoc {
        public String name;
        public String strVal;
        public Integer intVal;
    }

There are a few classes you should know:

AESEncryptionProvider: this is an implementation of the interfaceEncryptionProvider and offers AES encryption
RSAEncryptionProvider: this is an implementation of the interfaceEncryptionProvider and offers RSA encryption
All encryption systems access the EncryptionKeyProvider, which can be set in the MorphiumConfig.
- DefaultEncryptionKeyProvider: you save the keys yourself
- PropertyEncryptionKeyProvider: the keys are read in via properties, the keys themselves can be stored in encrypted form (AES encryption)
- MongoEncryptionKeyProvider: reads the keys from the Mongo, Collection and encryption key can be specified
Of course, all of these interfaces can be implemented yourself.

category: global --> E-Mobility --> Tesla

900km road trip with the tesla model 3

2020-01-07 - Tags: Tesla RoadTrip

Now we have the Model 3 for a few months and it was time for a slightly longer trip. Driving on shorter distances, commuting to and from work every day is not an issue at all, provided you have a charging option (at home using the normal socket would certainly be sufficient in most cases).

the trip

Our first long trip with the Model3 should take us to Paris (and more precisely to Disneyland Paris). Route from Munich there is about 900km.

When planning the route in advance, we used [a better route planner] (https://abetterrouteplanner.com) and were able to get a rough idea of how long it would take.

The planning in Model 3 with the on-board software was then somewhat different, in particular easier. In addition, the on-board navigation does not run the battery nearly as empty as [a better route planner] (https://abetterrouteplanner.com).

Space

So, the Model 3 is the smallest limousine in Tesla's fleet, but as far as space is concerned, you really have enough storage space to accommodate everything for 3 people for 7 days (and also with a lot of Disney merchandise in your luggage when coming back :smirk.). 2 large suitcases fit easily in the rear trunk, and there is still the "lower additional compartment" where a lot can be put in, and on top of the suitcases is also some space and next to them also. The frunk also has room for 2 smaller bags. I would say that overall we have more space in Model3 than in the BMW 5 that I had before. So that was really ok ...

the charging

I have to confess, before the trip I was a bit nervous. How does it work with the super chargers? Do they work? Are they possibly overcrowded and you have to wait forever? How much time do you lose ...?

Spoiler Alert: I worried in vain. The whole thing was as easy as driving an internal combustion engine, if not easier.

But in detail:

Driving was nothing special anymore, I could get used to it pretty well in the last months (and I'm spoiled for other cars).

Still, I was amazed at how easy it all went. Since we were traveling with a child, we also had to take regular breaks. You can't shoot down 900km in one session.

All in all, we took more breaks than was necessary. The battery of the Tesla lasts longer than some of the passengers' bladders

We also used the first charging stop for a lunch break and while we're sitting down eating (at a well-known fast food restaurant), my Telsa app says I could actually drive off again.

Admittedly, it was not necessary to have the tesla charged there. But we were hungry. So we charged it starting with 30% remaining range ... in the end we drove off with 90%. I have to admit I felt a little rushed ...

We had been able to try out a few SuperChargers on the route, the Reims, in Ulm and the one in Metz ... the latter was certainly the stupidest of all locations. the SuperCharger is in the parking lot of a large supermarket in France. Isn't really the best, because except for the supermarket there is more or less nothing there. Especially on Sunday, when we were there for the first time, we somehow had to pass the 20 minutes of charging. Fortunately, there were also the games from Teslatari

We were only 20 minutes away and we were able to go on with our trip, but was still a little bleak there.

On the way back we stopped there too, that was on a Saturday. And there was more life. Not the best place to do shopping, it was enough for a small snack and drinks. But on the next trip I would try to skip the break in Metz.

Fortunately, we then had the opportunity to charge the Tesla at the hotel. Respectively. at the neighboring hotel. If you are looking for information on the Internet: the Sequoia Lodge Disney Hotel has no charging facility. The neighboring hotel Newport Bay Club does, however. I was allowed to just drive over there and charge my Model 3 there - in the end it was a normal socket, but I could stand there long enough to start again at 90% on the day of departure.

The driving

The Model3 is really great. It's comfortable, the seating position is great, and with Spotify in the car it doesn't get boring that quickly (although the playlists there are pretty stupid and feel like they only put together about 20 songs differently).

Listening to podcasts also works well, but you don't get the podcasts from Spotify but from TuneIn - and they have much less to choose from ... Well ...

The autopilot is a great thing, especially on highways. It makes driving more relaxed, even if you have to keep looking at the road (maybe the software is doing something wrong, where it didn't happen to me on the 900km). Other vehicle manufacturers can certainly do that, but as I said, the whole thing is really great.

"Navigate on Autopilot" is something that other vehicle manufacturers are probably not yet able to do. This is very pleasant, because the Model 3 drives off and onto the next highway itself. This is a great feature and helps you to catch the right exit.

If you travel that way, you can't and don't want to ract anyway. In Germany you drive about 150km / h and in France you can't drive faster than 130 km / h. So the consumption was limited. It was a pleasant ride, very relaxed.

I had already mentioned this in the last blog entry about the Tesla, that driving is less emotionally charged. And that also applies to driving on the motorway. You drive somehow more relaxed. Sure, if an idiot tries to bully, you press the "fun pedal" to make it clear who can go faster. But that's rather the exception.

All in all, including charging stops and breaks, we needed about 10 hours for the 900km. A better routeplanner says you could do it in 8:30, Google thinks it would take about 8:05 minutes by car ... Well ... in both cases the traffic is probably not taken into account 100%.

Conclusion

Road trips with the Tesla Model 3 (and probably also with all other Teslas) are amazingly.... boring - thanks to the SuperCharger network! It just works, you don't have to worry.

Charging took a little time, of course, but not so much that you would have been a lot faster with a combustion engine. Especially when children are on board, you have to take a break more often anyway. And we use them for charging ...

It worked so well and we liked it so much that we started another road trip for Christmas that went without any problems (apart from traffic jams).

I know if you have never had an electric car, then you will be shaken by the "range anxiety". But with the Tesla at least that's not a problem at all. You just drive off and the rest is done by the technology!

The Tesla is also high level when it comes to car comfort. So we will do even more road trips in the future!

useful stuff for your tesla

charge pad for inductive charging
bright LEDs for the trunk. The standard LEDs are just not bright enough.
Case for your "key" of your Model3

category: global --> E-Mobility --> Tesla

Tesla as a company car

2019-07-04 - Tags: Tesla E-Mobilität Model 3

Tesla as a company car

I was self-employed for a long time and drove a lot of good and new cars. All were leased and all were new. I will create a blog post with a list, was also an exciting journey.

Since I am no longer working as a freelancer and therefore no longer have a business, I have always driven used cars, mostly petrol engine with large engines (because of the assumed better durability and the fun that brings for a petrol head ).

But in my current company (https://www.genios.de) there is a company car scheme, which I can access. Since my 5 Series BMW ist slowly falling apart and there would be some TÜV-relevant repairs in the future (certainly in the range of around 5000, - €), it was time to at least think about a new car or even a company car.

So I started to look more closely at the topic. As is customary in Germany, the state keeps its hand in everything and has rules for everything to be observed. And it's not quite the right thing to do it blue-eyed. You try to go the best way and the cheapest.

For us it was important that we have a vehicle with which you can make excursions, go on vacation. And for this we need space - dog and child also want to go on vacation: smirk: D.h. a microcar is out of the question.

The costs, which we have now for the used, should not be exceeded if possible (and that was quite expensive with all the repairs, fuel, oil change, etc.).

And so I started the search. What do you do ...?

Sure, such a 5 BMW in "new" would have been chic. But unfortunately also very expensive. Why you have to deal more clearly with the costs ...

Company car - it's great, everything for free ...

Or not. For one, it's not really that interesting for the company in my case that I'm mobile. I am not in sales, have no customer appointments. So that would be "only" an incentive. So you get a company car in this case not for "free", but you must take over the costs largely.

salary conversion

As with almost all companies in such a case, you can have the car leased by the company, but you have to pay the cost of your gross salary. So the company calculates, what costs the car in the month all in all is there and this is then deducted from the gross salary - depending on the negotiating skills may also less.

The salary conversion sounds ok for the first time, but is increasingly interesting, the more taxes you pay. Example:

I'm single, have a tax rate of 45% and would now have to pay 500, - € of my gross salary. Then my gross salary is reduced by 500, - €, my net is reduced by 275, - €
I am a family man, my tax rate is about 33%. The gross salary is again reduced by 500 €, net, however, then amounts to 335, - € per month

Of course, these examples are not exact, solis etc are neglected here, just to clarify the background.

The much-known payment-in-kind

The above mentioned costs are joined by the so-called payment-in-kind. This means that you have to pay for the private use of the vehicle, taxes. And indeed, the amount of thepayment-in-kind is calculated on the gross salary and then just taxed. (for the sake of completeness it should be mentioned, that you can calculate the payment-in-kind with a logbook, but that only makes sense, if you have business trips!)

The monetary value is calculated as follows (as of 2019):

The gross list price of the vehicle (new price!) Is 1% for combustion vehicles and 0.5% for electric vehicles. With a vehicle, which costs 40000, - €, that are for a combustor 400, - € payment-in-kind, with the electric vehicle exactly half, thus 200, - €
In addition, there is the commute. 0.3% of the amount in point 1 is due per kilometer of work. With a working distance of 20km it makes an additional 240, - € for the combustor of 40000, - €. With the same-weight electric car, half is again.
In sum, comes a combustor of 40000 € on a payment-in-kind of 640 €, an electric car but only 320, - €

For electric vehicles, the whole then changes in the future, the gross list price is no longer halved from 2020, instead, depending on the size of the battery, the gross list price for the calculation is reduced. Per kWh 500, - € set (I think), but max 10000, - €. So if electric car, then soon!

Why electro?

So, since we also have some claims to such a vehicle, the "cheapest" were left out. With such a Dacia Duster a trip to South Tyrol would certainly be possible, but certainly not so funny: smirk:

Just because of the tax incentives an electric car is a very interesting alternative at the moment. That alone is of course no reason, there are other substantial reasons:

The zero emissions of electric cars certainly ensures cleaner air, at least where they go. Of course, somehow you should not get the power out of coal so that the problem does not just shift. But that's another discussion.
Driving with an electric car is "different", much more relaxed and, above all, quieter. It's hard to describe, but with the fact that no engine howls when you push the accelerator pedal, even an overtaking maneuver is just ... an overtaking maneuver. Less "emotional", if you can say so.
The maintenance costs and the associated effort is virtually equal to zero. That's one of the reasons why the automotive industry so vilified e-cars in my opinion. Tesla himself says it is not necessary to bring your vehicle for maintenance. You should check after 4 years, if the coolants are still ok, but otherwise ... no maintenance intervals, no oil change, no nothing. Also saves money. And as a hint: the Teslas are all designed for a mileage of 1.6 million KM. How can that be? Well, such a internal combution engine (ICE) has about 2000-3000 moving parts, which must all be lubricated, maintained and possibly replaced if the wear is too high. In an electric car, there are on average 12 moving parts and they also have much less wear. So you will hardly have to change the brake pads in the electric car, because you hardly brake. The engine recuperates, i. he returns the kinetic energy back to the battery ...

Since the costs for the company are also lower due to an electric car, my gross content conversion is also smaller. You save a little bit on a monthly basis.

Why Tesla?

Well, to put it in a nutshell: the German carmakers have unfortunately totally failed to bring usable electric cars on the market. With the existing vehicles you can cruise wonderfully within the city, but traveling is really difficult or near to impossible. Just take a look at how the E-Cannonball ran in 2018, and when the individual vehicles arrived in Munich after the trip from Hamburg. In addition, they do demand maintenance at fixed intervals. That should actually be unnecessary.

And although Tesla does not require mandatory maintenance, you get a full 4-year warranty on the vehicle with each Tesla. And 8 years on drive and battery! Who else offers such a thing?

Tesla has not only built a fancy car (or several), but above all, they understood that you need a simple, unified, large-scale and fast charging infrastructure. In Germany, the SuperCharger (ie the rapid charging stations of Tesla) are hardly more than 100km apart, so there is always a charging station in reach. Of course, the range of> 400km from the Teslas helps as well.

