Fang – Mike Seyfang

• Image Size: largest .jpg, closest to 16:9. On my old Nikon D80 this is 3872 x 2592 (closer to 6:4) Not RAW due to our post-processing limitations and workflow.
• White Balance: Fluorescent (3) – look for off color (esp green) when shooting in fluoro lit labs.
• ISO: keep the ISO aka ASA close to 100 to avoid grainy images on half frame camera.
• TRIPOD: mandatory due to low light & ISO constraint above
• LENS: in the smaller labs yer gunna need a wide angle lens. *paste some AA recommendations for the D80 and Canon D500 here.
• LIGHTING: our next step is to buy and learn how to use a modest lighting rig.
• SETUP TIME: take (and book / pre arrange) time to setup each shot
• ZOOM IN, FOCUS: then half hold button, zoom out to frame shot. Esp. on eyes!
• BREAK Rule of THIRDS: NO DEAD SPACE in middle of shots for the ultra wide and thin banners. Remember both Left and Right edges will get lost and shot needs to degrade gracefully.
• ADMIN: pre prepared, have a list with all locations, peoples names, numbers etc. Double check you have each and every name, do the right thing with release forms, exposing shy people online and ethical concerns. If in doubt – DONT take the shot!

POST PROCESSING

• Top3 from each attendee.
• Select best image that meet legal, ethical and doing the right thing constraints.
• Crop to 16×9 (without throwing away any more pixels than necessary) – pick most interesting crop that will lend to further cropping for ultra wide banners on the site (ie no DEAD SPACE in the middle of a wide thin slice)
• Adjust, tweak each one till it looks great for the site
• METADATA: keep the name of the file from camera (at end of description). Make punchy title, name the lab and all people in shot. Include keywords to do with the science. (esp related to Research Themes / Challenges).

Fang – Mike Seyfang

Before you dismiss their claim, check this out..

Careful checking of one such complaint revealed that the user was TABbing through a gravity form entering data then pressing RETURN. Looking closely I saw that the cursor was not tabbing from the last entered field to the next or the SUBMIT button but to another field elsewhere on the page. That field happened to be a SEARCH field, and pressing ENTER executed a search for nothing but did not send the POST data!!!

After much hair tearing, fecking with TABINDEX settings and some excellent support from the team at RocketGenius (Make sure you invest in the developer version of GravityForms – best hundred bucks I’ve spent in a while) I cornered the issue to Safari browsers on OSX [safari 5.1.10 on OSX 10.6.8 or later].  I went thru all the usual steps to isolate WordPress THEME / Addin conflicts, set the TABINDEX=”1000″ to crazy high values in the shortcode on the page that displays the form and tried this little gem

The form at xyz does have the tabindex attributes, the issue now is a tabindex conflict. Try increasing the tabindex on the form either on the shortcode or using the following: http://gravitywiz.com/fix-gravity-form-tabindex-conflicts/

Now with all other plugins disabled, my theme at twentytwelve I could see the tab indices in my simple test form (single text field, three choice textboxes) but could not TAB into the checkbox field items in Safari on OSX. Then I found THIS little gem:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1271082?tstart=0

SystemPreferences->Keyboard

Change “FUll Keyboard Access:In windows and dialogs, press Tab to move keyboard focus between:”

from Text boxes and lists only to All controls

BINGO

it works!!

Ah.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

flic.kr/s/aHsk1mskA4

(Thought I had lost my blue ‘Grover Allman’ folder with all the old security blanket setlists, chords and tabs).
Fortunately I hadnt!

Fang – Mike Seyfang

Why change?

Because my shiny new SPORT GPS telemetry sensor reports rubbish data (and no latitude / longitude) to the telemetry screens of my Taranis using an X8R reciever. Did a test with different x6R receivers – same issue. Used a mate’s more recent Taranis (the one that ships with bigger battery, nicer sliders and v2.x firmware) and it worked fine. OK – time to bite the bullet and upgrade to the totally new V2.0 platform which replaces Companion9x with OpenTX companion v2.x

What a bloody nightmare of issues. Lets start with what worked then list the plethora of things that didnt.

WORKED (eventually) with some help from this manual (wish I had found opentx university and THIS differences to OpenTX2.0 reference:

• Backup models. Make sure you have an .eepe file with all of your models (EEPROM memory to file) before proceeding.
• Backup firmware. Use OpenTX Companion v2.0.8 on a windows 8.1 PC to Read Firmware from Radio and save it to FirmwareBackupFromRadio.bin on OneDrive. The trick(s):
  • Turn Taranis TX OFF before USB Connect to PC.
  • Check for STM32 BOOTLOADER in windows cpanel device manager (thanks to this and this video) then
  • download the right zadig.exe and run the bizzare driver swap (thanks to this post) to work around DFUUTIL errors when trying to read firmware from radio.
• Set preferences & download new firmware. OpenTX Companion v2.0.8 has moved preference s to Settings-Settings. It is crucial to ensure Radio Type is OpenTX for FrSky Taranis before proceeding. Then select the Build Options (I chose no heli, have be warned not to add haptic). The build and download firmware buttons have also been helpfully removed. Go to help – check for updates and you will get exactly one chance to download the appropriate opentx-taranis-noheli-en.bin firmware file. Hint: if you change one of the build options you will get ‘no firmware appears to have been downloaded’ and you can download.
• Update the firmware. Read/Write -> write firmware to radio. That was the easy bit!
• Panic. Unplug Taranis from USB. Switch on. Greeted with ‘EEPROM WARNING EEprom Data v215′. Hit any key. Converting EEPROM.
• Phew: conversion finished. All my models are there. The ‘WizardGlider’ model works, test GPS telemetry – now get coordinates! Mission Accomplished.
• Sort of… Remembering the new ‘3finger salute (two trims inward while power on) to put taranis in USB mode before connect to computer – now my SD card structure with log files etc doesnt show up.
• Restore custom splash startup image. My fancy FANG skull n cross bones startup image has gone (but the sailors hornpipe custom sound remains). Found FangSPLASH-212×64.bmp on an old drive and away we go.
• Taranis Bootloader – 2.0.8. I knew about the 3 finger salute (two trims in and power on) to get to USB mode but had no idea what it meant or where to get information on it. Info on understanding bootloaders at OpenTX University.
  • Backup EEPROM to SD card. Long Menu->Radio Setup->4xPage->VErsion -> ENTER long to backup EEPROM to SD. Creates /EEPROMS directory on the SD card in the same drive as /LOGS etc. NOw you can restore a whole .eepe file with all the models etc in the field without a PC.
  • Backup FIRMWARE to sd card. Create /FIRMWARES directory on the same drive as the /EEPROMS and /LOGS directories. Copy in one or more .bin files to enable restore from bootloader (WITHOUT PC / MAC / ZADIG OR ANy o that shite).

