RSSArchives: Brian Jepson
Windows Phone-powered t-shirt cannon at MIX10
At the MIX10 conference this past week, MAKE had a booth embedded inside the Coding4Fun exhibit. We showed off MAKE magazine, some of our Make: Books, and a few kits. Our Coding4Fun neighbors had a lot of great projects on display, including their Coding4Fun Cannon, which was a robotic t-shirt launching platform with two barrels. What's more, it was controlled by a Windows Phone 7 app, and they completed it in two weeks. Here's how Clint Rutkas of Coding4Fun described it:
Mid-February, we were asked to build a t-shirt shooting robot for the Mix conference on March 15th, 2010. This required us to pitch our vision and then research, build, test, and ship our project--all in about 3 weeks. After Scott Guthrie gave us approval based on our SketchFlow demo, we had to divide and conquer the application with only 2 weeks left to build the physical robot, the server software, and the phone software. And on top of all that, since we were consuming an unfinished product, everything had to have backup plans.
Read all about it at Coding4Fun: Coding4Fun Cannon - Project Overview
Read a sample chapter from the upcoming Learning Windows Phone Programming at O'Reilly Answers
Posted by Brian Jepson |
Mar 20, 2010 05:00 AM
Mobile, Robotics |
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Android-powered Garduino remote control
Dan Morrill decided to take the Garduino system that he built a step further, and created a remote control that runs on an Android phone and talks to the Arduino over Bluetooth:
In practice, it takes your "Serial.print" output from an Arduino program and makes it available over Bluetooth to a PC..... or a phone. Android, meanwhile, added an API for Bluetooth RFCOMM in version 2.0. My wife got me a BlueSMiRF for my birthday, and it was off to the races.
I rewrote the Arduino code into a simple finite state machine, and added the ability to accept commands over serial. It's a very simple project, so there are only 2 commands: reset, and set current time. I encountered some interesting open-source related issues in doing this, but that's another post.I then wrote a spiffy little Android app that pairs up to the BlueSMiRF, reads the state dumped from the Arduino every 3 seconds, and then makes a pretty little Android UI. It shows me a Sun, Moon, or Clock depending on which state the Arduino is in (daytime, nighttime, or waiting for clock data), and reports the other status fields like light intensity and status.
Source code for Arduinos and Android devices
Posted by Brian Jepson |
Mar 9, 2010 06:30 AM
Arduino, Cellphones |
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Finland's first book about Arduino on Finnish National TV
Tero Karvinen, one of the authors of Sulautetut, a Finnish book about embedded prototyping, will be featured on Finnish National Television next week on the program Voice Heräämö. Tero was kind enough to send along a translation of the interview, which starts at around four minutes into the video above.
Juha Valvio, interviewer: Tero Karvinen, you are teaching here - but what?Tero: Linux and embedded systems.
Valvio: I hope they are showing a translation below... Let's take it to ground level. You [and Kimmo] have written a book on embedded systems. What?!
Text box: "Tero Karvinen, Linux God, Haaga-Helia".
Anne Nurminen, Miss Finland first runner up, is showing the book: Sulautetut - learn to build robots and other embedded systems.
Tero: Embedded systems are everywhere. For example, air conditioning of this room is an embedded system. It has a tiny computer that measures air and controls motors.
Valvio: So an embedded system is ... for example ... a car computer?
Tero: Yes, it is an embedded system. It's a computer, but it doesn't have a keyboard, a normal display, or a mouse. Instead, it makes measurements and controls some outputs accordingly. Some car brakes are embedded systems too.
Valvio: Can I build a car computer in a week?
Tero: Yes, you can build a prototype.
Valvio: Matias, a student in Haaga-Helia, we are now in UbiOffice lab. What have you studied lately?
Matias: Currently, I am in practical training. I work with Linux, build web pages and the like.
Text box: Matias Korhonen, student, Haaga-Helia.
Valvio: Have you learned to build something in a week?
Matias: Yes. I took Tero's course. For example, a built a system to connect a Wii controller to a computer. So I have played with embedded systems.
Valvio: Could one build a heat seeking missile system to a car - James Bond style? Can I do it in a week?
