sundh.com

Geek Girl Meetup in London

Ellen — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 14:33:31 +0000

Spending the day at Geek Girl Meetup in London. Talked about The Sound of Football and my Arduino projects.

In the Arduino session I presented my Depressed Shoe Shelf, the bend sensing belt Bad Posture, how to control electronics from the internet using Processing.

Arduino library for LED Message Display

Ellen — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 17:53:23 +0000

Making life a lot easier I wrote an Arduino library that takes care of converting strings and calculating the checksum of all commands sent to the LED Message Display. Compared to the first example of sending text to the display the library can send commands of how long the text should display, how to be animated in and out and display European characters. All included in the BockiMessageBoard library on Github.

The code below shows how to initiate and send messages:

#include 
BockiMessageBoard messageBoard = BockiMessageBoard(0); // 0 is the Id of your message board
void setup {

      // Configure the display before sending the text.

      int displayTime = 0.5; // Input 0.5 sec or 1 to 25 seconds

      messageBoard.configure(displayTime,SCROLLLEFT,VERTICALCLOSE);

}

void loop {

      String euroChars = "Testing with European characters ";

      messageBoard.displayMessage(PAGE_A,euroChars);

}

The library generate serial data to the LED Message Display with this setup:

<ID00><L1><PA><FE><MA><WC><FD>MESSAGE CHECKSUM<E>
<ID00> - The id of the message board. 

<L1> - Line number

<PA> - Page id

<FE> - How the text will appear. Scrolling, twinkeling, snowing…

<MA> - 

<WC> - Waiting time. How long to display text.

<FD> - How the text will disappear. Scrolling, twinkeling, snowing…

MESSAGE - The message text to be displayed

CHECKSUM - Hex value calculated on all tag sabove.

<E> - End of data.

The circuit uses a RJ14 cable to transfer the serial data to the display board:

Make WiShield work in latest Arduino IDE

Ellen — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:22:35 +0000

1. Download the WiShield library that has been optimized and fixed by users:

https://github.com/asynclabs/WiShield_user_contrib

2. Rename the folder to WiShield and put it into Arduino_sketch_folder/libraries
You might notice that just running a sketch with the WiShield library will generate errors like:

return type specified for ‘virtual void Server::write(uint8_t)’

clock-arch.c:44:20: error: wiring.h: No such file or directory

3. In order to get rid of these error you need to change the corresponding names in the following files:

clock-arch.c
Replace #include “wiring.h” with #include “Arduino.h”

WiShield.cpp
Replace #include “WProgram.h” to #include “Arduino.h”

WiServer.cpp
Replace #include “WProgram.h” to #include “Arduino.h”
Replace void Server::write(uint8_t.. to be size_t Server::write(uint8_t..

WiServer.h
Replace virtual void write(uint8_t); to virtual size_t write(uint8_t);

Get analog value from Yellow Jacket

Ellen — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 21:07:40 +0000

The Yellow Jacket wifi microcontroller originally from Asynclabs is being produced by The Rugged Circuits. I got one and here is a tutorial on how to read an analogue value from the board.

The Yellow Jacket is using the library WiShield from Asynclabs. I have seen a lot of puzzled comments on how to get it working. Just running one of the WiShield examples in the latest Arduino IDE gave me a few errors:

“error: conflicting return type specified for ‘virtual void Server::write(uint8_t)’”

It seems like the WiShield library isn’t really up to sync with the latest Arduino IDE. So I used the older Arduino IDE and downloaded the WiShield 1.3.0 library which is made for the older Arduino 0022.

Your network settings
Next thing I modified the example SimpleClient with my personal network settings. The local ip is the address where I will be able to access the board from and with that the sensor value of the analog input. In your network settings you can see what type of security settings your network has. Change the digit in code to correspond to your network’s security type. In my case I have got a WPA2 password that I enter in the code.

unsigned char local_ip[] = {192,168,2,240};     // I choose a free IP address in my network

unsigned char gateway_ip[] = {192,168,2,1}; // Address of my router

unsigned char subnet_mask[] = {255,255,255,0};

const prog_char ssid[] PROGMEM = {"NAME_OF_MY_WIFI_NETWORK"}; 

unsigned char security_type = 3;        // 0 – open; 1 – WEP; 2 – WPA; 3 – WPA2

// WPA/WPA2 passphrase

const prog_char security_passphrase[] PROGMEM = {"my_password"};

Initializing WiServer
In the setup method of the sketch the WiServer is initialized together with the name of a function defining what we will see when surfing into the board.

void setup() {

WiServer.init(sendMyPage);

WiServer.enableVerboseMode(true);

}

Serving data to web page
As in any Arduino sketch the analog value can be reached through analogRead. Within the method sendMyPage the content of the web page is printed together with the sensor value.

