Plotting Time - Open Source Clock - Plot Clock

Some days you get into work and find out someone has made something awesome. Those are good days. When that thing is Open Source it's an even better day. This is one of those days. 

Jonnanes of the Nuernberg Fablab has created the plotclock. The plot clock is built from 3mm Acrylic or can be 3D printed and consists of three 9g servos controlled by an Arduino Uno. Two servos control the arms that hold the pen and the third lifts the arms and therefor pen from the surface. The files for the machine can be found on thingiverse along with the code, the code is also in GitHub so it's double OpenSource. The Build instructions are available on the Fablab site as linked in the first sentence of this paragraph.

After some tinkering and breaking of parts we've got it together. No joy on the wiper part yet but it's a work in progress. All of the parts we broke we redesigned a little so clumsy people like our good selves don't snap them too. This was mainly increasing hole sizes slighty so self tapping can be used, which actually makes the build super easy. There's an edit to the left and right arms too, where they attach to the servo, making it easier to attach. All of the edits have been uploaded and cross referenced on Thingiverse

When is a Pi not a Pi?

Well when it's an Arduino compatible of course! Spotted by the eagle eyedRecatha this robot based Kickstarter seems to have got confused, or are cynically skirting the Raspberry Pi Trademark to sell a few kits.

Lets apply Hanlon's Razor and say it's a mistake and they've not heard of the Raspberry Pi we can then draw our focus to the Arduino Compatible board that ships with the robot. It's clearly based on the Uno and says as much in the blurb but the image that we can see only has the Kickstarter company's details, no attribution is visible, we only have 50% of the evidence available at the moment so lets not speculate any further until we see the whole thing!

We look forward to seeing how this pans out and wonder if there will be any fall out from "the Foundation" regarding the use of Pi in the robotics and electronics field.

More on the Cambridge Pi Jam

Now that the dust is settling it seems that other participants (and organisers) are getting together their thoughts and media on the 5th Cambridge Raspberry Pi Jam which took place on Saturday the 8th of February 2014. Youtube videos and blogs are popping up all over the place and frankly I'd like to watch and read them all! I'll try and keep them together on this post so it may evolve over the next week (or day).

First up is this funky short from Michael Horne (aka Recantha) just look out for flashing lights and you'll spot us!

Next up we see the whole day pan out right from set up. We're top middle right, you'll see the flashing lights switch on at about 30 seconds in. It was a really great day, seeing crammed into 6 minutes is quite fun.

Last up we have charwarz blog who sums up why she didn't by a Cylon kit. If only she'd known that it would have taught her about Charlieplexing as well as being the ocular display of a robot killing machine...

I may be repeating myself in saying the Raspberry Pi Jam was great. You should see if there's one near you. Check out the PiJam uberwebsite for details! I'm looking forward to seeing more reports as the week rolls by as well as catching up on all the cool stuff I missed whilst manning the stall via the PiJam Youtube channel

It's all about the Benjamins

Looking around at my chaotic desk and the scrawled on day book and notice board front and left of me (respectively) I often think I should be more organised. 

A man who did get a lot done is Benjamin Franklin. He invented Bifocals, lightening rods, was a founding father of America, had an illegitimate son and even got his face on the £100 bill.

This was a man with a plan, a daily plan it would seem, according to lifehacker. 

Further to his daily plan he lived by 13 virtues:

1. "Temperance. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation."
2. "Silence. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation."
3. "Order. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time."
4. "Resolution. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve."
5. "Frugality. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing."
6. "Industry. Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions."
7. "Sincerity. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly."
8. "Justice. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty."
9. "Moderation. Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve."
10. "Cleanliness. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation."
11. "Tranquility. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable."
12. "Chastity. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation."
13. "Humility. Imitate Jesus and Socrates."

So that my friends is how you get things done. I'd struggle with 2. I'm chatty. 3. You really should see my desk and for that matter so should I, alas it is covered by a great number of half finished projects and coffee cups. Perhaps I'll clear it a little and find places for things. 6. Better uninstall Ingress from my phone again. Would be happier doing that when I hit level 8 though, that harks back to 4. 12. Benjamin didn't do so well with that one it seems.

10 Minute Open Source Test

I've devised a simple test to see if an Open Source project is actually open source. Give yourself ten minutes. Try and find the files for the source of the project, that's the Cad files or code that allow you to reproduce the work - pdfs of board layouts do not count - open software does not provide jpegs of code.

If you can't find them in that time frame then the project isn't Open Source. If the project says it's going to be Open Source in the future then it's not Open Source yet. It's closed. Then if it says it is open and you can't find the files, email the project lead and ask where to find the files they may not have been published due to oversight - apply Hanlon's Razor.