BOLLOCKS:

• Trying to get Companion9x v1.5.2 (the last before the big v2.x jump) running on mac osx 10.7. Tried many combinations of installers / downloads none would give me a working v1.5.2. The app would always crash on launch.
• Trying to read firmware from radio to create a backup of my firmware using companion 9x v1.5.1 on either of my Macs. The ‘Read Flash Memory’ icon would prompt for a file (.bin) to save then exit blindingly fast with no indication of reading from TX and no file written.
• Trying to  read firmware from radio on the windows 8.1 PC running OpenTX Companion V2.0.8 with the Taranis TX turned ON while connecting to USB. Many circles and loops of dfu-util [Opening DFU capable USB device .. Cannot open device ] errors and zadig.exe insanity here.
• Having to use a Windows 8.1 shitebox to get from the world of Companion9x 1.5.x to OpenTX Companion v2.x. I guess that’s because my macs are getting long in the tooth. (OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard and OSX 10.7 Lion).
• Support for old Apple Mac OSX versions (down to OSX 10.5 Leopard). Had to wade through gallons of tripe to find an OSX universal build of OpenTX Companion V2.0.7 from a DropBox of some brave compiling soul who commented on this thread in a github database of OpenTX issues. I like building rockets but I’m not about to start compiling my own builds of OpenSource software just to manage my TX.
• OSX Universal (OSX 10.5 upwards) download – having found a universal build for 2.0.7 in the dropbox from the comment above, I went looking for a decent source of OSX universal downloads. And there it was, right under my nose [the 2.0.8 OSX .dmg is universal and works on my OSX 10.7.5 Mac.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

and the network name at the top left of screen has changed from Amaysim to YES OPTUS. Dug around the FAQ and google to no avail – too many possible options and old information that is very confusing. Called 567 Amaysm support (2-4-5) and got thru in less than 10min. Turns out my personal hotspot had been disabled their end and was easily re-enabled. Within about 1 minute I got a txt message “Hi Mike, good news – tethering is now enabled on your amaysim mobile service. Happy surfing!”.

All good: personal hotspot (tethering) now works as expected in settings->Mobile Data->Personal Hotspot

Then the penny dropped – Tether ing is what they call personal hotspot. Things I could (should) have tried before calling:

• I see from this old post that I should have tried:

• • Personal Hotspot: txt ‘Tether’ to 568 and wait for confirmation message that setup is complete. This fixes “To enable Personal Hotspot on this account, contact OPTUS” error while trying to setup Personal Hotspot in Settings->General->Personal Hotspot as per AMAYSIM documentation.

• If that didnt work I could have logged on to amaysim.com.au and resolved via text chat.
• The support person said that to fix the ‘YES OPTUS’ network name back to ‘Amaysim’ I would have to do a full sync with iTunes. Maybe later.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

What I ended up doing* was enabling RemoteSQL access to my Windows ‘server’ from MySQLworkbench by:

• Open Port 3306 (TCP) in Windows Firewall
• Granting some privileges from a SQL console.
• For browser access to the wordpress blog: Windows (8.1) Firewall Configuration: add rule “Open port 80″ (TCP) to computers from my IP address range. [one of my WiFi networks is ‘private’ the other ‘public’ so I had to add rules for both public and private network profiles. [tested thanks to this excellent article on windows firewall logging].

*Notes taken out of my gDoc “MySQL Learnings”:

Fang – Mike Seyfang

– Save desired text as a .PNG with dimensions of movie (say 1920×1080) and transparency.

– Open .PNG with quicktime player, select all, copy

– Choose a section of the target movie (in/out points) and

– Edit add to selection and scale

– Open Properties windows and play with the visual settings of the pasted .PNG video track

– Adjust Transparency (bottom left dropdown) to Straight Alpha

– repeat for as many tracks as needed.

Fishy.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

Something fishy going on in twitterland methinks. When I first visited @rikmayall on twitter there was a single post dated 13/04/2010. When I went back to show a friend things had changed…

Fishy.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

Patching to the 10.6.8 combined update for OSX did the trick!

My guess is that it is IPv6 related. See below for a list of symptoms / things I tried that did *not* work:

• DNS / Name resolution in general: access to sites like http://www.google.com (ie search) or code.google.com worked but sat on ‘contacting google.com’ for ages. Paste an IP address (obtained from ping) and access was immediate.
• NSLookup from terminal was always fast – even for sites with multiple IP addresses like http://www.google.com and code.google.com
• Changing TCP/IP advanced settings on OSX system preferences (manual IP addresses, hard coded DNS servers, excluding my router’s IP address from DNS server) made no difference. Neither did messing with proxy settings.
• Changing from ‘ISP default’ to known good DNS servers on fritzbox admin console made no difference.
• NameBench ran, took a long time and did not report anything useful
• Changing back to Billion router made problems go away immediately, Switch back to fritzbox and they return.
• Symptoms first appeared when booting of old external HDD image of OSX Snow Leopard that had not been patched for years. Rebooting to usual patched version was fine. First I suspected DHCP / IP Addressing issues.
• After finding and applying the combined 10.6.8 OSX Snow Leopard patch the problem immediately went away.
• I suspect that I could have worked around the issue by fiddling with IPv6 settings for Fritzbox / OSX but did not have time to do that.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

 The operation can’t be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -8003).

No matter which keys I hit while empty trash (shift, ctl, option, cmd).

This MacWorld article contained the clue that helped me.

DIY Terminal tricks

However, all those utilities merely send OS X commands that you can issue yourself in Terminal. To do so, first open Terminal (in /Applications/Utilities). Typecd ~/.Trash and press Return. Then, type sudo rm -R followed by a space (don’t leave out the space character—it’s essential). Don’t press Return yet.

Next, click the Trash icon in your Dock to open a window displaying the contents of the Trash. Select everything in that window and drag it into the Terminal window; this action adds the paths of all those files and folders to the rm(remove) command. Now, press Return and enter your administrator password when prompted. In a moment or two (depending on how much was in your Trash), the Trash icon should return to its empty state.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

Seems FaceBook has stolen my attention and that of those I care about.

