Sneaking up on a problem

Not sure this will work every time, but I pass it on as a tip that has worked for me. If you are stuck trying to solve a problem it is sometimes a good idea to go off and try solving a totally different one for a while. I have a number of “background niggles” which are things that I would like to fix when I get round to it. I keep a list of these in my diary.

When I get stuck on a “foreground” problem in something I’m working on I will go off and have a look at one of my “niggles” for a while. If I’m lucky (and I have to be lucky) I’ll fix the niggle, come back to my original problem, take another look at it and then solve that too.

Forcing the brain to switch from one issue to another and back again sometimes allows it to pick up on something you didn’t spot first time around.

If you haven’t got any “background niggles” (lucky you) then you can do something different for a while and then come back.

Yet another book

I’m writing another book. You might wonder why I’ve just signed up to spend 6 months of my life thinking about nothing but JavaScript and deadlines, but I happen to like writing. So there.

The new book has the title “Begin to Code – Building Apps and Games in the Cloud”. It’s a follow up for “Begin to Code with JavaScript” with the aim of turning the reader from a programmer to a programmer who knows how to use the cloud.

I’ve already had a lot of fun putting together the overview and roughing out the sample projects. And I’m really going to enjoy turning out the text. Really

The Party Printer Lives

This is the latest “thing” I’m building. It is intended to serve as a “party printer”. It detects when people stand in front of it and offers to take their picture. After a countdown the picture is taken and then sent via Bluetooth to a printer that makes a hard copy of the image. You can see the tripod socket on the bottom of the device.

I’ve just about got the code working. The biggest problem has been getting the lens to focus. You have to do this by turning the lens in the camera. I was having a lot of bother screwing the lens in tight enough to get a sharp image. “No problem” I thought to myself, “I’ll use those really expensive angled pliers that I bought a while back to grip the lens and turn it”.

That didn’t end particularly well. As you can see by the massive scratch across the lens. The good news is that the scratch itself gave me something to grip on as I tried to rotate it. And it doesn’t look as if the image quality has been affected too much.

Now I just have to finish off the software and write up the device for a Hackspace article.

Fixing the Theta S

A while back I bought a Ricoh Theta S camera. I’ve used it on and off since. More off than on recently though. I thought it might be fun to take it to emf, but when I got it out I discovered that it was dead. The battery would not hold a charge.

It turns out that this is a common problem and there is even a guide to replacing the battery with an Olympus one which is a perfect match. The instructions refer to special tools that you need to get the back off, but I made do with a penknife and a thumbnail. My pro tip, the cover on the bottom is actually a very thin sticker so you don’t have to get far behind it to get it off. Once you’ve done that, remove the four screws and then pull open the cover at the bottom right hand corner, stick something (your thumbnail or the corner of a credit card) into the gap and then run it round the edge to pop open all the clips holding the cover on. You only have to take the cover off one side, the one facing you when the three buttons are on the left hand side.

The old battery was a bit tricky to get out as it is stuck to the case, but if you give it a gentle prise with a wide blade it will pop out. There is no need for any soldering, the new battery just drops in. My replacement battery is now in and seems to be accepting charge and the camera is working well. It can transfer pictures to my phone over WiFi or over usb to my computer. To say that it is six or so years old the quality of the images holds up quite well.

It works!

Update: It turns out that the latest Ricoh Theta cameras use the same battery - the DB-110. You can buy a DB-110 here - although I reckon the Olympus one I got is the same thing with a different label.

Radius vs Diameter: The eternal battle

An important feature of the thing I’m building now is a tripod fitting on the base. I’ve decided that the best way to implement this is to get an adapter that converts a 3/8ths inch hole into a 1/4 one. If I make the right sized hole in the case I can just screw the adapter into the hole and it will provide the socket that I want.

I carefully converted 3/8ths of an inch into millimetres, added the hole to the design and printed it. However, as you can see above the hole is much too big. Twice as much too big. I’d used the value as a radius, not a diameter. The thing that amazes me is that I managed to check the diagram, look at the enormous hole and then say to myself “Yep, that looks like 3/8ths of an inch”.

