Command Line LCD Arduino Interface

Liquid crystal displays are pretty awesome. Command line interfaces are very awesome. Hmm…

I started daydreaming at work about how to go about making hardware interface with an RSS feed. I have seen some projects that use Arduinos with ethernet shields to check Twitter, for example, but they seem unnecessarily bulky. Or clumsy. I spend a lot of time working on the command line, and love to put together dirty little scripts to solve problems. It sort of goes along the lines of ‘when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail’…I figured that the same thing could be implemented with a little shell scripting and my trusty Arduino, sans anything complicated.

So far, so good.

bad lab mobile
bad lab mobile

I put together a sketch (after the bump) to drive my LCD, writing serial output to the screen. After verifying that the sketch worked via the Arduino IDE’s serial monitor, I popped open a CLI and got to work. FWIW, I am using Ubuntu 11.04 still…ctrl-alt-t pops open a terminal window…unity has me all over shortcuts these days. Anyhow, I was able to verify that I could echo text and direct it to the USB port that the Arduino was mounted to. No sweat.

As a proof of concept, I decided to display the number of times that I had the word “awesome” on swantron.com. Once the LCD was shown to work, the sky is the limit…see some regex, pipes, wget, and so forth in action:

CLI
CLI FTW

Survey says:

+1 awesome
+11 awesome

Eleven “awesome”s. Awesome.
(Hit the bump for some code, an oddity, and more fun…)
Continue reading “Command Line LCD Arduino Interface”

Garage Door Hack

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.

hit the vid
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…

After the bump, of course

Continue reading “Garage Door Hack”

Messy Lab is Messy

Demolition phase: complete

messy
wait...what was I doing?

I feel like a space cadet…too many things in flight. Component central over here.

NASA Finds New Life?

T minus 2.75 hours until NASA hits the stage to talk about a newly discovered life-form.

nanu nanu
nanu nanu

Stay tuned…this is a good day.

Droid 2 Must Have Games

Games kick ass, am I right? Am I right? (****Spoiler…YES!*****)

Since I haven’t blathered about how awesome Android stuff is in a while, I figured I would ramble about games for a while. So far, I have found four games that are pretty much “must-have.” I hate that term, but it gets me search engine traffic. And traffic is a must-have. (Sorry.) You can find these must-havers on Android Market, but you probably knew that. Let’s begin.

In order of most-must-have, to still-must-have-but-not-as-much-as-most-must-have…

Angry Birds — Q. Why so angry, birds? A. Those egg-stealing pigs, that’s why.

mofo
I like that one ^

Robo Defense — Tower defense, FTW. I got really, really sucked into this one, keeping it in the two spot. All acheivements, check.
joke fail
D - Fence...get it (shakes head)

Fruit Ninja — Chopping the shit out of fruit…this game is as fun as it sounds
nacho ninja
Fruit Ninja looks more like Nacho Ninja

Doodle Jump — Pretty sure this (like Angry Birds) made some waves on iStuff. You jump a doodle…it is amusing as hell.
stupid flanders
Stupid Flanders

I’m still waiting for the non-advertisment-laden version of Angry Birds to drop. Right now, the free app is all that is out there on the Android Market. I’m not entirely sure, but I think I spent less than 3 bucks for the other three apps. Robo Defense has a pretty solid trial version, FWIW.

Well, in any regards, get Angry Birds. Meetings at work become little workday vay-kays. Little bird flinging vay-kays.

If you come across anything that I should check out, hit me with a comment. Or, Tweet that crap over to @swantron. Plug.

Droid 2 Must Have Games

Games kick ass, am I right? Am I right? (****Spoiler…YES!*****)

Since I haven’t blathered about how awesome Android stuff is in a while, I figured I would ramble about games for a while. So far, I have found four games that are pretty much “must-have.” I hate that term, but it gets me search engine traffic. And traffic is a must-have. (Sorry.) You can find these must-havers on Android Market, but you probably knew that. Let’s begin.

In order of most-must-have, to still-must-have-but-not-as-much-as-most-must-have…

Angry Birds — Q. Why so angry, birds? A. Those egg-stealing pigs, that’s why.

mofo
I like that one ^

Robo Defense — Tower defense, FTW. I got really, really sucked into this one, keeping it in the two spot. All acheivements, check.
joke fail
D - Fence...get it (shakes head)

Fruit Ninja — Chopping the shit out of fruit…this game is as fun as it sounds
nacho ninja
Fruit Ninja looks more like Nacho Ninja

Doodle Jump — Pretty sure this (like Angry Birds) made some waves on iStuff. You jump a doodle…it is amusing as hell.
stupid flanders
Stupid Flanders

I’m still waiting for the non-advertisment-laden version of Angry Birds to drop. Right now, the free app is all that is out there on the Android Market. I’m not entirely sure, but I think I spent less than 3 bucks for the other three apps. Robo Defense has a pretty solid trial version, FWIW.

Well, in any regards, get Angry Birds. Meetings at work become little workday vay-kays. Little bird flinging vay-kays.

If you come across anything that I should check out, hit me with a comment. Or, Tweet that crap over to @swantron. Plug.

Airsoft Hack Kickoff

I’m working on a project to control an airsoft pistol via my Arduino. The end result is to enable web control of this thing…

pew pew pew
pew pew pew

So far, I have checked off one step of two. My steps are as follow:

Step 1) Tear apart item
Step 2) Hack the crap out of said item

Stay tuned…

Wiimote Input For Droid

Nerd cred…oh indEEd

that sums to plus 3
that sums to plus 3

Playing GBA games on a Droid is cool.
Playing GBA games on a Droid via a Wiimote is ubercool.

Once I can figure out the accelerometer input, I’ll post more. In the meantime, I’ll be playing a little Mario Pinball. Suckers.

22 Degrees Solar Halo

I took a spin outside for a brief reading session on my lunch break yesterday. I’m glad I did, as I was treated to a little optical phenominon action…in the form of a 22 Degree Solar Halo. FTW.

I’m posting some pics I snapped…I’ll toss in the full write-up soon.

dang

cool

number 1

inverted

I inverted the colors of that last pic, quite obviously. That will be my template, so to speak, on which to wax nerdy in a Physics-y kind of way. Stay tuned.