And thanks to the high efficiency of the Tesla's and the fast charging power of the charging stations, you can recharge your car so far within a reasonable time, then you can drive on. This makes a relaxed journey within Europe very possible.

With the other manufacturers, there is not this infrastructure, there are _many- providers for charging. Ionity to Telekom, everyone has a different approach. This is hard to see through, the costs are different everywhere, the calculation methods, the loading speeds. This makes planning in advance difficult to impossible.

In addition, you may still need some charge cards from the respective provider or use a charge station of a provider that offers roaming for my cards (which, of course, are additional costs). This is not only inscrutable, this is actually a knock-out criterion, if you want to go further away with his e-car - in my opinion!

There is gossip on the internet of a report of one who has bought an Audi E-Tron and if he wants to go on vacation, the car dealer provides him with a diesel for free ... because of the charging issues!

Well, the charging infrastructure is one of the main reasons why I use a Tesla. Although we have to admit, that things tend to get better for others.

where to charge?

I started researching in March 2019 to find out what is the best way for us. Even finance a car, again a used car, a company car etc.

Then you come to a first conclusion, the company electric car fits actually the most likely. However, I am the first person in the company who wanted to have an e-car, i. E. there is still no process for it. What would be the costs for the company, what would have to be paid by me ...

And one of the most important questions: how to charge it! That is also an important point. In garages, it's not that easy to set up a charging point. There must still all owners agree in unison. This almost never works. At my home, e.g. no chance. They even refuse, if the garage should be swept ...

To charge at work would be great. The SWM has a funding for the charging of electric vehicles and the development of charging infrastructure. The package, which was laced by the public utilities, is really interesting. Actually, there is no reason even for the owners of garages to reject that. Basically, the owner has nothing to do. The SWM take care of connection, maintenance, setup etc., guarantee that it has no influence on the other power connections etc.

Nevertheless, you have to charge at home - there are also holidays etc ... For me it is not sooo easy. As I said, to get a power outlet in the garage is virtually impossible. So the Tesla is not charged in the garage, but must be charged in front of the house (public parking - not my own parking space). There I have to attach now a power outlet CEE16 and there I can then connect a wallbox.

A "charger" is with the Tesla yes, but this charger can only max 1 phase charge (the Model 3 that is, model s used to have a 3 phase charger). That you get max 3.7kW with it, if you can plug it into a 16A outlet.

That 's not all that much, so to charge a Tesla Model 3 with a battery capacity of about 75kWh from 10% to 80% (you should not charge every day to 100%, and 80% in my case is about 400km) about 15h. If you could do it now with a 3-phase charger, you would only get to about 5h ...

And for the sake of completeness: you can also load the Tesla on a normal power outlet. But you should limit the current to 10A max. Then you'll get 2.4kW charging power (in the most favorable case.) For me, the voltage dropped to just under 200V in this case). And so the Tesla needs from 10% to 80% in about 22h. Realistically more like 30h.

At the moment I'm thinking about taking a wallbox from stark-in-strom.de, which are quite cheap to buy and have everything you need (including the required RCCB and fuses). And if you ask them, they will add the the length of the charging cable you want. So I have 12m Charging cable now, although on the website 5m was maximum. But that is not the best solution. The parking space is occupied often, so I cannot charge the car. And during winter when there is snow on the streets, the snow-plowing service put the snow - exactly: to that specific parking place. So, for Winter I need another solution. Up until then I am fine.

These costs should be clarified then again with the employer, especially mobile solutions are certainly something that remains in the car and actually belongs to the car ...: smirk:

ok, go for a Tesla ... and now?

After a lot of back and forth a lot together with the managing director of [GBI Genios] (https://www.genios.de) the decision to bet on the Tesla and to try it out. I was, so to speak, the test balloon in this case ...

So, first, i contacted some leasing companies. Most had the Tesla Model 3 not on offer and if, then for some lunar prices (leasing rates of> 1200 € were not uncommon).

At some point I came to [Kazenmaier] (https://www.kazenmaier.de), which had a really interesting KM lease offer for the Model 3.

So, with the offer, the discussions continued and then ... Tesla changed the prices. Starting over...

the second offer comes in, also ok, and again Tesla changes the prices again. In the period from April to the end of May Tesla has changed prices about 4x.

During this time, I also contacted Telsa and asked when such a vehicle would be delivered. "It takes about 3 - 6 months," they said ... When we did the test drive, it was said that it would be "safe 3 months" ... well ...

Kazenmaier offers the lease but after deduction of all subsidies, i. The leasing rate is cheaper, which is definitely interesting for a company car. However, the subsidies are dependent on the gross list price and must be adjusted every time. That I had to wait from the beginning of April until pretty much the end of May, until we finally got the order.

It was somehow "different" than usual. We sent the documents to the lessor, everything was OK then. they ordered the "vehicle". Then Tesla called me and said "so, we can now perform the order together" .... Hä ??!?!?

On the phone we have the configured and ordered vehicle yet again. It turned out that the prices changed again. Great. We ordered the vehicle nevertheless. The leasing company has then promptly sent a new contract, but the lease has left the same ... back and forth ...

Then I was also told that "Tesla it is not able to register the vehicle due to the high order volume" - you have to do it yourself. awesome... NOT!

When ordering it was said, the vehicle would be here in "probably 6 weeks, but personally I think it comes in 3".

Well, that's cool, delivery time shortened to a sixth.

6 days later I get a call from Tesla, I could pick up my vehicle ... but it is in Nuremberg, but Tesla pays taxi and train tickets ...

Oh great ... then we'll go to Nuremberg. The conversation was on Wednesday, Thursday was Corpus Christi. The lady on the phone thinks I could pick up the car on Monday.

Of course that was not possible, I had no papers. And with that, I found myself in the Tesla universe, things are going quite differently than in the rest of the world ...

The documents for the approval were not sent on Friday ... on Monday, I try desperately to reach someone else, to make it still work. After some attempts, I reach someone in the evening and they say: "oops, the papers went to Karlsruhe" - To The Leasing Company. We really chewed that 10x that the stuff has to come to me, so that the registration could work ...

The leasing company received the documents on Monday, sent them back to me at the expense of Tesla via Overnight Express, and on Wednesday morning I got the papers. The appointment for the registration was the same day ...

That had then finally worked. E-plate and fine dust sticker taken, car is registered.

On Friday we went by train to Nuremberg, there by taxi to Tesla. At the Tesla Delivery Center, everything was really nice, the staff there were accommodating (though a bit foolish: "I can not get to your car right now, because the colleague is gone with the key")

At the handover, we complained a few flaws on the paint and then we drove off. And that was really great .... but more about that in a next blog.

category: Computer --> Apple

MacMini 2018

2019-02-26 - Tags: Apple MacMini OSX

MacMini2018

I am a Mac user for quite some time now and I was always happy this way. Apple managed it to deliver a combination from operating system and hardware that is stable, secure and easy to use (even for non IT-guys) but also has a lot of features for power users.

(i already described my IT-history at another place https://boesebeck.name/v/2013/4/19/meine_it_geschichte)

My iMac which I used for quite some time (since beginning of 2011) did die in a rather spectacular way (for a Mac): it just did a little "zing" and it was off. Could not switch it back on again, broken beyond repair... :frown:

So, I needed some new Hardware. Apple unfortunately missed the opportunity at the last hardware event end of 2018 to add newer hardware to the current iMacs. There is still an more then 2 year old cpu working. Not really "current" tech, but quite expensive.

The pricing of Apple products is definitely something you could discuss about. The hardware prices were increased almost for everything, same as with the costs for new iPhones. This is kind of outrageous...

In this context, the new MacMini is a very compelling alternative. The "mini Mac" always was the entry level mac and was the cheapest one in the line up. Well, you need to have your own keyboard, mouse and screen.

now, the MacMini got finally some love from Apple. The update is quite good: recent CPU, a lot of useful ports (and fast: 4x Thunderbolt-3, 2x USB-A 3.0, HDMI). This is the Mac for people, who want a fast desktop, but do not want to pay 5000€ for an iMac Pro.

I was a bit put off by the MacMini at first, because it does not have a real GPU. Well, there is one form Intel - but you could hardly name it a Graphics Processing Unit.

That always was the problem with the MiniMac - if you want to use it as Server, fine. (I have one to backup the photos library) But as Media-PC? or even a gaming machine? No way.... as soon as decent graphics is involved, the MacMini failed.

But with thunderbolt 3 you can now solve this "problem" using an eGPU (external graphics card). How should that work? External is always slower than internal, right?

Well, not always. Thunderbolt 3 is capable of delivering up to 40GBit/s transfer speed and current GPUs only need 32GBit/S (PCI-express x16). This sounds quite ok... (although there is some overhead in the communication)

But it is quite ok. I bought the MacMini with an external eGPU and I am astonished, how much power this little machine has. All the connectors, cables, dongles etc do not look as good as the good old iMac. And the best thing: if you want to upgrade your eGPU, because there is a better one fine... or upgrade the mac mini and keep the eGPU - flexibility increase!

Performance comparison

Of course, my 8 year old iMac cannot keep up with the current MacMini, that would be an unfair comparison. But I have to admit that the 2011 iMac was a lot quicker when it comes to graphics performance. So for gaming the Mini is not the right choice.

The built in Harddisk, of course, is a SSD. Unfortunately it is soldered fix and cannot be replaced. But it is blazingly fast and does read/write with up to 2000MB/sec.

If I take a look at my GeekBench results of the Mini, the single core benchmark is similar to the curren iMac Pro with a Xeon processor. That is truly implressive. But, of course, in the multicore benchmark the mini can't keep up - it just has not enough cores to compete with a 8-Core machine - I have the "bigger" MacMini with the current generation i7 CPU.

I plugged in (or better on) an external Vega64 eGPU. This way I could compare the Graphivs performace with other current machines using the Unigine benchmarks. In those benchmarks, my Mini has about the same speed as an iMac Pro with the Vega64. This is astonishing.

Costs

Well, how much does all this performance cost? Is it cheaper than a good speced iMac 27"?

The calculation is relatively simple. To get something comparable in an iMac you need to take the i7 Processor - although this one is about 2 generations behind. As an SSD-Storage, 128GB is probably not enough, 512 sounds more reasonable. Anything else can be attached over Thunderbolt-3. A Samsung X5 SSD connected via Thunderbolt-3 is even faster than an internal SSD - so no drawback here.

You should increase the memory yourself, as Apple is very expensive. This way an upgrade to 32GB is about 300€ - Apple charges 700€!

But for comparison the RAM is not important, as with the iMAc I would do it exactly same. So lets put that together. Right now, an eGPU case is about 400€, than a Vega64, also about 400€, the MacMini is about 1489,- € plus 250€ for a screen (LG 4k,works great), and additional 100€ for Mouse and Keyboard. All in all you end up with 2539,- +/- 200€!

Just for comparison: the iMac would cose about 2839,- € - but in this configuration it would be slower than the Mini. With a Vega64 and a comparable CPU the mini in this configuration is more comparable to the base model of the iMac pro, which is 5499,-€ (but still has a slower GPU!).

conclusion

The new MacMini is definitely worth a thought. Considering the costs in comparison to other Macs, especially when you do not have to buy everything at once (like buy the MacMini, 3Monts later the RAM upgrade, 3 Months later eh eGPU case and again later the GFX-Card). The biggest disadvantage of the Mini is, that you now have more cables on your desk compared with the iMac...

I do have the Mini now running for some months and I love it! If you need a desktop, the MacMini is worth a try! Even compared with a MacBook!

category: global --> drones

5 inch sub 250g possible?

2018-12-04 - Tags: drohne drone sub250g

Thanks to the not so new drone laws and the rules that were introduced, it is in most countries only allowed to fly drones freely without regulations if the drone is lighter than 250g - especially if you want to do FPV. (in Germany, if the drone is heavier than 250g you need a Spotter, which keeps an eye on your drone and shouts out "Danger" if something happens or whatever).

Regarding to ensurance a sub 250g drone is considered a toy and is also better.

But real racing quads do have 5" props, sub 250g is only possible with 3" - or is it?

