I am tired of looking at wobbly windows full of Eclipse. The best and worst part of the IOIO board is the fact that the libraries are Java-centric…unfortunately, I am in the middle of a ‘worst’ phase. I am sort of stalemated. Unfortunately, my issue lies in something that should be trivial, namely naming. Once I can figure out how to orient the crap out of these object-ass pins, I will be good to go. Until then…I am going back to the basics. Processing looks so safe and warm. Coziness, for the win.
How about a 20 by 4 LCD project? Okay.
+1 blue
I have had this sitting on the workbench of bad lab for a while. Time to get after it.
The unit came assembled, minus the jumpers I needed to plug this into my breadboard for prototyping. Coincidentally, my soldering station needed to come out of retirement. Sixteen pins…sounds about perfect.
(hit the bump for several more pics, a snippet, and some other awesome stuff) Continue reading →
My new thing has officially arrived. Both in the literal sense and philosophically. I love my Arduino, and I love my Android…now I can have the best of both.
Introducing, the IOIO breakout board…
+1 sleek
I snagged this guy from SparkFun. You know how the Android is full of stuff? Accelerometers, touch screen, GPS receiver, WiFi…etc? Instead of having to start from scratch for each of my Arduino projects to introduce components, this board will allow me to use the Android/Java as the backbone of my code, instead of using Processing/C++. And that, my friends, is +++.
Take a look at this awful-picture-quality-having video:
Sorry about that…I had to use Katie’s old BlackBerry to record the demo. It leaves much to be desired.
Anyhow, so far I have just managed to get Eclipse configured, and have uncovered several gotchas. The biggest obstacle was getting the permissions worked out and linking the libraries properly. When in doubt, chmod -R 777 * and let it rip. We’ll see what comes of this…could be cool once I dust off my Java skills.
Of note: pretty sure I am the first person to get this working on a Droid 2, and likely the first to set this up on Linux. It just shipped yesterday, so the sky is the limit on this…I am very excited. Big props to Ytai and SparkFun.
I’ve had some time to poke around under the hood of Ubuntu 11.04, a.k.a. Natty Narwhal. I still am struggling to spell ‘narwhal’ for the record, but I’ll share some of my first thoughts. After all, sharing is caring. Write that down.
I’ll put the most obvious thing on the table first…they Apple-ed the crap out of this distro. Take a look at this screen shot, and tell me it doesn’t look an awful lot like OSX, with the bottom ‘stuff’ dumped on the left-hand side: (click to enlarge)
thanks mr. narhwal
The good news is that like Leopard, Narwhal is usable. The same cannot be said for Ubuntu’s first foray into this new territory with Unity. Their last attempt was in 10.10 Netbook Edition, which was horrible to say the least. The UI was attempting to mix desktop features with mobile phone-like buttons, and it was a joke. Pretty much junk…I reverted my Mini 9 to the 10.10 Desktop Edition, and jumped back on the Gnome bandwagon. Well, to their credit, Ubuntu has polished the thing up.
From what I can gather, Unity sits over Compiz…sort of like a plugin. I snagged the Compiz configuration tool via a CLI and messed around with the settings. The snap-to-side function that came stock with this was a pain in my ass, so I reverted it to my beloved ‘wobble windows’ It was sort of odd to have the options bar integrated with the top bar at first, but when I change gears and use multiple windows, I am liking the move.
The window switcher function pans out and shows you four workspaces…see below (click to enlarge)
window switcher is switchy
So basically, I am writing this post in one area, have Eclipse up in another, and have two CLI sessions live in their own spots. With the integrated file bar, the Gimp is far less cluttered…which is awesome. The taskbar slider function is a bit spotty still. I have taken Compiz down running my Arduino IDE (trying to set a temp file up as a taskbar item…it puked) but now have it configured and snappy. I would chalk that up to a training issue, rather than a show stopper.
At the end of the day, I give it a surprisingly positive review. I was very satisfied with the last few long term support versions of Ubuntu, and hesitant to make the switch after the whole fiasco with Unity last time. You can switch back to Gnome, but I have no plans on doing so.
Pros:
* Linux distro. Give me terminal or give me death.
* Firefox 4. Much improved.
* Update manager. Keeps me current without much hassle.
* Interesting UI. Make sure you download the Compiz manager to tweak things.
* Free.99. Can’t beat the price
Cons:
* Ubuntu’s slant. Not bad, but they are steering us toward their cloud services and apps.
* Not Linux-y. Feels like a Win7/OSX hybrid at times.
* Rushed to market. Unity is in need of some refinement.
At the end of the day, I am sticking with this distro. It will only improve. When the new Gnome drops, I’ll make the call as where to head, but this is it for the time being.
Spoiler1: This is awesome.
Spoiler2: I’ve never seen Minority Report.
I do know that there is some sort of hands free interface, and that is what I have put together.
