disclaimer > I am not clarivoyant < / disclaimer > I’ll make a bold prediction. **You are reading this post on a web-connected device!**Cunning, righf? I will do you all a favor and cut to the point. We all have access to the internet, nearly always. Why not put that to use for difficult problems, in general? Like stock control. Pretend, if it helps, that the stock management software is the robotic overlord, and your staff constitutes the minions… The take away in my whole rambling post lies in a centralized control system for hard goods. A system such as OrderWise allows you to handle arguably the most fundamental business need, inventory, in a convenient digital manner. When you have the same system in place for inventory, order processing, web integration, etc., you will know what your snagging points are. Manage your physical goods, intelligently. That just might be part of business 101. I would have zero idea…I studied math. Anyhow, hit that link and take a look. Computers really pay for themselves in managed applications like inventory…I do know that much for a fact.

Fun fact: math guys find math stuffs in non-math stuffs Fun tip: don’t study number theory Fun tip bonus aside: If you think of numbers as things instead of numbers, they will take on funny little characteristics. Fun anecdote: I was taking a look at a sweet site about Mind health, and noticed they had an awesome number on the page… I have no idea whether or not Cognifit was trying to slap that particular number on their site on purpose, but it is a good math number. Do explain…okay. 353 is both prime, and a palindrome. Remember “Madam, I’m Adam.” from school? Take that, make it a number, and moreover make it a number that is only divisible by one and itself… you have a crazy little thing like 353. How do I pick that up? Mental fitness. How does one pick that up? Practice. Plain and simple. Your brain works much the same way that any other of your body systems work. Want big swollen biceps? Grab some dumbbells, do some curls. Want a big, awesome brain? Grab some mental dumbbells, do some brain curls. Curls get the girls…be them brain or biceps. Joking aside, it is proven that you must keep your memory and problem solving skills working in order to fend off getting old, slow, sluggish, etc. That link above is of some serious value…fun brain fitness activities are the best type. Stay sharp, readers. Holler with any palindromic primes…I’m on the hunt.

So, every once in a while, my home WiFi connection will drop an error bomb on me. It always seems to be at a horribly inopportune moment; I am trying to do some actual work at home, and all of a sudden my wireless router is showing itself to be frozen. I will admit wholly: I find ethernet cables to be creepy reminders of horrible computing times past. Long story short, when my WiFi decides to dump out, I find myself digging through the ghetto tupperware containers in the garage, in search of a physical cable with which to connect. Hard lines are for the birds. It is easy to take wireless tech for granted. Between 3G/4G and WiFi, we can be connected pretty much wherever. The mobile companies bear the burden of maintaining the cellular connections…what about the WiFi? A single access point can be troublesome…what about multiple WiFi points? It doesn’t take much to create a messy situation. Put yourself in the shoes of an IT manager for a second. Say you have a few hundred users, and a dozen access points. Chances are pretty good that all of your WiFi routers are not the same version…chances are also good that you are tasked to juggle multiple companies’ routers. Easier said than done. Take my word as truth…you need a management system. More particularly, you need something like Tanaza Cloud WiFi Management SaaS. I work in the SaaS game…this is a solution for which you are better off buying software for. Your lack of headaches will signal the significance of said purchase. Take my word or take a look at that link. If it saves someone a wasted weekend on the phone with Netgear, I’ll consider this post a success.

It kills me a little bit inside every time I boot into Windows at work. Just a little bit. It seems like Microsoft is following Canonical’s lead, by introducing an Ubuntu-like hover bar deal to the taskbar in Windows 7. I won’t bother myself with figuring out who is doing the aping…we’ll just leave it at that. Anyhow, the first real impressive feature I have found with Windows 7 is seamless handling of multiple monitors. Getting triple monitors was *nearly plug and play. A few resolution tweaks and a reordering was all it took. For what it is worth, that monitor placement is strategic. Suffice to say my view is much, much better now. (shutters)

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

So, good news and bad news in regards to my IOIO servo controller project. Good: I have published my code to GitHub. See… Bad: Ytai, the creator of IOIO itself, let me know that my code is in need of an overhaul. Big time. I am experiencing too much lag…losing a ton of time in the writing phase of my app. Expect an overhaul of said code, in preparation for my next project. I have seen some activity on both of my apps on the Android Market. I feel some moral obligation to fix both apps, cite some versions, etc. This one could take some time, but should result in a pretty sweet project. On a strange note, Ytai has a sample app that handles the analog input that I need for my next effort. I should be able to stand up a project before too long…pretty pumped. Anyhow, check that code if you are bored. Really bored. I will update when I get some decent code committed…until then…

I just doubled my Android Market presence with one fell swoop. IOIO project number two is in the books: IOIO Servo Controller. 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. 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…

Proof of concept stage has passed…we are full on code cleanup and prep for video on the servo project… I should have the app polished and on the market Saturday afternoon. Tune in.

I put together a simple proof of concept using a slider to control a PWM pin out…simple is an understatement. Nice, right? In doing this, I did a fresh download of the IOIO example apps, as I had gutted the Blink example for my 120V relay app. It turns out that there is a fresh firmware version…I grabbed the new IOIO library that is associated with that. So, my proof of concept doesn’t function…I tested it with an LED to no avail. So, I have a few items to address before I push out another project

2. Update firmware | flash V3 to my IOIO
3. Update my IOIOPowerSwitch App to contain IOIOLib V3
4. Update READMEs / Github / Android Market to cite firmware version
5. Update proof of concept to same specifications _ It should go smoothly, after the first bullet-point is in the books. Stay toooned.