Druckbär Ultralight

Have a look at Druckbär. The frame Ultralight 3, only weights 30,7g in 5 Inch!

Using a 20x20 Flightcontroller-Stack it is possible to keep the weight unter 250g including a Runcam Split mini. Then you can do full-HD recordings AND fly FPV.

Parts used:

Druckbär Ultralight 3
HGLRC XJB F440 Stack inkl. VTX
Runcam Split mini
XNOVA 1804 Motoren - 15g jeder!

All put together the mini racer weight with props about 160g. With a small Lipo (650 or 850 mAh minimum) you end up with about 250g.

Hints for the build

The Stack is simple to build, but we need to keep an eye on some specialities. I wanted to achieve some things with that build:

1.lighter than 250g (that’s the point, right?) 2. I wanted to control the Runcam Split Mini via the FC and the Taranis (switching on and off would be enough for a start) 3. I want SmartPort Telemetry on the Taranis. The OSD would warn about end empty lipo, but the audible warning is a lot better. 4. I wanted also to be able to control the VTX settings using the OSD or Taranis.

Spoiler-Alert: I got everything to work, except for number 4.

How did I do that?

The FC does have 2 "free" UARTs (serial ports that can be used for some periperals). One is used for ESC-Telemetry (the FC can read out temperature, RPMs etc) the other should be used for controlling the VTX.

All that is a bit of a problem, as we need 4 UARTs: ESC-Telemetry, RuncamSplit Mini, VTX and SmartPort.

FrSky SmartPort Telemetry

The simplest thing first: Smart port is possible using the LED-UART, which I did not use for this build. So jus solder the SmartPort Telemetry from the FrSky-Receiver to the LED OUT port

in Betaflight you need to remap the corresponding resources, this was in my case like this:

resource LED_STRIP 1 NONE
resource SERIAL_TX 11 A01
save

For that to work, the checkbox for "softserial" needs to be checked (Configuration Tab). After running those commands, you can see the virtual UART in the Serial Port Settings - set this to SmartPort then.

That was it for me. If it does not work for you, you should try to change the settings for tlm_inverted (on or off). In any case tlm_halfduplex should be set to on

set tlm_halfduplex = ON
set tlm_inverted = OFF
save

(Hint: the smartport of FrSky is inverted. But the FC is expecting an inverted signal. So if you set inverted to on, it will invert its expections! Crazy thing, but this acutally meens inverted from expectation.)

Controlling Runcam Split Mini

from the hardware this was quite simple. I used UART6 for the Runcam. You solder RX to TX, meaning RX6 from the FC is connected to TX from the Runcam, and TX6 from the FC to the RX pad from the runcam. Ground needs to be added also - voila!

Do not vorget to solder the video out of the runcam to the CAM-Port of the FC.

Well, this should work. But it did not... at least not really. It seems there are some problems with the firmware and runcam, so it works from time to time but not reliably. With Betaflight 3.4 new settings were added, which should fix those problem:

set rcdevice_init_dev_attempts = 8
set rcdevice_init_dev_attempt_interval = 2000
save

It seems, the problem was that the Runcam needed to long for initializing. That means, the FC was up, the runcam not. And so the FC did not find it reliably. So I increased the timeout with those settings. Theoretically the Runcam may now need 16secs to init.

Remark: there seems to be a bug in Betaflight, i could not store those settings! Did not work as expected

ESC Telemetry

This is also quite simple. ESC telemetry should be configured for UART3 and you are done. Well... almost ESC telemetry is read only, means, you solder the RX-Pad of the UART (here UART3) to the ESC-Telemetry port of the FC.

VTX Steuerung

This is not really working yet, I do not know why. The Idea is, that the vtx control is connected to a sending only pad of the FC. So I soldered it to the TX-Pad of UART3. Now you only need to create a new virtual UART that is using this pad:

resource SERIAL_TX 3 NONE
resource SERIAL_TX 12 B10
save

done...

Now I could set the VTX-Control in the port settings. The Setting was possible, but it is not working. I also tried to configure it the other way round - creating a virtual RX-Pad. Did also not help.. (then nothing works)

I will put an update here if I know more

category: global --> drones

DIY Lipo 1s Volt Checker

2018-09-02 - Tags: lipo checker electronics diy

If you fly small drones like the Blade QX Nano at home in your livingroom or any other tiny whoop, you end up with the problem having a lot of 1s batteries but no 1s battery checker. There are a ton of checkers out there, but most of them need at least 5V to operate - 1s only has 3.7 to 4.2 V...

so up until now I used a standard multimeter to check it or have the lipos checked by the charger.

But that is clumsy to do so I created my own little DIY 1s lipo checker (well, you could use it for all other types also, but there is already something available, right )

You need:

A volt meter, like this here: (get it from Amazon)
Female connectors for your 1s batteries. In my case it was a molex for the blade nano ( from MyLipo) and a Walkera plug (also from MyLipo)
if you want, you can use a fancy litte box. If you happen to have a 3D-Printer, just print that one here: STL-File: 1s_lipo_check_box.stl

Now lets put all together. Which is also quite simple:

if you use the box, please put the plugs in first! After you soldered everything, you won't be able to fit the plugs in!
Just connect the two red cables from your to plugs to the red cable of the voltmeter. This is a 2-in-1-Connection then. Use heatshrink here.
same with the black wires
put the voltmeter from underneath into the lid of the box. Should fit on its own, but just add some hot glue for safety.
close the lid - done!

if you want, you can add a little hot-glue to the lid.

At the end, it looks like this:

Have fun building it!

PS: with the same principle you can build a 4s checker. Well, there are a lot of good ones out there, but I created one, I can also connect to a balancer board (because it has both a male and female 4s balancer plug):

this way I can monitor what happens on my parallel charing board when connecting the lipos and even see what happens during charing and balancing. Pretty cool...

category: global

Worauf es beim Homepage-Layout ankommt

2018-07-17 - Tags:

there is no english version of this text available

Anm.: Dieser Text wurde zur Verfügung gestellt von homepage-erstellen.de

Worauf es beim Homepage-Layout ankommt

Hat man erst einmal die ersten Hürden bei der Erstellung einer Homepage gemeistert, muss man sich um ein passendes Layout kümmern. Ein übersichtliches und ansprechendes Layout sorgt dafür, dass relevante Inhalte leichter gefunden werden können und Seitenbesucher eher zurückkehren.

Was ein gutes Layout auszeichnet

Beim Layout einer Homepage gilt es zunächst darauf zu achten, welchem Zweck die Homepage dienen soll. Soll ein Produkt vorgestellt werden? Möchte man über die Dienstleistung einer Firma informieren? Oder nutzt man die Homepage, um über ein persönliches Anliegen aufzuklären? Wichtig ist, dass alle relevanten Informationen jederzeit gefunden werden können. Ein gutes Layout besteht aus Überschriften, Bildern, Fußzeilen und Spalten. So werden Informationen sinnvoll vorgefiltert und können schon mit wenigen Blicken erfasst werden. Das erhöht für den Besucher der Seite den Bedienkomfort und die Wahrscheinlichkeit, dass man zu einem späteren Zeitpunkt die Seite nochmal aufsuchen wird. Zuerst werden beim Layout Farben und Formen wahrgenommen. Ein farbenfrohes Layout kann sich zum Beispiel für ein Portfolio eignen, das Kreativität ausdrücken soll, passt aber kaum zu bestimmten Firmen oder Dienstleistern. Bei diesen ist es wichtig, dass man die Informationen zu jedem Produkt sofort finden kann.

Seitenleiste zum Teil sehr nützlich

Laut www.homepage-erstellen.de kann sich eine Seitenleiste als sehr nützlich für Besucher der Seite erweisen. Dort sollten aber nicht die wichtigsten Inhalte, sondern hauptsächlich ergänzende Informationen zusammengefasst werden. Die Ausrichtung spielt dabei keine große Rolle und die Seitenleiste kann sowohl auf der rechten als auch auf der linken Seite angebracht werden. In der oberen linken Ecke sollte sich ein Logo befinden. Bei E-Commerce-Seiten ist der Warenkorb meist in der rechten Ecke angebracht. Das Suchfeld befindet sich oftmals direkt neben dem oder in direkter Nähe zum Warenkorb.

category: global

T-Entertain-hell

2018-07-16 - Tags: Telekom T-Entertain Servicewüste

For quite some time we used satellite tv and had a dish on our roof. So far so good, all was ok more or less. Then this ineffable HD+ came along, you're not allowed to record anything in HD, and if, then you are not allowed to fast forward anything... when timeshifting, no fast forward is allowed and so on. (Why would you want a hd-receiver then?)

Well, my contract with Telecom is quite old, so I decided to give them a call and get a better deal. And during that call I was also asking about T-Entertain. The callcenter agent was very polite, although she did not have deep technical knowledge. She mentioned the data rates would be higher with T-Entertain than with satellite... well...

But what really annoyed me most are those statement, all of which i had confirmed several times during the call:

"Of course you can fast forward HD-Recordings" - ** wrong! Private tv channels can not be fast forwarded**
"of course you can fast forward during timeshift in HD" - ** also wrong - same as above**
"You can also use the app and see everything you recorded on your device" - wrong, if you pay additional 6€ a month you can watch live TV, but not your recordings

This was not something mentioned by accident, I asked several times and had that confirmed. The callcenter agent also came up with a story about her parents moving to t-entertain and everythin was soooo awesome and she knows all the features because of that.

I called a second time and had a guy on the phone, who seemed to have more knowledge. He also mentioned "of course HD recordings can be fast forwarded", but when I asked "also the private channels", he mumbeled something like "no, those not"... this seems to be the "official wording"

I feel a bit kidded at the moment...

category: Computer --> programming --> MongoDB --> morphium

MongoDB Messaging via Morphium

2018-05-06 - Tags: java programming morphium

originally posted on: https://caluga.de

One of the many advantages of Morphium is the integrate messaging system. This is used for synchronizing the caches in a clustered environment for example. It is part of Morphium for quite some time, it was introduced with one of the first releases.

Messaging uses a sophisticated locking mechanism in order to ensure that messages for one recipient will only get there. Unfortunately this is usually being solved using polling, which means querying the db every now and then. Since Morphium V3.2.0 we can use the OplogMonitor for Messaging. This creates kind of a "Push" for new messages, which means that the DB informs clients about incoming messages.

This reduces load and increases speed. Lets have a look how that works...

Messaging in Morphium - how it works

As mentioned above with V3.2.0 we need to destinguish 2 cases: are we connected to a replicaset (only then there is an oplog the listener could listen to) or not.

no Replicaset => Polling

No replicaset is also true, if you are connected to a sharded cluster via MongoS. Here also messaging uses polling to get the data. Of course, this can be configured. Like, how long should the system pause between polls, should messages be processed one by one or in a bulk...

All comes down to the locking. The algorithm looks like this (you can have a closer look at Messaging.java for mor details):

send a command to mongo, which will lock all messages either send directly to me (= this messaging) or is for all and exclusive (should only be processed once). Every system can be identified with a unique UUID and this id is use for locking, too. it will either lock one or all matching messages - depending if you want to process one or all
read in all locked messages
process them
mark message as processed by me (UUID->processed_by)
do a pause (configured) and go to 1.

Replicaset => OpLogMonitor or ChangeStreamListener

The OplogMonitor is part of Morphium for quite a while now. It uses a TailableCursor on the oplog to get informed about changes. A tailable cursor will stay open, even if thera are no more matching documents. But will send all incoming documents to the client. So the client gets informed about all changes in the system.

With morphium 4.0 we use the change stream instead the oplog to get polling of messages done. This is working as efficient, but does not need admin access.

So why not use a TailableCursor directly on the Msg-Collection then? for several reasons:

it only works with capped collections. Which is not a showstopper in our case, but unpleasant
it only informs about new entries in the collection. But the locking algorithm depends on the update being atomic - hence this is not working. We could try to lock messages by erasing old ones and creating new ones, but this is not atomic and will lead to misreads.

