Busy hands | Disquiet mind

CoderDojo

2013-05-11T14:22:53Z

CoderDojo, for those unaware, is like a free Saturday computer club for children, set up by various groups (increasingly companies are setting up their own), with an aim of teaching children some form of computer language. The most popular is HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Recently I started helping out with the CoderDojo in DCU (website launching soon). It's just over a year old, and today was my second week.

I got involved because, a woman from work sent around an email, and it's close to my home. That, and three weeks ago they started another class particularly aimed at girls. So from 10am to noon, 30 or so 10-18 year old girls (and their parents/guardians) gather to learn how to write their own webpages. Then from noon until 2pm the mixed beginners class is run, and from 2pm to 4pm is the advanced class. There is a bit of a mix-up with the ticketing system that needs smoothing out (girls tickets, gen tickets), but other than that things seem to be going well.

Why start an all-girls class? After all the material isn't any different. They'd been running the mixed classes for a year, and had about four girls attending. The girls class started with about 35. Why? Perhaps it's about perception? No-one is particularly keen to do things if they feel they won't fit in. So if you tell them yes, this is for you, and there will be others like you, maybe they feel more encouraged to attend?

I help out with the two beginner classes, and after those four hours I'm a bit shattered, and keep missing out on the advanced class who do fun things like animation and node.js. Maybe once I get used to the routine I'll find the extra energy. It's inspiring to see the children getting excited over what they're doing. It's humbling to see the creativity just pour out of them so effortlessly. And it feels good to be able to help them when they get stuck. I'm looking forward to the coolest-project competition.

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Maker Faire UK 2013

2013-05-03T14:07:36Z

After a year hiatus Maker Faire UK was back in Newcastle last weekend. This time around I was behind the stands with tog. Our base for the weekend was the large room dubbed 'Zone C' which housed "Giant Drawing Machines and UK Hackerspaces", and us. (We'll allow them that gaff, as otherwise we were made very welcome.) The other areas held sections like DIY Bio, soldering, robots, crafters, software, and even a long line that allegedly led to a laser game in the style of a jewel thief caper.

Luckily there were enough of us on the stand that we could duck out and have a look around. I took part in a taste survey and got my tastebuds counted (I'm in the super-taster range) in the DIY Bio section. In the soldering section they were running a workshop with squishy circuits. In the craft section they had robots that knit! There were also modified knitting machines that could create complicated patterns, and an accurate set of knitted and crocheted organs. I also found beautiful modern quilts and a Dazzle Dress made of high-vis and reflective materials. Bitmap Machine Knitting even crocheted EL wire with regular wire to create hats and bracelet-cuffs!

( Pictures )

I met rainycat and saw her EEG-pendant visualiser in action. I met BobDotStone from the York hackerspace as he proudly showed off his 8x8 matrix tshirt. I even spied LEDs decorating a sombrero. Bare Conductive stopped by and kindly gave us one of their pen samples so we could have fun with it (we're thinking screen printing). Someone stopped by asking for advice on how to improve his touch-screen gloves and we gave him a piece of conductive fabric to try. This free sharing and helping is one of the things I really like about the Maker community. (For more of this sharing, and to see how much a duck is worth, take a look at the tog post.)

Lots of people seemed to enjoy our projects. partfusion brought his giant Ardunio, and a collection of his LED displays and wearable pieces. I brought my 7x7 LED matrix top, my temperature sensing scarf, and the Starry Light (LED wind-'chime'). Different people liked different things, I had great discussions about how the problem was really with the batteries (it's so great to met people who understand), about research in the area, giving people ideas about different ways to utilise soft-circuits (and getting ideas back in return). I even met a teacher who was really excited about the whole thing, hoping to use it as a way to get the girls in his class interested in electronics! I was also impressed to meet a young lady who already knew about soft-circuits, and was more curious in how we programmed them. All in all I think the future is bright (and twinkly).

( Pictures of our stand )

And of course MakerFaireUK isn't complete without purchasing so many books and kits that the weight-allowance on the flight home becomes a worry.

( About the LED nametag )

Overall it was an exhausting, but fantastic experience. I'm still buzzed from all the compliments and new ideas. And can't wait to see what all these other makers do next.

