Author: Rob
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Day 15: display testing
So I have my display working sort of. It’s definitely showing good old ASCII characters. Here’s a quick video of it in action: You can see my code at GitHub. I’m quickly realizing that I will need a more sophisticated text parser to make this thing usable. ‘Cuz sending a character at a time for…
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Platform Interchange
I suppose that the “Slippery Slope” phenomenon applies to me right now. A chink in my Apple armor developed some time ago. Then I got out of the iPhone world all together, which amazed me as much as it did my friends. The recent maturity of Google’s cloud services (Photos, Drive, Music, etc.) had a considerable…
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Day 6: early firmware testing
Things are progressing nicely. I have the display fully wired now to the Mega. It’s a spaghetti mess, but it’ll work.I have the serial port on the Arduino working nicely for debug. I also did a fair amount of thinking with regards to data and address packetizing. It quickly became apparent that doing a bunch…
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Day 3: Arduino setup
I’ve had a bad experience with Arduino. But perhaps I was just cranky that night. I was also unlucky with a defective Uno. The good news is that for my new project (which has a deadline), my new Arduino Mega is not in fact defective. I can attest its functionality tonight, at 10:45pm. This platform is…
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Day 1: setup
I got the display mounted to a breadboard. How about that, it’s green! The display has a self test diagnostic mode built in, which is incredibly handy. Saw little cute LED bits flashing and twinkling. So the thing appears to be alive, after all these years! Here is some video too: The majority of my…
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GaSiProMo
I’m a notorious task-starter, and not a great task-finisher. My garage is littered with old projects that are collecting more dust than accolades. I can lean on the old, dependable excuses but really that’s lame. If every moment is the new normal, then there aren’t any excuses. Our hobbies define us, and I love my…
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Modernizing my email
A few months ago, I did an overhaul of my digital life. Those posts were all about switching smartphone platforms from Apple iOS to Android. What was most revealing to me was not the hardware and software differences, but just how I get things done now. In the end, I’m not unhappy with my switch. I tend to…
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Simulated Power Fail Test
I ran across this little humorous easter egg the other day, buried deeply in a software development kit manual: To begin the test, pull the power plug from the UPS. The first time that you do this, psychologically it won’t be easy, but after you have pulled the plug a few times, you may even…
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Attack of the Robots
Is it just me, or have there been a lot of robot-themed movies lately? I suppose it’s not really that surprising, as science fiction is one of the best barometers of cultural zeitgeists.
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Pi through the ages
I’ve loved the irrational number set for most of my life. There’s something magical about numbers that have no finite limit. Pi is one of those.