This time last year we were in Paris as part of our fantastic voyage to celebrate Mandy’s 50th. Thought I look through my old posts and facebook timeline to see what I was doing on this day one year ago. I found a few blog posts but scrolling back thru my own facebook timeline was a better experience. I wonder when they will start charging for that?

Fang – Mike Seyfang

About 13mm seems to be the sweet-spot (indoors on a mild day).

While I was able to measure a voltage drop at distances up to about 20mm (which could be detected as an Analog input to my Arduino project), it seems that things degrade pretty quickly after about 13mm. Using the resistor setup I describe here, 13mm gives an input reading of <100 as an analog input with gap open, and jumps to 1023 when closed – ideal for digital LOW/HIGH state change with good margin for error in differing conditions.

Here is the data:

Fang – Mike Seyfang

In the end I had to set up two separate IP networks and get the Billion BiPAC 7404VGP to forward packets by setting up an ‘IP Alias‘. Set as DHCP relay agent.

Not as elegant as a single IP network but simple enough once you figure out the design and the funky terminology in the web based user interfaces for each device. However, the path to get there was anything but simple thanks to Telstra device locking, sloppy user interface design and firmware by Billion and an annoyance of half-arsed forum posts. With a bit of luck this blog post will save somebody (probably me) some pain when they try to re-use some old gear to get people on the internet.

• Telstra have locked the thomson speedtouch 536 configuration to suit their BigPond network. My plan was to change the LAN IP address range from 10.0.0.x to 192.168.1.x to match the factory defaults of the Billion. Could have proceeded down the ‘update and unlock’ path but life is too short. The IP address for this router is 10.0.0.138 – whodathunk!
• Couldn’t set  Billion LAN IP address range to 10.0.0.x The bipac7404vgp gave error “webserver:Invalid value 10″ every time I tried to set it’s LAN IP address to an unused address in this range.
• Didn’t notice anything in the Billion configuraion User Interface that looked like it would forward packets from a 10.0.0.x network to a 192.168.1.x network until after I upgraded it to the latest firmware. (Doesn’t mean it wasn’t there, I just didn’t find it – and I cant be arsed going back old versions and looking).
• Updating the bipac7404vgp firmware from a Mac running OSX snowleopard 10.6.8 was a pain in the arse.
  • The .zip files on the billion support downloads site contain another compressed ‘.afw’ configuration file which is what the firmware update interface is looking for
  • Many OSX methods for unzipping the .zip file give varying results.
  • Firmware Upload Failed
    Failed to write to file system.
    Failed to update FLASH chips.
    This may be due to a corrupt FLASH filing system.
    You can attempt to repair this by saving configuration.
    error
  • Use terminal in OSX to unzip the .zip file is the most reliable
  • Restart router using Factory defaults *BEFORE* attempting firmware upgrade
  • Still no joy
  • Out of desperation I grabbed the 7404VGPM firmware (even though every physical marking or configuration page said mine was a 7404VGP), unzipped the .zip using OSX terminal, restarted from factory defaults – this time it worked.
• After the firmware update, I still couldn’t set the Billion’s IP Address to 10.0.0.x range but I did notice ‘IP Alias’ in the configuration pages for the first time.
• Set up an IP Alias of 10.0.0.254 for the Billion with subnet mask of 255.0.0.0. Remember the SpeedTouch router address is locked at 10.0.0.138 and it’s DHCP server dishes out client addresses starting at 10.0.0.1.
• Turn off DHCP server of Billion (set as DHCP relay agent).
• Took the Billion around to the in-laws, used a spare Cat5 10baseT ethernet cable to connect from LAN port 1 on the Billion to the unused Ethernet Port on the Thomson Speedtouch (checked for the green link status light on each port – you guessed it, the first cable I tried failed!).

After a bit of fiddling around I managed to get an iPhone, iPad and my Android phone to connect to the WiFi from the billion, get an IP Address in the 10.0.0.1-20 range (shows up in the speedtouch status page at 10.0.0.138) and surf the world wide inter-tubes courtesy of a locked BigPond rooter. Yay!

Fang – Mike Seyfang

As part of my research for the Institute of BackYard Studies , I am prototyping various components for a Lightly Oscillating Linguistic Organ (LoLa) – a musical instrument that harnesses the sinusoidal beauty of the pendulum wave.

After much fecking around with magnetic reed switches, analog light sensors, mercury switches, mp3 players and android phones I have finally iterated toward a reliable setup.

• A $2 Opto (or Photo) Interrupter sensor. For two bucks you get a little plastic gizmo that has an IR LED and detector separated by a 3mm gap. A couple of resistors and some fancy PCB wiring and you can make a digital input for the Arduino.
• Arduino Sketch that detects a change of state on said digital input and sends a MIDI note command via the serial output.
• A very simple 3 wire connection to a DIN 5 Connector for MIDI Output (Not quite MIDI standards compliant – need an opto isolator circuit for that).
• MIDI to USB input to an old mac mini that was lying around (PowerPC – OSX 10.5).
• SimpleSynth midi synth running on OSX 10.5.
• MIDI Monitor for OSX to debug things.
• Headphone output from mac mini to an old ghetto blaster in my shed to make noise louder.
• A work of art! (in the making).

Here is what I learnt:

• MIDI can be deceptively simple and frustrating
• On arduino DUE when using the +5V MIDI DIN 5 circuit as per all the instructions out there just got jibberish. By pure chance I tried +3.3V and it works like a charm.
• I probably spent as much time getting the sketch to reliably start with the MIDI sound I wanted (church bell) as I did on the rest of the MIDI work, including cabling.
• I probably should have started with a photo interruptor already wired up as an Arduino sensor rather than go down the rabbit hole of circuit diagrams, datasheets and the futility of resistance!

Fang – Mike Seyfang

I’m using an Arduino DUE so I used an external +5v power supply (from my model aeroplanes) always remembering to connect earth to common ground – arduino GND and the GND of my circuit.

*Note: this simplified circuit diagram does not quite match the physical layout of the pins. If you look closely at the ‘Top View’ schematic in the datasheet you will notice that the Collector (3) and Emitter (4) are physically located the other way around – which makes the wiring a little more messy.