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Updates of stuff

2013-03-12T21:26:51Z

Work has been keeping me busy so coherent ... speech stuff ... is little beyond me at the moment. (I'm going to a grammar workshop on Saturday, maybe that will help.) So this will be blessedly brief.

Those are crepe-paper cherry blossoms at the top. I roughly followed this tutorial, only I lack a tree branch.

I've taken to learning how to needle-felt. Here's my first attempt at a rectangle in green wool, and conductive stainless-steel fiber.

I've also been experimenting with fusible fibers (and sheets) together with conductive fibers as well.

In tangential news we got a 3D-printer. I haven't logged much time with it yet but am looking forward to some of the translucent and UV-reactive plastics.

Finally, to conclude, I'm going to be busy this year attending all the things.

April, Saturday 6th. Anime Dublin (facebook twitter) Showing people how to make LED-flowers.

April, Saturday 27th - Sunday 28th. MakerFaire UK (website twitter) Helping out at the TOG hackerspace table.

June, Friday 7th - Sunday 9th. GaelHack (website twitter) Doing... something.

July, Saturday 27th. MiniMakerFaire Dublin (website twitter) Again helping out TOG.

July, Wednesday 31st - August, Sunday 4th. O.H.M. (website twitter) Trying to forget that I dislike camping.

Now to find the energy required to do it all.

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Installing my Touchatag and getting it to work

2013-02-24T00:59:37Z

I bought a touchatag ages ago, but couldn't get it installed properly under linux (and when I got it working under Windows the supplied software required that I create an account, which I really dislike). It's no longer available to purchase (except perhaps through resellers with old stock), but it is a RFID-tag reader (that came with a few RFID-tags) and was part of the 'Internet-of-Things' effort. Although anyone I know who has one didn't get it for that reason. It lay gathering dust in the back of my mind until I suddenly had a project idea. But first, I had to get the darned thing to work!

Here's how I went about it under Fedora 18.

Pre-requisites (you probably don't need all these, but I have ambitions);

yum install pcsc-*
yum install libusb libusb-devel
yum install libnfc*

Install the driver;

wget http://www.acs.com.hk/drivers/eng/ACR122_Driver_Lnx_Mac10.5_10.6_10.7_104_P.zip
unzip ACR122_Driver_Lnx_Mac10.5_10.6_10.7_104_P.zip 
cd ACR122_Driver_Lnx_Mac10.5_10.6_10.7_104_P/
tar -jxvf acsccid-1.0.4.tar.bz2 
cd acsccid-1.0.4/
./configure 
make

Check it's working;
lsusb
Lists it as Advanced Card Systems, Ltd.

nfc-list
It should list your reader, if not, try pcsc_scan, if still no luck run pcscd -f.
If at this point it's complaining that your firmware is bogus you need to edit the config file to skip the version checking, for me the file path is;
vim /usr/lib64/pcsc/drivers/ifd-ccid.bundle/Contents/Info.plist

Locate "ifdDriverOptions" and turn the "0x0000" value into 0x0005 (0x0004 might work too). Save and exit, then restart the daemon. I had trouble getting it back up again, so I rebooted.

Run the checks again to see that it is now picking up the device properly.

Use it;
This varies greatly depending on what you want to do. One of the alternatives recommended on the touchatag site is iotope. I downloaded it (to run in standalone node mode), unzipped, and ran the bash script provided (it's Java based). Then you open a browser and go to http://localhost:4242/ui/. Then simply put a RFID-tag in the reader and (if compatible) see the details show up.

I pieced together this information from two sources;
1. An archlinux wiki page which suggests another application, and
2. A backtrack linux page that suggests an entirely different application and use.

This is probably old-hat to those of you it interests, but I've finally gotten it to work, so I'm putting it here against my forgetting in future.

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Open-Source Software, and One Small Step

2013-02-22T22:53:44Z

Hello! Been a while. I have been starting things, just not quite getting around to finishing them... My friend Julie is on a mission to spread the joy of contributing to Open-Source Software. So this Wednesday just gone she organised a meet-up at the hackerspace to help new-comers get started. She gave a short talk (transcript here), and then we broke up into groups to get hands-on experience, in some cases finding, and in others getting started on projects.

