These are some of projects, developed over the years, in my spare time, mainly related to software development, using various technologies.
ZX Spectrum Related
I started my computer hobby in my teenage years, with a ZX Spectrum compatible computer. Below is a video of a TV show where I talked a bit about this hobby and where some of my old computer collection is displayed.
Another TV show that I contributed to is below, related to the Romanian ICE Felix computer factory. Some computer equipment shown was borowed from me.
Name
Link & Description
Technologies
Romanian Home Computer website and discussion group
Website and Google Group related to ZX Spectrum and compatible computers manufactured in Romania, like HC, CIP, Cobra, with a few hundreed members. The website provides scanned books and manuals, schematics, photos, related hardware and software projects, provided by the group members or myself. The group replaced the previous group with the same name previously hosted on Yahoo groups, starting with mid 2000.
Collection of about 5000 games, indexed, searchable, presented with loading screens, project by Antonio Villena. The emulator is QAOP by Jan Bobrowski. I combined the 2 projects into one, since the QAOP Javascript emulator is a bit better than the original one from Antonio Villena.
Usefull for the Romanian Home Computer Group project linked bellow. Uses project Autoindex PHP deployed on Linux, for self-hosting as an alternative to cloud hosting.
Utility for ZX Spectrum related file system operations, running on PC/Windows. Handles file systems like CP/M, ZX Spectrum +3 BASIC, Betadisk TR-DOS, MGT, OPUS, DEVIL. Handles tape images like TAP, TZX. Handles convertion between disk and tape and also communication via serial port, audio port and many others. An older port to Linux made by Alex Badea is available on Alex's repo here. He also worked on a Fuse ZX Spectrum emulator fork for HC-2000, found here.
C++, C, Visual Studio, serial port transfer, frequency modulated audio signal transfer, image conversion, compiler/decompiler integration, object oriented design, C++ Standard Template Library, reverse engineering, low level hardware integration (floppy controller, USB floppy drive)
File manager running on HC computers with disk interface. Provides an interface similar to Norton Commander for file and disk operations, file viewer in text and hex formats, BASIC programs decoder to text, file/disk copy over serial link, and other features.
Provides a generic, automated mechanism to create compressed ZX Spectrum games, optimised for minimal file size and portability for loading. Also provides all the steps to convert those games starting from the original TAP/TZX image to produce the compressed one-block game in TAP format. Each resulting compressed game is the smallest version you will probably find, thanks to the very good compression using ZX0 and also because the entire game resides in a single program block. Also provides the feature for producing turbo-loading TZX files (tape image files) for using with ZX Spectrum computers not connected to a disk interface, providing a quick way to load games via audio input.
Installed a floppy drive emulator on my ICE Felix HC-2000 ZX Spectrum compatible computer. The device has custom firmware called FlashFloppy that I had to install using an USB-TTL Serial adapter. The floppy drive emulator uses floppy disk image files, like the ones created from real floppy disks by HCDisk. A video showing how it operates is bellow.
This website is self-hosted on a low power PC, running Linux. The PC is also used as a NAS, FTP(S) server, back-up server, media/DLNA server using Plex, torrent server, home automation server using Home Assistant (presented below), print server using CUPS, proxy server using Squid, webcam server using mjpg_streamer and old webcam. Monitoring is done using the 'monitorix' package and some of the charts are displayed automatically on a Samsung Photo Frame that accepts JPEG images over USB. The photo frame display was initially used with an Asus WL-500gP router, as shown below.
Windows desktop program for recording the cash ammount for a store or exchange office. It's fully configurable, allowing any number of currencies and any number of denominations for each currency. Handles printing a report form and also allows saving the report in PDF/Excel/Word format. The data is stored as XML and it's digitally signed, using a password as secret, to avoid unauthorized changes.
I recently had solar panels installed at home so I started to investigate ways of making the best use of the green electricity provided by the sun. Some usage scenarios implemented are:
- Monitor energy production and consumption
- Automate PHEV car charging by integrating a Tuya smart plug, to charge the car when the produced electricity is in excess
- Integrated the car into Home Assistant in order to monitor the car statistics, like electric efficiency, distances, charging times, consumption, lock/unlock, remote start. This interface is better than the manufacturer provided app (Ford).
- Integrate media devices in the home, like smart TV, Google Home, media server, surveilance cameras.
The provided information is available in the browser, in the Home Assistant Android app on my phone and on my WearOS smartwatch, by using custom YAML templates.
