This week I have made Circuit 5 of the ARDX experiments for the Arduino. This re-introduced the use of LEDs but this time using a shift register (or serial to parallel converter). The shift register allowed control of 8 LEDs with only using 3 pins on the Arduino instead of 8. This is more along the lines of what I wanted to play with, so I'm very excited to modify the program and see what this can do.
Also this week I managed to finish the Minecraft water transport system. Last week I only completed one direction and now both ways are operational.
If I haven't been busy this week, then I've been extremely sick, so I'm keeping my notes brief. Thanks!
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Week 10 - Arduino Servo Motor & Minecraft Waterway
So this week, I connected a servo motor to the Arduino and played around with it to see how it responds to the delay and had some fun. It was a simple one to put together, but its one I've been looking forward to. I'd like to see what other servo motors are out there. the one i have doesn't respond to the 5 volt battery to well - it only works when plugged into the usb port. None the less, It's cool :)
Also this week I found myself researching different water transport to use inside of Minecraft. I've been wanting a neat system to really take advantage of getting from one area to another by boat inside the game. My goal for this was to make a prototype, and then find the right place to start building it. I got pretty engrossed in the process and made it all the way to making one direction fully dug out and working successfully. Most of the other side is done - just general digging and prepping. It was quite awesome to see it work the way I had hoped to.
I found one example in particular that seemed to work really well. So I built a prototype near the river I was at, and got it working nicely, but I definitely needed to relocate this otherwise it would not reach my destination and it would clutter the winding river turning the scenery into more of an eyesore.
I strategically placed it where it would connect a great distance from one primary lake to the ocean while maintaining the water height at sea level and making a straight line from point a to point b. This was a big project and was happy to get the prototype working and find the right location for it. I honestly thought I'd end this week with at least digging a hole through the ground that a avatar could walk through (2 blocks high), but found myself on a mission and dug roughly 75% of the entire project. One half/direction is completely finished and will transport you from the ocean to the lake in roughly a minute or two (I didn't time it yet).
Thanks for reading and watching the vids and WOOT!! 10 weeks alright!
Also this week I found myself researching different water transport to use inside of Minecraft. I've been wanting a neat system to really take advantage of getting from one area to another by boat inside the game. My goal for this was to make a prototype, and then find the right place to start building it. I got pretty engrossed in the process and made it all the way to making one direction fully dug out and working successfully. Most of the other side is done - just general digging and prepping. It was quite awesome to see it work the way I had hoped to.
I found one example in particular that seemed to work really well. So I built a prototype near the river I was at, and got it working nicely, but I definitely needed to relocate this otherwise it would not reach my destination and it would clutter the winding river turning the scenery into more of an eyesore.
I strategically placed it where it would connect a great distance from one primary lake to the ocean while maintaining the water height at sea level and making a straight line from point a to point b. This was a big project and was happy to get the prototype working and find the right location for it. I honestly thought I'd end this week with at least digging a hole through the ground that a avatar could walk through (2 blocks high), but found myself on a mission and dug roughly 75% of the entire project. One half/direction is completely finished and will transport you from the ocean to the lake in roughly a minute or two (I didn't time it yet).
Thanks for reading and watching the vids and WOOT!! 10 weeks alright!
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Week 09 - Arduino Spinning Motor
Knowing this was going to be a busy week for me, I was glad to just get an arduino experiment in for this weeks project. I originally planned to continue on writing a second version to control a series of fading LED lights, but I really needed to work on something different. I also read ahead and discovered there's more LED fun to come so yay - I'll revisit LEDs then.
You can find code at http://ardx.org/src/circ/CIRC03-code.txt
You can find code at http://ardx.org/src/circ/CIRC03-code.txt
In summary I was just glad to get to this and build it right the first time. There was a bunch of other little things handled this week, but this is very Project Mustang speciffic for me.
This blog was also an experiment with using a blog app on the iPad. Kind curious to see how this works out.
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Week 08 - Arduino PWM Fade Experiment 1.0
Hey so lots of stuff going on and trying to fit in a simple project this week. I could say that I have actually did a few more goals I was going and have achieved, but the main focus this week for me was to experiment with the PWM pins on the Arduino Uno board and fade a series of lights on at the same time and set it for a number of iterations.
The goal for this experiment was to see if I could improve the existing fader code I had in place for 6 LEDs that are connected to PWM pins. I wanted to (and have made) make the LEDs fade in and out smoothly, and then pause for 1000 milliseconds. Once successful add a formula that can include how many times you want this to repeat itself.