I had great plans to finally get started on some Dreamwidth dev. I got my Dreamhack ages ago, but hadn't had time to do much with it. So I read up my wiki, logged into the account (miraculously remembering the passwords), and decided starting fresh would be the best. (When I wandered away things were still in CVS, they're now in github.) So I found the reinstall script, and ran it.

Don't. At least, not for a while. After following all the steps I could find I still had trouble; the system complaining about not being able to access the db. I logged into the dw-dev irc room to complain, and found out that the script is broken. Alas! My plans are on hold for another little while until the script is fixed up and I can get my Dreamhack working again. The hard part is waiting patiently. I think I've been bitten by the bug.

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Well, that went... well.

2013-01-11T00:08:23Z

I try to keep this blog about things that have gone right (or at least experiences I can learn from). As such, I would be remiss if I did not mention the night of talks we had in TOG last night. The topic ended up being Computer Games and Development, and it's one of those rare times when everything just went right.

Back in December I said to the other members, I've a speaker lined up, let's have a night of talks! December being so busy it got pushed out to January. Which is good, because January is so quiet, and devoid of interesting events. But then a wondrous thing happened. Julie and Becky said, hey, I know someone who might like to talk, and suddenly we had a topic and more speakers than we could fit in one night!

It's one of those examples of just how a hackerspace should work. One person starts something, others join in, and a location is provided. Easy as pie, an event happens. And this one was spectacular (if I do say so myself)! One speaker presented from an iPad, controlled by a phone. Another provided my first real life experience of Windows 8. One was part of a team that won a BAFTA. And we had possibly the largest audience yet, including possibly the youngest yet. All on top of the genuinely interesting presentations!

But personally, the icing on the cake was that of the six (excellent) presenters, four were women. In the area of computer games. It happened without thinking, without specific effort. It was simply that when people thought of others involved with computer games, these were the people they thought of. It's a small thing, but it makes me happy.

Julie made the point that we reaped the fruits of past effort; of going to all those tech events and cons, of making a point of seeking out other women in tech, that made this possible. (And to be fair, in this case it was mostly Julie's graft.) So this, is not only a fine example of a hackerspace working well, but also a good reason why women-in-tech events are important. They lead to great events!

Moving on, people are already talking about a 'next one'. Guess we'll have to do something about that :)

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Code for the LED matrix top, version 2

2013-01-01T23:19:04Z

While I wait for LJ to let me log in again (to upload photos), or until I find a better alternative, I thought I'd share some more of the LED-matrix top code with you.

Here's version 2, with the SparkFun wearable keypad functionality added. Let me know if there's any problems, or if you'd simply like to discuss it.

(Version 1 post)

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Crochet Baubles

2013-01-01T20:59:33Z

You know what I need to stop doing in 2013? Thinking, gosh, what I need is to pick up another craft. Seriously, I have more than enough to be doing. But, during 2012 I picked up a little crochet. Tríona (of Science is Delicious) had the task of teaching me how to crochet. Multiple times, over and over.

The main plus crochet has over knitting is that the level of entry is much lower. I never quite got the hang of casting on (or off) in knitting, but crochet is much easier, it simply begins with a single knot!

But also having a project to work on gives the knowledge something to stick to. And so, crochet baubles!

Using a 5mm hook, and some mysterious yarn, the pattern goes like this;

Start with a knot, leave a tail to work in later.

Chain 6, work last into first chain stitch to form a circle.

Chain 3, work last into the centre of the circle. Repeat to make eight loops, working the last/eighth loop into the centre of the first loop in the row.

Chain 5, eight times, last one into first in this row.

Chain 6, eight times, last one into first in this row.

Chain 7, eight times, last one into first in this row.

Check size against the bauble. If needed, chain 8, eight times, last one into first in this row.

Start decreasing. So if added a chain 8 row, chain 7, then chain 6. Check size against bauble, continue as needed. (I find the final row only needs seven loops.)

Cut a tail about the length of your forearm. (Work in the bottom tail now.) Thread the top tail on a large needle, and use it to catch each loop of the top row, and tighten to completely enclose the bauble. Knot and tie off.