Oh well.

Back on the road

Earlier this year I had a little surgical procedure which meant that I had to stop driving. When I got back from hospital I gathered up all the information, filled in a form and sent everything off to tell the authorities I was broken but had been mended. Then began the long wait for the Driver and Vehicle Licencing Agency to contact my surgeon, convince themselves that I was fixed and then decide to let me drive again.

They’ve just done this. I’m very pleased. I’ve spent the thick end of three months walking past my lovely little car but not being able to drive it anywhere. I’m not sure where I’m going to go just at the moment but I’m really looking forward to going there.

Everything is better with a big button on the front...

I’m working on a design for a new device and I’ve just decided to put a big green button on the top of it. I see this as definite progress….

Yamaha Tenori-On

After the glorious triumph that was my emf presentation I met up with a bunch of the audience in the bar. We were talking about different music devices and one chap mentioned the Yamaha Tenori-ON. I’d just got paid for some work and so……

It’s a very interesting device. The top surface is made up of 256 illuminated buttons in a 16x16 grid. On the back there is a duplicate of the front, except that these are just lights that mirror the playing grid. The idea is that you can stand in front of an audience and play it and they can watch what you are doing.

You play notes by tapping a button or holding the button for slightly longer to create a note in a sequence which will be played repeatedly as the play position (indicated by three vertical lights) sweeps over the grid. There are sixteen different grids and you can flip between sixteen different versions of each grid. You can vary the length of the sequence on a grid and change its speed. It is quite fun to come up with interesting sounding stuff by combining panels of different lengths. You can record a complete performance onto an SD card and then play it back. The note playback is animated, making a performance look like a tiny firework display.

There are 256 different voices built in and you can load samples off an SD card if you want to make songs out of your own sounds. It can be battery powered (6 aa batteries) or mains via a 12v adapter. It also has a MIDI connection and a pair of weedy speakers built in.

The device dates from 2007 so there are no fancy Bluetooth or usb connections available but it does have a headphone output for personal playback or connection to an amplifier. The LCD panel is a tad hard to read (mostly because it is behind an artistically curved window in the case) but it works well enough.

I’m choosing to regard it as an investment (pause for laughter) but I’m also having a lot of fun playing with it too.

The Estates is a great game

We’ve started having in-person game nights again. With real people. At the last one we played The Estates. This is a fantastic game. The gameplay has you playing as a construction company vying with others to put buildings on tracts of land. If you manage to fill your tract, you get points for the bits of the buildings you made in it. If the tract is not filled, all of those in it get negative points.

It is great. Highly strategic, with with plenty of bluff, counter bluff and whatnot. One wonderful thing about the game is that every turn involves an auction, which means that even when it is not your turn you can either buy something you’d rather like or try to scupper another player by forcing the price up.

The gameplay forces a kind of cooperation. It would be impossible to fill a tract with just your own buildings. However, since there can be only one winner, it also forces chicanery and double crossing. It is the kind of game that you really appreciate playing in the same room as everyone else.

I’ve put in an order for a copy for Father’s Day……..

Harlow Carr

Time to get back to nature again. But this time the nature is the carefully managed variety you can find at Harlow Carr. One of my favourite places in all the world.

Making a box

I’m making a box for one of these. Handy to have all the measurements.

Camping with a dirt-cheap laptop

Now with added sticker

For the last few days, I’ve been living in a tent and doing all my work on a laptop that I bought for 80 pounds (that’s around 100 dollars). I’ve developed code, written documents, captured video, opened lots of browser tabs and given the odd presentation. The machine I’ve been using is a GeoBook 140. It is not what you would call highly specified. It has an Intel Celeron N3350 processor, 4Gb of RAM and 64Gb of mass storage. It chugs a bit. And yet it gets there in the end. It has run everything I want faultlessly.

It has a couple of USB A sockets and a single USB C. It also has HDMI and audio outputs along with a micro-SD slot. The keyboard is clunky and not back lit, but I can type quickly on it and it is a good size with all the keys I need. The screen is low resolution (but very bright) and the track pad is not great (although I much prefer an external Bluetooth mouse anyway). It runs Windows 10 very well indeed though (although it may never run Windows 11).