I was able to achieve this successfully, but other little programatic issue arose and I plan to work on a release 1.1 to upgrade this one more time before moving on to other experiments.
I also was able to get to a few other smaller goals:
The goal for this experiment was to see if I could improve the existing fader code I had in place for 6 LEDs that are connected to PWM pins. I wanted to (and have made) make the LEDs fade in and out smoothly, and then pause for 1000 milliseconds. Once successful add a formula that can include how many times you want this to repeat itself.
I was able to achieve this successfully, but other little programatic issue arose and I plan to work on a release 1.1 to upgrade this one more time before moving on to other experiments.
I also was able to get to a few other smaller goals:
- Installed ta SSD 2.5" SATA drive into a aluminum enclosure
- Helped take care of friends many laptops
Week 07 - The Oscar Challenege
More details later - I just wanted to post the on the blog but the work was done on time and a success.
theoscarchallenge.com
Check out the spreadsheet view and the 'View 2012 Results'
I created a different admin form to enter winning nominees on the fly and I go between that and the website to check that all is working.
Other pieces of code I added was
theoscarchallenge.com
Check out the spreadsheet view and the 'View 2012 Results'
I created a different admin form to enter winning nominees on the fly and I go between that and the website to check that all is working.
Other pieces of code I added was
- improvements to CSS
- fixed side manu dramatically
- elimnated need to manually edit index pages from voting/pre-award phase to award phase to post award phase (in the past this was put off due to other work)
- forget password page was improved and the emailit sends was cleaned
- headers were cleaned
- jquery toggle added for menu
- added new re-categorization code for spreadsheet view
Week 06 - Oscar Site continued, Storm Door Installed - and Minecraft!
I've been running behind on updating the blog, but have actually completed week 6 and week 7 projects on time. Here's the details for week 06...
So continuing on the Family's Oscar website, I created the detail entry page finished and working last week, but there is another part of combining the data into groups. This form was originally created last year, but it needed some fixes and a better naming structure. Once I had that working smoothly, I combined both pages together to make it a complete data entry tool page. The "Add Groups" form was on the left, and the "Add Group Details" was added to the right side of the page. This way as one added groups and found data missing you didnt need to go anywhere else; you just add it through the details form right there. After adding additional data the page would reload and re-populate the content on the "Add Groups" select menus showing your newly added info. The response of family adding the data was well received, and no errors or bad data was created upon release. Working without any issues from the getgo is a big win cause now I don't have to fix any data and this form is ready for future additions.
I also helped my friend Pete install a storm door on his front entrance. Those things are always a pain as nothing ever comes assembled. Of course there were issues with the existing door Jam, but nothing a circular & reciprocating saw can't handle. Other than the door Jam issues, we successfully installed the storm door without having to re-fix anything. We measured twice and installed once so YAY! That was a great achievement as well. No more heat loss or cold drafts.
And as a third place mention - I created three new floors in my underwater dome in Minecraft with the one floor being a 32x32x8 room complete with pillars. The other two were 32x32x2. All lit well and I revamped the stairway access. Woot! Thought I would have found more iron ore deposits, but still happy to finally get those levels cleared out. I'm shot so I'll post details tomorrow night on my blog.
So continuing on the Family's Oscar website, I created the detail entry page finished and working last week, but there is another part of combining the data into groups. This form was originally created last year, but it needed some fixes and a better naming structure. Once I had that working smoothly, I combined both pages together to make it a complete data entry tool page. The "Add Groups" form was on the left, and the "Add Group Details" was added to the right side of the page. This way as one added groups and found data missing you didnt need to go anywhere else; you just add it through the details form right there. After adding additional data the page would reload and re-populate the content on the "Add Groups" select menus showing your newly added info. The response of family adding the data was well received, and no errors or bad data was created upon release. Working without any issues from the getgo is a big win cause now I don't have to fix any data and this form is ready for future additions.
I also helped my friend Pete install a storm door on his front entrance. Those things are always a pain as nothing ever comes assembled. Of course there were issues with the existing door Jam, but nothing a circular & reciprocating saw can't handle. Other than the door Jam issues, we successfully installed the storm door without having to re-fix anything. We measured twice and installed once so YAY! That was a great achievement as well. No more heat loss or cold drafts.
And as a third place mention - I created three new floors in my underwater dome in Minecraft with the one floor being a 32x32x8 room complete with pillars. The other two were 32x32x2. All lit well and I revamped the stairway access. Woot! Thought I would have found more iron ore deposits, but still happy to finally get those levels cleared out. I'm shot so I'll post details tomorrow night on my blog.
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