Messaging based on the OplogMonitor looks quite similar to the algorithm above, but the polling simplifies things a bit. on new messages, this happens:

is the incoming message an exclusive one, just try the locking described above. But as we now have the ID, it is a lot simpler and more efficient.
is it non exclusive (and not send by myself), just process it
is it an exclusive message and sent directly to me, process it

usually, when an update on messages comes in, nothing interesting happens. But for being able to reject messages (see below) we just start the locking mechanism to be sure.

how to use Messaging

Well, that is quite simple. Kust create an instance of Messaging and hit start.

Messaging messaging=new Messaging(morphium, 500, true);
messaging.start();

of course, you could instanciate it using spring or something.

Message sending

to send a message, just do:

messaging.storeMessage(new Msg("Testmessage", "A message", "the value - for now", 5000));

this message here does have a ttl (time to live) of 5 secs. The default ttl is 30secs. Older messages will automatically be deleted by mongo.

Messages are broadcast messages by default, meaning, all listeners may process it. if you set the message to be exclusive, only one of the listeners gets the permission to process ist (see locking above).

        Msg m = new Msg();
        m.setExclusive(true);
        m.setName("A message");

this message will only be processed by one recipient!

And the sender does not read his own messages!

Of course, you can send a message directly to a specifiy recipient. This happens automatically when sending answers for example. To send a message to a specific recipient you need to know his UUID. You can get that by messages being sent (sender for example) or you implement some kind of discovery...

        Msg m = new Msg("testmsg1", "The message from M1", "Value");
        m.addRecipient(recipientId);
        m1.storeMessage(m);

storeMessage vs queueMessage

in the integration tests of Morphium both methods are being used. The difference is quite simple: storeMessage stores the message directly do mongodb whereas queueMessage works asynchronously - which might be the better choice when it comes to performance.

receiving messages

just register a Message listener to the messaging system:

           messaging.addMessageListener((messaging, message) -> {
            log.info("Got Message: " + message.toString());
            gotMessage = true;
            return null;
        });

here, messaging is the messaging system and message the message that was sent. This listener returns null, but it could also return a Message, that should be send back as an answer to the sender.

Using the messaging-object, the listener can also publish own messages, which should not be answers or something.

in addition to that, the listener may "reject" a Message by sending a MessageRejectedException - then the message is unlocked so that all clients might use it again (if it was not sent directly to me).

usage of messaging - cache synchronization

Within Morphium the CacheSynchronizer uses Messaging. It needs a messaging system in the constructor.

The implementation of it is not that complicated. The CacheSynchronizer just registers as MorphiumStorageListener, so that it gets informed about all writing accesses (and only then caches need to be syncrhonized).

public class CacheSynchronizer implements MessageListener, MorphiumStorageListener {

}

on write access, it checks if a cached entity is affected and if so, a ClearCachemessage is send using messaging. This message also contains the strategy to use (like, clear whole cache, update the element and so on).

Of course, incoming messages also have to be processed by the CacheSynchronizer. But that is quite simple: if a message comes in, erase the coresponding cache mentioned in the message according to the strategy.

And you might send those clear messages manually by accessing the CacheSynchronizer directly.

And we should mention, that there you could be informed about all cache sync activities using a specific listener interface.

conclusion

the messaging feature of morphium is not well known yet. But it might be used as a simple replacement for full-blown messaging systems and with the new OplogMonitor-Feature it is even better than it ever was.

category: Computer --> programming --> MongoDB --> morphium

New Release Morphium 3.2.0Beta2 - Java Mongo Pojo Mapper

2018-05-02 - Tags: morphium java mongodb mongo POJO

originally posted on: https://caluga.de

Hi,

a new pre-release of morphium is available now V3.2.0Beta2. This one includes a lot of minor bugfixes and one big feature: Messaging now uses the Oplogmonitor when connected to a Replicaset. This means, no polling anymore and the system gets informed via kind of push!

This is also used for cache synchronization.

Release can be downloaded here: https://github.com/sboesebeck/morphium

The beta is also available on maven central.

This is still Beta, but will be released soon - so stay tuned

category: global --> drones

Drone beginners guide

2018-01-14 - Tags: Drohne drone FPV

This is the german version, I will translate it bit by bit in the upcoming weeks

(Achtung: das hier hat keinen Anspruch auf Vollständigkeit, die Links zu Amazon habe ich nur der Einfachheit wegen gewählt. Amazon hat auch nicht immer das günstigste Angebot! Diese Anleitung und Empfehlung muss nicht für jeden passen! Die Gesetzlichen Bestimmungen die hier erwähnt wurden sind Stand Jan 2018 in Deutschland, ich habe keine Ahnung, wie das in anderen Ländern aussieht!)

Aber ich wurde jetzt schon des öfteren gefragt, wie soll man anfangen, mit Drohnen und ist das nicht fürchterlich teuer...

... und da fängt es ja schon an. Eigentlich sagt man ja nicht mehr "Drohne" sondern eher "Multicopter". Die Medien haben dem Begriff "Drohne" einen so negativen Stempel aufgedrückt, dass die Community oft lieber was anderes hört. Ich nutze den Begriff hier aber doch. "Copter" fühlt sich irgendwie hölzern an.

bevor man überhaupt fliegt.

Es ist schon auch wichtig, sich mal mit dem Regeln im Bereich Modellflug / Drohnen vertraut zu machen, bevor man sich überhaupt so ein Ding zulegt. Es gibt nämlich viele Leute, die einfach aus Unwissenheit in diesem Bereich Straftaten begehen.

Grundsätzlich hilft es aber, den gesunden Menschenverstand einzuschalten.

Disclaimer: das ist mein Verständnis von den Regeln und das, was ich mir dazu angelesen habe. Es soll eine Einstiegshilfe sein, ist aber sicher nicht 100% vollständig und deckt sicher nicht alle Fälle ab! Lest auch die Drohnenverordnung einfach noch mal durch.

Auch wenn ich selbst die Drohnenverordnung für zum Teil ziemlichen Blödsinn halte, plädiere ich dafür, dass man sich daran hält, denn sonst kommt es für alle nur noch schlimmer!

Haftpflicht Versicherung

Das wird auch beim Kauf eines Copters immer wieder unter den Teppich gekehrt: man ist verpflichtet in Deutschland eine Haftpflichtversicherung zu haben, die Drohnen- / Modellflug mit abdeckt. Und dann auch in entsprechender Höhe. Des weiteren sollte in den Bestimmungen der Versicherung das "wild" Fliegen erlaubt sein, d.h. einfach über irgend einem Acker fliegen. Wenn das nämlich nicht drin steht, kann man nur auf Modellflugplätzen fliegen.

Die meisten "normalen" Haftpflichversicherungen haben Modellflug explizit ausgeschlossen oder nicht implizit eingeschlossen. Deswegen wird man sich in den meisten Fällen eine gesonderte Versicherung zulegen müssen. Da gibt es in einigen Foren ein paar echt gute Vergleiche, beispielsweise im drohnen-forum.de.

Ich selbst habe mir eine Versicherung bei der Deutschen Modellsport Organisation DMO besorgt.

Und nicht vergessen: um Probleme zu vermeiden, sollte man den Versicherungsnachweis beim Fliegen mit sich führen!

Kennzeichnungspflicht

Drohnen ab einem Startgewicht von mehr als 250g benötigen eine Kennzeichnung mit einem nicht brennbaren Schild, auf dem die Adresse des Drohnen Besitzers steht.

Der Sinn dahinter ist sicherlich fraglich, Verstöße dagegen könnten aber theoretisch mit hohen Geldstrafen geahndet werden.

Davon wird sich der Terrorist sicher abschrecken lassen, sein Drohne mit Sprengstoff zu beladen - denn ohne Adresplakette darf er ja nicht starten -

Gewicht der Drohne

ist erstaunlicherweise auch vom Gesetz her wichtig. Denn alles was leichter als 250g ist, gilt als "Spielzeug" und bedarf kaum weiterer Regeln (abgesehen von der Haftpflicht). And die Regeln, wo man fliegen darf muss man sich aber natürlich auch halten!

zw. 250g und 2kg muss die Drohne gekennzeichnet werden, darf aber sonst - gemäß aller anderen Regeln - frei geflogen werden (wenn die Versicherung vorhanden).

zw. 2 und 5kg darf man die Drohne nur dann fliegen, wenn man den berühmt berüchtigten "Drohnenführerschein" sein eigen nennt. Kostet auch noch mal was...

Alles was schwerer ist als 5kg benötigt eine gesonderte Aufstiegserlaubnis von der Luftfahrtbehörde.

Wo darf ich fliegen?

Eigentlich ist das keine positiv, sondern eine Negativliste - müsste also heißen, wo darf ich nicht fliegen.

Grundsätzlich gilt: auch bei Flug per Videobildübertragung (FPV) immer nur in Sichtweite bleiben! Und grundsätzlich nicht höher als 100m. (beim normalen FPV-Flug nicht höher als 30m)

Es gibt aber noch eine Menge Flugverbotszonen, z.B. um Flughäfen (2km von der Außengrenze weg), öffentlichen Gebäuden, Justizgebäuden, Autobahnen und Seestraßen / Verkehrswege auf Flüssen etc. und Industrieanlagen. Das ist schwer zu erkennen, wenn man sich in der Gegend nicht auskennt. Deswegen mal im Internet nach "No-Fly-Zones" suchen, da gibt es Karten. Und natürlich gibt’s dafür auch ne App

Die teureren Kameradrohnen haben teilweise diese No-Fly-Zones auch einprogrammiert. Eine DJI Phantom mit aktueller Firmware lässt sich z.B. in der Nähe eines Flughafens so ohne weiteres gar nicht mehr starten. Ob das nun Gängelung oder ein Sicherheitsvorteil ist - darüber erhitzen sich die Gemüter...

Außerdem ist es verboten über "Wohngrundstücken" zu fliegen, es sei denn, man hat die Erlaubnis des Eigentümers / Mieters. Also in der Stadt ist fliegen damit eigentlich grundsätzlich nicht erlaubt!

Man darf auch nicht über Menschenansammlungen fliegen - mehr als ca. 5-10 Personen reichen da schon.

Naturschutzgebiete sind auch tabu. Landschaftsschutzgebiete gehen, es sei denn, es ist ausdrücklich verboten.

Grundsätzlich sollte man niemanden gefährden, seine Privatsphäre verletzen oder ihn einfach nur stören. Nehmt Rücksicht!

Eigentlich alles "Gesunder Menschenverstand", oder? Aber dennoch kommen immer wieder ein paar Super-Spasten auf die Idee, auf dem Münchner Flughafen startende / landende Flugzeuge möglichst nah zu filmen.

Wenn ihr euch nicht sicher seid, kann man bei der zuständigen Gemeinde im Zweifel auch mal anfragen. Die sollten Auskunft geben können.

Eigentlich ist das Fliegen überall sonst erlaubt, es sei denn, der Grundstücksbesitzer verbietet es. Grundsätzlich darf man ja auch z.B. private (und natürlich auch öffentliche) Waldstücke betreten zu persönlichen Erholung (wenn die nicht eingezäunt sind - sobald der Zugang beschränkt ist, darf ich auch nicht drauf und dort starten). Solange man da nicht allzu sehr stört, darf man dort auch fliegen.

Falls der Besitzer allerdings es euch untersagt, müsst ihr gehen. Aber: den Überflug kann er meiner Meinung nach - sofern es sich nicht um ein Wohngrundstück handelt, denn da ist's eh verboten - nicht wirklich verbieten. Insbesondere in größerer Höhe - wenn man da auf Kopfhöhe rumfliegt ist das sicher was anderes.

Was darf ich und was nicht?

Wieder: Gesunder Menschenverstand! und Respekt gegenüber anderen und deren Privatsphäre.

Also: Privatsphäre ausspionieren ist natürlich verboten. Also ist nix mit der Drohne mal eben in Nachbars Schlafzimmer filmen oder die sexy Nachbarin beim Sonnenbad beobachten.

Kleine Anmerkung am Rande: das geht unbemerkt 100%ig nicht! Selbst mit den teureren Drohnen ist es aus einer Höhe von mehr als ca. 30m kaum noch möglich eine Person zu erkennen, geschweige denn Details die ein Ausspionieren "interessant" machen würden.