The 220 ohm resistor between the +5V and Anode drives the IR LED input’s Forward Voltage in the range 1.2 – 1.5V at around 20mA. The 4.7K ohm resistor between the +5V and (3) Collector gives us a nice wide voltage change when an object is placed in the gap between the IR LED (1) (2) and the Detector (3) (4). I measured 96.5mV open and 5.31V closed. This gives a very sharp and reliable OFF/ON, LOW/HIGH, 0/1 digital input. Hooking up to an ANALOG input (A0) on my Arduino DUE showed values from the low 20’s open to 1023 closed – perfect!

So, how did I get that circuit diagram and those resistor values? I have to admit, I phoned a friend. My mate Ashley who actually understands this stuff explained the calculations like this:

• Look at the ‘Forward Voltage’ Vf on data sheet which shows 1.2V typical to 1.5V max at 20mA. (5V-1.2V)/.02A = 190Ohm. 220Ohm is close enough.
• Look at the ‘Light Current’ Il on datasheet 1.0 – 10 Ma. To get a nice strong voltage change across (3) Collector and (4) emmitter calculate the resistance required to leave about .5V with gap open. At 1mA the calculation is (5V-.5V)/.001A = 4500 Ohm.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

• I used this zd1901 photo interrupter from JayCar (datasheet).
• I copied the schematic from this post which had a 10k resistor between the + anode (long wires) and a 230 ohm resistor between the two short (- cathode) wires. That design was based on this RPI-574  datasheet .
• Since I didn’t have a 230 ohm resistor I used a 100 (which measured at 180 on my multimeter) in series with a 103 10k potentiometer that I tried to dial in 230 ohm total.
• All was going well until I figured a lower than 230 ohm resistor would be interesting to try, only I managed to provide a path of 0 ohm resistance for long enough to fry my IR led.

Schematic

Which resulted in:

• A kinda / sorta working output voltage in the range 4.7 – 5 volts. Ranged from the high 900’s to 1023 on arduino analog input A0 by moving a piece of paper between the gap.
• A failed attempt to use a variable resistor to drive the analog values from close to 0 up to 1023 so I could use it as a digital input to my arduino.
• A short across what should have been a 230 ohm resistor resulting in a loud pop, smoke and a nasty smell!!!

Note to self:

The z1670 photo interrupter I got from altronics and it’s datasheet.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

Here is what I did:

• Hung an old broomstick from a ladder
• Added a few bearings to make it swing better
• Added a six inch piece of orange PVC conduit to the top of the broomstick (via some home sprinkler system pieces I had lying around)
• Wired my sensors to servo leads (from my model planes) and stuck em to wooden pop-sticks (actually tongue depressors)
• Whacked a cardboard box on the top with arduino, battery and breadboard with holes to shove my sensors into
• Strapped an android phone running ‘AndroSensor’ to the bottom of the broomstick
• Carted my laptop out to the shed and collected a bunch of data via arduino serial monitor & pasted into a spreadsheet & from a .csv file that an android phone’s sensors was writing to
• Bunged the collected data into a few google spreadsheets for analysis by chart

Here is what I learnt:

• My $10 freetronics light sensor for android (that gives an analog output proportional to light intensity) mounted at the top is very reliable and copes with really sloppy swings.
• A $1 glass reed switch under a strong magnet on the bottom of the broomstick works well (once you make it stronger by sticking to a wooden tongue depressor and cover in clear epoxy and when you figure out how to ‘de-bounce’ the signal). 
• My $10 hall effect sensor for android mounted at the top is easy to use & check but hard to position well for consistent results. You need to have a very smooth swinging pendulum and find the exact centre.
• The guys building the physical pendulum wave have expressed concern over perceived slowing due to the magnetic force on each pass. This should be measured & tested before giving up on the simple reed switch..
• The ‘false positive’ readings I was getting from the magnetic reed switch is actually a well known phenomonen called ‘bounce‘ which can be de-bounced in software or via some rather ingenious circuitry! [I’m a little bit chuffed because before I discovered those links, I simply looked at my data on a graph and hacked my code to ignore state changes for a few hundred milliseconds after the first].

Photos:

Fang – Mike Seyfang

After much googling around and substantial fiddling, here is what I did:

• Searched around for quick and dirty ways to create an android app using PROCESSING to play sounds based on sensor input. Found out pretty quickly there are many can-o-worms and significant issues around latency.
• Decided to simply mash up a few sensor / music apps for a V1.0 prototype. 
• The AndroSenso app simply outputs raw data from each sensor and can make graph / log file recording for a period of time. After looking intently at accelerometer data I decided the Proximity Sensor would be a better option for my first prototype sound trigger.
• The Proximity Actions app allows actions to be configured when various numbers of ‘waves’ past the proximity sensor are detected. It is pretty well thought out, behaves well in the background and can easily trigger music play / pause.

Here is what I learnt:

• Latency, latency, latency – such a long wait before any sound starts. Varies depending on the state the phone is in, gets worse over time…
• APPS: accelerometer sensor, physics Toolbox, androSensor (the most useful), proximity sensor finder, proximity sensor clib, sensor music player, music proximity, proximity actions (the most useful).
• Good as it is, Proximity Actions has it’s limitations & points to a whole lot of pain in developing my own specific trigger app. A minimum of two ‘waves’ must be detected before and action can be triggered. The proximity sensor on the HUAWEI ascend g510 running android v4.1.1 is soooo frustrating. I could only get it to detect two waves with Max ave time at .4 sec & max wave timeout at .7 sec. And then it is frustrating as hell to reliably produce the two waves required to trigger the music.
• And then there is the LATENCY. Not only is it horrible but it varies. I’m guessing the variation is due to the phone o/s swapping out or shutting down things like the music player after a while. Nearly a second delay at best, several seconds when things go pear shaped.
• If it is crap as a prototype, things will probably get worse trying to hard code this and scale up to more than 8 devices swinging at once! My guess is that proximity sensors (and indeed others) would vary from phone to phone – making consistency difficult. From everything I read, latency is always going to be a problem. Finally, the phone is designed to provide a good phone experience – there are a lot of environment considerations to take into account when building an app to quickly trigger sounds, day in, day out..

