Java Developer’s Journal – July 2003
Not all USB cables are equal: Arduino IDE not seeing Arduino Nano
I have an Arduino Sketch to upload to an Arduino Nano. Connecting the Nano to my MacBook Pro, the power led lights up and the ‘sketch upload’ led is flashing. In the Arduino IDE however, the Nano is not visible under the Port menu. Reading around online, this could either be that the FTDI drivers are not installed or something wrong with the cable.
Given that the cable that cable with my Nano is rather thin, I remember reading elsewhere that there is such a thing as a ‘charge only’ usb cable. They’re thinner because they’re only wired with the power wires and are missing the data wires.
Changing this cable for another thicker cable, now the Arduino is recognized as expected in Arduino IDE under the Port menu. Swapping between the thinner USB cable and the thicker cable confirmed the thinner cable doesn’t work for a data connection.
Microsoft Flight Simulator AI generated scenery oddity – Maentwrog, Wales, UK
Microsoft Flight Simulator uses Blackshark.ai to generate 3d scenery buildings from interpreting patterns like shadows in the 2d photo map imagery. In most cases this works great, but occasionally there’s some weird interpretations of the imagery that generates some incredible structures.
Here’s one example south-west of Maentwrog in Wales. If you look at Google Maps of this area, there is line casting a shadow on the ground and some regularly spaced structures along the shadow. I’m guessing these are power lines and pylons. However, in the sim this is interpreted as this very impressive and incredibly large bridge to no-where structure:
Location in Volanta moving map app:
It will be interesting after the upcoming UK scenery World Update if this is still here or if it gets fixed.
Java Developer’s Journal – March 2003
Cover page and editors column from Java Developer’s Journal March 2003