Where you can find them, are you allowed to use them without restriction other than you attribute and not close the product? If not it's closed. A conversation has already been started regarding non-commercial licences. In my opinion these only serve as "douche bag" enablers, the only people who won't use your software / hardware are people who respect the licence. Douche bags will use it and profit from it. You are giving them an advantage over the good guys.

Then what? That's the bit I don't know, there's a lot that claims to be open that isn't and I think that hurts the community.

Pat Delaney - The Concrete Lathe and the Engine Mill

I had the fortune to meet Pat at the Open Hardware Summit in 2012. Pat's hardware was the hardest there, it was concrete. Pat had rediscovered a method of making machine tools cheaply and was at the summit to share it with us. On Make he's sharing the concrete lathe, his engine mill and his philosophy. It's well worth a read.Make Article on Pat Delaney there's also a great deal of info atOpenSourceMachineTools.org

"This is the story of Pat Delany, one of the leading creative voices in Appropriate Technology — technology that is small-scale, decentralized, labor-intensive, energy-efficient, environmentally sound, and locally controlled. This 78-year-old grandfather came to the field as an outsider, inspired by a second-hand description of a news photo. But his visionary home-built machine-tool designs now have the potential to help millions bootstrap themselves out of poverty. Delany never had much money himself, or any formal engineering education, but his personal quest to develop open-source DIY machine tools has been embraced and spread by Appropriate Technology’s conference-hopping, grant-getting establishment."

Dyson invests £5m in Domestic Robots

Sir James Dyson is investing £5,000,000.03 in Imperial College London's Robot Vision Lab, who set out their stall on their fantastic website that is actually full of content, links and actual research rather than the single image slick websites we've seen of late. There's even a software section and links to github of Alumni Hauke Stradat.

The group head, Professor Andrew Davison, is a pioneer of Slam (available from the github link above) or simultaneous localisation and mapping. Where a camera is used to make a 3D map of the visible space and is to be used as the only environment sensor on a robot, compare that to the Roomba, which uses a contact sensor, IR distance sensor and "cliff sensor" (which is another IR distance sensor) to avoid drops.

Combining this software and camera approach with Dyson's experience with motors and electronics they hope to build a new generation of domestic robots. 

CamJam Download (long and unnecessarily detailed)

Today I attended my first "Pi Jam", CamJam or the Cambridge Raspberry Pi Jamboree. Since arriving home I've had a long chat with my wife and now she's headed to bed and I'm unwinding with an Ubu beer and an episode of Myth Busters, downloading the days thoughts to the blog.

It was a 5:30 am start, which isn't unusual of late, what with the boy's sleeping habits. With no prior knowledge of the format I had mentally prepared for a Maker Faire style day, fielding questions non-stop from all angles from doors opening to closing time. The usual pre Maker Faire preparation ensued, filling up the car in the dark, buying bottled water and snack bars for the day (if it was good enough for Luke on Degobah...) and some RedBull for the journey home. Each item purchased separately to stock up on £5 notes and £1 coins for change later in the day. I was set.

The journey down wasn't too bad, stopped just outside Cambridge for the last substance I expected to consume for the day. For a change I was in good time, which was lucky, as I was about to take the scenic route through the beautiful city that is Cambridge. Junction 13 was closest to the CamJam venue, but it's an unusual one in the UK as you can only leave at it going north bound. As I was going south, I just needed to take the 7th right after leaving the dual carriage way, follow the road through, turn right and watch out for the observatory turn right and I was there. Or was that the 8th right? Nope the 7th. But already I'm in the city, and it's a beautiful city. Architecture like you wouldn't believe. Green spaces everywhere. Road signs that only tell you about bikes and the colleges in the city. Next my phone battery was dead depriving me of accurate location services, the MacGyver in me was mentally using a buck converter direct off the car battery to charge the phone when I discovered the in car charger. Day saved and I arrived at the venue, still first of the vendors I think!

Well what a spot they had picked out for phenoptix, first seen on entry and three tables! Very glad I went full tilt on the blinky and brought a tonne of stock with me! I really had a lovely welcome, from familiar faces met in person for the first time. The most enthusiastic welcome was from Aideen who'd won a BeagleBone Black our newsletter giveaway. The warm welcome set the tone for the day. It was all so friendly. For set up I decided to go for blinky, then plushie, then a smattering of tech with the big box o'sensors at the end of the table for the real enthusiast to look through. Setting up at events like these is a mix of fun and conversation and fear that you'll not be set before the hoards descend. I'm not sure if ready was ever an option for me at the Jam but set was ok!

However rather than a hoard, the CamJam participants arrived seemingly from nowhere in small groups, politely mesmerized by our display of colour changing LEDs. The questioning that followed has prompted me to spend more time with the WS2801 datasheet! What was great is that everyone arriving was headed to the lecture theatre and passed all us vendors with curious conversation, eager to come back and explore more. With a great day of programs planned and scheduled breaks for coffee and browsing electronics nobody seemed rushed. After each session groups would come out, explore our stock, ask questions and even buy some stuff! It was really nice to be there as a vendor, I felt as if I was there to sell but also share knowledge and experience (the very little I have!) as well as to learn from the participants. The stuff I had to show was there as a bit of an extra rather than a "maker veneer" as it sometimes feels at Maker Faires. Last year I attended a lot of Maker Faires and in some cases there were more vendors than makers and it all felt a bit off. At CamJam, it all felt very nice.

