If you wear glasses and have a 3D printer, or have a 3D printer, don’t wear glasses and know someone who does wear glasses or…. This is getting far too complicated. This looks like a really nice print for a very clever foldable case. I’m going to have a go with it.
One of the best parts of the Hardware Meetup is the conversations we have at dinner afterwards. Take last night for example. For some reason the conversation turned to muck spreaders, tractor powered devices which spread, er, fertilizer over fields that it may enrich the land and lead to larger crops. I wondered whether, after you’d finished muck spreading, you actually cleaned your muck spreader, and if so what with?
Anyhoo, an owner of a muck spreader is keen to have a musical chime attached to his tractor that could play a jaunty, ice cream van themed, tune while going about his business spreading other peoples, er, business. He felt that this would add a lot to the occasion and we were inclined to agree. While not actually being that keen to go along and audition the device when in use.
It turns out that musical chime systems that were used on ice cream vans in the last century are quite collectable and fetch good prices on eBay. We took a look at one lot which was selling for a tidy sum for what was just a music box mechanism attached to an amplifier. So we are going to look out for a music box mechanism and some suitable hardware.
So, if you are ever passing by a field and hear distant musical chimes that make you fancy buying a “ninety nine”, accompanied by a truly horrendous whiff, you’ll know that we got it to work…
Turns out we don’t need a gantry. Which is nice. Brian brought his tripod, mounted a Pi camera on it and within minutes he was tracking robots in the entire arena. Well, not actually robots. More like bits of paper with Aruco codes on them. At the next meetup we’ll have the codes attached to robots moving around, and hopefully receiving position information.
We had other stuff too including DSP (Digital Signal Processing - I knew that one) hardware, a very impressive retro touch sensitive keyboard from Ross and lots of excellent chat.
The next meetup is in two weeks on the 9th of July. I’m rather looking forward to it.
One of the most common causes of programming problems is not knowing exactly what the program needs to do before you start writing the code. You have a vague idea of how it is supposed to work and so you start knocking out statements, thinking you can fill in the detail later.
This is a really bad idea. It doubles the length of time it takes you do do anything, because half way through writing the code you’ll discover that your understanding of the problem is faulty, and you have to either fiddle with what you’ve built, or start again from scratch.
A much better idea is to try to write down a chunk of text which describes what you think the program or module should do. You don’t need to go down to the level of individual statements, just a general idea of what the ins and outs are supposed to be. The act of doing this will force you to think a lot harder about what you are trying to do, and hopefully mean that you will make fewer mistakes when you go to code. I find this useful even (or perhaps especially) because I’ve done a fair amount of coding. The stuff that I write ends up in my diary so that I can refer back to how my code works (which is also super useful).
Seems appropriate
Went to see a show last night. A bloke pulled a huge steam locomotive onto the stage and then told us how he did it. The show was called “How to drag your train on”.
Thank you.
Derek put me on to this. It’s a tiny red telephone you can build that looks very like the real thing.
This is not Lego, but my goodness it looks like it
It’s a Zuru Max Retro kit. There are a bunch of them for sale in our local Aldi for knock down prices. They also have a tiny computer, ghetto blaster, instant camera, TV and games machine. They also have some rather fetching food and flower models too. They are very close to Lego in every way. The bricks even fit together with Lego bricks (although they lack their heft). The instructions have the same step by step sequence and sometimes hard to see colours. If you want some cheap construction fun they worth a look.
We didn’t really set out to visit South Yorkshire Aircraft Museum, we were really on the way to Doncaster Gaming Market. But we had tickets for the 1:00pm entry and some time to spare so we went along to look at aircraft and helicopters for a while.
They’ve got a lot of stuff under cover, plus a whole bunch of aircraft and helicopters outside.
There are also loads of exhibitions and displays, including an aircraft control room. There’s also lots of material about the blitz and what it was like to go through. Thought provoking stuff and well worth a look.
It fits too!
I’m writing an article about using a Raspberry Pi as a desktop computer. Good thing I’m not wasting time playing with Lego instead…..
