Plus One Awesome – swan tron dot com

September 5, 2011

IOIO PowerSwitch Project

I can finally report a conclusion of sorts on the IOIO / PowerSwitch Tail project. The ‘of sorts’ disclaimer is in regards to my Android App, which is pretty much a working beta. I have some issues with my onResume code, and want to put some polish on the UI. That said, I have released the code to the interwebs, so had better provide a write-up.

The setup is the same as I have been posting. Dual open drain pins with a 10K pull to 5V do the lifting…triggering of pins is handled via my IOIO board…Android app providing a UI to do the switching.

ioio-example-project — beta version: check.

I went ahead and published my app on the Android Market. It will pop for sure by searching for IOIO.

Price: free ninety nine. Can’t beat that.

I also tossed this code up on GitHub. Go nuts.

Video time: see this in action.

Basically, between all of the shaky camera work, I download my app from the Android Market, connect via USB, and control the 120V relay via my Droid 2. I will shoot a better video once I clean up my code a bit.

Stay tuned. The README on GitHub and the app details section should have all of the connection information. I can provide any further details via email / comments / @swantron. Have fun with this one…

Link to android market
Link to project code at GitHub

July 16, 2011

Android Instant Upload to Google(plus)

I created a Google+ account last week, in order to kick the tires a bit. I am going to hold off on a full review until I get some circles going, test the group video chat functions, etc.

I do want to mention one puzzling feature that Google has built into this thing.

Instant upload.

I don’t get it.

This makes for super easy uploading of images to your profile. Android phone…cellular radio connection…there you go. This app will run a cron job to dump your photos to your Google plus profile. The default setting is to allow this when you set up the Google+ Android app, with all new photos dumped to a private (non-shared) folder on your G+ account.

I opened up my settings and let this one rip.

webcam shot to google plus via android — plus one intrusive

It took about 20 seconds for that picture to show up in my private folder. Cool implementation, but pretty impractical.

Issues I have with this:

* Increased data usage. Especially as unlimited plans are goners.
* Battery nukage. One more thing to kill -9.
* Location data. Real time seeding a DB with your lat/long.
* Duplicate media. Primarily for deletions…two is worse than one.
* Neccessary? USB cord…bluetooth…MMS…physical media…email…

Suffice to say, I will have this ‘feature’ disabled. Stay tuned for the full review, and holler if you would like an invite.

October 2, 2010

Motor Shield Assembly Steps

Good news…you don’t have to listen to me blather on. At least blather on too much…there will be some blathering.

I mentioned a few posts ago that I was feeling lousy about failing to post some junk. Junk and stuff…electronics…programming is uber-super…blathering again…et…cet…etcetera.

clamp — asterixes astericies astericxses

soldering x3 — doot doot doot doot deet deet doot deet doot deet deet

October 2, 2010

Motor Shield Assembly Steps

Good news…you don’t have to listen to me blather on. At least blather on too much…there will be some blathering.

I mentioned a few posts ago that I was feeling lousy about failing to post some junk. Junk and stuff…electronics…programming is uber-super…blathering again…et…cet…etcetera.

September 21, 2010

+1 Twin Terminal Sessions

I’d like to post the details of my latest one-on-one with my Arduino…but, I’m not going to.

Suffice to say, it was sweet. Anything (non work related) involving multiple command lines is plus one awesome.