With WiServer.print we serve the value to

WiServer.print("");

sensorValue = analogRead(sensorPin);

WiServer.print("sensorValue :");

WiServer.print(sensorValue);

WiServer.print("");

Good to know-list
Good to know when uploading your code to the board:

You need to set your board type to Arduino Uno.
It will take about 30 seconds for the Yellow Jacket to start up after uploading the code or adding power to it.
You can source the Yellow Jacket with its own power by adding 7V-24VDC to pin raw.
Depending on which code library you want to use you need to activate it in apps-conf.h within the WiServer library code. In this example I have uncommented #define APP_WISERVER

Develop for Android on your Mac

Ellen — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 11:53:24 +0000

Here is a short tutorial on how to install all you need for Android development on a Mac.

1. Download Eclipse 3.2, 3.3 (Europa) for your Mac on:
http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/

2. Download the Android SDK from here:
http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html

2. Once you installed the SDK you can get the latest update from this command-line command by
executing:

tools/android update sdk

3. Install the ADT plugin
- Start Eclipse, then select Help ]]> Install New Software…
- Click on add and the window below will appear. Input the URL https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/. Use http if https does not work. Name it “ADT Plugin”.

- Click on Next, and then Next agian and accept the license agreements. Click on Finish.
- Restart Eclipse

4. Create an AVD Manager
- In order to run our Android app on the Mac we need to set up an Android Virtual Device in Eclipse.
Window > AVD Manager
- Create a new AVD by clicking on new
- Type in the name of your avd, in my case my_avd
- Choose a target.
The target is the platform (that is, the version of the Android SDK, such as 2.3.3) you want to run on the emulator. I chose the latest one I got.
- Click create!

5. Now you are up and running!
Why not start with a simple Hello World:
http://developer.android.com/resources/tutorials/hello-world.html

Small Ehternet access just got smaller

Ellen — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 21:08:37 +0000

The Arduino Ethernet shield has been around for some time now. It’s a great solution for cutting out the middle man of the computer when check things online from the Arduino. In order to build smaller cases I stumbled upon EtherTen from Freetronics. It’s a fully Arduino-compatible board that runs Arduino code AND connects to internet with Ethernet.

Lets make a list of the pros:
- Smaller than Arduino board with Ethernet shield on top
- Runs Arduino Ethernet library
- Power of Ethernet, no power supply needed (!!!!)
- Micro SD card holder
- And sexy round corners (rounder than the Ethernet Shield)
- Neat mini USB socket

When it arrived I simply ran the TwitterClient file by Tom Igoe in Ethernet examples of the Arduino IDE and it was up and running. To call my custom php file was a bit harder though. Example code to be posted on my Arduino Circuit Blog shortly.

Xmas Installation based on node-js and Hydna

Ellen — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 13:35:56 +0000

At Society 46 we celebrated the Xmas by hooking up to loads of Xmas lights to the node-js module Hydna. People can switch on and off 11 220 V sockets in real-time. Try it out on http://www.society46.com/xmas and turn on the lights of Society 46 Xmas Crib.

AppleScript in Objective-C

Ellen — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 10:22:26 +0000

I am working on a project where the good old Apple Script is need to do some magic on a Mac computer. Even though it is very semantic it can do some powerful stuff. The result will be posted as soon as it is finished.

Here is a simle Hello World example just to get it up and running in Xcode. The example is used in a Mac OS X application.

#import "S46AppDelegate.h"
@implementation S46AppDelegate
@synthesize window;
- (void)applicationDidFinishLaunching:(NSNotification *)aNotification

{

    // Insert code here to initialize your application

    NSDictionary* errorDict;

    NSAppleEventDescriptor* returnDescriptor = NULL;

    NSAppleScript* scriptObject = [[NSAppleScriptalloc] initWithSource:

    @"display dialog \"Hello World\" buttons \"OK\" default button \"OK\""

                                   ];

    returnDescriptor = [scriptObject executeAndReturnError: &errorDict];

    [scriptObject release];

    if (returnDescriptor != NULL)

    {

        // successful execution

        if (kAENullEvent != [returnDescriptor descriptorType])

        {

            // script returned an AppleScript result

            if (cAEList == [returnDescriptor descriptorType])

            {

                // result is a list of other descriptors

            }

            else

            {

                // coerce the result to the appropriate ObjC type

            }

        } 

    }

    else

    {

        // no script result, handle error here

    }

}
@end

Tracking technology meets iPhone

Ellen — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 09:49:09 +0000

Today Society46 is launching the Pepsi Refresh project together with Åkestam Holst. The project involves the Tracab tracking stystem, UDP streams, iPhone sensors and FMOD for iOS. Code will follow.

My Arduino circuit blog

Ellen — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 10:45:36 +0000

Whenever I make a circuit I try to document it and take photos. With the Fritzing software it gets even better. To share code and circuits I gathered my Arduino circuits on this new blog: Ellen Sundh’s Arduino Circuit Blog