Jul 17

Friday Post: More 3D Printing

Posted on July 17, 2015 by SSilver2k2

Hey All,

Happy Friday! Brain fried from a week of getting some new software at work prepped and ready to be moved to production. Scary doing a push because some 60,000 faculty and students might run into an issue. We test as well as we can, but theres always that one case that you miss. So nerve wracking.

For the past two weeks my coworkers and I have been printing out tons of things on the Micro 3D Printer. After the first week, everything started to shift horribly to the left on each new layer. Nothing would print right. A vocal minority was also having this issue on the forums. Micro3D has a huge support backlog, so communication was very sparse, BUT they DID keep us in the loop on how they were fixing the issue. Two new software releases in 2 weeks and it seems to be working fine again. I am extremely happy with the prints now.

Eevee (with support structure)

Winnie the Pooh bear (with support structure cleaned off)

Don’t mind the weirdness with the Eevee, that’s the support structure that pulls off. I’m mailing it to a friend so I’m leaving it intact. It’s like 3D printed bubble wrap, I can’t deny her the joy of ripping it off 😀 You can see a couple remnants of the support structure on the pooh bear as well. I need to clean it up a bit more before I send it to my Mom. She will love it.

My conclusion: It’s a $300 3D printer,You get what you pay for. I am extremely happy with it. It was broken, now it’s fixed to Micro3D’s credit. I am hoping the shifting issue is now in the past and that it was just a software bug.

Have a good weekend all!

-Shea

Jul 10

Friday Post: Make Magazine!

Posted on July 10, 2015 by SSilver2k2

Hey All,

Happy Friday!

This week just flew by, but projects are going really well, and I am hoping to have a cool announcement in the next week or so. In the meantime…

PiPlay was featured in Make Magazine!!!!!!!

I’m seriously fanboying over here. To have my project featured in Make is like having a researcher’s paper featured in Science or Nature magazine. I’m just blown away.

The article is about making a home arcade system and controlling the games with an Arduino Esplora.

Have a good weekend all!

-Shea

Jul 03

Friday Post: 3D Printing and Raspberry Pi live streaming

Posted on July 3, 2015 by SSilver2k2

Hey All,

Happy Friday and happy 4th of July weekend!

On Monday I recieved a 3D Printer from the company M3D. It is the blue Micro 3D printer. If you use the coupon code “refurb” you can get one for $300 dollars (plus about $12 shipping).

So far I’ve printed out a bunch of things, ranging from Bulbasaurs, and Ford Fiesta ST scale models, to characters from Dota and keychains. So far it has been an awesome little printer. Now, it’s slow, a little loud, and only has a print size of 6x6x6, but that hasn’t been an issue yet.

I’m using a Raspberry Pi with the camera module to livestream my printer.

Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream

Livestreaming from USTREAM on the Raspberry Pi

Here is a quick guide to livestreaming on the Raspberry Pi with USTREAM and an RPI Camera Module

References from: https://ustream.zendesk.com/entries/63723444-Raspberry-Pi-Streaming-video-to-Ustream and http://www.oz9aec.net/index.php/dvb/490-turn-your-raspberry-pi-into-a-live-hdtv-transmitter

Install Raspbian to your Raspberry Pi SD Card
Install the Raspberry Pi Camera Module
Using Raspi-Config activate the camera module
- sudo raspi-config
- Enable Camera
You are going to need a version of ffmpeg installed. The version from apt-get will not work.
- You can download a working binary here: http://files.oz9aec.net/datv/490-rpi-hdtv/ffmpeg
  - wget http://files.oz9aec.net/datv/490-rpi-hdtv/ffmpeg
  - chmod +x ffmpeg
- Or you can download and compile the ffmpeg sources via git
  - git clone git://source.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.git ffmpeg
  - cd ffmpeg
  - ./configure
  - make
  - sudo make install
Set up a ustream script:
- nano ustream
- ```
 #!/bin/bash
RTMP_URL=<rtmpurl>
STREAM_KEY=<streamkey>
while :
do
    raspivid -n -vf -hf -t 0 -w 960 -h 540 -fps 25 -b 500000 -o - | ./ffmpeg -i - -vcodec copy -an -metadata title="Streaming from raspberry pi camera" -f flv $RTMP_URL/$STREAM_KEY
    sleep 2
done
```
- Change RTMP_URL and STREAM_KEY to match the keys you get from your USTREAM Channel settings page.
- If you compiled and installed your own version of ffmpeg, remove the ./ffmpeg and replace it with just ffmpeg in the code above.
- chmod +x ustream
- ./ustream
With any luck, you will now be streaming to your USTREAM channel.

Jun 19

Friday Post: Raspberry Pi Case and No Starch Press Humble Bundle!

Posted on June 19, 2015 by SSilver2k2

Happy Friday!

This was a long week. I had three things to do at work. 2 of them took 20 minutes, the last one took 4 days to finish. I’ve also apparently become addicted to Splatoon on the Wii U.

Official Raspberry Pi Case

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has come out with their official Raspberry Pi Case. I haven’t gotten my hands on one yet but it looks really nice.