Außerdem müsst ihr, wenn ihr eure Videos auf Youtube oder ähnliche Plattformen hochladen wollt darauf achten, dass ihr nicht gegen den Datenschutz verstoßt. Personen müssten theoretisch der Veröffentlichung zustimmen!

Gefährdung: die Propeller von so einer Drohne drehen sich mit mehreren 1000 Umdrehungen pro Minute und sind relativ "scharf". Wenn da eine Hand, ein Arm oder ein Gesicht dazwischen kommt, sind heftige Verletzungen vorprogrammiert! Denkt daran, dass so eine Drohne auch mal einen Fehler haben kann. Die Elektronik versagt, so ein Propeller bricht, ein Lager klemmt, die Software hat Schluckauf, was auch immer. Und dann fallen da 1,5kg vom Himmel oder fliegen mit Vollgas gen China (wenn der GPS Empfang ausfällt z.B.)!

Also denkt an den Worst-Case! Kein Foto/Video ist es wert, dass da jemand zu Schaden kommt!

Nachtflug: ist in Deutschland für Privatleute verboten. Also man darf von Sonnenaufgang bis Sonnenuntergang +/- 30 Minuten fliegen.

Autonomes Fliegen: In Deutschland verboten. Der Pilot muss immer Herr über sein Flugfahrzeug sein, auch wenn es unbemannt ist. Alle Automatismen funktionieren zwar, man muss aber zugegen sein und eingreifen können. Und es muss in Sichtweite geschehen.

Fliegen Außerhalb der Sichtweite: Auch wenn die modernen Kameradrohnen eine hohe Reichweite für die Videoübertragung haben (DJI rühmt sich mit bis zu 2km), ist es in Deutschland verboten außerhalb der Sichtweite zu fliegen.

FPV Flug: Das bedeutet, man fliegt mit einer Brille vor den Augen, die einem das Video-Signal der Drohne zeigt. Das sieht so aus, als würde man "auf" der Drohne sitzen und selbst fliegen. Einfach nur geil.... so sieht das dann aus. Aber auch das ist gesetzlich geregelt. Auch hier: nur in Sichtweite. Wenn die Drohne mehr als 250g wiegt, dann auch nur mit Spotter und normalerweise nicht höher als 30m.

Ein Spotter ist eine Person, die soz. aufpasst, dass keine Gefahr übersehen wird und den Copter auch immer im Blick hat. Das ist auch wirklich hifreich, wenn man mal wieder gecrashed ist. Nur weil man das Video-Bild hat, weiß man noch lange nicht, wo man eigentlich ist!

Racer vs. Fliegende Kamera

Zurück zum Thema, wie fange ich an mit den Drohnen.

Da muss man sich auch erst mal schlau machen, was man eigentlich will. Im Grunde gibt es für den privaten Sektor 2 "Arten" von Drohnen: Fliegende Kameras und Racer. Und dann gibt es noch die Frage zu klären, ob man lieber eine Drohne von der Stange kauft oder doch sein handwerkliches Geschick nutzt und sich selbst was baut.

Fliegende Kameras

Das sind die Dinger, die extrem einfach zu fliegen sind (meistens) und auch die meisten Probleme in den Medien machen. Wenn irgendsoein Voll-Horst in der Einflugschneise von einem Flughafen rumfliegt, ist das eigentlich immer jemand mit einer Phantom oder so was in der Art.

Das liegt in der Natur der Sache: diese Drohnen sind dafür gemacht, dass man sich aufs Fotos oder Videos Schießen konzentrieren kann, und das Fliegen findet nur nebenbei statt.

Ernstzunehmende Vertreter dieser Kategorie Drohnen haben eigentlich immer einen GPS-Sensor, Kompass und Höhenmesser an Board, mit dem man das Teil einfach an den Himmel nageln kann. Wenn man über die Fernsteuerung (oft auch Sender oder "Funke" genannt) keine Eingaben macht, bleibt so eine Phantom da stehen, wo man sie hin manövriert hat. Und da bleibt sie dann so lange, bis der Akku leer ist.

Diese Teile haben als Design-Ziel, dass das Fliegen in den Hintergrund tritt, d.h. die Technik nimmt einem so gut wie alles ab. so muss man sich noch nicht mal Gedanken über den Akku machen - ist der nahezu leer, fliegt die Drohne selbsttätig (wenn man nicht eingreift) zum Startpunkt zurück und landet dort (GPS sei Dank). Und ja, da kann man eingreifen - wäre ja sonst nicht erlaubt

Die Technik

Die ist bei dieser Art von Drohnen eher Foto-Technik denn Flugtechnik. Das Fliegen dient quasi nur als Plattform und ist nicht der Mittelpunkt. Man kann dort meistens auch nur wenig "rumbasteln". Allerdings machen diese Drohnen auch normalerweise weniger Crashes, weshalb ein "Basteln" nur wenig Sinn machen würde. Vor allem will man das gar nichts riskieren, da die Teile recht kostenintensiv sind.

Das bedeutet auch, die Lernkurve ist recht flach: Jeder kann so ein Ding nach der Anleitung abflugbereit machen und ne Runde drehen. Das ist kein Hexenwerk. Viel können / üben muss man dafür nicht.

Eigentlich wären das die Idealen Einstiegsgeräte, nur leider halt recht teuer in der Anschaffung.

Für wen?

Wenn ihr also atemberaubende Fotos und Videos aus der Höhe machen wollt, ist so eine Kameradrohne sicherlich eine Überlegung wert.

Ich habe recht schnell rausgefunden, dass es für mich nicht das alleinig richtige war. So eine Phantom 3 fliegt sich wirklich super einfach, die Fotos und Videos sind toll. Aber dynamische Videos lassen sich damit nur schwer drehen. Der Gimbal entfernt jegliche Dynamik. Das Teil fliegt sich eher wie ein "Omnibus".

Wen das Fliegen interessiert und die Videos sollen echte Flugmanöver zeigen, der sollte lieber auf Racing Drohnen setzen.

Auf was sollte ein Anfänger achten

Das Problem mit diesen Kamera-Drohnen ist, dass sie recht teuer sind - diese ganze Technik kostet halt. Und leider macht es überhaupt keinen Sinn, eine Billig-Drohne für diesen Zweck zu kaufen.

WiFi in diesem Segment sicher eine Möglichkeit, um damit auch die Steuerung der Drohne zu übernehmen. Bei all meinen Versuchen mit verschiedenen Drohnen hat Wifi aber leider gezeigt, dass es eben nicht für so was geeignet ist. Die hochpreisigeren Exemplare haben jedoch eigentlich immer einen eigenen Übertragungsstandard (DJI setzt z.B. auf eine LTE ähnliche Übertragungstechnik) oder übertragen einfach ein SD-Bild (meistens als normales RF-Video-Signal), speichern aber selbst ein HD-Bild auf einem lokalen Datenträger ab.

Achtet darauf, dass die Drohne die Videos selbst auf eine SD-Karte o. Ä. speichert. 4K-Videos lassen sich nur schwer störungsfrei übertragen, die Aufnahmen leiden stark drunter (selbst die aktuellen DJI-Drohnen übertragen kein 4k Bild!).

Die Drohne sollte die Kamera über einen sog. Gimbal stabilisieren. Da sich der Copter in die Richtung kippen muss, in die er fliegt, ist es nötig, die Kamera entgegen zu neigen. Das erledigt das Gimbal. Hat man kein Gimbal, wackelt das Bild, so wie die Drohne eben auch. Das ist einer der Hauptunterschiede zu Racern: da will man ja, dass man die Dynamik des Videos mit bekommt, und sich das Bild neigt!

Also, meine Empfehlung im Bereich semi-professionelle Kameradrohne wäre (wobei ich da nur wenige getestet habe - es gibt sicher noch andere):

DJI Phantom 3 oder 4 (muss nicht die Pro sein, sollte aber auch nicht die Standard sein)
Yuneek Typhoon Q 500 (kann auch 4k, ist deutlich größer als die Phantom, aber auch günstiger)
DJI Mavic Pro (zusammenklappbar - super für unterwegs).

Die Dinger sind natürlich alle eine recht hohe Investition. Mit Zubehör ist man da gleich mal gut 1200 bis 1800€ los +/-. Will man einfach nur mal reinschnuppern, gibt es auch Modelle, die einem da helfen, aber qualitativ bei weitem hinter den oben genannten liegen. Da gibt es Modelle schon ab ca. 200-300€. Jedoch ist es auf Grund der doch recht komplexen Technik eher ratsam sich das zu sparen und was brauchbares zu kaufen (z.B. gebraucht). Ist man sich aber nicht sicher und bewusst, dass die billigeren Vertreter dieser Gattung auch mindere Qualität (sowohl was die Flugeigenschaften, die Sicherheit als auch die Foto und Videoqualität betrifft) liefern, dann wäre das ein Einstieg.

In dem Seqment sind das eigentlich alles sog. "Ready to Fly"-Sets, man benötigt also nichts weiter als das Teil (evtl. noch einen Satz Propeller, und den ein oder andern Akku). Das sind alles im Normalfall rundum-sorglos-Pakete. Da sind ein oder zwei Akkus dabei, meist auch Ersatzpropeller, eine Fernbedienung und manchmal sogar ein Bildschirm, welcher das Bild der Drohnenkamera zeigt.

DIY Kameradrohne

Das ist natürlich auch möglich. Durch die vielen Verbauten Komponenten (GPS, Kompass, Höhenmesser, am besten Redundant mit Luftdruck und Sonar, Steuerung der Kamera / des Gimbal etc) ist das aber deutlich mehr Aufwand als eine Racing Drohne zu basteln. Und auf deutlich mehr Recherche nötig.

Für Anfänger in dem Bereich ist das sicher nicht das richtige. Baut zunächst mal was einfacheres...

Racer (FPV)

Das sind die Formel-1 Boliden unter den Drohnen. Diese Dinger sind recht schnell (100km/h keine Seltenheit) und man fliegt damit Rennen - wenn man will. Viele Nutzen die aber auch für sogenanntes "Freestyle" fliegen - im Endeffekt macht man dabei Stunts, Rollen, Flips etc.

Da die Racer für Crashes ausgelegt sind, kann man auch mehr risiken eingehen beim Fliegen - Stunts nahe am Boden, Fliegen mit High-Speed durch Wälder...

FPV steht hierbei für "First Person View", man hat so eine Brille auf, die einem ein Videobild Zeigt als würde man "auf" der Drohne sitzen und mitfliegen. Das hier wäre so ein Video - so ähnlich war es auch in meiner Brille zu sehen, allerdings in schlechterer Qualität.

Das Feld der FPV-Racer ist mittlerweile extrem... es gibt tausende Sets, Technologien etc. Das ist kaum zu überblicken für jemanden, der neu ist.

Hier mal ein paar Vorschläge, womit man anfangen könnte:

Tiny Whoop / Micro Quad

Für den Anfang sind die FPV-Flieger in der Tiny Whoop-Klasse (ich nenn die mal so, wenn man nach Tiny Whoop sucht, bekommt man viele Treffer) echt super. Die kann man auch in der Wohnung fliegen, draußen geht auch schon mal, wenn es nahezu windstill ist. Die Anschaffung ist nicht allzu teuer und die Teile machen Spass.

Beispielsweise die Blade Inductrix FPV

Das Teil macht einfach nur Spass! Leider benötigt man dafür eine Spektrum kompatible Funke. Aber dazu später noch mehr.

wobei das nicht ganz stimmt, ich hab mir meine TinyWhoop auch selbst zusammengebaut: Acrowhoop Flight Controller inkl. Taranis Empfänger, Mircomotor Wharehouse Insane Motoren!