( Couple of pics )

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A picture really can say more than a thousand words

2012-12-17T02:04:30Z

I came upon this post just before bed, and now am having trouble getting my ticking brain to sleep. These photos, reportedly the first colour photos ever taken in Ireland, are 99 years old. They represent some of the poorest people and places of that time, some of the furthest from Dublin, and some of those retaining most of the old native Irish way of life. These people were the neighbours of my ancestors; my grandparents' parents. Irish identity is a tricky thing, a nebulous thing. For so long the colonised, the Free State only 89 years old. The records of our recent past burnt in uprisings, the stone monuments of the ancient past strewn about the landscape. And in between only the stories. (This is a good podcast by the way, if you're interested in the old Irish stories.) Then out of the blue (I like to think of the internet as blue) comes these photos.

It struck me, looking at them, how many are doing something, associated with their craft. Which in turn reminds me of the Hands boxset of documentaries from the early 1960's about traditional crafts, with a focus on those dying out due to industrialisation. I come from a people that tell stories and make things. What with the nature of this blog and all, it just kind of resonates. And my, how the world has changed in a hundred years.

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Laundry Bag

2012-12-16T22:02:26Z

I made another bag! The last ones were so small I think I've over-compensated and have gone too much the other way. This one is a laundry bag from a project in 'A Bag for All Reasons'. I deviated a little from the instructions. The two-compartment design wasn't going to suit me; most of my clothing is darks and brights, with a handful of whites/pales/delicates. So I doubled up the internal divider to make a small third section in the middle. For the darks section I chose a black and grey striped fabric, and for the brights a nice colourful printed patchwork fabric. Then at the every end I got lazy, and instead of two parallel lines of stitching 5mm apart I used a twin-needle in one pass. It's mostly straight lines and different sizes of rectangles, which makes the cutting out easier (thank the rotary cutter), but makes the actual sewing rather boring (not even any seam finishes). The end product is approximately 50cm x 60cm, and fully lined. It's quite pretty and ultimately functional, good result!

( Pictures! )

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ahem Ta-Da!

2012-12-11T23:56:00Z

It's a dress! Actually, it's the Crepe dress I started two years ago! (You can find previous posts with the tag gerties sew along.) The astute among you will notice a couple of things.

Firstly that it's finished. I didn't want to risk posting another in-progress update in case I put it down and ignored it again for another few months. But yesterday was the annual Crafters Sugar-overdose Night (which has unofficially become the TOG Christmas party), and I was determined to have something to show at it. So despite my intense hatred for hemming I spent all of Sunday doing just that, and felt the relief of actually finishing something. This is my first (non-costume) dress, so I now feel justified in calling myself a 'dressmaker'!

As Craft Night is directly after work I ended up wearing my dress to work. It was a peculiar experience. I have never worn a dress to work before, not even when I worked in retail. Skirts sure, but not a full dress. Being the middle of winter I made one concession, the stockings were swapped for leggings, so please excuse the bagginess in the photos.

Secondly, oh observant followers, you'll have noticed that you've never seen this fabric before. Indeed, the project came to a rather definite halt when I gave up on the fitting and was about to cut the fashion fabric and realised that the fabric wouldn't work well with this dress design. Time passed, and I happened on an online fabric sale. The moment I saw this fabric I knew the dress was back on!

Here, let me do a twirl for you! (These photos are not instagrammed, just shot in poor, yellow, light. That first photo was taken with flash and shows the colours better.)

( Photos! )

Did you spot the pockets? Pockets! Such wonderful inventions. Okay, since this was a sew-along I should talk a bit about the actual construction. The lovely patterned crepe is rather translucent, so it is underlined with black polycotton, which gives it a nice (but slightly stiff) body. Although, the hand-basting took such an impossibly long time that in future I will be saving this technique for particularly special gowns.

This was also my first time doing facings, and it was an adventure. The points on the neckline could have been done better. And my interfacing was so delicate that I melted a few pieces with the iron. That took getting used to. And they are so light that they have to be tacked down in several places to stop them flipping out. (That is one advantage of the underlining; I can tack to the lining without having the stitches visible on the outside.)

My usual method of seam construction is straight-stitch finished with overlocker. In some places, like the skirt side-seams with the pockets, I had to leave the seams open, so I overlocked both sides. Speaking of pockets; I initially put them in the wrong way around. So I had to cut them out and put them back the right way around. Silly mistake, and reminds me to not sew when I'm tired.