Humble Bundle

I’m a huge fan of No Starch Press, and I love Humble Bundle’s bundles. I picked up the last No Starch Humble Bundle and it was great. This time it’s no different.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books

This bundle’s list of books:

Super Scratch Programming Adventure! by The LEAD Project ( A favorite )
The LEGO Adventure Book, Vol. 2
The Manga Guide to Databases ( I had no idea No Starch published this, a great resource)
Wonderful Life with the Elements
The Art of LEGO Design
No Starch Summer Sampler 2015

JavaScript for Kids (Was sent a review copy, very good, Python for Kids is another in the series)
The Unofficial LEGO Technic Builder’s Guide
Learn to Program with Scratch
Arduino Workshop
The Linux Command Line

The LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 Discovery Book
Teach Your Kids to Code
Automate the Boring Stuff with Python

PiPlay

Mark and I have been working on our remote controller concept that I posted a while ago on the blog. I’m really impressed with how it’s turning out. I couldn’t ask for a better team member. I’m excited to share that in the upcoming weeks.

Jun 14

Late Friday Post: NMC 2015 Conference and Washington DC

Posted on June 14, 2015 by SSilver2k2

Hey All,

Sorry for not posting on Friday. I’ve been in Washington, D.C. for the week presenting at the New Media Consortium 2015 Summer Conference. I was demonstrating UCF’s LTI applications to other schools and representatives. It was a great experience. I also got to explore DC, which is an amazing place. It’s our Capitol, and me having worked / interned for a state representative before, it was very cool to see the bigger version. Also tons of fun were had at the Smithsonian, the Archives, the Library of Congress, National Zoo, etc. etc. etc. 😀

I’m exhausted, but refreshed. Pumped to do some awesome things 😀

-Shea

Jun 06

Friday Post: Ubuntu Mate on Pi2

Posted on June 6, 2015 by SSilver2k2

Hey All,

I do not know how the Splatoon box art got into the title. That’s crazy. Anyways, I tested out Ubuntu Mate for the Raspberry Pi2, and it’s impressive. Everything feels really responsive, Firefox on it is super smooth. It looks like a good build. The only problem is that it’s only for the Pi2. A few years ago I switched all my installs from Ubuntu to vanilla Debian, and I’ve been enjoying that. Ubuntu Unity didn’t sit well with me, but on Mate, it feels very much XFCE, so I like it.

The next version of PiPlay is coming along, going to be updating to the next version of Raspian, and some various little fixes. Can’t wait!

Splatoon has been so much fun. If you have a Wii U it is so worth it.

Have a good weekend all.

-Shea

May 29

Friday Post: BeagleBone Splatoon

Posted on May 29, 2015 by SSilver2k2

Hey All,

Happy Friday!

Today Nintendo released a whole bunch of new Amiibos that were highly sought after. I was in line at WalMart at midnight and had a lot of fun. Met a bunch of cool people in line. We were laughing and comparing game collections, and then the electronics guy comes out and tell us there are 6 Amiibo. Not 6 of the 9 characters. Just 6 Amiibo total. 3 Pac-Man and 3 Charizard. I was 7th in line. We could only laugh at the ridiculousness. On the plus side, I picked up Splatoon! It is just as amazing as the demo! If you have a Wii U and like FPS / 3PS this is a must.

The only Amiibo I was after was the Silver Mario. I mean, come on, Silverman, Silver Mario. It was a must buy. There was no line at my GameStop so I was able to get one without a problem, it was just that was all they had. This whole product line is crazy. People going crazy over little figures. Gotta catch em all!

In other news, I picked up a Beagle Bone Black and I am working on testing PiPlay on that. Initial tests look good. It runs Ubuntu, and has some quirks, but I was able to get Mednafen, CaveStory, and DGen working without issue.

Look for more updates regarding that soon!

Have a good weekend all.

-Shea

May 22

Friday Post: Happy 90th Birthday Grandma!

Posted on May 22, 2015 by SSilver2k2

Hey All,

First off, Happy 90th Birthday to my Grandma B!! Love ya!

It’s been a hectic few weeks. The migration has gone pretty well. I have some more stuff to move over, but I’m happy with it. The server is so powerful.

Mark and I are going to be bringing up a new service for gamebox art soon to help with PiPlay. I have also been hard at work on some electronics stuff, and Mark has been doing some cool coding.

I’m really looking forward to the next month. I have been pulled in a lot of directions, took a few breaks, but I think I’m finding the right thing to move forward with.

I can’t wait for the next part of this ride.

Have a good weekend everyone!

-Shea

May 15

Friday Post: F-Zero AX

Posted on May 15, 2015 by SSilver2k2

Hey All,

So, I used to collect arcade games, but when I moved, I had to sell my collection. Now that I own a house with a garage, I’m able to start rebuilding my mini arcade (and using PiPlay in the mean time 🙂 ).

One of my favorites and prized machines was an F-Zero AX. This is the companion to the GameCube’s F-Zero GX. It has a magnetic card reader, which allows you to save your pilot data between racers, and has a gamecube memory card slot which can access your save data.

I got very lucky that my original machine went up for sale, so I was able to repurchase it!!

The board it uses is called the TriForce, which is a regular GameCube with more memory. The game is on optical media, but rather than using gamecube optical discs, it uses GD-ROMs. Yep, the same media used in the Dreamcast. In fact, the platform is a collaboration between Sega, Namco, and Nintendo (hence, TriForce). The racing cabinet is a standard Namco / Sega model.

It’s really awesome, and I’m so glad to have it back.

Have a good weekend!

-Shea

Apr 17

Friday Post: PyCon 2015!

Posted on April 17, 2015 by SSilver2k2

Hey All,

PyCon 2015 is over. It was an amazing time in Montreal. My coworker and I presented ProctorHub, the homegrown proctoring solution that we created for our university.

We met a lot of fellow educators, tons of fellow pythonistas, and learned a ton!

A PiPlay kit was also auctioned off during the PyLadies auction, where it brought in $200!

All of the talks are up on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgxzjK6GuOHVKR_08TT4hJQ