The Business
This is by far the best thing ever. It is "The Business".
No posts for so long
Hi All,
Sorry for the people who actually follow this blog; I have been crazy busy with work and family stuff. In my spare time lately (when I have been near home!) I have been hitting the photography a far bit. You can check out some good shots on my flickr page (http://www.flickr.com/photos/matqua/).
Don’t panic though, I am still tinkering around with some cool, geeky stuff. Right now I am working on an Arduino-based data logging system with an Eee PC. I’m wanting to sample the output of a solar panel and log the power data over a few months. Hopefully that will be operational (at least the GPS data logging component) in the next few days.
Anything interesting or anything in general? Feel free to drop me a line.
Matthew
Arduino Action
Hi there. Today I finally got some time to sit down with my Arduino Duemilanove (and motor control shield) and have a good play. Firstly I hooked up the Duemilanove board and played with a few examples (mostly just flashing LED 13 a few different ways. I did want it to flash the beat to “Everybody Dance Now” but didn’t want to spend that much time!) then got onto the task of building the motor shield.
Thankfully the motor shield works perfectly. I was able to control the steering of my robo-car with a servo connected and able to drive the car forwards and backwards using a standard DC motor connected to one of the motor controller inputs.
After that, I dove into writing a small test program or “sketch” in Arduino language to read the ultrasonic rangefinder I am placing on the front of the car. After an hour of tweaking I seemed to have succeeded. The sketch I wrote reads the analog pin, averages the last three readings to keep the distance a little more stable, then converts the voltage reading into a cm value. The Arduino then pipes the results out the USB serial port. The setup and output can be seen below. If anyone is interested in the code, drop me a line.
Next step, interfacing the motor shield with RoboRealm! Should be easy.
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- The Arduino and Rangefinder Setup
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- The output from the Arduino for the rangefinder measurements
Bit of photography action
Well it has been a rainy weekend here, so I thought I might get outside and see what shots I can polish off. I have been reading some excellent Lifehacker tutorials on getting out of auto mode on your DSLR today and decided to put some things I learnt into practice.
I only got as far as programmed auto mode today, but I’m sure I will make it through to manual soon enough!
I posted the best three pictures I took on my Flickr page. See what you think. The only adjustment I made to them was tweaking the colours a little in iPhoto.
Hacking the Apple TV
Just a quick post here. Mythbuntu on an Apple TV is awesome. I am amazed at just how well it runs. I guess it isn’t really that far fetched as the old 701 Eee would play back most things fine. HD channels look great too.
Having a little trouble with the IR receiver in it currently (I’m not too keen on having to recompile LIRC just to get it going). So for the time being I have a USB keyboard attached to it. 25 days since I set it up initially and so far, no lockups, video artifacts or issues of any kind. Really makes such a nice Myth frontend for only $329.
Hacking the Apple TV
Podcast Number 2 – Unibody MacBook Pro Review
Hello everyone! I have finally got podcast 2 recorded and uploaded. In this podcast I review the new MacBook Pro. I took more time planning this podcast so it should have a little more sustinance than the first podcast; however I recorded it after 4 hours of driving so the audio quality may vary.
If that hasn’t scared you off, you can download the podcast below in either Enhanced AAC or MP3 format. This episode runs a tad under 13 minutes but because of some junk at the end of the GarageBand timeline it encoded an extra 2 minutes of silence on the end; so sorry about that.
Time flies when your flatout…
Hi everyone,
It has been a little quiet here on the blog the last couple of weeks. I am in the process of getting Podcast #2 ready to record so look forward to that in the next few days (hopefully). I also have some posts on Zoneminder and the Eee, Mythbuntu on the Apple TV and all going well my new MBP will arrive tomorrow so I can give a quick review of it (and whether I have made a huge mistake ditching my matte screen for a glossy one).