Fang – Mike Seyfang

First impressions – huawei ascend g510 running android v4.1.1

• This is an ‘Optus’ badged beast with no sim card.
• What a freakin mess… apps &  home screens scattered everywhere
• Found the on/off button top left (eventually)
• there are three icons on the bottom panel of the display – the middle one brings up some kind of menu, the left one looks like a back button, I have no idea what the three lines on the right hand side mean. [update: There are the usual capacitive touch button below the display for back, home and menu]
• SD card. Turns out there is an empty micro SD slot behind the rear cover which is removed by prising the bottom left corner. The first SD card I inserted did not work. The second showed up blank and could be formatted under system settings -> storage (when not connected via USB)
• After searching for and finding various file transfer utilities for mac OSX I accidentally discovered that plugging USB from Mac into phone when running brings up a prompt to go into USB mode. After that the file system appears in my OSX finder window and works as expected. [maybe the google supplied transfer app is for older versions of android ??]
• Found a cool app called ‘Physics Toolbox’ that exposes accelerometer data and can record same to a text file and share via email or bluetooth
• Found another app called ‘accelerometer’ that shows x,y values on a scope like screen, has a low pass filter and can show maximum values. Not so useful for me and my pendulum whimsy.
• The phone runs on Android 4.1.1 (Jelly Bean) with Huawei’s own Emotion UI 1.0 on top
• Found another app called ‘androsensor’ that shows lots of sensor raw data and promises to record / save to file (but I keep getting unable to write to SD card error – oh, that’s cos I was plugged into USB mode)
• SCREENSHOT – hold power and volume buttons at same time. Thanks.
• x
• My first app: PROCESSING with android mode. Fire up processing. Add ‘android’ mode. Restart processing. Grab a sample app, change mode from java to android “is SDK installed NO”. Install android SDK.
• System settings -> developer options -> USB debugging (not sure if that was a good idea!)
• Get error: /Applications/adt-bundle-mac-x86_64-20130917/sdk/tools/ant/build.xml:542: Unable to resolve project target ‘android-10′
• Looks like I need to install the (OLD) android-10 files. android-18 is currently installed under \sdk\platforms\
• after much googling around, fire up eclipse -> window -> android SDK manager -> add v10 (accept license, download, … yep sdk\platforms\android-10 now installed)
• PROCESSING: grab a sketch & chose -> Run on device.
• Build: v22.2.1-833290
• Make a little ‘Hello Android’ app & run on device. Here ’tis:

Then things got messy:

• Getting processing to run sketch on emulator I ran into this can of worms. [fixed by SDK manager by uninstalling the intel x86 image]

Fang – Mike Seyfang

A quick munge of my earlier ARDUINO <-> PROCESSING serial ‘ASCII call / response’ code for running a dot on the screen by model aeroplane TX / RX remote controls did the trick:

• MultiSensorsSerialCallResponse_Crickets.ino – reads SPL from freetronics MIC sound input into Analog pin 8 of my Arduino & writes the value (0-1023) as the first of four (channel) Comma Separated Values to the serial port (every time an “A” is read from the serial port).
• SerialCallResponseASCII_Crickets02.pde – reads the 4 value parameter CSV from Serial port and does all the logic to figure out how much noise is coming in (on the first parameter) and what to do about it. The basic idea is to react to noise by setting a ‘fear’ string to the values: calm, alert or panic depending on the SPL level coming in. It then decays gradually from panic through alert to calm when all is quiet. Various cricket noises play depending on the state of fear: all three crickets.wav files play simultaneously when all is calm, only one when alert and immediately stop playing all sounds when in panic. I also threw in 4 keyboard controllable ‘seasons’ morn, noon, eve, night to toggle the mix of creatures making noise by typing 1, 2, 3 or 4. This is in preparation for time / light control.

• code.compartmental.net/tools/minim/ – looks a bit neater and possibly simpler. Let’s start here.
• crickets1 crickets.wav  http://www.freesound.org/people/Christoff45/sounds/106019/
• crickets2 crickets_creek.wav http://www.freesound.org/people/rhapsodize/sounds/171823/
• crickets3 http://www.freesound.org/people/Tito%20Lahaye/sounds/83270/ [cc:by, NC and too loud, find another cc:by replacement]

Fang – Mike Seyfang

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUqpf8gJl2k

There ya go Rick – that’s one way for your piece to react to the environment. If the ambient noise is low enough, we can tell when (noisy) people are nearby. That could shut the crickets up!

Speaking of crickets, how are we gunna control playback of noises? For a quick start I thought I would use Processing to process sound files from my computer & communicate via serial. Here are my learnings on PROCESSING and sound playback.

• www.tree-axis.com/Ess – turns up first in searches but looks ALPHA, buggy and messy
• code.compartmental.net/tools/minim/ – looks a bit neater and possibly simpler. Let’s start here.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

It seems that the first challenge will be identifying which serial port on my mac I need to address. This time I started with the PROCESSING 2 MANUAL and tinkered with the sample code under ‘serialEvent()’. After getting rid of the redundant font feckery, my little piece of code crashed and said I needed to create a directory and do a chmod 777 on it. Turns out this is business as usual to work around a port in use exception.

sudo mkdir /var/lock
sudo chmod 777 /var/lock

Tried by TERMINAL stuck on login: Reboot to fix that.

So I did. And it works. [well, after I plug my arduino into the USB port that is]. Before long I had a little text box displaying the serial data that was being written by my arduino running on the USB port.

Now, to make the output more interesting, lets find some code that does something a little more interesting with x,y (mouse) coordinates and hack that to use elevator & rudder input from my R/C TX.

• PROCESSING File->Examples/Basics/Input/StoringInput [looks nice]
• Modify Arduino sketch [MikeRX03_2ch_x_y] to output a pair of comma separated coordinates x,y with values between 1,1 and 1920,1080
• Didn’t really work, need to thing about serial protocol (ie HANDSHAKE)
• notice the range of pulse widths measured changes by about 100 from time to time. [subtract between 1240 – 1190 to make lowest values close to 1]
• arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/SerialCallResponseASCII looks the goods
•   Run: MikeRX03_4ch_CallResponseSerial.ino [no serial monitor!]
•   Run: SerialCallResponseASCII.pde
•            Let’s you control a dot in a window by Left TX Joystick.

• Probably should have a go at making an Etch-a-Sketch!

Fang – Mike Seyfang

I was at the sacred place. That park in my suburb where there is no surveillance. The one where you have to dock your phone into one of those drums. You know, the ones that start swinging and making those weird harmonic tones and tunes that drive away the hi-res drones.

It was like any other Sunday afternoon  conversing and hatching plans away from prying eyes and ears, except for one strange thing. Barry Morgan was playing tunes into the array of swinging drums. It was amazing. Beautiful. Disturbing.

