Hi all!
I am very proud to announce that I am getting married tomorrow. I am very excited to be spending the rest of my life with the person I love. This is a really exciting time in my life. I couldn’t be happier I have a wonderful bride, many projects, friends and family, health, and I’m happy.
Thank you all!
Shea
Hey all, hoping not to make [Saturday Posts] tags a habit but I feel bad that the wireless ate my last post 🙁
So PyCon is going amazingly well. I have seen some amazing talks, I gave a small talk about PiMAME for 15 minutes in the Raspberry Pi lab. Everyone who attended got a free Pi. Sourceforge told me they could easily host my PiMAME images so that’s a plus for everyone here.
I got to hold (but not wear) a Google Glass. It feels incredibly solid. Light. Balanced. I’m excited for it. O’Reilly was giving out a ton of books, and I have my reading for the next year scheduled.
A lot of the attendees were impressed with PiMAME and I’m excited to get the next version out. I’m brain fried. I will have pictures and things and stuff to post when I get back to Florida on Monday. Woo! PyCon!
-Shea
Hey All,
What a week. I’ve been working on a presentation for the University, finally showed it off, got a ton of good jobs and awesome work. Feels like a weight was lifted. I don’t know if we will move forward with the idea, but it’s been fun so far.
Next week I will be at PyCon in California. I went last year and it was amazing, and this year’s talks look great. I’m excited.
I’ve gotten tons of feedback about PiMAME 0.6b2, and I feel like it’s going in a great direction. If it wasn’t for all you giving me tons of feedback, this project wouldn’t be even 10% as good. Thank you.
On an exciting note, a book I have been a technical editor/reviewer on has made it to the printers and is available to buy at Amazon. It’s called the “Raspberry Pi Networking Cookbook”. It’s really humbling to have my name in print, and I honestly wouldn’t have been given these opportunities without everyone’s support. That’s why my part of the dedication is to the community. Here’s to you!
The FIRST Robotics regional competition in Orlando has been going on this week. I was a member of Team 108 (Go SigmaC@TS!) back in high school. FIRST is what really pushed me into the field I’m in now, and it’s always an awesome sight seeing hundreds of students working on robots, getting excited about competition, but most importantly, making friends with others from around the world. It’s not about winning, it’s about working together.
So wooo! So glad it’s the weekend. Time to sleep until Monday!
-Shea
Beta2 is now up!
You guys rock! I know about the slowness. Working on a Beta2 right now!
Sorry for the late post, I have been waiting on the new image to upload to my web host.
Hey All!
Today is the 1 year anniversary of the Raspberry Pi’s launch. I’m really proud of the community and environment that has sprung up surrounding this wonderful device.
I am very happy to be releasing a beta for PiMAME 0.6.
Release Notes:
I realize this isn’t a monumental release, but it’s a leap forward on the foundation. I have a lot of ideas and a lot of improvements I want to include. As I make these improvements, I’m going to release more and more. You all have been awesome at pointing me in the direction you wish PiMAME to go. Thank you! I’m eager to hear your feedback on this version.
-Shea
Full Disclosure: Seeed Studio sent me the Wireless Charging Module for free because I entered their reviewer contest.
Hey All,
So I said I had some cool hardware to show off today, and here it is: Seeed Studio’s Wireless Charging Module
This kit uses inductive charging to transfer power “wirelessly” from one coil to the other. You put in 12v 1A on the transmitter end, and on the other end you get 5v 0.6A.
I initially had some trouble getting it setup. I was trying connectors in every different position, every combination I could think of. It took me a day to realize my power supply was set to 9v rather than 12v. Once I upped the voltage, I could hold the coils an inch away from each other and still keep a charge. I also tried putting things in between the coils to see how much interference it could take. It had no problems with a coupon book, business cards, a small plastic mint case, though it did have issues being between a remote.
Now, me being me, I had to try this with the Raspberry Pi, and I knew I had to do something special. My coworker Mike has been fiddling with bare metal assembly on the Pi, and has ported NyanCat to the system. His github repo with the source assembly code and pre built binary is available here.
By connecting the receiver coil to the 5v and GND GPIO pins, I was able to wirelessly power the Pi.
I hope you enjoy!
Have a great weekend!
-Shea
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PiMAME 0.6 should be out this weekend 😀
Hey All,
I want to start this by saying I LOVE Kickstarter. I have funded many projects, most have succeeded some have been delayed, some are still in the will it succeed or will it fail phase. I really like the Kickstarter model. It’s not a store. It’s a risk vs reward for the backers, and a way to make the creators dreams come true. I plan on putting the DeskCade on Kickstarter very soon(tm).
Today I am going to talk about the Pebble Smartwatch. I backed this many months ago, and it’s an ambitious project. It was the first Kickstarter project to reach 10 million dollars. I received my Pebble last Sunday, and I would like to write some initial thoughts on it.
TL;DR Cliffs Notes: It’s got potential, with a firmware update it will be awesome, but it’s just not there yet.
My out of the box experience with the Pebble sucked. I was using an iPhone 4S with iOS 5 because they said it was supported. Well it isn’t 100% supported on iOS 5. The app gets stuck trying to talk to the Pebble, and the firmware update that’s available hangs. iOS 5 will send a notification when you get a call, but no notifications on texts or e-mail.