I’ve fancied a Playdate for ages, ever since I played with the number one son’s. It is a tiny games machine with a super sharp black and white screen and the usual buttons and stuff. Plus a crank. You can see it on the right hand side of the picture above. You swing out the handle and, er, crank it. If you’re not sure what I mean by this, all I can say more is that it would be absolutely perfect for a fishing game. It’s about the same size as the top half of a small Gameboy. When you aren’t using it, it turns into a clock - Game-watch style.
It is powered by a meaty Cortex chip with an ESP32 doing the Wi-Fi and whatnot. You can write your own games for it in Lua or C++. It’s made by Panic, who seem to have got themselves into the lovely position of being able to afford to do things for fun, or because they might be interesting. The Playdate is that kind of thing. I don’t think Panic need the Playdate to sell massive numbers for them to keep developing it. They’ll only stop (or hand it off to someone else) when they stop enjoying the ride. Here’s hoping its no time soon.
The way they send out games is interesting. When you buy the Playdate you get a subscription to “Season 1” which arrives in the form of two games a week for 12 weeks. They’ve just released “Season 2”, which costs 39 dollars for another tranche of games.
They make Podcasts about what they are up to. These are impeccably produced and very informative. I think anyone interested in making hardware should listen to their first episode. It does a fantastic job of telling you how making something that works is the easy bit. Making large numbers of them and managing that process is the really difficult stuff. Students of electronics and computing would learn a lot from listening to these. You might too.
After a long time with the censors (not really) we have finally released the movie that we took at the Hull University Computer Science Anniversary Celebrations in October last year. It was shot on a 16mm Bolex movie camera which is clockwork and had to be wound up before each scene.
Landing on it was quite fun. Good thing you can fly through lampposts and wires
Last night I bought the Humber Bridge. All of it. And the colourful cottages on the foreshore. And the old mill too. Then I landed my plane on it. All in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. All for less than seven pounds. It looks really good.
It’s a pity that the traffic doesn’t know about the bridge and insists on driving along the river..
I had a lot of fun flying underneath it and then between the pillars of the tower. Trying to fly inside it was less successful.
I like being able to get out of the plane and take pictures
If you’ve got the game you really should get this too. It is a great replacement for the measly little bridge that comes with the game. Oh, and if you are wondering how you can get hold of pictures you have taken in the game, you can find them in this folder:
C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.Limitless_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState\Screenshot
Just replace yourusername with, er, your windows username and you should be able to browse the folder containing all your shots.
I’ve got an article due soon. In preparation for writing it, I first need to make sure that all my cables are nice and tidy.
I carried a great big camera all round Leeds today. It was totally worth it.
Rabbit’s artists impression….
My Great Aunt Anne had an Olympus Trip 35 back in the 1970’s. She took it all around the world and then, when she got back, we’d take a look at the pictures and slides she’d taken. They were all nicely exposed and usually in focus. I’ve always fancied one myself and six months or so ago one popped up for sale at my local camera shop. It’s in lovely condition and the light meter works fine.
The camera is self powered. The light meter is uses a selenium cell which generates a voltage. the more light, the more volts. This moves a tiny needle on a meter inside the camera which selects between two shutter speeds and then picks the correct aperture setting. All this happens as you press the button down to take a shot. Amazing engineering. The lens is nice and sharp, but you have to make sure to set the distance to the subject before taking a shot. It uses 35mm film. I loaded mine with Kodak Gold 200 which works well.
I took it along when we went to Florida a while back. The snaps all came back in fine form, despite the camera having been through several X-Ray machines on its travels.
I really should learn to hold the camera straight.
Nice and sharo
It’s not a scratch, it’s a radio aerial
Universal studios looking good
A very imposing souvenir shop
All of my pictures came out with the correct exposure and plenty of detail. I had some prints made and these look lovely. If you’ve always fancied having a go with a film camera, but don’t want to break the bank, I can strongly recommend the Olympus Trip 35.