Other than that my skirt is 62cm long measured from the waist seam. The ties don't want to lay flat and keep compacting, and there seems to be a bit extra fabric in the body, but I figure that's part of the pattern. I am glad I spent so much time working on getting the fit just so, because this really is a very comfortable dress to wear. (Like it was made for me or something :P )

( Here are some shots of the inside of the dress )

Okay, that's that. *dusts off hands*

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Code for the LED matrix top

2012-10-10T10:01:22Z

I received a request for clarify some of the code I use in the LED-matrix top, so I've decided to start sharing my code in a more modern way. But before we get to that, if you are thinking of following my adventures in making this top there are a couple of things I want to add.

Please please please use metal snaps instead of metal rings!

Use lithium-ion batteries, more power, much better.

As soon as you have the circuit working as you want, cover each conductive trace with fray-stop glue to prevent oxidation of the conductive coating over time.

Test that you can turn on each LED individually by using a (at least 3V) coin-cell battery and touching the positive side to the trace that connects to the positive side of the LED, and the negative to the negative. If it doesn't light up get a multimeter and check every single trace/LED for short-circuits.

Okay, so the top is physically made up and working fine? Great! Here's the first version of the code, with the LEDs working, and the push-button switch for cycling through patterns, and that's it. It's available through github at https://github.com/chebe/chebe-led-matrix-top. I'll let you know as I clean up and release newer versions.

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Reprogramming the Raven USB Stick for use with the KillerBee framework

2012-10-08T23:05:31Z

This is the Raven USB stick. It is a network evaluation tool for ZigBee networks. You can use it with the killerbee framework/toolkit to passively listen in on network traffic.

Which is great, until you want to use some of the more active features of the toolkit. The toolkit comes with an active firmware, but first you have to load it onto the Raven.

( Another good use for a Dragon )

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Lilypad LED Matrix: part 4.b, adjusted layout

2012-09-26T13:10:45Z

Last we looked in on this project I'd just added in the adapter for the keypad and a battery holder. Since then a couple of things happened.

One; in the two-and-a-half years since starting this project, the silver on the conductive thread has started to corrode. This manifested first as the programmed time delays no longer seeming to work right, and then with an un-even light disruption across the LED grid (this happens anyway, but wasn't noticeable before this). So I rather carefully went over every single trace of conductive thread with a thin paintbrush and a bottle of fray-stop glue. Hopefully it will slow down further corrosion.

Two; I got my hands on a IR-detector unit, and wanted to include it in the top (as talked about in the Dublin Maker Faire post). To make this possible the keypad-adapter would have to double up as an ir-adapter. But this required a change of circuit layout.

The keypad has five wires; 3 output, 1 led, 1 ground. The ir-detector has four wires; 1 output, 1 led, 1 ground, 1 power. The adapter has five slots. But two of them are pins 0 and 1 (Rx & Tx) and I had trouble getting them to work consistently. So to fit everything in I decided to move the power and ground lines out to their own adapter. But where was I to find a two-pin breakout board? They come in large, small (used for the existing adapter), and that's it. *brainwave* I remembered a set of empty LED boards I hadn't gotten around to using.

And sure enough, two separate connections, just add headers! I pulled out the existing stitching and stitched the new layout in. The power lines are actually run along the back in channels of bias-binding for insulation because the whole thing is so crowded at this point.

Turned it on, fixed up the code (new pin numbers), adjusted the timing on the patterns, and tried my hand at interrupt coding. However, before I could finish it up, my top needed to go off with Jeffrey_Roe and PartFusion to NY MakerFaire to represent tog, so development of new features was promptly abandoned, to be continued once it returns. (Although, I hear it was a bit wet, so I expect my top probably stayed in somewhere nice and dry.) *edit* Spot the LED top. But now I have a definite list of things that need doing, and then it will actually be finished!

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4.a

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Bags!

2012-09-26T13:03:31Z

I've started making bags! They're handy things, carrying stuff for you. But it can be hard to find just the right one to fit all your really important stuff properly. Therefore, on occasion, I need to make one myself. I got a book (Sew What! Bags) and started small.

