Inderjeet Singh's Blog

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Pulsating LED on a Powerbook: A case of UI Effects Gone Overboard

Apple is usually really good at design and UI effects. A case in point is expose', which is a cool one-key way of arranging all open windows so that you can choose the one you want to work on. When I got my powerbook first, I was in awe with all such cool effects, and attention to the details. But there is one UI effect that I will talk about here: it is the snoozing light that comes off the LED when you close the lid. Let me explain in case you do not own a powerbook. This is one of those cool visual effects that apple is famous for. When you close the lid of a powerbook, the system goes to sleep, and there is an LED that switches on. However, apple designers chose to make this LED really bright, and also made it pulsating. i.e., the lights slowly varies its brightness to its maximum and then lowers itself giving the effect of the computer snoozing. Really neat, especially for the first couple of days.

But slowly you get tired of it. Worse, if you happen to be in a hotel room, your laptop is usually in the same room just suspended. As you might have experienced, the hotel rooms with curtains closed are usually quite dark. In such a room, this light may annoy you to no end.

You might think that there might be a simple setting to switch this effect off. But no, there is none. There is pretty much no way to change this behavior other than opening up the computer and physically removing the LED. A simpler solution is to ensure that the LED is covered (with a book, or with a tape), which can be an annoyance.

Obviously this should be possible hardware-wise. The very fact that the LED can vary its intensity implies that it should be possible to control how bright this LED can get, and to turn this effect off. The electronics must surely be there.

Why am I complaining so much: afterall it is one tiny light, and I own numerous other gadgets which have bright LEDs. I guess the reason is that my expectations are for much higher standards when I am buying Apple products. Afterall, that is why I am willing to pay the premium. So, the UI lesson number one is that for our products we need to be aware of what customers expect from a product that bears our brand. The UI lesson number two is that when we put-in features which serve no useful purpose except as an eye-candy, we should provide a mechanism to disable or bypass them.

Does this light annoy you as well? Have you had similar situations with products where a seemingly well designed and reputed product failed to meet your expectation in some way? Were there any good UI lessons that you learned in the process?

Using Airport Express as a range extender/repeater for Linksys Cable/DSL router WRT54G

If you have a wireless network at home, then I am sure this sounds familiar. Even though the advertised range for these products is quite large, in reality, the range does not extend beyond one or two rooms. In the past, I tried using signal boosters, but they did not make much difference. When Apple announced Airport Express, its wireless repeating feature was one of the big draws for me. However, I did not want to buy the expensive Airport Extreme Base Station when equivalent wireless routers can be had for under 50 dollars. Moreover, most of these other routers include a four-port 100mbps switch, which is quite important for big file transfers because in my experience the 802.11g data rates are nowhere close to the claimed 54mbps. A google search revealed that Airport Express uses WDS (Wireless Distribution System) protocol and hence it is possible to use it as a repeater for Linksys WRT54G. This article has the needed information, though probably too terse. It is quite easy in theory, but you need to understand a little bit about how WDS works, and what all you need to do.

Note that the article incorrectly lists that you need to turn off firewall, and "ignore anonymous requests" on WRT54G. Both of which will be bad moves for security reasons anyway. Also, note that you need to setup Airport Express through the airport admin utility, not through the airport express setup tool.

So, here are the steps:

1. Upgrade WRT54G to use the open-source firmware Sveasoft Satori v4.0 WRT54G.
2. login to WRT54G admin tool and enable WDS. In the Wireless WDS section, enter the MAC Address of Airort Express and choose its type as LAN. Turn lazy WDS and WDS subnet to off. Ensure that your newly setup wireless connection is working by accessing the Web.
3. Plug-in Airport Express in a room where you know that you get adequate wireless signal from WRT54G.
4. Do NOT setup Airport Express to join your main network. Set it up as an independent wireless station, on the same channel that WRT54G is using. Note that if you want to use encryption, you can only use WEP. If you want to enter your WEP key in HEX, do not forget to put a "$" before the key (thanks kp_nine for the tip).
5. Initially choose a different SSID (say "MyAENet") for Airport Express. This will help in debugging, and ensuring that the Airport Express is correctly working as a repeater. Later, you can use the same SSID as WRT54G for seamless wireless repeating.
6. Turn off firewall and NAT on Airport Express.
7. Setup Airport Express as a WDS Remote Station, and make it connect to the internet through WDS provided by the WRT54G. You will need to use the ethernet address of the wireless side (not WAN side) of WRT54G.
8. Enable the Airport Express to provide music streaming (this was probably the reason you bought Airport Express in the first place). The name chosen here has nothing to do with the wireless setup, so choose whatever name you like.
9. Use your laptop to first test that your wireless network is up. Then select the SSID of Airport Express (MyAENet), and see if you can still access internet. If so, congratulations. If not, retry all the steps after resetting Airport Express. I discuss some ways to reset Airport Express in another weblog.
10. Login to the airport admin tool, and change the SSID of Airport Express to the SSID of WRT54G. This will enable a laptop to automatically select WRT54G or Airport Express based on the strength of the signal. Note that the Airport Express will not be accessible through airport admin utility anymore. In future, if you need to access it for reconfiguring, connect it directly through its ethernet port.
11. Now go out on your patio, and browse the web to your heart's content. You have earned it!
    
    

    Resetting Airport Express

    Posted by inder on October 12, 2004 at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
    
    Do you own an Apple Airport Express? I got mine shortly after they were announced, and love the ability to stream music to my home stereo through the optical port. Recently, I set up my Airport Express to act as a repeater for my linksys router WRT54G. I cover that topic in a different weblog, but here I describe some ways to reset Airport Express since I needed it a number of times during the hacking:
    • Soft reset: just press the reset button for one second
    • Hard reset: press the reset button for five seconds
    • Restore to factory defaults: switch off Airport Express. Press the reset button. Turn on the Airport Express while keeping the reset button pressed. After about 10 seconds, the LED on the Airport Express will blink four times. Release the reset button and wait for 90 seconds.
    
    
    
    
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