Raving only. No robota

RavingRobot currently has a rapture of unleashed ADHD. I would be sorry if I had the Empathy upgrade. Oh well...

I finally got around to installing the Android SDK, and was going to install Eclipse as well, but all the different versions has got me a bit confused. I definitely want the C++ one, the java one and maybe the PHP one. But I don't want three sets of Eclipse on my mind. Perhaps I should just stick with Komodo. I guess I'll settle this over some caffine and sugar.

Do hit me up in the comments if you have any thoughts regarding android app dev. What app is the world lacking?

The Bassoforte

So many days, and so few posts. My desk is bulging with projects, yet I have so little time to write them up.

So, as I sat down at my desk to procrastinate some, I stumbled upon this on Hack a Day. Diego Stoccos Bassoforte.

Feels good man

I found myself in need of a SmartCard and SIM interface for my computer, and found the Infinity USB Unlimited. I bought it right away, and WB Electronics delivered amazingly fast internationally.

It seems to be a good choice. The device is technically good indeed. Good software. 3rd party supported. Sweet buildquality. If you want to edit or backup your SIM-card, or if you are geting in to smartcard keyed security/encryption -this reader/writer is what you want.

Raving Robot is not affiliated whith wb, just a satisfied customer.

Doxygen

Ever wanted to add your own touch to an open source project, but didn't know where to start? Too many methods, functions and classes to wrap your head around? Then you need to take a look at Doxygen. It can quickly document this for you, in a clean and tidy manner.

You let it chew your code, and it spits out the declarations. Nice. It might even do more that I do not know of yet, as I just stumbled over it today.

High Energy Destruction

Really hardcore nerd-porn. In this you will see Dave Jones from EEVB so excited, he actually says "shit".

I came.

The TweetBot

I made a little ethernet/internet project from the mbed NXP LPC1768 (they should make a brain-frendly name for it, like Massimo and the team did with their AVR protoboard). It consists of the mbed board and an ethernet jack on the right, and a battery. I opted to add a Pololu power button, wich required me to drop the voltage from my 9v battery with an LM7805. This makes up the circuitry on the left.

You might notice that there is no magnetics for the ethernet, which is quite hazardous. But that's just how Raving Robot rolls, living on the edge.

This whole thing sends out a message on twitter every time it resets. I sould probably timestamp the messages, as twitter does not allow the same tweet within a certain timeframe. This is annoying if you want your toilet to tweet its flushes, and such. But the mbed sports an onboard realtime clock I could put to use in v.2.

I put the code up on pastebay.

Shapeshifting robot

This is about a year old allready, but oh-so-cool.

US gov. to hacker: STFU

Feds aim to take out the Bunnie, "father" of xbox hacking. Read more about it on TG daily. Why do several states want to silence chineese men theese days?

Raving Robot urges all hackers to procreate like bunnies to eaven out the field.

Pic related. It's a bunny.

Unconventional gears

I've allways had a feeling my gears wasn't like they were supposed to. This video I stumbled upon tells me there are more ways of making gears than I had imagined. Take a look.

Done some extensive testing of the door opener the last couple of days. And it works fine. Here is an action photo of it, all covered in snow but still doing its duty.

The hardware is my own take on the arduino, witch I dubbed the sketchyduino in an older post. The firmware is loosely based on Robert Carlsens work.

I'll happily write more details of this work, or other projects of this sort if you want me to. Just shout out in the comments!

On the list

Google might have to track those who don't want to be tracked. Er... Make a list of those who don't want to be listed -errr.. How should I put this. According to insidegoogle, google needs a database of the people that do not want to be in the database. Read more about it here.

Hardware debuging

Ran in to some problems with the garage door opener project. I swapped the four button epoxy keypad with a "real" one with 0-9 , "*" and "#". I took precautions for voltage drop over the longer lead, but it still didn't work every time. The relay doesn't connect for 1000 millisecs like the code says, WTF? I think it must be an issue with the power supply, so I beefed it up a bit, and I am testing it now. Hope it works tomorrow morning, after a cold night.