You see, some school-kids had hacked the ‘SwingTone’ app that runs on our phones when they are charging in the drum dock. They added the new PhoneLab tweet stack to the usual move and sound stacks so that the entire array of swinging drums could be programmed on the fly. The cheeky buggers had had then compiled and published their apps to the store and managed to convince punters like me into a paid 5 cent upgrade. With the money they had collected over a month of Sundays they built an acoustic coupler that took the majestic tones of the IBYS Musycle and converted them into commands – from Barry’s Wurlitzer Organ to the SwingTone tower via the @BarrysPWorgan twitter account.

As usual, I awoke from my dystopian nightmare with a rather splendid technical architecture in mind. Like the old days when I could not stop my over-active mind from obsessing over technical architectures (usually required for clients who were paying my employer vast sums of money per hour for my services) I emptied my mind into a couple of pages of my notebook. Today I decided to share a photo of those pages with you via flickr and this blog post. Now – I can start my day without obsessing about refinements to my design for a rather impressive machine that makes beautiful sounds and shapes in the sky. Or can I?

Perhaps it is time to get a real job. Again.

Or maybe not.

Jamie and I hacked this little prototype together (accelerometer triggered tone on a string):

A bunch of them swinging together might sound a bit like this mockup.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

But how do I control something more interesting on my computer?

It seems that the Processing environment is an ideal companion to the Arduino IDE. Let’s download it and find out. Single app install, nice and easy v2.0.3. The hello world app draws a circle around the mouse location and comes with nice easy to understand diagrams. Cool.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

The tutorial wires up three channels from an RX which gets power from the 5v of a (non DUE) arduino. We need to modify things for just one channel and for external power (a 6v 3xAA NiMh battery pack from a glider). First we need to make up a servo lead that provides the pulse and our common earth. Then (the hardest part for me) we have to pick an input of the Arduino DUE. A quick look at the specs suggests any of the 53 DIGITAL inputs would do. Because some of them (1-21) have special labels like PWM, Communication TX, RX, I picked 30 which does not.

Setup:

• RX signal (orange) to Pin30 set for pinMode(30, INPUT)
• Common earth (brown) to GND next to pin 53

Code: MikeRX01.ino

Modifying Nick Pool’s code was easy. Just delete the lines for unused channels 2 & 3 & change pin to 30.

The key lines are:

• pinMode(30, INPUT); // Set our input pins as such
• ch1 = pulseIn(30, HIGH, 25000); // Read the pulse width
• Serial.println(ch1);  // Display read values on serial monitor

What happened was the values changed as follows:

• 0 everything off
• 1583 power up TX & RX
• 2013 pull full up on my TX Elevator (T3 Stick)
• 1146 push full down

Cool eh?

p.s.

• PWM: Pins 2 to 13
  Provide 8-bit PWM output with the analogWrite() function. the resolution of the PWM can be changed with theanalogWriteResolution() function.
• FrSKY TFR6 Bind: power on TX, Hold ‘F/S’ button on RX while power up.
• Values: 1583 CH1 neutral, 0 servomon, 2013 full UP +100 servomon, 1146 full DOWN -100 servomon
• Change to CH2: Values: 1578 CH2 neutral, 0 servomon, 2015 full RIGHT +100 servomon, 1142 full LEFT -100 servomon

Fang – Mike Seyfang

The first tutorial I found on YouTube that looked easy was this one by 000Plasm000 that uses the servo.writemicroseconds() method to make the servo move.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfMfysmfoNM

Trouble is it didn’t work. Nothing, not a skerric of movement. Bring on *Wild Goose Chase #2 – chasing updated servo.h libraries for the DUE board I had, and wishing that I started with an older, bigger, simpler Arduino! After wasting a couple of hours chasing updates & swapping servos I stumbled upon a much clearer and better servo tutorial that is part of the excellent ‘Adafruit’ learning system. Turns out I had fallen into trap for young players #1 ‘Ye Olde Common ground’. YUP. That simple. Since I have to use external 5v to power my servo (since DUE only handles 3v) there has to be a common earth or ground connection. Bingo! All good. And a much more elegant servo.write.angle() way to position the servo angle from 0 – 180 degrees.

Here is how I built on the basic tutorial:

• SWEEP – got the basic sweep back and forth code working
• Hard Code angle – update the angle value in my ‘sketch’ code & run. Works fine.
• Add serial monitor – accept input, adjust angle, output some info
• Improve serial ASCII input – MikeServoSerial03_Ascii.ino uses serial.parseInt() as per File->Examples->Communication->ReadASCIIstring

* Wild goose chase #1 – trying to run new software on old hardware. [thought that the Arduino IDE would run fine on my old pre-intel macbook pro. Probably would have except that the Arduino board that Jamie had lying around in his room was a fancy new ‘DUE’ which required a recent (v1.5.4 Beta) IDE that required a recent JAVA that required certain updates to OSX Tiger etc etc. After wasting half a day trying to update, re-jig partitions, wait for huge downloads etc I decided that life is too short and ran the IDE on my current Snow Leopard ‘production’ machine.

*Wild Goose Chase #2 – new fancy hardware. The arduino DUE board that Jamie had lying around from his music tech days promises great things for fancy audio output but comes with two catches: it doesnt do the usual +5v stuff that R/C gear uses and it needs an update to the ‘servo.h’ library in the Arduino IDE. ‘THat old chestnut’ methinks, so I wasted way too much time looking for versions, updates etc only to find that they are already in the beta 1.5.4 IDE I am using…

Fang – Mike Seyfang

A radio controlled glider that can see thermals and ‘sing’ (using telemetry data to conduct a symphony of sonic bliss).

I have scrounged around for a few old R/C components, including some FRSky telemetry, taught myself the basics of 3D modelling in Blender and even printed v1.0 version myself on a 3D printer. I have bent many ears of anyone who will listen about my crazy ‘singing glider’ and set myself a deadline of 1 year (from today) to have a basic version working. I may even document some of my learning journey and turn it into some form of ‘phd’. But last week a couple of chance meetings and an invite to a local ‘hackerspace’ event caused me to grab hold of an Arduino and start hacking. I get the feeling that a whole new obsession is about to begin.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

Mandy Seyfang

The idea was inspired by finding an old post entitled ‘emergent vs detergent’ on ye olde PROCESSOFINNOVATION blog that Andy Denlin and I used to write. To my amazement this highly relevant and insightful piece was just about five years old – ‘that would be right’, I thought, always about five years too soon with my bright ideas. Then my wife decided to start a blog last night so I thought to myself, self I thought, why not.

