I bit on the Mr. Beer home-brewing kit last woot-off. Much to my dismay, the kit arrived in a giant brown cardboard box, with a sizable puncture would in the side. Opening it verified the damage:

that's my name

The brewing container was smashed inward, and the plastic was too thick to pop back into shape.

I tried contacting FedEx, as the damage was definitely done in shipping. As it turns out, after creating an account with FedEx | submitting a claim ticket | waiting | waiting, FedEx has you contact the sender when the item is shipped via “Smartpost.” Whatever that entails. Not very helpful…just a reply email sending me back at woot.

I was sort of pissy, and ended up forwarding the email from Fedex to the primary woot returns email. Details are as follow:

I’m very sorry about that. We’ll get a replacement sent to you and have our crack team of commandos that make the Expendables look like babies go after them. No need to return the damaged one to us.

Riley

——————- Original Message ——————-
From: SWANIACHI
Sent: 02/01/2012
To: RMA; RMA Woot; RMA@woot.com
Subject: damaged shipment from woot (MRS), case # W-1030992-R925

Passing the buck…

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: SPCustomerSupport
Date: Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 7:45 AM
Subject: Re: damaged shipment from woot (MRS)
To: Joseph Swanson

Good Morning,

Thank you for your recent inquiry. We have received your request, however when
packages are lost or damaged, only the party directly paying the shipping charges to
FedEx SmartPost may file a claim. Please contact the Shipper with your information so
they may file a claim.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

Thank you,
FedEx SmartPost Customer Support

—– Original Message —–
From: Joseph Swanson
Date: Tuesday, January 31, 2012 9:02 pm
Subject: damaged shipment from woot
To: SPCustomerSupport@fedex.com

> In regards to Smartpost tracking #02927009713120839115…
>
> I received a package from woot.com today (1/31) that was damaged by
> something en route to my front stairs, likely a forklift tine.
>
> I recognize that mistakes are made, accidents happen, etc., but it so
> happens that the damaged item is a Mr. Beer home-brew kit. The (assumed
> forklift) did quite a number on the brewing vessel in particular, and
> the
> plastic used is not well-suited for popping back into shape. The reduced
> volume caused by the damage render the vat unable to accommodate a full
> batch of beer, which is the end goal. It turns out that our baby daughter
> is angrier that first assumed…half batches may not cut it.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> J. Swanson
>

Awesome support, Woot. FedEx should take note. FedEx should also teach their forklift drivers how to drive forklifts, but that is another topic entirely.

You will continue to receive my business…well done. I owe you a (Mr.) beer.

My workaround didn’t pan out…time to rethink the build. Guess what I have on my desk:

yoink

Adafruit Motor Shield for the Arduino. Two good looking H-Bridges staring at me….that’ll do. I never thought I would find myself treating my Arduino gear as a scrapheap, but the day has come.

The H-Bridge will allow me to cross over (think of a capitol H) and provide bi-directional motion from the hardware level. 3.3V digital outputs…no more open drain needed (bonus.)

h bridge pins

Anyhow, I ended up putting together a little test board…socket, some male pins, and eventually some wires for a more secure connection. Sucking some serious soldering fumes…

custom mod

It looks sloppy, but here is the hardware in its entirety:

+1 great holder

Here is a quick video of my testing. I fired up my IOIOSeek program, which has two simple digital outputs triggered via buttons…

Early success? Yep. Except for the early part…this has been more work than I had assumed. More EE work…hoping the UI and hardware containment goes smoothly. Tune back in.

Super easy too…fire up a terminal [ctrl-alt-t]

Step one:
cd /etc/apt
Step two:
sudo vim sources.list
Step three:
add “deb http://repository.spotify.com stable non-free” to the file

sudo vim

Step four:
sudo apt-get update

_{_n_/_Y_}_Y

Step five:
sudo apt-get install spotify-client-qt

can I kick it

That is that. It is not a supported version, but I doubt anyone installing via aptitude will really care about that item.

Side thought: How sad is it that my favorite album came out in 1993? Old balls.

Watch the video to see the Andoid / IOIO / servo in action:

I’ll get app updated on the Android Market and on GitHub this weekend. Happy Friday.

I'm going HAM

That means, without any doubt, that the satellite that MSU stuck in orbit last week has indeed been a long time coming.

I’m running up to campus for the mission statement and a possible down-link tomorrow afternoon…stay tuned for this one. We have entered full-on geek mode.

...friday funday

Once I sew this all together, I’ll have a good one to post. Shooting for Sunday evening…

servo in altoids can smells like altoids

This project is a one-off of the PowerSwitch Tail relay project I have out in the wild. I took the button out of the mix and implemented a slider bar…removed the relay and am now driving a hobby servo.

brand placement

Displayed is the relative level (zero to one) of the slider, the slider itself, and a shameless plug. The onboard LED also fires with a brightness relative to the slider position…which I implemented in the coding and sort of left in there.

The basic concept was to get the PWM output configured correctly, in order to control the servo positioning…the slider function is pretty much just the stock slider from the Android Development docs, widened a bit for the sake of video capture. The rest was just mashing around the code I had out there…not too bad.

Check the thing in action:

This project is available for download in app form on the Android Market. Right next to my other guy…search for IOIO. I will toss the code on my GitHub account as well. Fun project…I may branch and see If I can do anything cool with a few servos. We’ll see.

Shoot any comments to joe(at)swantron(dot)com. I can help with any setup issues, if they may arise. Good luck…

awesome project is awesome

I had a mostly sleepless night, again. I managed to figure out what I had been botching while trying to provide enough juice to my PowerSwitch Tail. Transistors and alligator clamps are out; extra pins are in.

Take a look at the (awful quality) video…on the main page, as the picture quality won’t grind loading to a halt.

I still need to toss some headers on the IOIO, and take some clips out of the picture for a better picture of what I did here. Look for that shortly, along with a snippet. Pretty straight forward, but we’ll have to see where this one ends up.

New Things

…or an embedded Van Halen music video. You are welcome.

Cheers to new things.

+1 a bunch of wires

Eclipse and I are still having our issues, but the ADK is becoming less Greek to me. The next project should shed some light on what sort of possibilities IOIO presents.

I shot a video of one of my debugging tests. I eventually will be using an ‘open drain’ setup, in order to get 5V output, but am doing some testing at 3.3V. I hooked up an old speaker that I salvaged from a CRT tear-down to my test pins, to verify that my Android App was working.

Hit the jump to view said vid…

Stay tuned.