8x8x8 LED Cube

I'm looking into building a box with an LED array. An example of one in action is a video on youtube that demonstrates an Asteroids game on an 8x8x8 cube. Right now I need to determine what kind of power supply to get to attach to a driver board, like a rainbowduino. It looks like 9V is recommended for that particular LED driver platform, but it accepts a range of voltages. Also I will need a shield with buttons to control the lights and an Arduino uno to connect the shield with the LED driver.

Rovio Battery Issue

I had some time to play with a WowWee Rovio robot recently. It is having a battery charge issue where it runs out of charge quickly. A guy posted a fix for his Rovio battery issue online where he found a diode was installed improperly. However, in my case it appears the diodes match the silkscreen direction.

Machine Learning Class

I'm struggling through a machine learning class in LA. It is difficult to find the time for it and it is a very specialized topic.

On the other hand, seeing how math can be applied to solve problems with a computer is interesting. It seems that using a dedicated tool is a better start than coding up something in C#. For example, I've seen Roborealm applied to machine vision. Presumably using its gui is easier than using opencv. In class there was a demo of  R and Jags. I've played a little bit with R in the past to plot some data and run a linear regression on it, but I feel like I'm just barely scratching the surface of this topic. 

Software Requirements

A professor in the UK has the "No Silver Bullet" paper online.

This point from the paper is something I'm trying to remember and maybe follow up on later by reading about how Agile software development attempts to address this.

Requirements refinement and rapid prototyping. The hardest single part of building a software system is deciding precisely what to build. No other part of the conceptual work is as difficult as establishing the detailed technical requirements, including all the interfaces to people, to machines, and to other software systems. No other part of the work so cripples the resulting system if done wrong. No other part is more difficult to rectify later.

Roku development

From the site:
Developing on Roku

Roku introduced the first streaming video player in 2008, in partnership with Netflix. In the first two years nearly a million units have been sold in the US, and there are now over 100 channels available in the Roku Channel Store. Roku is the most affordable product for consumers looking to stream video over the Internet to their TV, and the most open for developers and content owners looking to reach new audiences.

For content owners or distributors, Roku represents a very cost-effective means to deliver their content to a rapidly increasing number of households. Roku has relationships with leading Online Video Platforms and development partners to further simplify bringing your content to Roku.

An open platform, Roku’s Streaming Player enables content owners to bypass traditional distribution routes and reach views and consumers directly. Roku’s platform allows a wide variety of channels and monetization options.

Kivy

A github project named Kivy sounds like an interesting chance to try using python for mobile apps.

From the official site:

Kivy - Open source library for rapid development of applications

that make use of innovative user interfaces, such as multi-touch apps.

Cross platform

Kivy is running on Linux, Windows, MacOSX, Android and IOS. You can run the same code on all supported platforms.

It can use natively most inputs protocols and devices like WM_Touch, WM_Pen, Mac OS X Trackpad and Magic Mouse, Mtdev, Linux Kernel HID, TUIO. A multi-touch mouse simulator is included.

Business Friendly

Kivy is 100% free to use, under LGPL 3 licence. The toolkit is professionnally developed, backed and used. You can use it in a product and sell your product.

The framework is stable and has a documented API, plus a programming guide to help for in the first step.

GPU Accelerated

The graphics engine is built over OpenGL ES 2, using modern and fast way of doing graphics.

The toolkit is coming with more than 20 widgets designed to be extensible. Many parts are written in C using Cython, tested with regression tests.

Go Language for Python programmers

I came across a blog about visual effects and scripting. The author, Justin, has a post about learning Go for Python programmers that looked interesting so I'm logging it here. Before reading about Go, I knew only that it was developed in-house by Google. Thanks to the article I now learned that a reason to use it is to get C++ performance with Python syntax. I've been trying to learn more Python lately so I don't think I'll be switching to Go, but it was nice to learn a bit about Go's community and goals.

A Swarm of Nano Quadrotors

Experiments performed with a team of nano quadrotors at the GRASP Lab, University of Pennsylvania. Vehicles developed by KMel Robotics.

A Swarm of Nano Quadrotors

Project Possibility

From the website - About Project Possibility

Project:Possibility is a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating groundbreaking open source software for persons with disabilities. We inspire students through university coding competitions that introduce them to the possibilities unlocked by accessibility and open source assistive technology. Then we connect these students to our community of persons with disabilities and software developers, a collaborative community that creates access to experiences previously impossible to achieve.

Join us in our mission to make the vision of universal accessibility a reality!

Processing

From the Processing.js web site:

Processing.js is the sister project of the popular Processing visual programming language, designed for the web. Processing.js makes your data visualizations, digital art, interactive animations, educational graphs, video games, etc. work using web standards and without any plug-ins. You write code using the Processing language, include it in your web page, and Processing.js does the rest. It's not magic, but almost.

I heard about this some weeks ago and need to check it out some time.

Chinese Character For Next Page - #3

下页 (Xià yè) - Next Page

Google translate has a feature to click on a word for alternate translations. Upon trying out this feature, I learned today's character can mean either "next" or "next page".

Chinese Character For Previous - #2

上页 (Shàng yè) - Previous

上一页 (Shàng yī yè) - Previous

Google translate has a text to speech feature that works for Chinese now:

According to the wikipedia article on Google translate, this feature's support for Mandarin launched on December 2010 and the open source project eSpeak was used. From its home page on Sourceforge, eSpeak uses something called a "formant synthesis" method. On eSpeak's languages page is a request for help from native speakers. A list of "provisional" languages indicates the ones that need help. Currently Welsh, Ancient Greek, Hindi, Armenian, Indonesian, Icelandic, Lojban, Georgian, Latin, Macedonian, Norwegian, Russian, Albanian, Vietnamese, Cantonese Chinese are listed.

