With men’s league baseball around the corner and a new Baum Bat in my garage, I got antsy to hit some baseballs. Since the sidekick keeps me close to the house on weekends, I had to improvise. Enter, DIY Baseball Trainer…
Step one: Drill hole in baseball
*Fun fact…I still haven’t had to charge this lithium ion battery pack, after a whole bunch of baby furniture assembly and random tasks in the *lab. Battery technology is great.
Step two: Attach ball tether
*Fun fact… I have been looking for uses for old salvaged power cords. They are everywhere.
Step three: Attach unit to fixed point
*Fun fact…I had to go nuts with my tree trimmer in order to clear a suitable space to accommodate a baseball swing. I still have a sizable pile of tree that I am working into our garbage cans pre-pickup.
Step four: Get real
*Fun fact…I thought this would hold up for a while. It turns out ‘a while’ was two swings.
+1 meta.
I falsely assumed that flashing a ROM would work the same on Gingerbread as it did on Froyo for the Droid
2. Way wrong…I honestly thought I had bricked the phone. I ended up having to get creative with ADB and flashing an older firmware version, and standing Froyo back up on my device. From that point, it was the same old song and dance…testing ROMs, pulling batteries, hanging out on the recovery screen. I wound up settling on an old nightly build of CG7.1. I am due for a phone upgrade right now…my wait for ICS is way more tolerable with a usable phone.
Season starts in eleven days…we are tied for first place until then.
The lab was light-free, and I was connected to the camera’s web server via my 3G connection. Controls are fairly snappy, and the image looks good even when pushed via cellular. Response time is very quick on the network itself…but remoting in to the router does the trick nicely. I’m keeping my eyes peeled for a second cam…set designated choppable. We’ll see…I’m growing attached to this guy, but really want to get into its guts.
The price of IP webcams has dropped to a pretty ridiculous level. My cheap little Foscam can handle audio and has eleven sweet little IR LEDs for nighttime footage…should have taken this route over the Samsung baby monitors, hindsight being what it is. I configured my router and have this cam connected to my home network wirelessly, so I can access via my router’s URL, the local network, or via free apps on my Droid or Katie’s iPhone. Sort of ridiculous. Full pan and tilt controls and the works. The further beauty of this IP dude is full hackable controls. In addition to the IR LEDs (eleven indicating a decent amount of juice) on this unit, there is a light meter, speaker, microphone, and two servos. All triggerable with this thing’s API over WiFi. I just need to find some time…this thing is sweet.
This thing screams with wall wart power. Watch… Now comes the hard part…choosing a decent battery and mounting the circuit board savely on the chasis. I have found a few good candidates, but they are a little bulky for my application. Still looking… The UI should be fairly straight forward. Just need a few more garage sessions, and I’ll be good to go. The cordless Dremel was a super purchase FWIW. One of the best tools I’ve used.
I still need to make the servo mounts more secure, but the initial test runs look promising: Getting close. I determined that the IOIO board will not fit inside the casing, so I will have to come up with an external mount. Which will change the balance, so I might end up having to add some counterweights for balance. It should shape up, mechanically, in another garage session or two. The UI work will be another session, thereafter, but look for a finished product within the next week or so.