I can even run KiCad

I can open Visual Studio Code, Word, PowerPoint, OBS, Thonny, GitHub desktop, PureData and all the other bits and bobs I need to get things done. The paltry storage space doesn’t bother me because I use OneDrive to give me the illusion of all my files at my fingertips. I’m getting at least five hours of battery life. I don’t know how long the battery really lasts because I’ve not managed to run it flat yet. I wouldn’t be thrilled if someone said that it was now my primary device, but I’d still be able to do stuff.

I’ve got a MacBook Air which I think is lovely. And I use it every now and then. But I’d never take it away to use in a tent. I’d be scared that it might get dropped, scratched, or wet. And it wouldn’t be as useful to me as the GeoBook. I’m afraid that MacBook to me is a bit like a Ferrari. I take it out for a spin every now and then to do fancy things. The GeoBook is more of a Ford Focus. I use it to get things done. I like it a lot, especially in the Minecraft Blue colour. I’d be a bit upset if it got broken. But I’d also only be 80 quid out of pocket. For the price of my MacBook I could buy more than ten “blue wonders”.

The amount of productivity you get for your money is amazing. If you’ve not got a laptop it represents amazing value. You can pick one up from xsonly. They have a bunch of different ones. I recommend the N3350 based ones as they have four core processors. Well worth a look.

Heading home

Today it was time to go home. Rather sad. It has been an awesome festival. We’ve gone to loads of session, met a bunch of people and seen some amazing tech. Thanks so much to the organisers and the huge team of volunteers who made everything work. Apparently it isn’t possible to organise and manage an event like this with such a small number of people. Except that it is. Wonderful stuff. Counting down now to EMF 2024.

Self promotion at emf

Shameless self promotion in the lounge

We’ve had a couple of interesting nights here at emf. It’s quite fun to watch the tent around you swirl and dance as the wind howls and the rain pours down. Really. The best bit is the moiré fringe effects that you get when the inner and the outer layers of the tent touch each other. Quite mind blowing.

Anyoo, the good news is that just as we woke up the rain stopped and it wasn’t ever a hinderance right through the day. Oh, and here I present my tips for emf shower success. I meant to write these down last time, but I forgot and had to rediscover them all again.

• wear shorts for the shower. There’s nothing quite as nasty as pulling on jeans over barely dry legs in a steamy, enclosed space.

• don’t wear socks for the shower. If you think jeans are hard to pull over damp legs, you haven’t tried pulling socks over damp feet.

• a carrier bag is your friend. When you set out it holds your clean clothes, towel and soap etc. You can hang it on the hook in the shower, and then move things in and out as you go through the shower process. A true ninja takes two bags, one for clean stuff and one for dirty.

• put your toothpaste on the toothbrush before you leave the shower cubicle. The tap and basin are outside the shower. It’s a real faff to put toothpaste on a brush while standing in a queue. Much better to just have it all “tap ready” when you leave your shower. The first time I saw someone heading towards me holding a toothbrush in front of them I thought I was being challenged to some kind of duel. But when he shot past me and made for the tap I realised what a genius he really was.

emf skies

Humans: “Look at the pretty light displays that we’ve made for emf (they were very good)”
Nature: “Hold my beer………”

Making Geiger Counters at emf

What better way to start the day than by building a Geiger counter. The session yesterday was fully booked so today saw me standing in my wellies (the weather has changed slightly) at the head of the queue to take part. I was lucky to get in, as in the previous session things got very busy. The bad news for everyone was that, due to a shortfall in Geiger tubes, not everyone would be able to take away a fully working device. But they are readily available on ebay for a modest price, and I never could resist a bit of soldering, so off we went.

It was wonderful. We had excellent instructions, plus lots of folks wandering around offering us components and advice. At the end of the day some of us walked away with working devices. Number one son got his built and working and even managed to get a tube to take home. I’m going to get myself a tube on ebay so that I can finish mine off . Somebody told me that bananas are a good source of radiation. I’m looking forward to investigating this.

