Hardware fun at C4DI

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I could tell you what this is, but then I'd have to kill you....

We had another great hardware meetup at c4di this week. Some new folks who turned up to see what all the fuss was about, quite a few HullPixelbot devices wandering around and some very enjoyable technical chats about this and that. 

The next meeting is at the start of November. You can find all the Hardware Group meetings, along with other c4di meetups, here:

http://www.meetup.com/Hull-Digital-Hull-Open-Coffee/

Hull Pixelbot Problem Solving

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We had a great time at the c4di hardware meetup last night. We had some more new faces drop by, including one family who were out for a walk around the waterfront and just came into see what all the fun was about. This was great for me, as I was able to try out some HullPixelbot arenas that I'd made up.

The idea is that you get a robot, an arena and a programmer interface that makes the robot move and turn. And then you have to navigate the robot from the start to the finish. 

The one on the left is quite simple, except that you don't know what the numbers used to control the robot actually mean. 

Anyhoo, we managed to navigate the above arena and make the robot stop in exactly the right place. Then we moved onto a more complicated one and then I got clever, tried to make the robot retrace its steps and had it turn the wrong way and nearly fall off the desk. On well. 

The great news for me is that the folks who happened to drop by left with a kit of parts for the robot chassis and the intention to come back with a completed robot for the next Hardware Meetup. 

If you want to come along the meetups are open to anyone who fancies a bit of hardware fun and games. You can sign up here. 

Big Fun Hardware Meetup

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Firstly, if you were planning on coming to the Hardware Meetup tonight I'm sorry about the traffic problems. These were caused by road closures for the Hull Freedom Festival which is this weekend. And during our meetup we had an awesome choir practising on the stage near c4di.

It was great to see some new faces in amongst the regulars. I gave out four or so Hull Pixelbot chassis and I'm looking forward to seeing some working robots next time we meet up. It was a great atmosphere and there seem to be lots of things going on at the moment, which is lovely. If you want to come along too you can sign up here. 

And you can find our more about the Hull Pixelbot, including new revised assembly instructions, here.

Hololens and Occulus Rift at c4di

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I got to the c4di Hololens and Occulus Rift demos slightly later than planned thanks to a succession of red lights on the way. By the time I arrived the room was pretty much full and there were queues to try out the latest in virtual and augmented reality.

The interesting thing for me was the contrast in the devices. The Occulus  Rift is a fairly bulky device attached to a large, powerful PC. The Hololens just sits on your head with no cables, no external computers, just the device itself. It ran happily on batteries for the time I was there. I had a brief go with it and the experience was just as impressive as it was when I played with it last year. The thing about these devices for me is that, unlike things like stereo TV or multi-channel sound, people try them and just decide that they want more of this.

The Rift (and my weapon of choice - the HTC Vive) take you somewhere else. The Hololens takes where you are and adds value to the surroundings. They are both awesome technologies and I'm racking my brains to think of an area where they couldn't have an impact. Interesting stuff. Thanks to Trident for arranging the session. 

HoloLens and Occulus Rift at c4di

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I've not got a HoloLens. Or an Occulus Rift. Yet. But I've had a go with both of them and they are really, really interesting. The way I see it, there are two game changers coming round the corner as far as computers are concerned. One is the Internet of Things, the other is virtual/augmented reality.  You need to know about both of them.

You can get to play with the new versions of reality  at a c4di event on Thursday morning this week, which is open to all. Sign up here. It's free. I'm going.

Very Busy Hardware Group at c4di

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We had a really busy Hardware Meetup last night at c4di. Plenty of new faces, and quite a few folks who'd taken HullPixelBot kits and brought them back made up. I showed off the latest software and the HullPixelBot improvements and it was lovely to see so many people on the night. 

I'm going to be releasing some new software for HullPixelBot in the next week or so, to coincide with the first public appearance of HullPixelBot at the Amy Johnson Maker Fest on August the 27th next week. If you want to come along and see what we are doing we'll be in Zebedee’s Yard, Whitefriargate, Hull HU1 2EX along with lots of other folks between 10:00am and 16:00 pm. 

If anyone fancies helping me "man the stand" over the day then I'd love to hear from you. Ping me a message via twitter (@robmiles) or email (rob@robmiles.com) and we can get some kind of timetable together. 

If you want to come along and take part in the hardware group (you don't have to build a robot, but we'd love it if you built something) then you can keep track of the meetups and sign up here. 