Matias: It depends on your rocket science background.
Robot Insect project video from Sulautetut
More videos from Sulautetut
Posted by Brian Jepson |
Mar 6, 2010 02:30 PM
Arduino |
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Behind the scenes of OK Go's Rube Goldberg video at Ignite Los Angeles
We're in the middle of Global Ignite Week right now, and the first video from Global Ignite Week is up: a behind the scenes description at Ignite LA of the OK Go music video we covered recently:
Ok Go had a video idea for the recorded version of "This Too Shall Pass". They approached Adam Sadowsky, president of Syyn Labs, to design a Rube Goldberg inspired machine in which they would base their music video around. After months of preparation and 20 consecutive 18 hr days, they finally got the perfect take. Adam explains all the tedious fun!
Music & Machines: OK Go's Rube Goldberg Inspired Machine [via O'Reilly Radar]
Posted by Brian Jepson |
Mar 4, 2010 05:30 AM
Events, Video Making |
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Hands-on with FEZ Mini, a .NET-powered microcontroller (+ robot kit)
Szymon Kobalczyk, one of my collaborators on the Generic Serial Driver for Windows 7 Sensor and Location Platform project, recently posted a link in our forum to the FEZ line of .NET-powered microcontroller kits. Shortly after that, Gus Issa from GHI Electronics (makers of the FEZ) got in touch, and sent kits to both Simon and me. Simon's had a chance to play around with the kit and build the robot shown in the video above:
Two reflective sensors are included in the kit (useful for line following and edge detection projects), and you can order additional components both from TinyCLR.com and other robotics sites. Many construction parts are included in the kit so it is very easy to attach additional sensors or other parts. As you can see on the picture above, I already added a Sharp IR distance sensor in front (so I can teach the robot to not bump on walls). I also added an Xbee expansion board on the back so one day I can control the robot remotely (and my Holy Grail is to connect the robot to Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio).
...In my previous post I complained how upset I'm that there is no cheap .NET Micro Framework hardware for hobbyists. Now I can take it back. IMHO we finally have a very powerful alternative to Arduino and similar platforms, with the price that won't break the bank (especially with FEZ Mini).
The FEZ comes in two form factors: the FEZ Mini, which has a pin configuration that's compatible with the BASIC Stamp from Parallax; the FEZ Domino, which is pin-compatible with the Arduino USB models (and they even have a beta driver for the WIZnet Ethernet module used in Arduino Ethernet shields).
First day with FEZ Mini Robot Kit
Posted by Brian Jepson |
Feb 25, 2010 07:00 AM
Robotics |
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Turning a motor into a sensor with the Peppermill
Tom Igoe got his hands on a Peppermill circuit board, and took it out for a spin:
Nicolas Villar sent me a sample of the PepperMill, a new sensor board he and Steve Hodges designed at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK. It's a nifty little board. You attach a DC motor and the board can an output voltage when the motor is turned, and analog signals telling you the direction and speed of the motor. It turns a DC motor into a rotary encoder, of sorts.
Wiring is very simple. The motor connects to the two spring connectors at the top of the board. Direction and Speed pins connect to two analog inputs on your microcontroller. Ground connects to your microcontroller's ground. The motor generates voltage when you spin it.
Check out Tom's article for circuit diagrams, source code, and information on obtaining a Peppermill board to experiment with. Using PepperMill to turn a motor into a sensor
(Tom is a member of the Arduino team and the author of Making Things Talk).
Making Things Talk
Our Price: $29.99
Programming microcontrollers used to require an expensive development environment costing thousands of dollars and requiring professional electrical engineering expertise. Open-source physical computing platforms with simple i/o boards and development environments have led to new options for hobbyists, hackers, and makers. This book contains a series of projects that teach you what you need to know to get your creations talking to each other, connecting to the web, and forming networks of smart devices.
Posted by Brian Jepson |
Feb 8, 2010 05:30 PM
Arduino |
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Matt Cottam's talk on Heirloom Electronics at interaction10
Matt Cottam, founder of Tellart, presented Wooden Logic: In Search of Heirloom Electronics at interaction10 yesterday. Here are my running notes on his discussions of sketching with tangible objects, physical interfaces to the iPhone, and heirloom technology.
