I was playing around with this software this morning and decided to capture the FPS from a game of BF3 TDM. Using the FRAPS tool, I logged the FPS to an excel file and graphed the findings. The optimized settings look to be doing their thing as the FPS never really drop below the magical 60 mark. I think the FPS I get is not what’s important here, it’s how the optimized settings come together to keep my game above 60 FPS. It’s also interesting how much the FPS jumps around. I was expecting more or less a straight line. I’m guessing the graphical loads in a game of TDM change based on the action.

Any who, here’s the graph:
X-axis – FPS
Y-axis – Time in sec

UPDATE:

Tonight, I did a couple tests with battlefield 4.
About half way though this capture I switched from the optimized setting to an Ultra setting.
I lost about 20FPS right away, and the game felt that much worse – choppy and such. Nice to see that it’s doing its thing.
With the optimized settings, I pretty much say goodbye to anti-aliasing, and make the switch from ultra-to-low on some of the other settings.
And there is no headroom for scaling. This game is really demanding relative to battlefield 3!

My previous article “Weather Balloon Tangent Project – Surveillance Camera!” shot a wrench into the Weather Balloons gears. Well, not really a wrench, more of a change of direction. The planned Pelican case turned into a wooden box, and the expensive GPS module was replaced by 6 AA batteries.

The theory here was that sealed Pelican case would pressurize at altitude and possibly burst. Replacing it with something wooden would allow the interior to equalize with the atmosphere. Also, since I made it last week, it was ready to go. No fussing with again recreating packaging.

And the GPS module went away as it was proving to be more expensive than anticipated. I choose to instead increase the battery capacity of the phone, allowing it to complete it journey without dying, helping me locate it once it touched down. 6 AA batteries were wired in series to maximize run time. And a +5VDC regulator was wired in so the pack could be directly connected to the phone’s USB port.

Also considered as the wooden box was not the best in terms of insulation (high altitude is cold) was a small 5V heater. Keeping the phone (specifically the phone’s on-board battery) warm might help after a flight, when the phone falls back to the ground and needs to connect to a cell network, so that I can find it. This was ultimately decided against as the power consumption was too high at levels approaching 1A.

The final configuration was fairly simple. Keeping things simple and low cost. Here’s how it looks, balloon deflated of course.

While working on my weather balloon project, I was side tracked and decided to create a surveillance camera! As with all of my projects, this one will of course come in parts.

Part 1 includes the Nexus One, a 2500mAh Li-Ion battery, and weather proof box. The system is designed to be mounted in a discrete location, while taking time lapse photos of an area – photos are up loaded to my dropbox account. Photos can either be taken on an interval, or on motion detection. The modem is turned off for most of the night, which helps save some battery life. The current 1 minute interval configuration will last about 2 days before the batteries die.

Phase 2 involves a solar charging system rated for a 330mA charge rate, a solar charging manager (basically a really big capacitor between the panel and batter, and a bigger 6600mAh battery. This system should, in theory, never need to be taken down from its perch. We will see once the parts arrive and I am able to do some testing. I will also add a batch upload feature which will store photos on an SD card rather than directly uploading to dropbox. Once per hour a batch upload sequence will commence. This will keep the modem off for most of the day, again in theory, save precious battery life.

Part 3 will most likely involve winter proofing the enclosure. Cold -20C temperatures will with out doubt cause all sorts of problems for the batteries. I am looking into low power heating elements, and different enclosure options.