New Year's resolution

一般

Yībān

I'm planning on doing a series of posts on Chinese characters for the New Year. Hopefully I will learn a little bit and have a chance to use some of the knowledge gained by taking an online a.i. class.

Today I did a Google search for a character meaning, and the engine figured out Google translate would be helpful.

Another whiteboard

Codeproject.com has some whiteboard projects to look at. An html5 canvas based whiteboard looked interesting. Besides the code, the author also helped by documenting a bit about how it works. Screenshots were included. They show the drawing board and a chat message box for text conversations. Drawing functionality included making a line, erasing, and clearing the entire space. The writeup also describes that he decided against polling to update the server due to scalability and user experience issues. He mentions the terms HTTP Push or Comet as alternatives, but he picked the WebSocket feature of HTML 5 for ease of implementation. However, his code still needed to "chunk" the message data into pieces small enough to transfer via the socket.

Bournemouth University

YouTube has some videos of students in the Master of Digital Effects at the National Centre for Computer Animation.

From their page:

Using digital tools to create visual effects for film and television. Visual effects are typically shots or sequences of images that cannot be created live in front of the camera, but have to be created using production and post production processes.

The core of digital effects is the combination of captured live action with synthetic images, though sequences that are created could be all CG or all live action. The digital tools can take a variety of forms, including 3D softwares and compositing softwares. The main softwares taught and used by the students are: Houdini,Nuke, PFTrack.

Objective of the programme

Creating future industry leaders. People who, with time and experience, will become the next generation of visual effects supervisors and designers.

Dabbleboard

From the Dabbleboard web site:

Dabbleboard is an online collaboration application that’s centered around the whiteboard. With a new type of drawing interface that's actually easy and fun to use, Dabbleboard gets out of your way and just lets you draw. Finally the whiteboard enters the digital age!

It seems to have some object recognition software that helps clean up rough lines, squares, and circles into cleaner geometric shapes.

Also, since the board is web based, naturally the video demonstrates online collaboration on a whiteboard.

Shell scripting

I would like to learn more about shell scripting but am uncertain whether to learn something like Bash-scripting or find and read Python shell scripts.

One advantage to Bash-scripting is mentioned at reddit:

Python uses more memory and requires more disk space to be installed. This is might be important in small resource constraints environments such as embedded systems or small VMs.

Also the shell is always running and so shell scripts should start up faster than Python scripts.

Perhaps on a low cost embedded device Bash-scripting is the way to go. I will try to follow up on this later. As far as I can tell, one must have a shell on the system to work with, but having python is optional if one is willing to give up a lot of software. Therefore, for a system with limited hardware, in a sense you get bash scripting for free.

Prusa Mendel

From the Prusa Mendel web site:

Prusa Mendel is the Ford Model T of 3D printers.

Like the Model T, the Prusa Mendel improves on a previous design by being more streamlined for manufacture. The Prusa Mendel is a simpler remix of the original Mendel. By default, it uses printed bushings instead of regular bearings, though options to substitute inexpensive lm8uu linear bearings or other types of bearings or bushings are available. The current version uses three 608 bearings in total, one for the X axis and two for the Y axis. The 624 bearings are gone altogether.

Prusa's main goal is to be the purest and simplest 3D printer you can build.

I would like to learn more about this printer, but I need to finish some other, easier projects like the pong clock. Some day I would like to find a database of 3d models to print with such a machine. Maybe it could use html5 canvas 3d elements to preview the printable objects.

Introduction to A.I. class

A web site is offering a free online course:

A bold experiment in distributed education, "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence" will be offered free and online to students worldwide during the fall of 2011. The course will include feedback on progress and a statement of accomplishment. Taught by Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig, the curriculum draws from that used in Stanford's introductory Artificial Intelligence course. The instructors will offer similar materials, assignments, and exams.

I have been doing some preparation for that online class lately. I bought a used copy of an older edition of the textbook, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, and am skimming the early chapters. The site mentions the book is optional though so I doubt it will help much with the work for the course. However, the book has shown some usefulness. Of course, having enough time to continue my studies is next to impossible.

Why take the time to do this course then? Clearly, by taking the course one would learn some of the basics, but what could one hope to accomplish with this knowledge? Many examples exist of what people have already done with a.i. The class site mentions things such as humanoid robots, Google goggles, and self-driving cars. An example closer to every day life would include household electronic devices that have a learner feature to gather information from their environment and then behave differently. Yet, I don't see myself working with cutting edge projects like Google goggles. Those types of projects seem more appropriate for people who could teach this course rather than one who needs to take the course. What kind of application of this learning would be simple enough for me to do but still be of help to some one else or myself? Perhaps applying a rational agent, as the book calls it, to a video project would be something approachable. I've seen a C++ boids example and Blender already has a boids particle system. I'm going to need more time to ruminate on this.

Robot army video

from the description of the robot army video at youtube:

You could call it Mission Impossible: Robot Library Heist. An army of flying, rolling, and climbing robots have been taught to work together to find and snatch a book from a high shelf.

In a striking display of military-like precision, the robotic team, duhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifbbed the "Swarmanoid", attacks the problem with flying "eye-bots" and rolling "foot-bots". A "hand-bot" then fires a grappling hook-like device up to the ceiling and scales the bookshelf. Footage of the experiment, conducted by Marco Dorigo at the Free University of Brussels, Belgium, and colleagues, won the video competition at the Conference on Artificial Intelligence in San Francisco earlier this week.