In the home stretch… …which I thought would be a slam dunk. As it turns out, the programming phase for team swantron is a laborious thing at best. Code is boring. I knew that coming in, but Emma picked up on my ruse…we do a lot of jumper-ing breadboards in programming phase. Saturday should be interesting.

Quick update on the Red Bull Creation status. We’re turbull encabulating… I’m lacking a sufficient power source to push a ton of these LEDs simultaneously, so that is that for now. Power brick and a back-up strip are in the mail, so ambition will dictate how bright we go with this. The physical stuff is largely roughed-out, so now the challenge lies in refining the UI to this thing. Well, the secondary user’s interface is the thing that needs attention. My user is ready to roll. Time is running short…tune in soon. *** **PROTIP** burn the shit out of the copper contact tabs if you chop a RBG LED strip…the remnant rubber is a solder contact’s worst nightmare ***

Yesterday was fruitful. We are mostly done with the non-electronic portion of the build. I have a very tired jigsaw and a new-but-already-stress tested Dremel Multimax cooling off on the bench. Oh yeah…and there was spray paint. A lot of spray paint… No Red Bulls for the small assistant. She’s good to go. Heating up the soldering iron during the next nap. On to the next phase.

Thinkin’ of a master plan Timely song placement, Pandora…well played. Thinkin’ thought. Profiled and ready to implement. I can see the finish line beyond a bunch of Dremel-ing and a bigger bunch of .cpp. We’re close…stay tuned.

Materials, purchased. I’m a bit further down the road as of this posting, and already in a tool crunch. It looks like Lowe’s is the winner of this round…I’ll be back there tomorrow on my lunch break. “You wore that apron yesterday Lowe’s bro! j/k! Throw ’er on the tab!” Anyhow, this goal for the weekend is to have the base infrastructure in a rudimentary complete status. I have a bunch of question marks at this point, but a sharpening picture of where Emma and I will end up with this thing. I need to get saws and edible stuff out of the picture, so I’m hoping to be in the hardware / software phase of this thing in a few days. The generally awesome people at Adafruit have a new Arduino heading towards the Rockies, and I have a bunch of LED strip-centric things to study before that happens…tons to do. Sensors to study…screws to drive…Fruit Loops to eat. We’re busy. Need some Red Bulls. Stay tuned.

Big news. Team swan tron made the cut for the 2013 Red Bull Creation competition. Sweet and I made an unboxing video to signal the official start of awesome junk… –kit guts– As the video demonstrates, the mood in global HQ is babblingly excited. Grabby and frantic, but excited. The competition in these sorts of things is typically a lot tougher than the balsa bento box this kit shipped in. Maybe Emma and I can pull out an upset.

swan tron Global HQ is about to get really real. Tune in soon.

Have I mentioned how much I enjoy developing on Windows?

My primary motivation for elliptical-ing… An Asus Transformer perches nicely upon the ledge of a Schwinn elliptical trainer. Entertainment value is increased, and the view of the timer is obscured…two-for-one.

The only thing I’ve been doing pertaining to the site has been to polish off the resume and get a new job. That sort of stuff. I did run around the Gallatin Valley last weekend…chasing D-Rock and his gigantor ATV. 1000 cc…seriously. I really like the northern part of the valley: Nice little Saturday. More to come about the job…I’ll post some details when I start.