It’s a solid and stylish cameras with an all metal body. It is easy to load and use and the design was produced for many years, so there are lots out there. I’d rate it much more highly than the the few “new” 35mm cameras that you can buy which have cheap plastic lenses and not much going for them. The Olympus is great for street photography and travel stuff. You can put it on a tripod and it also works with an electronic flash. It has a lovely look to it (I think) and should prove reliable. If you can pick one up for around the price of a video game you could do a lot worse.
If you go to buy one, make sure to do the “Red Flag Test” before parting with your cash. Wind on the film, put the lens cap on (or cover the entire lens with your hand) and try to press the shutter button. If the light meter is working it will refuse to let you take a picture, with a red flag appearing in the viewfinder. Then, remove your hand (or take the lens cap off), point the camera at some light and press the button again. This time the shutter should spring into action. If it does, there is a good chance that the light meter is working OK. You can still take pictures if the light meter is broken, but you will have to select the aperture by hand and use the slower, 40th of a second shutter speed all the time.
Film photography is great fun. It was rather nice to get the pictures processed several weeks after we got back. And I love the colours.
Here’s a nice picture of some faders to make us all feel a bit better
Of course, I don’t believe in things like Friday the 13th. Which made the messages about UK and US tax and the third one about company registration hassle all the more surprising first thing this morning.
So I bought this little camera…. It’s a Ricoh GR1 and it is about the size of a couple of AAA batteries. It doesn’t work, but it does have a tiny film cassette inside. You can find out more here. And now I want to get all four of them.
Perhaps I should get out more.
Music and Robots
I had all kinds of plans for the Hardware Meetup tonight. They definitely didn’t include forgetting to take the gantry and the camera to the Makerspace for robot testing. Oh dear. But I did get to see some of Brian’s Aruco marker detecting code in action and have a whole bunch of interesting chats about tech and other matters.
I took the Deluge along for folks to play with.
The next meetup is in two weeks on the 25th June. I’ll definitely have the gantry this time. And maybe some robots running around underneath it.
Arena Bricks
I’ve spent a big chunk of today combining the Hull Pixelbot and Connected Little Boxes to make a single device. This will make it possible to use a robot as a connected device. It’s big news for me, but perhaps not for anyone else.
Anyhoo, I’ll be taking the newly upgraded robot along to the Hardware Meetup tomorrow (Wednesday 11th June) at 5:00 pm in Hull Makerspace. We’re going to try and connect it to a tracking camera so that it can tell where it is. It’s going to be great fun.
I took the Instax Wide Evo for a walk this morning. It’s fast becoming one of my favourite cameras. Not for the absolute quality of the output, but for what it does with the images it captures. There are 10 different lenses and colour filters. The shots above were taken with the radial black and white blur, summer colour profile and collodion process (which I rather like).
One thing I don’t like about the camera though is the “official” case I bought with it. This is a triumph of miss-design. It is hard to put on, easy to put on the wrong way, hard to take off and the leather finish feels far too easy to scratch. What’s more, it’s difficult to use the camera with the case on, and you have to take the case off (which is hard - see above) to charge the battery, get at the microSD card or put a new film in. I’ve just invested in a rather nice clear transparent one.
This looks like it will do a great job of protecting the camera from scratches while it is in a bag (although I need to get a screen protector for the back of the camera) but I do worry that the case might shatter if I drop the camera.
The Instax Wide Evo itself is a really engaging proposition. You don’t need to print your pictures (although they do look good when you do) and you can transfer them to your computer if you are prepared to fiddle around with the MicroSD card. It’s pricey for an instant camera, but as a creative device it is a much more enticing device.
You can pick up Stop the Robots really cheap. And for the price I reckon it’s good value. The gameplay revolves around a little walkie talkie and a deck of cards with pictures of robots on them. Each robot has a characteristic look and configuration. Your job, as a crack, er, robot de-fuser manager, is to work out which robot your field agent is defusing and give her instructions to save the city from something horrible.
The prompts from the agent are well done, and all your responses are spoken into the handset. There are three puzzles on the back of each robot card and there are 36 cards. You get a count down timer too. Our team, including the 8 year old primary manager, has done a couple and really enjoyed them. The puzzles look like they get more advanced as you progress, we’re looking forward to having a go at the next bunch.
