February, Alaska, North
Just walked up the hill
Brainstormed some good shit.
1. Conductive thread and flicker LEDs. Embroider the Wif the Alaskan night sky she remembers the most so during the day it shows the constellations, and at night the stars light up.
Need to ask her about the stars in Alaska.
2. Glass monolith with one way glass film facing the wrong way. Periodically it light LEDs on the inside with the clip of Dave Bowman saying “Stars. It’s full of stars.”
This weekend
It was midterm madness. I was being quiet, so no major progress. I did get a new bigger better cutting bit for the rotary, so I’ll see how that does going into the cigar boxes.
I also watched some videos on building a plywood fishtank, so on the day I do that, I’m feeling much more ready. I still don’t know if I want to go that route though. Hell, I usually can’t decide if I want an aquarium.
I think my bigger priorities need to be cleaning and clearing room. Then it’s time to consider rearranging, refurnituring. Then add living things. Seems a bit more respectable.
#blessed
Woke up too early after going to bed too late
I totally don’t have motivation today. I have so little motivation that I vacuumed to procrastinate. Then it got down to business.
I need to remember to charge the drill battery. Better yet, I should get a corded drill that actually had some oomph. So that delayed the shelf, again.
I started dismantling a cigar box. I see how it is now and I have a spare pair. This means that when the first parts box is done, that I’ll be able to make another one to match. This one I’ll make with documentation. I should also get some very small hinges. The poster hinge looks cool, but I don’t feel it’s long term survival. This is going to be leaked until o get a new cutting blade for the rotary. The ones I have are super cheap and couldn’t name the first cut even.
Next is pedometer.
Embroidery
I still can’t decide how the aesthetics are going to look. Terrible sentence by the way. I’m thinking the LEDs, but what about function. I’ll probably demo a shimmering colour field on the Arduino, and get am idea of where to go from there. Hell, I don’t even think I have more than one RGB LED. Also, RGB want in my dictionary?
Embroidery
I finished my embroidery project today. I ran out if black thread so I added some red. I have the red because I think I was planning on kicking it up a notch before anyway.
Next… I’m going to do a cut out mask to go behind do as to block the trees and the ground. Then, I’ll add LEDs in behind, probably some RGB ones so I can have it act as a weather forecasting device. When I get to it, I’ll probably just order another Thing to act as the controller. Just young this is making me think of ways I could get a low work solution to have variation in the lights. Probably I’ll add a couple candle flickers in there too.
Obviously
I could just dump the data, bit the idea of a CSV output sounds sexy, it means I can burst out all the data.
Soo… something like this on the headers:
// output headers so that the file is downloaded rather than displayed header(‘Content-Type: text/csv; charset=utf-8’); header(‘Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=data.csv’);
That was pulled from here.
Wow. I totally attributed shit. Actually, I think I usually do, bit it is an example of my being kinda precocious. Note: I tried to “type” persnickity which my phone read as precocious. Which itself is precocious.
Every single company involved in the cellphone industry is a giant bottle of vinegar.
Last night
Started prototyping on the Arduino. I then realized that was stupid. I bent the shit out of the headers I soldered on, wasn’t necessary, and then figured out what was really causing me grief. It turns out the library for the accelerometer I’m uses variable names that are used in the library for the Thing. I was kinda suspecting this, I looked into it, I brushed it by looking at the comments. Problem solved.
Note to self: STATUS is a shitty constant name in a library.
I’m now able to pull the data and post as a webpage. My task tonight is figuring out how to do the same thing as a data dump. Ideally CSV style so I can log for a walk around the block and then dump into a data visualizer of some kind. I’m guessing I’m looking for a period of about 1-3 seconds, obviously up and down on the Z axis, but maybe a little something on the Y. Then, if I’m all hardcore, which I am, I’d love to add a little bit more back end on identifying the motion type.
I feel confident I should get some data going this week.
HUMPDAY!
Proj
It looks like I’m waiting for my 4g RePhone now until October. That’s a good thing. Yes, there’s a delay, but the final product is what I really wanted, so yeah. #blessed
To get a good baseline, I’m trying to download a pedometer for my phone, but of course my current phone and downloads aren’t friendly to each other. I’ll have to do this when I get home.
I think tonight I’ll start prototyping everything on the Arduino, and then migrate the code over to the Thing. Should have gotten a Thing Dev Board also. Now I know why someone would want something so much burlier. Should I be adding and removing headers or just plan top leave headers on?
Next time.
Fitness
Right, made some progress tonight. I still feel on track to get this thing logging something by the end of the week. That’s my current goal. I want the accelerometer reading data, saving data, dumping data, end of week. Then it’ll be a thing of identifying steps and having the data be useful. Then it’s strap on everything else and add an enclosure.
Tomorrow I’ll hook the accelerometer up to the Arduino and get a handle on I2C. One that’s done, switch it to the Thing and probably log data to Sparkfun’s data thing. Proceed from there.
Totally doing this.