Our Work is Done Here 02FEB08

by on osx-avr

I have been looking at AvrMacPack as a recommended platform. They have done a really nice job ob doing everything that I was trying to do and they also have paid attention to a lot of detail that I haven’t.

Please look at this and tell me what you think. I am considering dropping OSX-AVR and focusing on other underserved platform pieces if everyone agrees that it is done as well as I think it is.

http://www.obdev.at/products/avrmacpack/download-de.html

I will be contacting them to see if they can consider bundling nick’s x-code templates or I may put any pieces that are missing as individual packages.

Day 1

by on Thing A Day 2008

(Archive of http://www.thing-a-day2.com/2008/02/01/day-1-25/)

Today we made 4 things, and broke 2 soldering irons.

Thing 1a closet shelves.

Left Shelf
Shelf 2
I recently moved out of my storage unit. While putting most of the boxes into my hall closet I realized that there was a ledge which would make it a no brainer to put in a shelve. So I cut down some laminated boards that I dumpster dove last year and rounded the corners off of
them so I wouldnt hurt myself coming and going. I hot glued the edge of the laminate around the corner so It looks good as well :)

Thing 1 b and c Meg and A168 mouse (arduino based mouse bots).

Meg and A168 mouses.

My son and I have been working on modifying a pair of Tamaya wall following mice. After some thought and discussion we decided to build both of them out using the arduino and the motor controller boards that I had built for this purpose previously. My main soldering iron went out in the morning when I was preparing these. My spare went out in the middle of the second motor contoller board. I should move the soldering iron timer up on my to do list.

To Do List

by on Thing A Day 2008

(Archive of http://www.thing-a-day2.com/2008/01/26/to-do-list/)

For starters I thought i would sit down and see if I had more than 30 things on my to do list that I could do in a day or less. I got stuck fast. Most of the things on my to do list are multiple day projects. So I will list some of the things that are on my bench.

  1. “Have a Nice Day” (M./F.)Displays
    1. Rain “Gear” Display
    2. Hdsp-201x based display
      1. Creapy Pilot display
      2. cute little box.
    3. VFD
    4. CharleyPlexed leds
  2. Stackable Boxes
  3. Arduino Based Projects.
    1. New Soldering Iron Timer.
    2. Tiny45 / Tiny 24 emulation pods.
    3. Reset hack for xbee/arduino board.
    4. Line follower from bench scratch.
    5. Fishy Sculpture.
    6. Buzzbomb populate analog board
    7. Mega644 port
    8. a 168 (meg mouses twin for aidan)
    9. Stepper motor based pen bot.
  4. Wiring Based Projects.
    1. SorryBot prototype
    2. sorrybot board
    3. Etchy Sketchy.
  5. Crowswings
  6. Internal combustion frame.
  7. ftdi breakout boards
  8. max7219 breakoutboards
  9. Flow Charting Unit for Lego Robotics
  10. Battery Charging Circuit for Bicycle.

December 07 Release Contents

by on osx-avr

Gcc toolchain.

Arduino 10, uisp and the rest of us.

by on Dorkbot

I was looking at the new arduino and the api and noticing a few things that should have been implemented a long time in the new board. Not the least of which is the reset being hooked up to the fdti chip so that you dont have to intervene to download your code. There are still a few things that I am missing. Not the least of which is the necessity of using a serial boot loader. If the boot loader uses the stk500 then you would be best off with a cheep clone like one of these.

  • http://www.serasidis.gr/circuits/avr_isp/avr_isp.htm
  • (reference on work computer and not yet on my del.icio.us)

This would pull the expenses off of the board while achieving the same convenience of not needing to reset the board every time you needed to download. I am looking at adding this to my usb serial serial thingy. Its like a 1.25 part. There are a couple of single sided board designs which use the ftdi 232RL chip. I will have some sketches up soon.

…. to be continued …

NDA Rolls (Apple Verses its Developers)

by on Avr Development

I have spent more of last week wondering why X-Code wasnt signing my code and loading it onto the phone than successfully

The introduction of the Iphone and the apple SDK for it seems to have created massive confusion and hurt for the two communities most effected by it.

[Moderator] Re: Controlling Preferences on iPhone

  • Subject: [Moderator] Re: Controlling Preferences on iPhone
  • From: Scott Anguish <email@hidden>
  • Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:56:41 -0400
  • Delivered-to: email@hidden
  • Delivered-to: email@hidden

iPhone SDK
----------

Until an announcement is made otherwise, developers should be aware that the iPhone SDK is still under non-disclosure (section 5.3 of the iPhone Development Agreement). It can't be discussed here, or anywhere publicly. This includes other mailing lists, forums, and definitely blogs.

This situation is somewhat different than a Mac OS X release, in that a Mac OS X release includes a copy of the developer tools with the distribution. The iPhone OS 2.0 release on devices and as an upgrade does _not_ include the development tools. As a result, the SDK is not automatically considered public because the release has occurred.

Section 5.3 of the iPhone Development Agreement remains in force at this time, and will so remain until iPhone Developer Program members are specifically and personally notified by an authorized representative of Apple.

On 18-Jul-08, at 10:07 AM, Aaron L'Heureux wrote:

I have done some preliminary searching, but as I am still relatively new to the platform, I've not come up with an answer to this question. If anyone could help me out or point me in the right direction, I'd really appreciate it.

Is it possible to programmatically change system preferences on the iPhone? Say I wanted to be able to turn location services on (at the request of the user of course) or to enable Bluetooth, or toggle a few of the sound alerts. Utilitarian stuff. Can this be done from an App Store application? 

_______________________________________________

Notes on Ports to Packages

by on osx-avr

Ports,

The bsd community maintains a huge collection of reviewed and stable sources for open source software. The ports collection contains a framework of Makefiles and descriptions containing enough information to build the port from source. Using the ports collection on a bsd box is as simple as changing to the port’s working directory and typing make &&make install.

The ports collection can be retrieved in one of two ways. You can get the port collection in its entirety at ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/ports-current/ports.tar.gz or you can pull the individual port from the cvs tree. http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/ports/$category/$port/$port.tar.gz?tarball=1

The structure of the ports tree is:

  • /usr/ports/<category>/<package>

The port’s directory itself contains the following

  • Makefile
    — Contains most of the information required to build the package. Key variables include.

    • PORTNAME
    • PORTVERSION
    • PORTREVISION
    • CATEGORIES
    • PKGNAMEPREFIX
    • DISTFILES
    • BUILD_DEPENDS
    • RUN_DEPENDS
    • CONFIGURE_ARGS
    • CONFIGURE_ENV
    • MAKE_ARGS
    • MAKE_ENV
  • pkg-plist
    — This file contains a manifest of the files to be installed. It includes directory information and weather or not the directory should be cleared out or not.
  • pkg-descr
    — This file contains the package description
  • distinfo
    — contains the filenames, sizes and checksums for the source
  • files/
    contains any file not in the distribution and patches needed to build the file on xxxBSD

    • patch-xx

Packages

PackageMaker