Use lots of pictures.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

• Right kerfuffle dropping hire car (SKODA) to Geneva Airport!
• Lots of trains, super easy walk to hotel
• Nice welcome, checkin and WiFi per device by GUID (Guideio of tripadvisor fame) and dinner nearby on our own (sorbet)
• Most of the famous beachside walks closed.
• Train to Monteroso aimless wander towards Venezza ended up walking the rather difficult, treacherous, busy path (found later it was the only one open, lady rescued by helicopter the following day!)
• Enjoyed hard earned beer then seaside lunch.
• Train back to Rigiamortise met up with Gilly n Paul, dinner at expensive fish place nobody left to pay!
• Brekkie with Woody and Vicky while I did the laundry (mexican stand off with woman who turned out to be from Adelaide!)
• Several beers at sunny clifftop thingy
• Zigzag train rides to Venezza and dinner with 8 aussies (Woodies, Vertues, etc)
• Nightcap drinkies a Zora
• That toilet brush incident
• A day of boats (first day calm enough) after catch up with Dave and Lisa for another nice aussie style breakfast with great 1E coffee at Zora
• Fish and chips picnic up top o hill
• Leave for Nice by train 666 (Paul and Gilly stressing out about their ‘connecting train’ turns out all 8 of us on same train!!!

See this flickr collection for a somewhat organised collection of photos from various stages of our European adventure.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

http://pinboard.in/u:fang/t:blender/

ToDo:

• Trace Sir Les (InkScape -> SVG -> Blender Curve [extrude & mesh])
• UV Sir Les (Front, Back, Sides)
• Improve photoshop edge selection [curve tool trace smooth bezier, mask, grow, sharpen / blur edges..
• Trace Sir Les (Blender Bezier – elegant, extrude, simple mesh) then seam / unwrap / UV precisely
• Model guitar pic (Blender Bezier – half + mirror Tx, simple / elegant editable mesh)
• Make outline (carve hole?) in Model guitar pic
• Chrome tribeardsirles badge
• better guitar neck – bend headstock, round edges.

• Space – start typing for function search
• Shift S – snap cursor to
• Shift C – cursor to centre
• Alt Home – set point to rotate view around
• Z – toggle wireframe [good for selecting those hidden vertices]
• n – extra info side panel [e.g. Mesh display, numerics for visible dimension measurements when mesh object selected in edit mode]
• Clt-alt-Q – toggle quad view
• Shift Ctl Alt C set origin
• Ctl T – track first selected object to second selected
• Alt T – clear Track
• Shift H – hide everything else (Alt H to reverse)
• b
• Scene, scene – set Units [metric millimeters etc, imperial feet inches etc]
• Glass: Material – intensity 1, hardness 473, ambient .55. Transparency (Y) Raytrace: Fresnet 5, Blend 1.25, IOR 1.55 <works a treat!>
• Chrome: hat tip. Material: just off white, specular as is, hardness up to 511. Shading emit 0.21, tangent shading. Remove transparency, add MIRROR 0.914 Reflectivity, Gloss <1 say .845, Samples up to 250.
• Alt C (object) convert to (Mesh from bezier curve) ? how reduce number of vertices? [Reduce Resolution while still a curve, curve shape->resolution – down from 24 to 6 worked well on first sir les trace]
• MeshEdit basics: ctl-tab (mesh select mode), global vs normal orientation, x-ray mode (only select vertices you can see), OPT-RM loop/ring select, grow / shrink selection (ctl numpad + -). W – specials menu. K – knife, drag/click cuts and press ENTER to accept. Ctl R – loop cut (purple ring), LMB, slide, LMB to accept.
• PIPE: Create a circle (or other shape object). Add Bezier curve 3d & Edit to basic shape -> Properties -> Geometry -> Bevel Object (set to circle / shape and bingo a pipe!)

Tracing OUTLINE cheat sheet

https://pinboard.in/u:fang/t:blender/

• Method1: hat tip to Joe’s Makerbot for this deadly simple script:

• Put the part on a piece of centimeter graph paper and take a picture.
• Import the picture into inkscape, line up the scale, and trace the 2D outline of the object. Save the outline as an SVG.
• Import the SVG outline into blender and extrude. Convert the curve to a mesh (Alt C), Go to edit mode and extrude the outline into a 3D shape.
• …
• Method2: from blender 3D noob to pro [using bezier curve to trace background image]
• see “Details of the background image panel” and “Introducing the Bezier Curve” sections.
• …
• Method 3 from excellent Batman logo trace YouTube:  [setup includes un-check normals 2D constrain, increase resolution in curve properties (from 12 to 24) for smooth curve [*reduce before convert curve to mesh], V – vector handles on first curve to make the two handles independent for better tracing control.
• Make sure traced path is Closed at end Alt-C (edit mode) ‘Cyclic’
• Drill: Pan (shift MM), Zoom (MM wheel), Add first curve segment (Shift A->Curve->bezier), Edit (tab), V (handle type to Vector)
• Sel first handle end (RM), G, make a tangent to outline (longer = more bend),
• Sel second handle end, G, make tangent, adjust length
• Sel endpoint, E (extrude), position new endpoint near place on outline, LM click
• <<rinse and repeat>>

UV Mapping cheat sheet

• Hat tip bpwebmedia for this handy youtube.
• <<<copy from my hand written notes here?>>>
• Two Panes [3D view, UV editor]
• 3D view – viewport shading to “Texture” [ball next to object/edit mode selector]
• Edit mode, select a face in a nice ortho view
• UV editor – image -> open -> image file
• 3D view – mesh -> unwrap -> project from view
• UV editor – Select All [a] Size, Grab, Rotate to taste
• Materials -> Add -> ASSIGN
• Texture -> new, type “image or movie”, IMAGE -> picture icon -> choose image
• Under IMAGE (Source) click on PACK IMAGE icon to bundle file into .blend project
• MAPPING coordinates -> UV (from default generated)
• Render!

Camera motion via Path:

• Shift A path, edit to taste (E xtrude, S ubdivide etc)
• Select Camera, Shift Sel path, Ctl P (follow Path)
• Curve properties – Frames (faster / slower movement through available total anim frames) Shape->Twisting – Z up.