The lectures gave us vendors a chance to chat and mingle a little too, which again is a bit alien to me. I even had chance to take some poor quality mobile phone shots of my fellow vendees. A really fantastic bunch.

It was great too putting so many names to faces, when I say names I pretty much mean twitter handles. I'll try and list everyone tomorrow. I suppose overall I enjoyed the feel of the CamJam, it was a really nice event and I felt privileged to be attending. It would be great to go again. There was even cake. I'll wrap up now before I type I again. Tired and unedited this thought stream for the day has been downloaded! Maybe something more concise will follow, probably not knowing me. 

Voronoi Boxes from NYC Resistor!

Just spotted this by way of NYC Resistor. 

This is a Voronoi box. The pattern is a Voronoi tessellation. I've seen these beautiful patterns before but never known what to google. This box was made by Trammell Hudson of Resistor who has kindly shared a couple of scripts to generate the patterns on his bitbucket as well as another to generate some cool circles.

Check out the original post for all of the the beautiful details. I'm about to fire up the laser and add some LEDs...

Guided Tour of the Adafruit Trinket

Arriving at phenoptix towers this morning we noticed that a someone had searched the site for the trinket pinout. You might first ask what a Trinket is, well a Trinket(TM) is a teeny tiny ATTiny85 breakout from Adafruit and is available in two flavours 3.3V Logicand 5V Logic.

Despite its diminutive size the Trinket is a very useful bit of kit and has found a lot of uses in its short lifespan, thanks to the ease of use provided by Adafruit and their update to the Arduino IDE. You can also program it by our favourite programAVRDUDE! So I mentioned many uses, like what I hear you ask. Well like this:

(making a light ball thing)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzzAmB3E3ok&feature=youtu.be

(making a chip tune FM Transmitter - apparently with Rick Roll capabilities)

(driving NeoPixel strip! - now you're interested right?!)

So now you know what it is and what you can do with it, here's the good stuff. The Pinout (I would say Pin Out but I don't know what would be correct. Feel free to correct me in the comments.) 

The diagram was provided by two cool folks in the Adafruit forums - ardunaut and the TheKitty. For a more technical view you might want to check out this schematic

Frankly we're most interested in the GPIO pins right? Well on the Trinket Tutorial over on the Adafruit learning system Ladyada explains

All the GPIO pins can be used as digital inputs, digital outputs, for LEDs, buttons and switches etc. They can provide up to 20mA of current. Don't connect a motor or other high-power component directly to the pins! Instead, use a transistor to power the DC motor on/off

On a 3V Trinket, the GPIO are 3.3V output level, and should not be used with 5V inputs. On a 5V Trinket, the GPIO are 5V output level, and can be used with 3V inputs but may damage electronic devices that are 3V input only!

The first 3 pins are completely 'free' pins, they are not used by the USB connection so you never have to worry about the USB interface interfering with them when programming

• GPIO #0 - this is connected to PB0 on the ATtiny85. This pin can be used as a PWM output, and is also used for I2C data, and SPI data input.
• GPIO #1 - this is connected to PB1 on the ATtiny85. This pin can be used as a PWM output, and is also used for SPI data output. This pin is also connected to the onboard LED (like pin 13 on a regular Arduino).
• GPIO #2 - this is connected to PB2 on the ATtiny85. This pin can be used as an analog input (known as Analog A1), and is also used for I2C clock and SPI clock.

The next 2 pins are also used for USB programming. That means that when the Trinket is connected to a computer and in bootloader mode or in the middle of uploading a new program, they are used for sending data to/from the computer! It's possible to share these pins if you are careful. The best use of these pins is as outputs to things like LEDs , or inputs to things like buttons and just make sure not to press the buttons while connected to USB. We didn't want to keep these pins off the board but we strongly recommend not using them unless you're sure you need them since you might have to disconnect any connections to reprogram the Trinket!

• GPIO #3 - this is connected to PB3 on the Attiny85. This pin is used for USB programming, but its also an analog input known asAnalog A3
• GPIO #4 - this is connected to PB4 on the Attiny85. this pin is used for USB programming, but it can also be used as a PWM analog output and an analog input known as Analog A2

The rest of the details are equally well explained so check it out on their fantastic learning system.

You should now be able to find the Trinket Pinout and see what a great little product the Trinket is. Even if you're not into off the shelf electronics you can build one yourself, very cheaply! It might not be quite so handsome though! 

Want to buy one right now? Click here!