This is the glasses case. Just a few rectangles of fabric sewn together in a tube like shape, fully lined. Handy little thing.

Then I tried the drawstring bag. I've made them before, but it's nice to follow a 'pattern'. The one in the book isn't lined, but I fancied a lined drawstring bag so that's what I did. I got a bit confused with the drawstring channel itself and think I was supposed to turn it to the inside rather than the outside, but hey, learning!

Have a few others in the works. It's nice actually having a use for all that pretty quiliting-weight cotton in the shops. Onwards to more complicated bags!

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Getting a hostname cloak on freenode irc

2012-09-12T17:40:55Z

Let's try a post without pictures for now. How to get an unaffiliated cloak on freenode:

Step 1; register a nickname [as detailed here]
Step 2; join #freenode and wait patiently for a staffer to show up
Step 3; ask politely for a cloak [as here]
Step 4; once cloak is applied, thank your staffer, and check your info

Simple, and awesome. Going to test it from work tomorrow to see how well it works.

*edit* Using the webchat.freenode.net clients still set the realname to something based on your ip, but using a client that sets realname to something silly like 'purple' (hi pidgin), is a pretty good combination.

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Some days are just sigh

2012-09-05T21:34:50Z

Hello. Well, I was going to tell you about how I'm getting into making bags, show you a nifty little glasses case I made yesterday, and maybe go into some cool Lilypad related stuff. But. My home router decided to bork its own wireless functionality, I wasted an hour trying to fix it, and the helpdesk doesn't open until 9am. Then I thought, isn't technology grand, I'll just connect to the mobile internet through a hotspot on my phone. Yeah, except for some reason all my attempts at uploading photos result in nasty xml-tastic error messages. So I'm throwing in the towel and putting on a few CDs for the rest of the evening. Oh, and things will be back to normal (more regular like) around here shortly, presuming the internet starts working again.

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Lilypad Holders

2012-08-08T11:47:27Z

Here's something I meant to talk about months ago. Lilypad microcontrollers are meant to be sewn into projects. Which can be time consuming, and seriously limits their resusability. (Also, I'd be much more willing to wash my e-garment if I could detach the microcontroller first.) So people have been coming up with shields/adapters to make their Lilypad projects more modular.

One that's pretty cool, and uses a 3-D printer, is the Lilypad Holder from mizliz via thingiverse. Namit very kindly printed me up a couple.

They fit the original microcontroller, the Simple Board (although it doesn't use all the holes), and even the XBee shield. The board is kept in place with a magnet glued into the little hole beneath where the board goes.

But, as I was filing out the holes I realised something; the metal snaps point up. Which means either the FTDI header is face down (making it hard to reach and program) or the other components are loose and not connected to the base material. That could be changed by altering the 3-D model to invert the outside ring though, probably.

But then I also realised the wires (wires!?) from the snaps are soldered directly onto the Lilypad pads themselves. Meaning any board you use with this holder is permanently committed. It's still a really cool idea, just doesn't match the way I work.

There are also a couple of nifty soft-circuit ones I came across that seem like great ideas, but a fair amount of work to create; like the Frogr shield, or a soft-holder also from mizliz, but fixing the direction the snaps point.

And, well, it seems that the powers that be were paying attention, because now there exists a Lilypad Microcontroller (Simple Board version) with built-in snaps! The SimpleSnap. It also has a battery attached, which means it must be removed from a project before washing, but that's a small trade-off. And to complement it there is a SimpleSnap Protoboard as well. I'm looking forward to getting my hands on these!

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The Tale of the Disappearing Dye

2012-07-26T19:25:41Z

Normally when I dye fabric I just dump the powder and salt in the washing machine and let the chemistry and engineering do what they do best. But it's wasteful, especially when all you want to dye is one or two t-shirts. So I decided to dip my toe into the domain of hand-dye.

I had two fine white cotton t-shirts to hand; one with blue and red print on the front and black on the back, the other with green and orange print on the front and black on the back. Clearly what they needed was purple. (I have been accused of thinking everything needs to be more purple, but see nothing wrong with this.) I found a nice dark, deep, "Intense Violet" colour. Perfection.