Posted by Brian Jepson |
Feb 6, 2010 08:30 AM
Arduino, Furniture, iPhone, Paper Crafts, Retro |
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Tinker.it's TinkerKit unveiled at interaction10 in Savannah, Georgia
interaction10 got underway today in Savannah, Georgia, and among the first workshops of the day was Arduino project co-founder Massimo Banzi's Tangible Interface Prototyping (Massimo, left, is pictured above with fellow Arduino team member Tom Igoe). Massimo's workshop featured the soon-to-be-released TinkerKit, a collection of pluggable sensor modules designed to work with the Arduino electronic prototyping platform.
Posted by Brian Jepson |
Feb 4, 2010 02:30 PM
Arduino |
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Sudoku puzzle solver using awk
awk is a fun and powerful language available in the command-line of Linux, Mac OS X, and even Windows (with a little help from Cygwin). In fact, our own Dale Dougherty co-authored one of the classic books on awk (and sed, another great Unix power tool) back in 1990 (the second edition was released in 1997), sed & awk.
At The Geek Stuff, Bill Duncan has posted a fun awk program that can solve Sudoku puzzles:
The application I chose to use as an example is "yet another sudoku puzzle solver". I must confess at the outset that I have never sat down to solve one of these puzzles myself, but sketched this out over a few days while commuting on a train and watching other people work on them. It was far more fun I think than actually doing any of the puzzles..
[...]This program uses a very simple depth-first recursive backtracking algorithm with up-front and ongoing elimination of invalid entries. Awk may not have the expressive power for representing complex data that perl or other languages have, but with care, many moderate sized problems and data sets can be used. This algorithm may not be the best one around, but it is certainly fast enough for most problems and is easy to implement.
When you strip out blank lines and comments it's only 67 lines! Keeping in the awk spirit, that would be:
awk '!/^[ \t]*#/ && !/^$/' solve.awk | wc -l
Yet Another Sudoku Puzzle Solver Using AWK
If you need to generate some puzzles to throw at it, try this Sudoku Generator written in Python.
Posted by Brian Jepson |
Jan 24, 2010 07:00 AM
Gaming, hacks |
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Massimo Banzi's Tinker Toolkit workshop at Interaction10
Massimo Banzi, author of Getting Started with Arduino and co-founder of the Arduino Project, is presenting a workshop at the upcoming Interaction10 conference in Savannah, GA on February 4, 2010:
The Tinker Tookit is a modular system of sensors and actuators being developed at Tinker.it! in London for the past couple of years. It allows designers to prototype and test tangible user interfaces with Arduino very quickly and without any knowledge of electronics. During this workshop we'll explore the basics of Arduino and get to build cool stuff within the first hour. You'll experience first hand accelerometers, touch sensors, colour sensors, and a lot more technology without having to spend a month talking about atoms and electrons.
Bring your laptop (Mac, Windows or even Linux) and your energy.
As a bonus, he'll be joined by Making Things Talk author (and fellow Arduino Project team member) Tom Igoe. It's two Make: Authors for the price of one!
Tangible Interface Prototyping with the Tinker Toolkit
Interaction10 Registration
In the Maker Shed:
Getting Started with Arduino
Our Price: $12.99
This valuable little book offers a thorough introduction to the open source electronics prototyping platform that's taking the design and hobbyist world by storm. Getting Started with Arduino gives you lots of ideas for projects and helps you get going on them right away. To use the introductory examples in this book, all you need is a USB Arduino, USB A-B cable, and an LED. By Massimo Banzi, co-founder of the Arduino Project.
Making Things Talk
Our Price: $29.99
Programming microcontrollers used to require an expensive development environment costing thousands of dollars and requiring professional electrical engineering expertise. Open-source physical computing platforms with simple i/o boards and development environments have led to new options for hobbyists, hackers, and makers. This book contains a series of projects that teach you what you need to know to get your creations talking to each other, connecting to the web, and forming networks of smart devices.
Posted by Brian Jepson |
Jan 15, 2010 07:00 PM
Events |
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