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. 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 marketLink to project code at GitHub

Making progress on the IOIO marathon project. GitHub has been chosen as the initial hosting deal. Configured with a little hello world this evening. Click on that for some CLI awesome junk. If not, tune back in for the larger effort soon. Android app may follow.

Q. Am I dragging my feet with the whole IOIO code cleanup deal? A. Take a look at this little pictorial dealio regarding soldering headers to my IOIO Exhb 1: Exhb 2: Exhb 3: I’ll get on that; you have my word. I am toying around with the idea of tossing the open drain app on both github and the Android Market, in order to throw some chum out to the crew of IOIO owners. We’ll see.

Black Sox, for the win… 2011 Gallatin Valley Men’s Adult Baseball League champions. You can’t tell due to the backlighting, but there are four games worth or infield on that uni. Red Bull, ibuprofen, celebratory OMLs, Skoal, and infield. And grass from a couple of cans of corn put-outs. Happy and tired.

I had three great years at Zoot Enterprises. Time for a change, however. Thanks for it all.

It was worth the wait…I now control 120V via my Android. I had a mostly sleepless night, again. I managed to figure out what I had been botching while trying to provide enough juice to my PowerSwitch Tail. Transistors and alligator clamps are out; extra pins are in. Take a look at the (awful quality) video…on the main page, as the picture quality won’t grind loading to a halt. I still need to toss some headers on the IOIO, and take some clips out of the picture for a better picture of what I did here. Look for that shortly, along with a snippet. Pretty straight forward, but we’ll have to see where this one ends up.

Katie and I are happily expecting a baby girl…due date: 12/31 There she is^ I have money on the little lady having big, brown eyes. Very excited to meet her.

I was horsing around with the Google+ Hangout function last week. In installing the required Google / Flash plugins via Ubuntu Update Manager, I managed to cripple my system. I wiped Flash off of my machine, did a fresh install…the whole works. To no avail. The bug (and fix) were strange enough to warrant a write-up. First, the symptoms were strange. Any Flash video would run super fast…triple speed. While watching Cubs replays in fast forward was sort of amusing, I couldn’t get audio to work either. All media was wonky, including streaming audio. I tried to play an MP3 from my hard drive…playback was nonfunctional. That sort of led me to the solution: I disabled the HDMI audio function, restarted Firefox, and that was that. Why audio settings would spawn that sort of malfunction is beyond me. I am going to submit a bug report on this guy…too strange to let slip.

So, good news and bad news. Yin and Yang. I managed to get my open drain setup working with the IOIO. Ytai was right…just needed to dump more current through the sucker and pull 5V from the board. See below: On to the bad. I wasn’t pushing enough current to trigger my 120V relay…but before I could do some current calculations, my piece of shit Radio Shack multimeter finally gave out. How timely? Not to worry…a quick trip to Lowes, and we have a new (much higher quality) Ideal DMM: Your eyes aren’t fooling you…that is a thermocouple. Thermocouple and stand…pretty official. I’ll get some calculations done and figure out where we are with this guy…pretty close!

Some career-oriented things have kept me largely out of the Bad Lab. I finally decided to dust of the soldering station and get a permanent power connector surface mounted to my IOIO board. I tackled this project before I headed to work…I think the pre-coffee pre-jitter scenario worked out well. Anyhow, this is the component from SparkFun: It is a simple two pin surface mount compact connector. Nice current rating, so I am hoping it will give me enough juice to pull 5V in my pull-up project. The issue to overcome in the actual soldering was keeping this little sucker in place and stable to get the first joint in place. My solution, once again, ended up involving my adjustable clamps. These things are great, especially compared to the ‘helper hands’ alligator clip stand. Wonky hands would be more apt. For a little connector, it seems to be fairly secure. I also picked up a barrel jack to two pin connector from SparkFun. Hooked up to a wall wart…survey says: We have power. I will test it against some loads, and get back on the pull-up project. Here goes nothing…