Perhaps doing it at the hackerspace was a mistake. There were many people to help, but largely it resulted in distraction and mass mis-reading of the instructions. We did it 'wrong'; you're supposed add the dye-water to the salt-water! But, t-shirts got dyed, so it can't have been that wrong.

( Pictures )

But, they're still cotton t-shirts, so there's no problem with trying again. And the coverage is nice and even, I especially like how even the gaps in-between the printed bits took the colour just as well. Maybe I'll get a better colour next time, if you know, I actually follow the instructions. But there will be more modding of these t-shirts first. Like adding of waists, and maybe lowering the necklines. Though that's a task for another day!

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Dublin Mini Maker Faire 2012

2012-07-16T22:15:49Z

Bear with me, this is going to be a long post.

This Saturday just gone, July 14th, was Dublin's first Mini Maker Faire! It was held in the Science Gallery and on the Physics Lawn of Trinity College. I was there as a part of TOG, the Dublin maker/hacker-space. It was a fantastic day. So many people showed up who already knew a lot and came up with interesting questions and ideas. Some people were just wandering through Trinity like they do every weekend and were a little confounded to find us there. Yet others showed up wearing ESOF lanyards! I'm sad I didn't get to see much of the other makers or exhibits, things were just so hectic! It certainly seemed like everyone was having a good time.

( Maker Faire )

( TOG's new tshirt )

Projects

( Arduino IR receiver )

( LED matrix top )

( Constellation Quilts )

Well, I fairly collapsed with exhaustion about 4pm (missing the after-party and everything), but up until that point it was a great day and I'm already looking forward to next year!

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Rooted Android phone HTC Desire Z

2012-06-25T18:21:20Z

HTC Desire Z (aka Vision, G2) is now well and truly rooted. I'm indebted to xda-developers, here are some posts I found really helpful;

Using adb

Gaining temporary root, changing the version number, and downgrading to 2.2

Getting temp root (again), replacing the boot-loader, and changing some settings to keep root permanently

I then found a close-to-stock version of 2.3.5 and loaded that up. It works pretty well, only a couple of very minor bugs. One was apps like Twitter force-closing constantly. But apparently that has more to do with the HTC Market becoming Google Play, so I just uninstalled and reinstalled and it's all working fine now. But sadly, it still doesn't have the USB-drivers I want! Upon closer reading turns out it was optional in 2.3.4 (default in 4.0.x), and seeing as how HTC isn't doing anything new for this model, I'm going to have to look at other, messier, options.

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Setting up dev environment for Android phone HTC Desire Z

2012-06-15T09:25:07Z

A while back I got a fantastic birthday present; the Electric Sheep! I've wanted one for ages! So I started reading up on it, and discovered it would only work on a phone with Android version 2.3.4 or higher, because that's when they introduced the new USB driver for it to work.

I waited, and waited. I'd bought my phone SIM-free, so I got Gingerbread while all my friends with the same branded phone did not. Then I waited some more. Lo and behold, another update! Yes, install! ... Hmm, only a security update, still only 2.3.3? Get in contact with HTC, asking when they're going to push the 2.3.4 update that all the other, newer phones had already received. The answer; "HTC has not released android 2.3.4 update for this phone due to the hardware requirements of this phone." This is plainly not true as several people having rooted their phones are even running 4.0.x on it.

What am I to do? There is only one way forward of course, root my own phone. The first step is actually just setting up a software development environment. On the phone that just requires enabling debug mode, and on the laptop installing the Android SDK (painful enough, remember to run as Administrator on Windows), and from that the drivers for the phone. Only, the driver kept on failing to install/recognise my device. Turns out I needed to edit the driver. In a minor way that is not nearly as scary as it sounds. Simply add info about my phone to the .info file, as described here: http://alt236.blogspot.ie. Then install the drivers again, successfully this time, and make sure the Android Debugging Bridge (adb) is working. adb shell lets you walk around the phones file system copying and deleting files and such.

This part isn't necessary for rooting your phone, but hey, I'll probably want to write some apps at some point, so I followed the procedure described here. To finish setting up the dev environment I installed Eclipse, built a virtual approximation of my phone and played with some of the samples. They are surprisingly slow to run.