Ein weiterer Vertreter dieser Indoor-Variante, allerdings mit deutlich mehr Dampf, als die Inductrix ist der Armor 90 (ist auch etwas größer)

Das Teil ist nur unwesentlich teurer als die Blade, hat aber durch die Brushless Motoren wesentlich mehr Power und kann dennoch einen Crash verkraften. Der Flight-Controller ist ein "Standard" FC und läuft mit Betaflight! Betaflight ist die Software auf dem Flight Controller (FC). Das ist wichtig, da proprietäre software - gerade bei billigerer China-Ware - einen nichts anpassen / einstellen lässt. Z.B. der die FPV-Micro-Drohnen von hubsan:

Die Hubsan-Dinger sind toll, haben eine Funke mit eingebautem Video-Monitor drin und, das beste, man kann auch eine Brille nutzen, denn das Video-Bild ist ein normales 5,8GHz RF-Signal, dass z.B. auch eine Fatshark Brille "versteht" (siehe unten). Ich hab mit dem Vorgänger von diesem Copter-Modell echt viel spass gehabt. Allerdings: die Software von der Funke und dem Hubsan ist proprietäre. Da kann man nicht auf ein update hoffen, wenn was klemmt.

Außerdem hat der Hubsan auch brushed Motoren, deswegen würde ich eher zum Armor90 tendieren. Wobei man da noch eine Funke braucht. Und durch die stärkeren Motoren kann man auch mal einen Flug nach draußen wagen, selbst wenn es ein wenig windiger ist.

Damit kann man sicher super anfangen, die Teile machen Spass. Ich fliege mit der Blade-Inductrix und dem Armor90 im Winter hier in der Wohnung rum - man muss ja im Training bleiben...

Die Aufnahme der Videos / Fotos geschieht bei diesen Micro-Flitzern immer im Empfangsgerät! Die Drohne selbst kann nichts aufnehmen. Das ist natürlich etwas blöde, da die Qualität eher so meh ist und man immer wieder Störungen im Bild hat - insbesondere, wenn man im Haus rumfliegt.

größere Racer

Größere Racer bieten natürlich gleich viel mehr Power und somit auch mehr Möglichkeiten, was das Fliegen betrifft. Außerdem kann man da auch besseres Kameraequipment anbringen das FullHD-Aufnahmen in 60fps ermöglicht - sieht natürlich deutlich besser aus, als was man bei den oben genannten Winzlingen aufnehmen kann.

Auch diese gibt es natürlich schon "fertig" im set. z.B. von Graupner.

Diese Sets haben den Vorteil, dass alles in einem Kit beisammen ist, und man "nur" noch eine Funke benötigt. Da unterscheidet man zw. "RTF" also "Ready to Fly", "BNF" bind and Fly und "ARF" - Almost ready to Fly.

BNF - Bind and Fly-Sets setzen voraus, dass man einen bestimten Typ Sender hat. Oben wird z.B. ein Graupner-Sender vorausgesetzt
RTF hat im Normalfall gleich eine (billige) Funkte mit im Set dabei. Für den Einstieg sicher ganz nett, aber man ärgert sich (hab ich) dass man dann noch eine Funke daheim rumfliegen hat... oder, wenn man zum Fliegen geht, mehrere Sender mit sich rumschleppt.
ARF sind normalerweise ohne Empfänger. D.h. man kann seinen eigenen Empfänger entsprechend seiner eigenen Funke nutzen. (und anschließen!)

Ein Beispiel für ein ARF-Set wäre das hier:

Die beliebteste Variante sind die sog. 5" Racer oder 250er Klasse. Das bedeutet, die Propeller haben 5 Zoll und der Motorabstand beträgt 250mm (wobei das mehr so ein ca. Wert ist). 5 Zoll trifft eigentlich eher immer zu. Der Motorabstand ist mittlerweile nicht mehr auf 250mm festgelegt, häufig findet man Rahmen, die einen Motorabstand von 210mm vorgeben.

Die 250er / 5" Drohnen werden gerne beim Racing verwendet (z.B. in der Drone Racing League DRL). Die sind im Verhältnis von Gewicht zu Power auch wirklich gut aufgestellt. So ein guter Quad kann gut 4-5kg Schub entwickeln, wiegt aber nur ca. 600g. Da passiert was, wenn man das Gas hochdreht

U250g Racer

Jetzt kommen immer mehr die sog. U250g-Racer in Mode: Racer mit einem Gewicht von unter 250g. Das wurde durch die neue Drohnenverordnung wichtig (welche auch in anderen Ländern in ähnlicher Form existiert und eine 250g Grenze etabliert). Diese haben zumeist Propeller mit 3 oder 4 Zoll. Die haben natürlich viel weniger Leistung, wiegen aber auch viel weniger. Vom Flugverhalten sind die den 250ern sicherlich in vielen Bereichen unterlegen, aber fühlen sich auch in vielen ebenbürtig an.

Diese Art Quads hat den Vorteil, dass man ohne Spotter - also auch mal allein - FPV fliegen kann, ohne gleich Probleme mit den Gesetzeshütern fürchten zu müssen.

noch größer?

Geht natürlich auch. Wer mag, kann sich auch einen 10" Copter bauen. Diese sind dann aber zumeist deswegen so groß, weil man Kameraequipment mit tragen möchte. Also eher die DIY-Version von einer Kameradrohne...

Lipo

Das ist der Akku der den Copter mit Strom versorgt. Lipo kommt von "Litium Polymere" und zeigt die Technik dahinter. Diese Dinger sind echte Power-Wunder. So ein Lipo kann gerne mal mehr als 100A Strom liefern!

Achtung: Ladegeräte sind in fast keinem Drohnen-Set dabei! bei einigen RTF-Sets sind (recht schlechte) Ladegeräte im Lieferumfang enthalten. Man sollte aber wirklich die 50€ für ein brauchbares Ladegerät investieren. Wenn so ein Lipo kaputt geht ist das auch nicht gut. Aber ihr benötigt ein Ladegerät das Litium Polymer-Akkus (Lipos) laden kann! Für den Anfang reicht sicherlich ein einfacher iMax B6, damit hab ich auch angefangen (ok, ich hatte am Schluss 3 davon - aber so kann man 3 oder mehr Limos gleichzeitig laden ) Auf Amazon gibt es da auch noch eine Menge Alternativen. Am besten sind wohl momentan die Lader von ISDT, kann ich nur empfehlen.

Achtet beim Kauf drauf, dass ihr nicht einen China-Clone bekommt - die messen sehr häufig falsche Werte und überladen gerne mal eine Zelle! Das kann gefährlich werden. Also nicht am falschen Ende sparen.

Apropos Zellen: Lipo-Zellen liefern immer 3,7 (leer) bis 4.2 Volt (voll). Um höhere Voltzahlen zu erreichen werden mehre Zellen zusammengeschaltet. So werden z.b. für Quads meist 3 oder 4 Zellen seriell geschaltet, man nennt das dann einen 3S oder 4S Lipo (genau genommen einen 1P3S also 1x parallel, 3xSeriell).

Da die Zellen mehr oder minder getrennt voneinander sind, können sie sich auch unterschiedlich laden / entladen. Deswegen müssen Ladegeräte das sog. "Balance Charging" beherrschen. D.h. sie messen die Voltzahlen der einzelnen Zellen und sorgen dafür das keiner überladen wird und alle am schluss gleiche Spannung haben.

Aus diesem Grund haben Lipos meistens auch zwei Arten von Anschlüssen: Den, über den der Strom abgezogen wird (Meist ein sog. XT60 Anschluss bei den größeren Drohnen, XT30 bei den kleineren) und einen Balancer-Clip.

Die Voltzahl bestimmt wie schnell sich so ein Motor drehen kann. Je größer die Volt-Zahl, desto größer die maximale Power. Aktuelle 5"-Modelle fliegen im Normalfall mit 3S oder 4S, einige verkraften auch 5S.

Die Winzlinge under den Coptern, die Micro-Copter, fliegen normalerweise mit 2S oder 3S lipos.

Tiny Whoops nehmen 1S lipos.

man sollte sich zwingend ein wenig in die Technik und die Gefahren von Lipos einlesen, denn sonst geht so ein Teil bei stark unsachgemäßer Behandlung gerne mal recht spektakulär in Flammen auf! Das ist bei sachgemäßer Behandlung zwar kein Problem, aber man muss es halt wissen.

Basteln

Wenn man sich so einen Racer zulegen will, muss man sich zwangsläufig mit der Technik auseinander setzen. Das hat mehrere Gründe:

es gibt schon fertig zusammengebaute Sets, jedoch hat man da häufig nicht die Premium-Qualität
man wird, wenn man so dynamisch fliegt wie es so ein Racer eigentlich verlangt, 100%ig crashen und es geht 100%ig irgendwann was zu Bruch. Dann muss man es reparieren.

Wem also der Lötkolben ein Graus ist, wer keinen Bock hat, sich mit der Technik auseinander zu setzen, der sollte von einem "echten" Racer eher die Finger lassen. Oder extrem vorsichtig fliegen

Die Komponenten:

Wie fliegt eigentlich so ein Ding und was muss man wissen. Deswegen hier kurz mal erläutert, was man braucht:

Der FC oder Flight Controller

das "Gehirn" von so einem Copter. Das ist normalerweise eine erschreckend kleine Platine mit 30 oder 20mm Lochabstand (für die Montage am Frame). Der FC regelt die Lage und nimmt die Befehle vom Empfänger entgegen (die dieser wiederum von der Funke erhält)

An Hardware mangelt es da überhaupt nicht, bekannte Marken sind Matek, TBS, Flyduino, Raceflight, Betaflight, HGLRC. Fast alle setzen auf die Opensource-FC-Software "Betaflight".

Betaflight ist die Software (das Betriebssystem) des FC und man wird sie selbst konfigurieren müssen. Selbst bei einem Set wird man sich mit damit auseinander setzen müssen. Zu Informationen dazu, wie man die Software einrichtet und konfiguriert, schaut euch die Videos von Joshua Bardwell an - sind zwar auf Englisch aber echt informativ. Ich mach evtl. hier auch noch mal den ein oder anderen Beitrag dazu - wenn ich wieder oft gefragt werde

In der von mir genannten Riege sind Fylduino und Raceflight Ausnahmen: die setzen nicht auf Betaflight, sondern haben eine eigene Software. Flyduino hat als Markenname KISS etabliert und das steht für "Keep it Super Simple". Die KISS FCs sind auch recht einfach zu verlöten. Aber haben nicht so viele Features, wie die meisten anderen Betaflight Fcs. Raceflight ist im Endeffekt das gleiche (wobei sie jetzt wohl Teile der Software opensource gemacht haben).

Ich persönlich habe die besten Erfahrungen mit KISS-Fcs gemacht. Die sind recht einfach zu verdrahten und die Firma sitzt in Deutschland (Hamburg glaub ich). Der Support von denen ist auch gut. Allerdings können die preislich natürlich nicht mit der Chinaware mithalten...

Am Einfachsten zu verbauen sind sog. AIO-Fcs. Das sind "All in one" Flight controller, die haben z.B. noch ein OSD mit auf der Platine, und ein PDF (beides s.u.) und manchmal sogar noch die ESCs...

Von KISS gibt es da das AIO CC. Die sind gerade für Anfänger super simpel zu verlöten - da muss nämlich nur der Motor dran, der Empfänger und eigentlich kann es dann schon los gehen! Allerdings sind die mit 99€ auch nicht ganz billig.

Kritiker betonen gerne, dass wenn irgendwas kaputt geht - und wenn man crashed, passiert das schon mal - dass man immer gleich die ganze 100€-Platine tauschen muss. Das ist wohl richtig... Aber dafür geht es super simpel. Und bei einem Crash, bei dem der FC komplett kaputt geht, da wäre auch bei einer Trennung der Komponenten viel hin gewesen.

Betaflight Fcs gibt es viel zu viele um die hier aufzulisten. Mal abgesehen davon, dass ich wirklich nur einige wenige getestet habe. Joshua Bardwell hat eine Übersicht über die Seiner Meinung nach besten gemacht - youtube

Von Flyduino gibt es natürlich auch einen "normalen" FlightController. Den KISS FC. Die Version 1 davon bekommt man gerade recht günstig, da die Version 2 mittlerweile verfügbar ist.

Im Moment ist noch kein Unterschied zu merken, habe ich mir sagen lassen. Ich habe hier aber biser nur die V1.03 laufen gehabt.

