Categories
Maker

Dorothy – a project for those away from home

I while back I’ve exchanged some of my points earned from posting projects to a MediaTek LinkIt One on the Hackster.io Store. This is my first project with that, trying to do something different than what I can do with the hardware I (literally) amassed so far. Being an expat and traveller, GPS / location sensing is always a timely topic, so set out to build something around that.

It was a long typhoon day when I started experimenting with the LinkIt one, and and as rainy days go – I’ve felt it would be great to know how far am I from home? Of course there’s a GPS in every single smartphone these days, but a dedicated device can still evoke a different feeling. So the idea for Dorothy came about.

Basic version: where are are you?

Dorothy - Long way from home
Dorothy – Long way from home

The basic idea is connect the GPS module and a Grove LCD RGB Backlight screen, and colour-code the distance from home. The LCD speaks I2C, so can directly connect it up to the I2C socket on the LinkIt One.

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Categories
Maker

My first non-trivial hardware: PCIeDuino

Just a bit more than a year ago I’ve started to work on a hardware idea as a challenge – a mini-PCIe form factor Arduino clone, the PCIeDuino.  The inspiration was working with a bunch of embedded boards, especially the VIA VAB-600 Springboard, that had a mini-PCIe connector, but not that many accessories that can go in there. (Disclaimer, I work at VIA at the moment, though this wasn’t a work project). I thought it would be cool to put an embedded-grade microcontroller on these boards, mostly to expand the I/O capabilities.

Idea

The original PCIeDuino sketch in my lab book
The original PCIeDuino sketch in my lab book

Looking at the mini-PCIe specs, the connector has mandatory USB 2.0 lines so communication was solved. The area available, roughly 5.1 x 3.0 cm, is not too bad  -more than how big the Arduino Nano is in comparison. The biggest challenge probably was that there are only 3.3V power lines available, and most example designs use 5V power supply.

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Categories
Maker Thinking

Is there an Uncanny Valley for hardware projects?

The concept of the Uncanny Valley comes from robotics, its hypothesis says that when humanoid robots move and feel almost, but not completely like the real thing, they can be more off-putting than the robots that have less human likeness.

Working on quite a few hardware projects these days, I started to wonder (okay, say it out loud: worry), that there’s an uncanny valley for hardware projects as well. My theory goes such that hardware projects that are almost, but not completely professional can be more off-putting (or underwhelming) than less advanced, clearly maker projects and prototypes.

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Categories
Maker Programming

A window to IRC with Edison and Resin

After trying Resin.io briefly with a SomaFM Streaming Application, I was eager to experiment more with their cloud deployment platform. Maybe some new hardware, maybe some more complex project… In the end, it became a little bit of both: here’s MrEdison, and portable IRC chat display based on Intel Edison.

Checking out the chatter on the #ubuntu channel
Checking out the chatter on the #ubuntu channel

The idea came from the fact that we have an IRC channel for the Taipei Hackerspace, #taipeihack on Freenode, just it is not very well (or rather: at all) frequented by people. I wanted to break that channel out of the computer, and put a physical window to it in the ‘space, so people can see what’s going on, and hopefully want to get on too!

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Categories
Computers

Magic for the Internet of Things: Resin.io

I have my fair share of playing with embedded Linux and Internet of Things projects these days, but the real treat is finding projects occasionally that just blow me away. Through some Hacker News comments I ended up checking out Resin.io, a tool that brings cloud deployment and management to embedded applications. That might simple (boring?), but here’s the workflow in a nutshell:

  1. Start a new application and download an image file for your chosen single board computer (1 of 5 choices at the moment: Raspberry Pi 1 & 2, Parallella, Intel Edison, and BeagleBone Black)
  2. Flash the image onto an SD card, connect the board to the network, and boot it up
  3. The board shows up in the cloud management console, and you get a git repo address
  4. Make an application (Docker, Node.js, etc.), do a git push: voila, your board’s running your app
  5. Flash a few more SD cards, connect the devices to the network, all of them will run your application
  6. Modify the app behaviour through environment variables, either all of them at once, or customize each
  7. Check status, logs, updates, online, and enjoy that things just work!

I cannot emphasise enough how good any service feels that 1) runs by git pushing code, and 2) just works.

SomaStream

To try it all out, I’ve put together a very simple application: SomaStream – the SomaFM internet radio streaming app.

SomaStream device status
SomaStream device status (image uploading)

Grabbed my RaspberryPi that didn’t do much lately, plugged an earphone in it, and started to look for some examples in the docs how to make it play some streaming music. 

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