Weatherproofing

Making a keypad to mount on the outer wall of the garage requires some weatherproofing. First I had to add a capacitor to overcome the voltage drop over the 2 meter long lead, and add quite large pull-downs (15KΩ). Now I need to make the whole shebang work in -20˙c, and even in blizzards. This has prooven to be harder than I thought. The relay won't work when it's cold, even though it rated to work just fine down to -40˙c. I'll try to solve it with more power, regulated from a transistor on the out-pin of my controller.

Any tips on outdoor electronics are welcome in the comments!

A few days away

I've been haveing fun with barcode fuzzing lately. The setup is as easy as blinking an LED, so if you play with Arduino, BasicStamp, PICs, mbeds or the like -this is something to try! This post on irongeek is what gor me going.

I'll be away till the 15th, but please stay tuned!

Coming together

I found a nice spice container tin to house the sketchyduino for the garage door opener. It looks sweet. I think I'll put a blue led in the tin, to give it a nice hue in the "window".

The keypad looks like something out of a cartoon though. I made it myself -out of epoxy. It's vandal proof as a rock, except for the IDE cable I used between the two...

The sketchyduino

I decided to make a tiny circuit to host the programmed ATmega328 from the arduino. All that is needed is:
• A power source
• A pull-up for the reset pin
• A 16Mhz chrystal
• Some capacitors
• A ciruit board
• A DIP 28 socket for convenience

I put it all on a proto board. With a voltage regulator, and a wall wart. It works like a charm!

Open sesame

I need a keypad to open my garage door, when I don't have the key-fob at hand. I decided to make the prototype with an arduino. I made a 4-key pad, added code to check for the magic combo, and made a relay tell the door opener to act.

It works on my desk. Now I need a power supply, a case, and probably a better keypad. It would be nice to not have to put the entire arduino in my garage... I'll keep you posted.

DIY Spaceflight

Homemade Spacecraft from Luke Geissbuhler on Vimeo.

This is awesome! I need to do this, and suggest you do too.

DIY Waffles

One of the best builds to get involved in is the straight-in-your-face waffle. The parts list looks like this:
• 3 eggs
• 3 table spoons of sugar (or more, if you like)
- whip it together for about 20 sec.
• 3-4 dl of milk (add cream or sour cream if you like)
• 1 tea spoon of baking soda
• 2 tea spoons of vanilla sugar (can be omitted)
• 1/3 dl melted butter (rough approximation i take a few scoops with a table spoon. Melt in micro)
• Add flour till you get a nice batter, with a consistency like yoghurt.
- Whip some moore.
- Leave it for 15-20 min.
You should now be ready to plug in your waffle iron. No iron?! This batter will also make awesome pancakes.

There you go! Straight in the face.

Lost at sea

Sorry my friends, for not having kept you up to date with my projects. I have been "lost at sea" so to speak. I have installed a gas alarm, and a shit grinder (really, for the toilet) in my boat. I learned that grinding porcelain with diamond bits is childs play, wich in turn put a grin on my face. If you guys want me to elaborate on my maritime enterprises, do say so in the comments.

On a sidenote, I got a mail from Embed the other day, saying they just shipped me the LPC1768 dev. board. They were giving theese away on CircuitCellar earlier. Hopefully I'll post a few projects for it come christmas.

Hacking in French

A GANG of thieves armed with a powerful vacuum cleaner that sucks cash from supermarket safes has struck for the FIFTEENTH time in France.

The burglars broke into their latest store near Paris and drilled a hole in the "pneumatic tube" that siphons money from the checkout to the strong-room.

They then sucked rolls of cash totalling £60,000 from the safe without even having to break its lock.

Police said the gang — dubbed the Vacuum Burglars — always raid Monoprix supermarkets and have hit 15 of the stores branches around Paris in the past four years.

A spokesman added: "They spotted a weakness in the company's security system and have been exploiting it ever since.

"Since 2006 they have stolen more than 500,000 euros and caused damage to alarm systems and other property totalling thousands more.

"It is clearly time Monoprix addressed this loophole and changed the way it guards its money."

