Best laid plans go awry

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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

Hull Pixelbot gets connected at the Hardware Meetup

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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.

Instax Evo Wide Walk in the Park

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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.

Stop the Robots is walkie talkie powered puzzle fun

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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.

How to Post a Page Without Posting

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I love a good paradox. Things like "silent alarm", "virtual reality", and the developer favourite: "posting a page without actually posting it".

Let’s say you’re building a mini web editor — a neat little HTML page with a <textarea> where people can type important things like novel chapters, shopping lists, or which biscuits they have in the cupboard.

The natural instinct is to wrap it in a <form> and let the browser do its thing when the user hits “Send”. Which works… but also reloads the page and clears the form — along with your carefully curated biscuit list.

Enter JavaScript: the Form Whisperer

What you want is a way to grab the form submission event before it fires off into the great unknown. Something like this:

document.getElementById("editorForm").addEventListener("submit", function(event) {
  event.preventDefault(); // Stop the page from reloading

  const text = document.getElementById("editor").value;

  fetch("/save", {
    method: "POST",
    headers: { "Content-Type": "text/plain" },
    body: text
  })
  .then(response => {
    if (!response.ok) throw new Error("Network error");
    return response.text();
  })
  .then(data => {
    console.log("Saved!", data);
  })
  .catch(error => {
    alert("Couldn't save your work: " + error.message);
  });
});

Binding the Save Event

That first line is the key:

document.getElementById("editorForm").addEventListener("submit", function(event) { ... });

It hooks into the form with the ID editorForm and listens for a submit event — i.e., when the user clicks the button. Then it politely stops the browser from doing its reload dance with event.preventDefault() and takes control of the situation.

Meanwhile, the text from the <textarea> with the ID editor is posted using fetch(), but the page doesn’t move an inch. It’s like sending a message by owl: invisible, efficient, and highly magical.

Minimal HTML Example

Here’s the whole thing in one slice:

<form id="editorForm">
  <textarea id="editor">Type your genius here...</textarea><br>
  <button type="submit">Send</button>
</form>

No Page Refresh. No Lost Content. No Panic.

You can even flash up a little error message if something breaks. Because nothing ruins creativity like silent failure. Well, except maybe stale biscuits.

Thanks to ChatGPT for help writing this.

Sometimes I don't mind fixing bugs

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I’ve just spent a couple of hours chasing a bug which broke all the pixel animations in the pixelbot. It turned out that I’d got two devices attached to the same hardware pin. As soon as anything moved the motors the pixel output broke. Perhaps I need something which will stop pin reuse.

Stupid me. Then again, investigating the bug did force me to brush up on my knowledge of the debugger, write some useful diagnostic code and re-learn how it all actually works. If I wasn’t investigating a bug in the software this would have been a much more boring experience. Now I can crack on with the actual code I set out to write…..

Switch 2 First Look

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Nice presentation

I couldn’t resist it. And it is lovely hardware. As to where it takes me, that’s another matter. The Switch 2 arrived today. First observations:

  • It is very easy to put the joycon controllers on the wrong sides when you first get the machine. They work that way round, but the console politely asks you to swap them over.

  • You can’t use the original Switch power supply with the Switch 2. The Switch 2 claims it is being charged, but the internal software doesn’t properly notice. If you try to power the dock with a Switch 1 supply nothing happens. The new supply is just a little plug with a usb c socket for the usb c to usb c lead that comes with the console. Additional chargers are 25 quid. You can find them here.

  • The Switch 2 has 128G of internal memory, which is more than previous Switches. Mario Kart world is around 25Gb. Tears of the Kingdom is 20Gb. No Man’s Sky is 25Gb Breath of the Wild is 10Gb, as is Animal Crossing.

  • The wrist straps clip on in a really nice way, and the buttons on the joycons are much, much nicer.

  • There’s an extra USB socket on the top of the Switch 2, which makes using the stand much nicer.

  • It’s very easy to transfer your identity from the original Switch to your Switch 2, but make sure you can plug the old Switch into the mains during the transfer, otherwise it won’t work.

  • The picture looks great in HD on a big telly, and it just works. The lcd screen is much larger than the original Switch, and I reckon the contrast is as good as the Switch OLED version.

  • You can’t use old microSD cards in the Switch 2. You need new fangled “Express” ones which cost 50 quid for 256Gb of storage. Wah.

  • No Man’s Sky looks good value. It is fifteen quid at the moment for the Switch 2 version.

  • If you are a Nintendo subscriber you can get the Switch 2 upgraded versions of Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild for free.

  • The HD version of Tears of the Kingdom looks a lot smoother, but that’s about it (or at least it was for me).

  • Mario Kart World is provided as a download code. It took around half an hour to come down when I loaded it. Things go a lot faster if you pop the Switch 2 into a docking station with a wired network connection.

  • Mario Kart is very good. But it is still Mario Kart.

I really like the Switch 2. I just hope that we get new games with the impact of the ones that came out with the Switch 1.

Still got it

Microsoft Office 2019 for 25 Quids

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I’ve mentioned StackSocial before (they are still doing Windows 11 Pro for 15 quid). Today I went to them to buy Microsoft Office 2019 plus for 25 pounds. This is not Office 365. It’s a perpetual licence to run the complete Office 2019 Professional Plus software suite on a single machine.

I reckon Office 2019 was about “peak office”, before the file management got silly and Word got too eager to point out when you were writing it wrongly. You get all the applications, including the good version of Outlook and Publisher and Access.