The next day I updated to iOS 6, and lo and behold, everything worked. For about 2 hours. When I sit down at my work desk, I usually take off my watch to code. When I stepped away for a bit, nothing worked anymore. I had to re sync the Bluetooth connection, turn off notifications and then re-enable them for it to work again. And then I walked away again and it happened again. It’s a frustrating issue that I know will be fixed in a firmware release. It has too for this product to be successful. I has to just work..
One other software gripe: Please put a battery indicator and a charging indicator somewhere on the screen.
Onto the good:
The build quality is amazing! Even though it’s only plastic, it feels solid and tough. The screen is very easy to read. The battery life so far has been great. The charger has a very Apple Magsafe connector feel to it. You place the charger on the side of the pebble and the magnets pull it into position. As a watch, it’s great.
Conclusion:
This is going to be a great product. I have no doubt. Once they get the kinks out of it on the software side, I’m never going to take it off. I’ve seen it work. It has the potential to be a paradigm shift in wearable computers with it’s SDK. I have high hopes for the creators. I want to be able to back more of their ideas.
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On a side note, PiMAME 0.6 is in the works. I’m hoping to release it next week. Te latest edition of Raspbian came out last week. I tried moving over to that, but it’s still slower than the older release of Raspbian I’m using. It also seems to require a bigger SD card as it’s just hitting the 2GB limit.
I’m going to continue using the older Raspbian, I’m putting in a start-up menu so you can access frequently accessed items, and I’m working on making the image smaller so there aren’t as many issues with temperamental SD cards.
Have a great weekend everyone!
-Shea
Hey All,
Happy Friday! I am going to spend most of tomorrow in bed. I’m beat. Grad School is great, but exhausting. Working full time, school, and hobbies (plus my upcoming wedding) is insane. And yet, I LOVE every second of it.
Warm Bodies
Tonight I had a well deserved date night with the fiancee. We went and saw the movie Warm Bodies. It’s a Zom-Rom-Com, like Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead. I highly recommend it.
Instamorph
I forget where I saw this product initially, but once I started reading up on it, I had to have it. Instamorph is mold-able reusable, quick setting plastic. The product comes as plastic pellets which you pour into just below boiling water. When the plastic becomes clear, you can take it out and mold it into any shape you want. As it cools, it hardens and turns white.
Kristene made that in about 5 minutes. I’m going to use it to make standoffs for my Raspberry Pi within the DeskCade.
Have a great weekend!
-Shea
Hey All,
Not much to write about this week. Halfway through the Python for Kids book, will be writing a full review once I get through it all. My graduate course is ramping up, but I’m still loving it. Working out the kinks on the Tankstick, like the fact that when I tried to play SF2 with my fiancee, the second player buttons wouldn’t register in game…whoops! Now onto the meat of the post!
If you have never been to Seeedstudio.com, you really should take a look. They are an open hardware manufacturer If you have an idea, and can make a prototype, they can probably mass produce it for you. They are currently selling preorders for a Nano Quadcopter.
At work, we have a couple of the $20 RC Helicopters that we play around with whenever we need to take a break. We always wanted to get a quadcopter for the office, but most of the time, they are very expensive, too big, and not a full kit. The size being the biggest factor. This new quadcopter comes with everything you need, is open source, inexpensive, and best of all, fits in your hand!
One has already been ordered by my coworkers, and should arrive in April. I’m excited to play with this thing (and hopefully not break a wing on my first attempt!)
Have a great weekend!
-Shea
Hey all,
I’ve been anxiously awaiting some voltage regulator boards I ordered from eBay for the past 2 weeks. It seems they all came from China and all got here within a day or two of each other. It’s kinda neat to see how each came packaged differently, through different mail systems, but yet all arrived safely on the other side of the planet.
My DigiSpark mini Arduino board came in as well. This was a kickstarter based project from DigiStump that puts a whole Arduino with USB connector into a 1 square inch of space.
It seems that the PiMAME 0.5 beta release is going well. I advise everyone running it to expand the filesystem before uploading any games. To do this, exit out of AdvMENU, then type sudo raspi-config on the command line. Press enter and run the Expand Filesystem tool so you will have the usable space of your SD Card. PiMAME was built to run on a 2GB SD Card, but only has 8MB of usable space be default.
Have a good weekend!
-Shea
Happy Friday Everyone!!!
Tomorrow is my birthday. I am looking forward to celebrating with a ton of friends. I feel like the past year has been amazing to me. Great job, great coworkers, great fiancee, great projects, everything is going great 😉
I am looking forward to what this year is going to bring me.
CES ended this week, and with it came a lot of announcements. Monoprice, the amazing company that brings you 99cent HDMI cables, is coming out with their own branded 27″ IPS Monitor. The monitor uses the same panels that Apple and Dell uses, and has a resolution of 2560×1440. For less than $400! I’m saving my pennies for this monitor.
(Full Disclosure: I’m currently technically reviewing a different book from No Starch Press)
At PyCon 2012 I met up with No Starch Press. They were showing off their new book, “Python for Kids”. This week a review copy came in the mail. I have only skimmed through it, but I am liking what I see. Don’t let the title deceive you, while it is written in a large and easy to read format, the book is aimed at everyone. I hope to have a full review in the coming weeks.
PiMAME 0.4 is coming VERY soon. I’m shooting for late Sunday, depending on how hungover I am after my birthday party. I posted on Reddit and the Raspberry Pi forums that I am looking for help. If anyone is interested in helping out on the project, send me an email, a comment, a contact-me message, smoke signal, etc. Just let me know.
That’s all for this week!
Have a great weekend.
-Shea