Hull Looks Great

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Every now and then I take a picture that I'm really, really, pleased with. This is one of them. I took it today wandering round the waterfront in Hull. This is fast becoming one of my favourite places. The Fruit Market is coming along a treat and interesting cafes and shops are springing up. It's a pity you have to cross the A63 to get to this part of town, but it's well worth a few seconds waiting at a pedestrian crossing. 

I took a few more pictures that I'm happy with. You can find them here. 

Putting the Pixel into HullPixelBot

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I've reached the point in 3D design where the hard part is not expressing the design. It's deciding what the design should be. I regard this as progress. Above you can see the new pixel mounts for the HullPixelBot that we've been playing with at C4DI.

Each bot will have two pixels. One at the top between the wheels to make it easy to do persistence of vision photography. And one at the back for other HullPixelBots to find and follow. 

I unveiled the new design to an awestruck audience at the hardware meetup tonight. Unfortunately I also unveiled a rather nasty power issue where the robot motors cut out when the lights were turned on. Oh well. It might be that we need extra volts for the pixels...

Anyhoo, I'll be posting the new designs in a little while, once I'm sure that it all fits together properly.  

I gave away a couple of 3D printed kits to new folks who had come along. If you want to come, get some parts and have a go at building your own robot (it won't cost you more than a tenner to build) then sign up for our next meetup on 18th August. All are welcome, young or old, experienced or not. Sign up here. 

Martyn Talks Azure at C4DI

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I like going to the C4DI developer meetups. If you are a programmer and you are based in Hull, you should go along too. You can sign up for developer and also the hardware meetups here. 

Anyhoo, this month we had Martyn Coupland talking about Azure. Martyn works for Inframon as a "Senior Cloud Architect". As he said his job title I had this vision of a meeting full of serious faced engineers saying things like "And this is our new Cumulonimbus 5000, with extra fluffy light bits...". But that would be silly.

What Martyn actually does is map business process onto platforms based in the "cloud". The cloud is basically a bunch of computers on the end of a high performance network connection. It is how you turn computing into a service, rather like water or power, which you can buy based on your needs.

If you have a thing you want to do, for example host a web site, provide the back-end for an application or even run a business, the first thing you do isn't buy a big rack of computers. What you do is talk to someone like Martyn who will design you a system that lives in the cloud.

If your idea takes off big time you don't have a problem, you just crack open the champagne and turn on more cloud based processing power. If your idea sinks without trace you put the champagne back in the fridge, chalk it up to experience and work on the next project, reflecting that at least you haven't got a room full of expensive hardware to get rid of.

Martyn gave a very good rundown of how Microsoft Azure works and how good it is. I knew a bit of this from the Rather Useful Seminar by Caitlin and Peter but it was very interesting to hear how it has progressed even in this short time. Most amazing fact for me was that the majority of Azure installations don't run Windows software. I forget the figure (forgot to write it down) but there are a huge number of open source solutions sitting out there on Microsoft infrastructure. It turns out that you can build an image using your favourite operating system, whatever that is, and then deploy it into the cloud very easily. 

At the end of the talk I was chatting with Martyn about Hull Pixel Bot and mentioned that I plan to make the robots all clients of an Azure based location and communication service. He reckoned that it was eminently doable, which was good to know.  He'll be coming back to Hull to do some more, implementation focused, sessions later in the year. He's also an MVP, which is nice.

Dual Processor Hull Pixel Bot

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I think you should know I'm rather proud of this...

I've just finished building the prototype for the dual processor version of the HullPIxelBot. A single Arduino is a nice enough way to do simple robot control. But I want WiFi. And access points. And web servers. So I've coupled an ESP8266 device (in this case the Node MCU) up to an Arduino Pro-Mini. The Pro-Mini takes care of the low level motor control, producing the signals that will drive the steppers. The ESP8266 device doesn't really have enough pins for the motors, and it has better things to do than drive steppers, so I've linked the two with a serial connection.

Since the Pro-Mini costs around a pound and has a negligible effect on power consumption I reckon it is worth doing. At the moment we have a really simple one byte command protocol, but I can build that up a bit if I need to use the Pro-Mini to do some sensor integration. 

Next step is to work up the web side so that I can make a wireless, web controlled robot. Then we add the coloured pixels to the bot and we are really in business. 

I'll be releasing all the code and the circuit diagrams later. If you want to see the real thing, come along to C4DI tomorrow evening at 6:00 pm. 