You can find it here. You get an access key and a link to follow to the office redemption page. When I clicked on the installer link Windows complained that it the file was not “approved”. I thought that this was hilarious, what with it being a Microsoft site and all. I’ve tried to report it as being OK, so this might go away. If you do get the warning just fight your way through until you get to run it.

Anyhoo, the software installed, the key worked and now we have a properly working setup.

Fun at The Deep

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They have sharks

We went to The Deep today. it was great.

And Penguins

One of the nice things about the way it works is that a ticket lasts for year. So we can go back for free. And we will.

And lots of things I don’t know the names of

You can take as many photographs as you like - as long as you don’t use flash. I took along my Sony A7RII (an old camera) fitted with a Contax 90mm (a very very old lens). The combination acquitted itself very well. It’s tricky getting pictures through the thick glass sides of the tanks and the white balance of the shots is a bit of a lottery, but I’ve spent a bit of time tweaking the pictures and I’m not unhappy with them.

This frog is probably horribly poisonous

The gift shop is the equal of ones they have at Disney, and all the staff were excellent. If you live in Hull you should go there and then go back so that you can grab a coffee at a place with one of the best views in Hull (as long as you can get a window seat. If you don’t live in Hull, it’s well worth the trip. We rounded off a very nice morning with a trip to Bert’s Pizza who make the best pizza in Hull. And also do fantastic gelato.

They have some great lights in Berts…

Fun with the Fujifilm Instax Wide Evo

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The Fuji Instax Wide Evo is an instant camera which works by printing images from an image sensor, not by working as a conventional analogue camera. To make up for this digital workflow (rather than the exciting variability of film) it provides lots of funky image processing effects that you can add to shots. There are ten lens effects, ten film effects and six processing effects you can combine in any combination. You can even adjust the intensity of some of the effects.

The pictures below were taken in Beverley Minster today using monochrome blur, warm lighting and collodium film processing. They are not the best quality (although they are OK on my desktop monitor) but I really like the way that they look.

I’m looking forward to trying some more combinations….

BombBusters is Number Guessing Fun

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Up until recently I’ve not been a huge fan of co-operative games. I want something I can win on my own, grinding my opponents into the dust. Or something. Anyhoo, I’ve recently played a few cooperative games and I must admit I’m growing to like them.

BombBusters is a cooperative game and it is great fun. It reminds me a tiny bit of the infamous “The Mind” game in which players have to guess where other player’s number cards fit into a sequence.

In BombBusters you are your matching number markers with those of other players as you attempt to cut wires leading to a deadly bomb. You know the order of their numbers, but not what they are (although there are a range of clues you give each other). Cut the wrong wire (match a wrong number) and you lose a life. Cut a red wire or a yellow wire (which have fractional numbers on them) and you lose instantly.

It’s rather exciting, with no small amount of jeopardy as often you have just enough information to take a risk based on an educated guess. The game comes with a increasingly difficult scenarios to have a go at, with more dangerous wires and dummies you have to work around. There’s a genuine feeling of accomplishment when you all manage to find the last red wire and it is all beautifully presented. Good fun I reckon.

Visit the London Camera Museum

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They have a camera on every table. Ours had a hasselblad

The London Camera Museum is one of my favourite places in the world. And I only went there for the first time last Saturday. It’s a camera museum in, er, London. It’s based in the Tottenham Court Road area. You just turn off the very busy main street into a quite side road and there it is.

They serve very good coffee, there’s loads of stuff on display just in the café and if you pay 3 pounds you can go round the museum and see even more. It’s not enormous. Just a couple of large rooms. But they are packed with interesting stuff. They also have a shop which sells cameras, film and other bits and bobs. I made a couple of carefully considered purchases.

If you go to London you should drop round. It’s a great place to grab a drink and a cake. And if you are into photography I think you will really like it. Hopefully I’m going back soon. I want to buy a T-shirt….

"Star Power" for embedded devices

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You can see the two “Stars”. They have blue heat shrink tubing on them

I’m building a large led panel. No idea why. Mainly to see if I can. Anyhoo, I’ve got six 8x8 panels that are linked to a Raspberry Pi PICO. One way to link the power signals for the panels is to “daisy chain” them, i.e. connect the power output of one panel to the power input of the next one. This makes the wiring a bit tidier, but it does mean that the power to the last panel in the chain has to make its way through five other panels before it gets there. This can cause the supply voltage to drop and the later panels end up looking dimmer. I know this for a fact because I daisy chained the panels from my PICO and the panels further away from the supply were dimmer.

So I’ve changed the wiring to “star”. A single wire from the power supply is split six ways and sent to each of the boards. There are no chains and the panels all get the same voltage. With the result that all the panels now look the same.

Pretty in pink

I think things were made a bit worse because I was using super-thin wire wrap cable which doesn’t transfer power very well. If you are finding that things don’t look the same as each other it is worth looking into the power supply side.

Buy "20 GOTO 10"

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This book is fantastic. If you lived through the microcomputer revolution of the 1970’s and 1980’s it will refresh a lot of memories. If not, it will give you a wonderful glimpse into that time. It’s packed with facts and stories you didn’t know you cared about until you read them.

Some of the articles are tiny, some span several pages. All of them are uniquely identified by a “line number” and each has references to other related stories. You can follow a path through the text and reach a happy ending, or just an ending. Or you can do what I do, which is dive into the text and just read stuff I fancy.

The printing is small, but that just leaves more room for detail. You should buy and read this if you have any interest in computers and where they came from. And if you have no interest, buy it anyway and learn even more. I can’t recommend it highly enough.