Note that just because the counter makes a noise when you hold it close to something doesn’t make that thing dangerous. I’m very grateful to the folks from Bristol and their sponsors for making the whole thing possible though, it was awesome.

When presentations go wrong...

So much for testing

If you’ve been wondering where I’ve been for the last couple of weeks, I’ve been working furiously on a device for a presentation at emfcamp. Emf is a fantastic place to talk tech and meet folks. I was at the last one and really enjoyed it. We arrived at the camp on Thursday and yesterday I got to tell everyone about my “Chocolate Synthbox Synthesizer”.

I’d spent a lot of time building the device and after some careful testing in the tent in the morning I reckoned it was good to go. Fate however had other ideas. If you’ve ever done any presentations you’ll have heard of the “Demo Gods”. If they smile on you all will be well. If they frown on you, then get ready for trouble. The worst I ever had was a while back when I did a session in Amsterdan where every demo failed - that is, the worst until today.

The presentation involved me saying nice things about two technologies, sending MIDI messages to musical instruments using the Raspberry Pi PICO and using the Puredata program to make sounds. It hinged around live demonstrations of the soundbox itself. If that didn’t work, I was toast. It didn’t work. Worse than that, it gave the impression of working every now and then just to get my hopes up, and then failed when I tried to use it to show anything off.

The audience was great. They laughed at all my emergency jokes – that is until I ran out of them. I think they were entertained too, but not in the way I was intending. Oh well. You should treat every setback as an occasion to learn something. In this I’ve learned that you should always have a fallback position. Most of the other presentations I’ve been to have used videos to show things off, so I really should have had a few of them lying around to show off.

We’ve tracked the problem down to power supply issues and a broken speaker connection. I’m hoping everything can be got working so that I can wander down to the bar with it and show it off properly.

Apparently, to this day in some parts of Holland they speak of the time that everything broke for the idiot Englishman, perhaps it is OK to be remembered for something, even it is glorious failure.

I just hope I get the chance to present at emf again, so that I can show something that properly works.

Heading for emf

We headed off to emf today first thing. Well, around 8:30, we’re not fanatics. The roads were nice and quiet and the journey was very pleasant. We didn’t actually sing at any point, but wouldn’t have been out of place if we did.

The site was just coming alive as we arrived and number one son found us a nice site on the side of the hill. Actually, here everything is on the side of the hill which takes a little bit of getting used to. If Istand up suddenly I then feel myself instantly falling over. The tent proved quite easy to put up. We’ve taken the precaution of getting an extra groundsheet to keep the inside of the tent nice and dry, but the ground seemed pretty dry.

We’ve carefully planned our itinerary for the first day, I’ve tested everything for the presentation and the WiFi reaches up to us. We’ve even got our own mains power courtesy of the tent next door. This is going to be fun.

emf presentation written

We head off to emf tomorrow, so today I thought I’d write the presentation I’ll be delivering. As you do.

Bringing back the Autographer

I’m thinking of taking my Autographer to emf camp. I bought it a while back when the idea of wearing an automatic camera to record my so-called life seemed quite attractive. Since then the product has been withdrawn and the company behind it has vanished along with all the software support. You can go onto GitHub and find someone hosting all the apps and documentation but the program flatly refuses to work on the Mac. On the PC the application runs OK until you try to press buttons and do stuff, at which point nothing happens. It’s all rather sad.

The good news is that the device itself does work and you can get the pictures off it after you’ve taken it somewhere interesting. The date and times on the pictures are all wrong though, which is surprising given that the Autographer is supposed to have a GPS system built in.

The thing about the Autographer is that it decides when to take the picture. It has a bunch of sensors that help it do this. You can trigger it to take a some pictures if you like, but you’ve no idea precisely when they will be taken. This not the kind of camera you can say “cheese” for. However, it does come up with the occasional gem, like this one of me coming down the stairs. I’d left the camera lying on the floor of the hall and it has captured a very interesting angle that I probably couldn’t have got any other way. The ultra-wide angle also captures a good view of what’s around.