Robot Building at C4DI this Thursday

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We will be holding a special Robt Building meetup this Thursday (16th of June) at C4DI. I'll be bringing along a bunch of printed components (see above) for people to use to build their own robots. If you've been collecting the hardware to build your own robot, come along and we'll help you put it together and get it moving. 

I'll also be showing off the latest "two brained" version of the PixelBot and we'll be discussing the way forward. Everything will start around 6:00 at C4DI in Hull on Thursday. 

HullPixelBot planning at C4DI

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We had another of our hardware hacking group meetings last night. Plenty of great discussion, a lot of it focused on the HullPixelBot. Robin had assembled one and added some sensors that allowed it to chase light. Which mostly worked. We're planning a "bot assembly" evening on the 16th of June. I'm going to print out a bunch of chassis and anyone who fancies a bot of their own can come along and build it with us. Then we'll try to get them all going. You can find the build instructions on the Hull PixelBot microsite here. They include how to get all the part's you'll need. It shouldn't cost you more than ten pounds or so. 

We also have a Google group about matters Hull PixelBot. If you want the details ping me a message (or add a comment) and I'll get you registered. 

Mike Taulty talks Universal Apps at C4DI

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I've met up with Mike Taulty a few times over the years, at the odd Hackathon or conference. I've also spent a fair while reading his blog. But I've not seen him to a talk before. Until now. 

He came along to a developer event at C4DI (which was packed by the way). He spent almost exactly an hour exploring how to build up a Windows 10 Universal Application to control a Sphero ball. At the start he made the point that Universal Applications are exactly what they say. They run on a Windows 10 platform that is now unified across lots of devices, from Raspberry Pi, through phone, Xbox One, tablet, PC, Surface Hub and even HoloLens. 

The talk served as a great demonstration of this, with the same code running on PC, Pi and phone. Mike also explained how different families of device can expose specific functions, for example a phone platform can provide an inclinometer, but a single application can be written to make use of these abilities in a context that is useful to the user.  He also touched on adaptive layout, where the designer can create display layouts appropriate to the format and size of the screen in use and then have the application automatically select the best one.

Mike also looked at the range of input options available to Windows 10 developers and by the end we had a Sphero that was controlled by speech, handwriting and even switches wired to a Raspberry Pi.

This was a great talk that packed lots into a very short time. I'm very tempted to ask Mike to come along and deliver it as a Rather Useful Seminar. 

The Internet of Things at C4DI

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Tonight I headed off to the C4DI for a developer meetup. It was nice to see a few folks I'd not met up with in a while, and even nicer to see that a few of our students had made it along to the meetup. These are really good events to get along to. You get to mix with local developers, drink free beer and see what's going on in software development. 

And you get to find out where the C4DI is, in a lovely and fast growing part of town. 

The talk was from Glynn Bird, a Developer Advocate from IBM. He gave a lovely talk about  the Internet of Things; starting with what constitutes an IoT device (a clue - it's not a clockwork gas meter) and moving on to future trends. Glynn reckoned that although IoT devices in the home sound fun- after all, who wouldn't want an internet connected kettle? - it is in the field of industry where they have the most potential.

We now have the ability to sprinkle connected sensors around any production process, from farming to nuclear power stations, and then use vast cloud based systems to crunch the resulting torrent of data. This should lead to huge improvements in the way that we do things as we use data that previously was either unavailable or discarded or just plain too hard to work with.

Glynn talked about MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport), a lightweight mechanism for routing data from sensor to client and suggested some technology (node-red and CouchDB - along with CloudAnt) that look very interesting

Very thought provoking stuff, with some great discussion at the end. Glynn is a fascinating chap to listen to - and he has a very useful website too. 

There are some very interesting meetups coming down the tracks. Anyone can go along, and everyone should. Sign up here. 

Happy New Year at the C4DI

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What with today having really quite nice weather we went out for a walk. I took number one son to show him the new C4DI headquarters down at the waterfront. I think it is a stunning looking building, and a great visual compliment for "The Deep" which is just across the river.  I'd like to think of this as a metaphor for all the great things which are happening in Hull just at the moment, with a burgeoning local software scene and some fascinating trajectories for developers who want to live and work in lovely Hull. 

Oh, and I'd like to wish all my readers a happy and prosperous New Year.  I hope you have a happy, healthy, fun-filled and prosperous 2016.