Ok, great. Next step, make backups. There is an adb backup -all command, but it only works with Android versions 4 and above. *sad* So I'm going to have to do it the long way, copying file by file. I thought I'd give scripting it a try, but that's for another day.

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Some .vimrc settings

2012-05-29T15:43:30Z

You know that feeling when you get into a new machine and vim is just configured wrong? Here's a couple of the configuration options I find most useful. Simply in your $HOME folder edit (or create if it doesn't exist) .vimrc.

set tabstop=3
set shiftwidth=3
set expandtab

This bunch basically swaps tab with a specified number of spaces, here 3. This is mostly useful if you're going to playing with shared code. Indentation can vary between people and platforms, so boiling it down to 3 or 4 spaces will be most portable. But instead of having to press space 3 or 4 times this lets you just press tab once, and vim will make the necessary changes.

set autoindent

This again is helpful when coding. Means that when you press Return onto a new line you will be at the same indentation level as the line above, like most IDEs. But, word of warning, if you're copy-pasting multiple lines this will go terribly wrong.

set backupdir=./.backup,.,/tmp

All those temp files that automatically get created when you're editing a file never seem to get deleted. And the clutter annoys me. This tells vim where to put the backups. First, if I've created a folder called .backup in the current folder use that. If not, use the current path (normal behaviour). Finally, throw them in /tmp; I don't like this option because it means having to keep the names of all the files I edit in vim unique across the machine.

if &t_Co > 2 || has("gui_running")
  syntax on
  set hlsearch
endif

This now, I find really helpful. It turns on syntax highlighting. And search highlighting. It gives you colours. Love it.

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LumiGram Fibre-Optic Fabric with RGB LED

2012-05-22T16:11:15Z

A reader reminded me of the LumiGram FibreOptic fabric sample I got a while back. I made quite a simple modification to the sample, adding an auto-changing two-leg Red-Green-Blue LED.

The connector is designed to come apart so you can change colours, or packs in case of damage. The plastic tube pulls back onto the battery-pack leads. A small plastic cage comes away in two pieces. (It's used to hold the LED pointing directly onto the ends of the fibre-optic fibres.)

So I just wrapped the legs of my RGB LED in electrical tape, placed it in the register marks of the cage, and held the whole thing together with more tape. (It's a temporary set-up.) Then held a 3V coin-cell battery between the LED legs, and voila.

A look at the connection mechanism. My LED in cage on left, provided LED and sleeve on right.

The RGB LED is rated for 4.5V, and I think here it really would benefit from the extra power. (Surprisingly it's quite a sunny day here.) Otherwise, yeah, kinda nice. Here, have a video.

You can see the colours being produced by the LED on the left, and on the very right at the end of the fabric see how it gets mixed. With a bit more power it would be prettier.

( See more... )

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Tasty Treats

2012-05-07T19:56:39Z

This started with a recipe; 'Rose Petal Cupcakes'. But I couldn't find extract of rose oil, and I couldn't be bothered candying rose petals. So really I just took the pink theme and ran with it. A friend of mine loves pink, and is lactose intolerant, so I tried my hand at making these dairy-free. I substituted soya-margarine for butter, and rice-milk for milk. I added a little pink gel colouring to the mixture, but when it was baked the colouring stayed in the middle and a regular cake-coloured crust formed around the outside. Bit odd, further investigation warranted. I added lots of pink gel colouring to the soya-margarine-and-icing-sugar icing, and it worked great.

Then there was 'Warm Molten-Centred Chocolate Cupcakes'. Surprisingly simple; 1 oz margarine, 2 oz caster sugar, 1 egg, 3 oz self-raising flour, 1 tbsp cocoa powder, beat. Spoon half into 8 cupcake cases, place a square of chocolate in each, then cover over with the other half of the mixture. Cook at 190C/375F for 20 minutes, eat.

I added a square of plain and a sneaky square of white chocolate to each. The plain melted lovely, the white seemed to re-solidify and was no fun at all.

Things learned; gel colouring can behave strangely in the oven, soya-margarine can make the cakes a bit hard, and rice-milk can leave them a bit dry. But still tasty. And what's with measuring butter in tablespoons? Seriously, just why? I can deal with volume, but it's not ideal. Measure with weight people, weight! Fyi, 8 tblsp. == 2 oz. That is all.

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