+1 dizzy
Long story short, I have extended upon my PING))) project to include some sweet touchless home automation. I have the ultrasonic sensor interfacing with my garage door and a lamp, utilizing a servo and a PowerSwitch Tail, respectively.
Hit the bump for an awesome video of this thing in action, and for my spippet.
Introducing Open-er-o-matic 3000. OOM3K. My finest project to date. I have my Arduino poking around with a PING))) sensor, a servo, some LEDs, and best of all…my garage door opener. End result: some Star Trek-ass shit.
Ronco alert
Check this footage of the OOM3K in action. Here, I had it configured to open the door when the ultrasonic sensor echoes off of something within 8 cm…
I really should have a running list of these mini-projects I have been cranking out. This one: using a PING))) sensor from Parallax Inc to drive LEDs for a set of values. Sounds boring, but it is sort of cool. Oh cool.
This dapper-looking little guy can accurately measure distance from a few to a few hundred cm. It is very simple by design…basically just a sonar setup. My sketch sends out a signal and listens for the signal’s signature upon return…calculates time elapsed and interpolates distance using the approximate speed of sound. Slick like Rick.
I hugged the sensor on my binary-project-having breadboard, as this is going to be incorporated in some way. My fr1st thought is to turn those LEDs into range holders, and output according to range. Could be awesome. Stay tuned.
I have had a bunch of white LEDs in my Amazon shopping cart for quite some time. I was tossing around the idea of doing a 5×5 cube a while ago, but ran out of steam on that project. I blame the PowerSwitch Tail…I had relays on the brain, big time. Still drafting out my big project on that front; stay tuned for some sweet garage door action. I rarely find my self with two projects in flight, that may actually turn into something, but I just might have stumbled back into the LED arena.
Long story short, I had my Arduino, Mini 9, some white LEDs, and exactly seven jumper wires in my backpack. I stepped upstairs at work for lunch, and decided to horse around with them…see what it takes to run multiple LEDs. Seems basic, and it is. Fortunately…
Here is he setup…
not much to it
I put together a little sketch. I managed to grab the time-stamp notion from this sketch that is included with the IDE, and run with the rest of it. There will be snippet, but snippet will follow A SWEET VIDEO FTW
Before you try to dr this, I have included a video to combat the tl crowd. You’re quite welcome. See below.
Now I’ll explain. I may even toss in a snippet…who knows.
Basically, I found myself with a few free hours, an Arduino, a bunch of random components in my lab (read: garage) at my disposal, and no real plan of attack. Result? Arduino/servo motor controlled fan.
Jump off component…silver spray painted Altoids can. Nice…chop that sucker up so I can smash a servo motor in there.
+1 minty
Well done. See…
dang, son
Lady Ada uses these for some random projects. If you can stomach a whole bunch of crappy mints, you have a nice little Arduino-sized metal casing. Of course, it poses a grounding threat, which I experienced working with my motor shield a while back. That said…keep a few around. I have put this one to use before.
Next step…testing the servo
wires for the win
For this, I broke out my motor shield. It doesn’t have any features that would benefit this project…the servo areas are basically just power, ground, and control. Control pumps into the 16B 10 port, like a jumper…that works for my debug.
Next, implement a fan.
I'm a big fan.
I snagged this fan from an old tower, I think. I really don’t know. It seemed to react well to a 9V battery, so I tried it with a 5V source…same deal. Awesome. I used a zip tie to fasten this to that, that being the Altoids enclosure.
This thing needs a base…man-clamp to the rescue:
man-clamp
I picked this up, to use it as a soldering base. That ‘x-tra’ hands piece of shit that I have previously posted in pictures didn’t cut it. This is the manly version. And, it works great for this project, I believe…you can decide based upon the vid. Here is what it looks like, with some more detail.
clamp in action
Let’s add some code…oh no…sounds like we’ve reached the BALLIN ASS SNIPPET ZONE
#include
Servo myservo; // servo opbect
int pos = 0; // initialize
void setup()
{
myservo.attach(10); // digi pin 10
void loop()
{
for(pos = 0; pos < 180; pos += 1) // from 1 to 180
{
myservo.write(pos); // moves servo
delay(20); // waits 20 ms
}
for(pos = 180; pos>=1; pos-=1) // sweeps span between 180 and 1
{
myservo.write(pos); // moves servo
delay(20); // waits 20 ms
}
}
If that looks familiar, it is because it pretty much the sweep example from the Arduino IDE. No changes necessary…I like when that happens.
Here is the final product:
I'm a big fan of this little fan. Sorry.
Not bad, for a quick slam-together exercise. It isn’t really robotic, since it has no sensors. I could bump this up a notch with some IR LEDs, or my PIR sensor, but that is for another time.
Blah blah blah, stay tuned, blah blah. Until then.