Die Motoren

Da unterscheidet man zwischen brushed und brushless Motoren. Erstere werden hauptsächlich für Micro-Quads wie z.B. Tiny Whoops verwendet. Brushed Motoren sind leicht anzuschließen und zu steuern (2 Kabel dran. Je nach angelegter Spannung, dreht sich der Motor). Allerdings haben diese Motoren einen rech hohen Verschleiß und gehen schnell kaputt. Brushless Motoren haben im Normalfall auch deutlich mehr Power und weniger Verschleiß, wiegen dafür aber mehr. Die brushless Motoren für Copter sind im normalfall 3-Phasen Motoren und haben somit 3 Kabel - eins für jede Phase.

Die Motoren haben verschiedene Kennzahlen, die man kennen sollte: Die wichtigste Zahl ist die Größe des Motors. z.B. 2206 bedeutet 22mm Durchmesser, 6mm Höhe. Je größer diese Zahlen, desto Mehr Kraft hat so ein Motor. Aber er benötigt dann im Normalfall auch mehr Strom.

Die zweite Zahl ist die KV-Zahl. Das heißt wie viel Umdrehungen schafft so ein Motor pro Volt. Üblich sind z.B. 2500kv = d.h. bei 16,8V sind max 42.000 Umdrehungen drin!

Bei einem 5"-Copter wird man auf normalerweise 2206 / 2207 und irgendwas zw. 2100 und 2500kv setzen. Ich hatte z.B. die "Schubkraft 2206, 2500kv" Motoren auf einem meiner Quads. Bei einem heftigeren Crash hat es mir da einen Motor zerlegt. Momentan fliege ich auf meinem 5"er Cobra 2100kv Motoren.

Grundsätzlich gilt zu sagen, dass man sich vorher evtl. mal auf youtube über Motoren schlau machen sollte, jedoch reichen für den Anfang vermutlich billigere. Die Teile reizt man eh nicht aus. Ich würde evtl. auf DYS Motoren gehen, sind zwar nicht die Effizientesten, aber dafür recht robust.

Sehr beliebt sind Motoren von Lumier oder gebrandete Motoren von bekannten Quad-FPV-Piloten wie Mr Steele, oder Skizzo.

ESC

Das sind die "Electronic Speed Controller" die man für brushless Motoren benötigt. Oft auch einfach "Regler" genannt. Diese nehmen das (heutzutage meist digitale) Signal entgegen und übersetzen das in eine Drehzahl. Die ESC steuern auch die 3 Phasen des Brushless-Motors. D.h. auf der einen Seite geht rein: Strom +/-, Steuersignal. Raus gehen die 3 Kabel für den Motor.

Bei den ESC ist es wichtig, dass die gut mit eurem FC können. Sehr verbreitet sind momentan ESCs mit der Software BLHeli drauf. Aber auch hier gibt es welche von Flyduino mit einer proprietären Firmware: den 25A Race ESC oder den gleichen mit 32A.

Was bedeutet das? Nun ja. Die KISS ESCs haben (im gegensatz zu vielen billigeren Varianten) eine Maximale Ampere Anzahl, bei der sie irgendwann einfach abschalten. Würden sie das nicht tun, würde die Platine durchbrennen.

Das ist äußerst ärgerlich wenn das im Flug passiert, sie aber spektakulär aus

Achtet darauf dass die max Ampere eurer ESCs zu den Motoren passen. Insbesondere wenn die nicht geregelt sind!

Das PDB

Das Power Distribution Board. Irgendwie muss der Strom ja vom Akku zum Motor gelangen und sollte auf dem Weg auch gleich noch so Dinge wie die Kamera und FlightController betreiben. Das PDB regelt genau das. Es gibt dort normalerweise ausgänge für die ESC, 5v/12v geregelte Ausgänge für Empfänger, FC, Kamera etc.

Diese Teile sind im Normalfall recht billig. Kein großer Kostenfaktor. Achtet nur darauf, dass die anvisierte Ampere-Anzahl auch vom PDB verkraftet werden kann. Einige PDB haben auch noch ein OSD eingebaut, was einem dann wirklich hilft, die übersicht zu bewahren. Ich hab so ein PDB von Matek in meinem 5-Zöller Lisam210.

Empfänger / Funke

das Ding ist der Empfänger für die Steuersignale der Fernbedienung (Funke). Was mir am Anfang überhaupt nicht klar war, war das jeder Empfänger nur das Protokoll eines Herstellers spricht. Hat man also einen Empfänger von FrSKY, kann man keine Funke von Spectrum nutzen. Steht so irgendwie nirgends erklärt... fand ich mal wichtig zu erwähnen.

Es gibt da momentan wohl ein paar "Große" Player am Markt:

Spektrum: war schon immer da war wohl einer der ersten, der Funken für Privatleute angeboten hat. Fast alle RTF-Modelle setzen auf das Spektrum Protokoll
FlySky: bietet recht günstige Funken an. Ich habe dieses System nie ausprobiert, die Funke fühlt sich aber echt bililg an
FRSky: wohl eine der Beliebtesten Marken unter den Herstellern von Fernsteuerungen. Die setzen zu 100% auf OpenTX und das macht es so flexibel. Außerdem können sie Telemetrie, ich bin mir nicht sicher ob alle anderen das können
Graupner: ein Hersteller aus Deutschland der mit seinem HOTT-System wohl große Reichweiten erreicht. Auch können sie, ähnlich wie FrSky, telemetriedaten an die Funke senden.

Ich würde da immer wieder FrSKY empfehlen. Da gibt es eine recht günstige Variante, die Taranis QX7.

Ich persönlich würde aber die Taranis X9D Plus Special Edition wählen. Die ist zwar teurer hat aber deutlich bessere Komponenten verbaut und fühlt sich für mich einfach wertiger und passender an.

FrSky hat den großen Vorteil, dass sie als Betriebssystem der Funke OpenTX einsetzen. Das ist ein OpenSource Betriebssystem für Modellbau Fernsteuerungen! Damit lassen sich tolle Dinge machen. Außerdem bieten fast alle Receiver von FrSky einen Telemetrie-Kanal an. Damit können Informationen wie z.B. der Ladezustand des Lipo an die Funke übertragen werden. Das ist wichtig zu wissen, wenn so ein lipo zu weit entladen wird ist er im besten Fall einfach nur hin... im Schlimmsten Fall wird der Quad zum Feuerball!

Da scheiden sich auch die Geister. Einige mögen es lieber, diese Information in einem sog. OSD angezeigt zu bekommen. Das ist Geschmackssache.

VTX

Das ist die Abkürzung für den Video-Sender. Der ist erstaunlicherweise nicht proprietär. Wenn ihr einen 5,8GHz sender habt, funktioniert der mit jedem 5,8GHz Empfänger (Brille oder Bildschirm). Das Signal ist dabei ein analoges RF Signal. Wer sich noch an die früheren Röhren TVs erinnern kann - genau so was, halt nur viel kleiner

Die beliebtesten Hersteller dafür sind wohl TBS mit ihrem TBS Unify Pro, Matek mit dem Matek VTX HV und Immersion RC Tramp.

Ich habe hier momentan den TBS Unify Pro im Einsatz und den Matek VTX Hv. Ich kann den Matek aber wirklich empfehlen, kostet die Hälfte vom TBS Unify und hat einige Vorteile gegenüber dem Unify Pro. So hat der Matek z.B. LEDs die auf einen Blick anzeigen, welcher Sender und welches Frequenzband eingestellt ist. Außerdem hat er einen geregelten 5V-Ausgang, der für 1A ausgelegt ist. Was für den Betrieb von einigen FPV-Kameras ganz interessant ist.

Dafür hat er "nur" 32 mögliche Kanäle, der TBS derer 40. Das war für mich bisher kein Problem, allerdings kann das zu einem Problem werden, wenn mal wirklich "Racen" will.

Außerdem hat der TBS einen Sog. PID-Mode. Das bedeutet, er sendet nicht gleich beim start mit voller Sendeleistung, sondern nur minimal. So dass man die anderen Racer weniger stört und doch an den Einstellungen feilen kann.

Ich würde für den Anfang aber auf jeden Fall den Matek vorziehen.

FPV-Camera

das ist die Kamera, die das Bild "zum Fliegen" aufnimmt. Die sind meistens mit nicht waagrecht ausgerichtet, sondern zeigen "nach oben" - meistens zw. 30° und 40°. Macht man das nicht, filmt die Kamera in den Boden, wenn man nach vorne fliegt.

Die beliebtesten Hersteller davon sind wohl Runcam und Foxeer. Beide haben mehrere Modelle im Angebot, die man in den Racer bauen kann. Für den Anfang würde eine Runcam Swift oder eine Foxeer Arrow vermutlich reichen.

HD-Camera

Die FPV-Camera hat naturgemäß eine recht besch... Qualität. Ist aber auch auf Latenz ausgelegt. Beim schnellen Fliegen ist eine Latenz von 50ms schon fast zu viel (eine Phantom liegt da deutlich drüber!) Damit man dennoch schöne Videobilder bekommt, schnallen viele noch eine Full-HD Kamera oben drauf. Mittlerweile gibt es aber auch kombinierte Systeme.

Ich habe hier in allen meinen Racern mittlerweile die Runcam Split verbaut (V1 und V2). Ich bin damit sehr zufrieden. Denn so muss ich nicht noch eine GoPro oder Xaomi Yi auf den Copter schnallen.

OSD

Falls man sich Informationen über den Quad in dem VideoFeed anzeigen lassen will, benötigt man ein OSD - On Screen Display. Das zeigt dann, je nach Konfiguration, z.B. die Fluglage an (künstlicher Horizont), Ladezustand des Lipo, Flugdauer etc.

Ein OSD ist eine zusäztliche Platine, die man mit unter bringen muss. Bei einigen FCs ist so ein OSD mit drin. Wichtig ist, das OSD muss natürlich mit dem FC "reden" können, denn sonst hat es ja nichts zum anzeigen

Auch für KISS-FCs gibt es OSDs von Flyduino.

Frame

oder auch Rahmen. Das ist das "Gerüst" an dem all das oben genannte angebracht wird. Der Frame bestimmt auch, was überhaupt möglich ist. Deswegen sollte man sich da auch genau ansehen, was man Kauft. Die Frames sind heutzutage eigentlich immer aus Carbon gefertigt, d.h. extrem stabil und das sollten sie auch sein. Der Frame muss nämlich die Innereien bei einem Crash schützen!

Für 5" Frames sind momentan wohl die sog. "Alien" Frames beliebt oder "Lumier 250". Ich persönlich hab hier einen "Emax Nighthawk 210" und einen "Lisam 210". Beide wirklich gut. Das hier ist der Lisam210:

Bei den 3-Zöllern wird es schon spannender. Der Leichteste Frame ist der "Redux 130" von Flyduino. Ist auch recht simpel zusammenzubauen. Allerdings ist die Elektonik nur wenig geschützt. Toll ist er dennoch...

Mein neuester zugang ist der GepRC Sparrow - auch ein 3" Flitzer, leichter als 250g:

Ich hab hier noch ein paar andere, die sehen aber entweder dem einen oder dem anderen ähnlich.

Eigentlich kann man sich den Frame aussuchen, der einem am besten gefällt. Der rest ist eigentlich egal. Es muss halt nur alles reinpassen. Das kann schon mal etwas "spannender" sein

FPV-Goggles

Da gibt es eine Menge unterschiedlicher Systeme. Aber eigentlich haben alle eine Brille von FatShark. Ich habe u.a. eine Fatshark Dominator V3.

Die sind nicht umsonst die Platzhirschen unter den FPV-Brillen. Aber es gibt auch deutlich günstigere Alternativen, z.B. die Eachine EV800d.

Das teil ist wirklich gut, und vor allem nicht allzu teuer. Wobei es die Variante ohne D schon für weit unter 100€ gibt - für den Einstieg sicher die bessere Alternative.

Der Unterschied zwischen beiden ist die sogenannte "Diversity" - d.h. die goggles haben 2 Antennen (meist verschiedene Bauarten) um damit optimalen Empfang zu erhalten. Der Empfänger schaltet automatisch auf die Antenne um, die das stärkere Signal hat.

Damit haben wir die Komponenten mal aufgezählt. Jetzt gibt es für alles 100e Alternative.

ok, ich will fliegen...

