Day 1 at Maker Faire

Some pictures from the Maker Faire today.

Ian Lesnet  presenting ‘Get your stuff made’ 

Make: Pavilion

Life Size Starcraft Marine

Defuse the Bomb by DFRobot.com

Make: Pavilion

How To: Fly With Homemade Electronics

Something I found that could be really helpful from grathio.com.

"About once a month I see an article about some ambitious maker who’s project  created an alarm at airport security. Most makers who travel with homemade electronics and other prototypes have a fear that their innocuous project wil catapult them to the front page as a threat to national security. While these news reports make up a good list of how to travel with bespoke electronics, but what I really want to collect is information on how to avoid getting into these situations to begin with."

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What is your dream smartphone?

The smartphone industry is growing like mad, more devices from more manufacturers. A lot of options for everyone's taste; or you would think. It seems like you would be able to find the perfect smartphone with all these options but there is always something missing or just not quit right, in my opinion. As time goes on and technology evolves what you want from your smartphone changes and improves, constantly trying to do more with it. What is that device that can fill the void? That is what I want to find out. Here is what I have in mind at this point in time.

Side Project - VMWare ESXi

Some time late last year, I decided that most off-the-shelf routers are terrible and I needed to find a better solution. After looking high and low on the interwebs I settled on pfSense, a FreeBSD based firewall. The only thing I needed was another network port, so after some research I bought a dual port Intel NIC on eBay. That didn't work out so well. I was running VMWare ESXi 4.0 which wouldn't cooperate; giving me PSOD's. Thinking that ESXi 4.1 would solve the problem, I then took the risk of upgrading. The reason I say risk is because to this day I haven't figured out how I got ESXi to work on the MCP73 nForce chipset. I had to uncomment a driver in some file to load the nv_sata.o file. Thankfully upgrading didn't mess up the config file. Unfortunately this didn't solve my PSOD, so it was back to looking for a compatible NIC. Finally, I settled on a single port Broadcom. This worked great and I've had no problems at all, so far. Great this is working out, so I thought.

New Domain Name

I finally got around to getting a domain name. You can use either listed below.

http://www.mobilewill.us

http://mobilewill.us

Microsoft Windows 8 Consumer Preview detailed impressions

The early days of Windows were inauspicious ones. Sitting on top of DOS, it was hardly a revolution in personal computing -- instead it felt like a disjointed platform perched uncomfortably atop a command prompt, ready to come crashing down at any moment. That's what it was, and often that's what it did. The early days of Windows required constant jumps from GUI to shell as users ran a wide assortment of apps, only some of which played nice inside a window.
It was over a decade later, after Windows 95, that the operating system would truly ditch its DOS underpinnings and feel like a totally integrated system. Why are we reminiscing? Because we're reaching that same point again. With the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, Microsoft is showing off the most complete version of the company's most modern operating system, yet in many ways it feels like 1985 all over again -- like there are two separate systems here struggling to co-exist. How well do they get along? Join us after the break to find out.

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Farewell to SBot 2 Version 1

At last the time has come to say farewell to SBot 2 v1. I have decided to rebuild it using a new chassis instead of trying to rig something up to get it to work. I wanted this robot to be durable and usable all day with autonomous operation. After so many issues, it's time to go back to the drawing board.

SBot2 brought me many learning experiences and the like Sbot 1, it has enabled me to rebuild it with a much better design. Building SBot 2 brought many good and bad times. A lot of money spent with very little much to show for it, except for a robot that can go forward and backward and "try" to stop before it hits an object.

So for a farewell, here was a list of it's problems:

• Wasn't fast enough to stop when the sensor picked up a object  in front.
• Motors were not able to draw enough current to turn smoothly or even at all especially on carpet.
• Power system was inefficient with the use of step-ups.
• Poor build quality of wheels and therefore would not drive straight or wheels would fall off.
• No wheel encoders.
• Very difficult to work on and get to all the parts for repair or testing.
• Bad connector for Wii Nunchuck.
• Microphone didn't register much.
• Current sensor didn't register much.
• LCD dims when motors start.

I did try to fix the turning problem by removing the two front motors, which helped a bit. You can see how it turns in the video below. If I hadn't decided to start over I was going to try a caster in the front but it would of been just another work around.

Taking these problems into account and what my goals are for my Security Robot, I can build a much better design. Most of the parts will be reused for version 2 except for where things didn't work, like the power and motor control systems. These will be redesigned from the ground up.

Here are a few final pictures and video of it's last run:

Taking the plunge: CarPC to CarDroid

For the past seven years I have had a computer in my car and it has been a great project. The problem  been reliability for every day use. Running on a hard drive or flash memory, I have had problems. Surprisingly, the hard drive had less problems than running from compact flash. It turned out to be bad flash card though. I found out after I pulled the card for another project. Now I am waiting for the RMA replacement. Last year I had been playing with the idea of pulling the computer out and just integrating my Android phone somehow. I had tried a test with my old phone but I didn't like the results. It was a Samsung Galaxy S, Capitvate version. All it had was composite out which doesn't look so good and there is also the control problem. Not near as seamless as a carPC.

In October of last year I got the Galaxy S II. Much better phone with MHL and native support for HID devices. After some research I bought a MHL to VGA adapter and an OTG cable. During testing both worked very well so I decided to install it in the car. For power, I hacked a USB to cigarette lighter adapter since I won't have the computer's power supply any more. (I might have to use it for clean regulated power later on for the LCD screen.)

So far it has been pretty sweet. I had to order a USB extension cable which turned out hard to find but I found a good quality one on eBay from the States. Using the cable got rid of the few issues I had with some interference and the signal cutting out.

Now that I am happy with the results, it's off to solve the final problem of how to best to control input. Touchscreen would be best but I'm also thinking about some sort of Bluetooth trackball.

Stay tuned for my next post on my proposed solution.

P.S. My first mobile post from my HP Touchpad using SlideIT keyboard, running CM7 customized version by Team Xron.