In the latest raid on Monday, the burglars broke into the shop through an emergency exit door armed with a large drill and a vacuum cleaner, he said.

They were caught on CCTV but were all wearing balaclavas and could not be identified, the spokesman said.

Monoprix said it had no comment on the burglaries.

The monome

A really cool project to dive into, even for a persistent beginner, is the monome. You can start with a rubber button kit from sparkfun, or find your own special way. Don't fee like building it, you can buy it from monome.org.

A monome is a musical instrument, or a sequencer, or both -all rolled into one. You can even fiddle with the firmware, and make it do whatever. A launchpad controller for your intercontinental missiles perhaps, or maybe a tetris game.

Behind the name

At first Shigeru Miyamoto called his new creation "Mr. Video." Fortunately, the name was scratched before the game was released to Japanese arcades , where it was launched under the name "Jumpman". This name did not catch tho. Fate would have it that a Nintendo employee in the United States ended up in trouble with a landlord by the name of Mario Segal. One day Mario Segal stormed into an official Nintendo meeting and demanded the the month's rent from the employee. The story of the difficult landlord circulated in Nintendo system, et voila, the "Jumpman" was renamed "Mario".

DIY 8bit gaming

In tribute to Marios anniversary today, RavingRobot brings an open source 8bit gaming project. The Uzebox. Based on an ATmega644 microcontroller, with 4k of RAM. You can build the hardware yourself, or you can buy a kit.

His 25th birtday

Yupp. It's the 25th anniversary of Mario! I will selebrate this with quite a lot of Super Mario playing on my DS, and maybe I'll dig up some DIY 8bit gaming here on RavingRobot. Play som Mario, and check back later.

Beautiful code

I find this piece of coding quite beautiful:

:(){ :|:& };:

Breakdown:
:() //defines ":" as a callable object
{ //that does the following
: //Calls itself
|:& //and pipes itself to yet another instance of itself.
}; // Into the sunset.
: //GO

It results in a wonderful exponentially expanding tree of ":"s in your ram.

This my friends is how you make a logic bomb. Try and type it at your shell prompt -I dare you.

VCI-100 firmware mod

A member of the Dj TechTools community has reverse engineered the VCI-100 firmware to produce a brand new 1.4 version that adds a number of new features and bug fixes including high resolution jog wheels and pitch faders. Just when you thought the VCI-100 might finally be on its way out- boom! Dj TechTools comes back with something cooler. Continue reading for a full list of improvements, and a video demonstrating a easter egg in 1.4- Disco mode!

Read all about it, and get the FW:
http://www.djtechtools.com/2010/09/19/brand-new-vci-100-firmware-1-4-hd-updat/

FDA approves stent stunt

MINNEAPOLIS – Sept. 20, 2010 – Delivering another innovation for interventional cardiology, Medtronic, Inc. (NYSE: MDT), announced today the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of the Integrity Coronary Stent System. The new platform for Medtronic’s coronary stents, including the Integrity bare-metal stent, is based on an advance in biomedical engineering called continuous sinusoid technology that enables the exploration of other breakthrough device concepts such as a polymer-free drug-filled stent.

Now available in the United States, the Integrity Coronary Stent System has been shown in bench testing and in blinded in vivo physician assessment studies to be highly deliverable. In this context, deliverability relates to the ability of the device to traverse the patient’s vasculature and reach the narrowed heart artery targeted for treatment.

To the beat yall -C'mon

"This is an illustration of how brain rhythms organize distributed groups of neurons into functional cell assemblies. The colors represent different cell assemblies. Neurons in widely separated brain areas often need to work together without interfering with other, spatially overlapping groups. Each assembly is sensitive to different frequencies, producing independent patterns of coordinated neural activity, depicted as color traces to the right of each network. Credit: Ryan Canolty, UC Berkeley"

Read All about it over at http://www.physorg.com/news204220208.html

The #1 wonder

This is where it all starts, now that all else has played out. Grab the tech before it grabs you. Write programs, compile kernels, flash microcontrolers and drink beer. DOOEET FAGGOT!