Dann geht man als Anfänger vielleicht folgendermaßen vor:

Will ich mehr so Luftaufnahmen machen und weniger fliegen? Dann auf zur nächsten Kameradrohne! Phantom 3 sind mittlerweile ganz gut gebraucht zu bekommen und nicht allzu teuer. Aber das sind die Luxus-Flieger!
will ich doch so in Richtung FPV und "Spass"-Fliegen, dann sollte man sich evtl. zunächst so ein RTF-Set besorgen, evtl. das Teil von Hubsan mit dem eingebauten Screen in der Funke. Zum Anfang völlig ausreichend. und da kann man daheim gut rumfliegen. Und dann ist man schon mit weniger als 150€ dabei.
Dann gilt noch eines klar zu stellen: Will man FPV-Fliegen, dann will man auch löten! Es wird nicht ohne Crashes von Statten gehen. Das Hubsan-Teil wird auch irgendwann neue Motoren benötigen. Also macht euch damit vertraut.
Übt den Flug LOS (Line of Sight), denn wenn eure FPV Übertragung warum auch immer ausfallen sollte, müsst ihr den Vogel landen können! Das geht in der Wohnung aber natürlich auch draußen. Am einfachsten Fliegt sich so ein Teil, wenn das Heck auf euch zeigt. Sobald das Ding auf einen zu fliegt, ist alles verdreht und es macht die Steuerung extrem gewöhnungsbedürftig.
kommt man auf den Geschmack und möchte so "echtes" FPV Feeling, sollte man sich eine Brille zulegen.
Ist man mit dem Hubsan zufrieden und stellt fest: "I feel the need, the need for speed" dann sollte man brauchbares Equipment besorgen.

Spätestens bei Punkt 4 sollte man eine Versicherung haben, wenn man noch daheim in der Wohnung und im Garten rumfliegt ist ja alles ok, aber sobald man "größer" wird und raus geht, ist das zwingend nötig!

Außerdem sollte man sich in der Umgebung mal nach Gleichgesinnten umsehen. Denn - sobald man einen 5" Copter sein Eigen nennt, kann man FPV nur noch fliegen, wenn man einen Spotter zugegen hat. Außerdem kann man beim Austausch mit den anderen eine Menge lernen.

oder man baut sich einen 3" Copter und kann als lone flyer die Gegend gesetzeskonform unsicher machen

Für den Anfang würde ich folgende Ausrüstung emfpehlen:

Eine Funke, ich empfehle Taranis X9D Plus SE (oder, wenn es etwas günstiger sein soll die QX7 - ca. 100€) Aber macht das auch ein wenig vom persönlichen Geschmack abhängig. Preis/Leistung ist bei FrSky eigentlich ungeschlagen...
wenn ihr die Funke habt, könnt ihr auch schon mal am PC / Mac üben. Es gibt da einige Quad-Simulatoren, da kann man schon mal ein Gefühl bekommen. z.B. auf Steam: Liftoff!
Besorgt euch eine leichte mini-Drohne mit brushless Motoren. Ihr werdet selbst mit 3s beim Umstieg von Hubsan extrem staunen, was das Ding an Leistung hat. Ich kann den oben erwähnten Armor 90 nur empfehlen! Flotter kleiner Winzling
ein paar Lipos. Für den Armor 90 gehen 2S und 3S lipos mit max 450mAh.
Ein Lipo Ladegerät. Ich hatte für dein Anfang ein iMax B6... dann 2... dann 3
FPV Goggles - die oben genannten Eachine sind für den Anfang super. Damit habe ich auch angefangen.
Einen Lötkolben, Lötzinn etc. Werkzeug, eine sog. 3. Hand

Spart nicht am Falschen Ende: die Funke wird man wirklich lange haben, aber Copter vermutlich eher viele! Die halten nicht wirklich lange

Alles zusammen kommt man auf ca. 500-600€. Dann ist man aber wirklich gut aufgestellt für die Zukunft.

Fazit

Macht euch vorher gedanken, geht mit gesundem Menschenverstand and die Sache ran und ihr werden super viel Spass damit haben. Sei es mit Kameradrohnen, mit Racern oder Micro-Quads.

Ich hoffe, ich konnte bei einigen von euch ein paar Fragezeichen klären...

category: global --> drones

New mini drone sub 250g

2017-12-29 - Tags: drohne quad build

partlist:

Frame GEPRC Sparrow Mini 139mm, got it from Amazon
Motoren Emax 1306 4000kv - also Amazon
KISS AIO CC - from Flyduino or n-factory
RUNCAM Split V2 -I got it from n-factory
MATEK VTX HV - got it from Amazon
FrSky R-XSR Empfänger - N-Factory
Aluminium Prop nuts from Banggood
you will need a lighter linear antenna for the VTX - the one(s) from Matek are too heavy and too long for this build. I got some from ebay

building it

The best thing about KISS builds is that they are simple (KISS = Keep It Super Simple). So, if the build itself is simple, you can add some complexity like keeping it below 250g including HD Recording...

If you want to put these parts listed above together, you will need to modify the frame a bit. There is a little notch that is used for keeping mini cams in place. but in our build, it is using too much space. You need to grind or cut it.

Make it as flat as possible, it will keep marks in the case of the Split otherwise.

Then put together the roll bar. This is a bit fiddly but the split will fit exactly. So it will be a very tight fit. If you do it that way, the minimal angle at which the split can be positioned is about 35°. If that is too steep for you, you will have to use a different frame or a different camera.

Once you got the roll bar finished, the rest is quite simple... except...

you will have to rotate the FC 90° in Yaw (either clockwise or counterclockwise). I chose clockwise, so that the USB-Port is in the Back of the quad. You need to do the rotation as the roll bar would not fit otherwise. The FC is just a couple of mm longer than wide.

But if you rotate it, it fits perfectly

Attention: even if you set the rotation in the FC GUI for the FC itself, the motors do not rotate! Motor #1 is still front left!

But the rest is quite simple - its a KISS build after all...

update the Firmware (FC and ESC) first, as it is probably not easily possible afterwards. (boot button is blocked by the buzzer)
Mount the EMax Motors to the Frame. Mind the rotation! I only used 2 screws f- we need to save weight.
Solder motors to the motor outputs of the FC. As the FC is rotated, you will have to lengthen the motor leads a bit. 1.use short standoffs (Nylon because of weight) and attach the FC with them to the frame.
solder Lipo connection. I used Xt30 (for weight and all my other builds use xt30)
connect the R-XSR receiver. It is rather straight forward: red 5v, black GND, white S-Bus, yellow Telemetry / SmartPort

solder a connection from the RX-Pad of the Runcam Split (or Split V2) to the TX-Pad of the KISS AIO CC.
In order to be able to control the Matek VTX via the FC, you need to solder a connection between the TX-Pad of the Matek to the RX3 Pad of the AIO-CC.
Connect the beeper / buzzer. The only place I found to put it is in the front of the quad. Unfortunately it will block the boot button. Maybe I can put it to the top later. If you want to put it there as I did, use some hot glue to mount it there

connect video out from RunCam to VTX
Power from LIPO directly to the Matek VTX
I used the 5v output of the Matek to power the Runcam. I read it is possible to do that directly from the lipo, but I did not dare to. The 5V BEC of the Matek is rated for 1A - so it should be fine.
Put all together (small standoffs), put the roll bar on and do not pinch cables.
Throw away the ultra heavy prop nuts from emax and get some aluminium ones from Banggood!
Test it using a smoke stopper - just to be sure you did not short something.
bind the receiver to the taranis.
Check in the KISS Gui that everything works. Test the motors one by one if they spin in the right direction. If not, exchange 2 of the 3 motor leads.

Aaaand... here you are. should be fine now. You just finished the 3-inch-KISSer. If all worked out, it should fly now.

but you will have to have a closer look at the GUI first.

Configuring the FC...

UAV Type / PIDs

We do have a quad, a receiver that speaks S-Bus and the Failsafe should kick in after 2 Seks. The default setting was 10s, but I think 2 seks is even long! I kept the standard PIDs (3 - 0,035 - 10 für Pitch / Roll und 8 - 0.05 -0 für Yaw). Of course we will do some PID tuning later..

General Settings / AirMode

I used no Air Mode on this build, just to see a difference. Airmode means (simplified), that the FC is powered on, even if there is no throttle on. Usually when there is no throttle, the FC is more or less switched off. The advantage is, that in flight, especially when doing tricks, your quad is still controllable even if you set to min throttle. The downside is that you need to be careful when landing. This sometimes causes the quad to bounce.

When using KISS you can enable AirMode by setting Min-Command to 1000.

The alternative is, in order to keep the Quad controllable even during no-throttle time, is to set an idle up switch in der Taranis. This only adds a little value to the throttle value and keeps the FC "on" even if thottle is set to minimum.

AUX functions

With the AUX Channels you can configure additional functions that can be enabled using additional switches / sticks on the FC. So you can switch beween stabelizd /level mode and acro mode, switch on the split, change power settings of the vtx and so on.

I use AUX1 to arm the quad. When switching AUX2 to high or mid position, I switch on level/stabelized mode. The Buzzer is enabled when AUX2 is high, that means when enabling the buzzer, the quad is stabelized. That may sound a bit strange, but you only switch on the buzzer when the Quad is lying on the ground.

Using another switch, which sends via AUX4, I can switch the Power of the VTX to High. Attention in Germany you may only use 25mW!

I can switch on/off the recording of the Runcam Split using the AUX3 channel. This is cool, I can switch on / off hd-Recording mid flight!

Usually, if you have such a switch, you do not want the switch to start recording when powered on. You need to change this setting via the OSD or the Wifi-Module and the App.

Advanced Tab - Lopo Alarm

I set a lipo alarm f just for safety.

13,9v only works for 4s lipos!

Advanced Tab FC Orientation

very important here you need to set the 90° for Yaw - or the copter will not fly at all or crash instantaneously!

if you rotated your FC the other way, you will have to set 270° here. Check your settings in the live view on the Data Output Tab!

Advanced Tab - VTX Config

This is very important. You need to set the right vtx type here. If that is correct, you can change power, band and channel via the taranis. For the Matek VTX you need to set it to IRC Tramp!

Band and channel is the Band and channel that will be set when powering on the FC. You can change that via the Taranis later if you want.

Verdict

It is still a bit early as I could not fly her yet. But she is a beauty the 3-inch-KISSer

And it is below 250g Puh...

Update 1st of January 18

I went for the Maiden Flight. It was fun and all went well... almost. One Crash and the frame broke. Not sure if it was my flying "skills" or the Frame...

Watch the whole Flight on youtube

update 2nd update 10th of January 18

got spare part (a new Frame) and re-built it. Flies now as before. It does not look like, there is a design flaw at the frame. Hope this one lasts longer than the last.

This is the private blog of Stephan Bösebeck, covering topics like Multicopters, Drones, Games... Leisure stuff...

Morphium V5

Targets of the rewrite

JDK 11

Morphium Object Mapping

Morphium Cache and WriteBuffer

Morphium Messaging

MorphiumConfig

Focus on Community Edition

Rewrite bottom up

Morphium driver

InMemory Driver

Why not the MongoDB driver

Features of the driver

new feature: InMemoryServer

migration

Current status

plan

situation

Experience with Tesla

candidates

Valuation

Road trip calculation

Range/Load

Vehicles

Polestar 2

Volvo C40

Hyunday Ioniq 5

Genesis GV60

Ford Mustang Mach E

Tesla Model Y

Tesla Model 3

Audi Q4 Etron

Skoda ENYAQ

VW ID3/4

Conclusion

The Keyboardio Model100

Difference

the switches

Whats in the box

The keyboard itself

The travel case

A screwdriver...

layout

Conclusion

Update

Email clients for iOS and MacOS

Email and Security

Email encryption

Sign emails

what about S/Mime

MacOS emailclients

Standard Mail.app

MailMate

PostBox

AltaMail

AirMail

Canary Mail

Apps for MacOS that didn't make the list

IOS

Limitations

polling

Markdown

Apple Mail.app

Blue Mail

Boxer

Altamail

Airmail

Canary Mail

Apples own Mail.app

Apps for iOS that didn't make the list

GPG/PGP on iOS

PGPro

iPGMail

Tessercube

Conclusion

Keyboards, again

Development continues

Model100

Moonlander Mk1