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.