HANDY SCREEN SIZES:

• 1280×720
• 1920×1080
• 3840×2160
• 5760×3240 [max on my old macbook pro]
• 9600×5400 – too slow to render
• 96000×54000 – well it did render but I gave up trying to save as .png file

Fang – Mike Seyfang

• Train from Paris to Geneva (up to 500km/h backwards)
• Hobble to EuropCar (arrived after close) to pickup rental
• Efficient but scary drive city->motorway->mountains
• Could have spent the rest of my life here (nearly did!)
• Love at first sight (beer, parapente baptisme sign on tennis court)
• Parapente baptisme
• Friends arrive
• Champagne, more (Pol Roger) Champagne, much celebration
• Weather turns crap, return to scene of launch in fog
• Cluses is the centre of the universe
• Daytrip to some lake town and Charmonix (elusive poco loco hamburger)
• Tad tricky returning the Scoda rental car
• Swiss francs versus Euro

Fang – Mike Seyfang

• Good STORIES told well can influence culture.
• People connect when STORIES overlap. (David Wallace)
• Interacting with digital STORIES (bits) is getting easier and can increase engagement. ReMix is the most potent.
• To MAKE stuff out of (atoms) from shared digital stories or plans (bits) currently requires a degree of small group collaboration and promises to be very engaging indeed. I think we should explore the possibilities as the tools for production become cheaper and easier to get.

An illustrated brain-fart of ideas.

It is becoming clear that there is indeed value in effective use of social media by scientists and I think this aligns well with the idea of science equity through engagement. I suspect that as the ‘internet of things’ plays out and the tools of turning ‘bits into atoms’ (Lasercutters, 3D printers, scanners and the like) find their way to the desktops of outsiders like me there will be even more opportunities for me to engage with science. There are some obstacles. Like the way we currently try to protect Intellectual Property (if you think the ‘piracy’ of music and movies is evil wait till you see what happens when we can print/make copies of cool things). More on that later.

But for now, who wants to join me in exploring ways to provide easy access to science for anyone who wants it?

Fang – Mike Seyfang

• Quirky bars
• Too much flash food
• A different vibe in each district or quarter
• A very helpful dude at an internet cafe near Moulin Rouge (Lebara.fr prepaid SIM – works a treat)
• Fun times with friends
• Clean, quiet (albeit tiny) room with free ‘Medievil’ WiFi
• Awesome metro system
• Laid back, safe vibe even on metro late at night
• Church at Notre-Dame
• Finding a local market (on our way out)
• Segway tour
• Playgrounds that forbid activity
• Lots of fancy clothes
• No smoking indoors (much better than last trip)
• Special times for my beloved bride

A Flickr collection of photos from our trip to Europe in 2013 for your viewing pleasure.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

Being too tired to think straight and not yet having any means of communication we dropped our bags in the room and walked around the block. By now it was about 7am and uncomfortably hot. We seemed to be in a ‘computer district’ and there were a whole bunch of people carrying shopping bags that looked like they would contain electronic gadgetry. The people on their way to work seemed to be mostly from India. Our Telestial SIM card burst into life and we were able to get in touch with our friend Andrew who gave us a few suggestions on things to see and an invite to his church the following day (Friday).

We took Andrew’s advice and used taxis instead of booking on one of the circular bus tour things. This worked out well and it was quite cheap to get to the places we wanted to see – like the famous Dubai Mall with it’s rather fancy fountain. It was almost deserted by the time we got there and we treated ourselves to an american hamburger at an empty Johhny Rocket franchise followed by a look at the aquarium.

By the time we got back to the Hotel, a non-smoking room was available and we changed rooms with a minimum of fuss – phew. We then took a short walk down to the Dubai Creek and caught a Abra over to the spice souk (market) on the other side.

We walked a bit too far then lost the will to live searching for a supermarket for some brekkie cereal and instant noodles. Finally found one & staggered back to find that we had no kettle with which to prepare the noodles. Had one beer at the very smelly Irish pub and went to bed.

Next morning we grabbed a cab to the ‘Madinat Jumeirah’ and enjoyed a fantastic breakfast looking at the Burj Al Arab then wandering the resort shops. A very short cab ride took us to the convention centre at another very flash hotel where our friend’s church meets. That was quite an interesting experience with heaps of ex-pats working in Dubai. We even met the Emirates pilot who flew our plane from Adelaide!

Next we enjoyed a wonderful lunch at an even flasher resort followed by a wonderful cruise out of the Palm marina in his boat. The feel from out on the water on a Friday was awesome. We jumped overboard and sat in the clean, safe water surrounded by locals and ex-pats having fun boating & skydiving around us for about two hours catching up on our respective life journeys. Something I will always remember fondly.

Feeling adventurous, we grabbed a metro to the Dubai Mall so we could check out the fountain again (they say it is better at night). In stark contrast to our Thursday morning visit, the place was packed – we saw the blasted fountain the joined an uncomfortably long queue for a cab back to the hotel. Slept well, off at the crack of dawn for our flight to Paris.

Search flickr for ‘fangoparis‘ to find a whole bunch more of our photos from this trip.
A Flickr collection of photos from our trip to Europe in 2013 for your viewing pleasure.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

YAK:

It looks like this and has served me extremely well – indoor flying at ETSA park with SSL one Thursday per month and most mornings out on Glenelg Oval.

Runs 2s batteries to power trusty TURNIGY 2204-14T 19g Outrunner with 8×4.3 props. Other bits:

• TURNIGY 2204-14T 19g Outrunner
  
• TURNIGY Plush 6A /.8bec/6g Speed Controller
• OrangeRx R410 Spektrum DSM2 Compatible 4Ch 2.4Ghz Receiver
• HXT500 5g / .8kg / .10sec Micro Servo
• ZIPPY Flightmax 350mAh 2S 20C (AUS Warehouse)

Fang – Mike Seyfang

60 Size Thunder Tiger Trainer:
I jumped on the HobbyKing website and ordered:

• 13/4/2011 Turnigy 5000mAh 6S 20C Lipo Pack (AUS Warehouse)
•  1/4 /2011 H-King 60A Brushless Speed Controller – Helicopter & Fixed Wing
•  1/4 /2011 TGY AerodriveXp SK Series 42-60 500Kv / 1475W
•  1/4 /2011 APC style propeller 12×6-E
•  1/4 /2011 PolyMax 3.5mm Gold Connectors 10 PAIRS (20PC)
•  1/4 /2011 EC3 plugs (10pairs/set)

Then I started scouring the web for a ‘Thunder Tiger 60′ model – to no avail. So I started wandering around the local hobby shops and when I got to ‘Model Mania’ in Morphett Vale I found one that had just been bought in on consignment. $130 later I had my plane!

RX – 14ch Futaba that shipped with my 12FG TX.

DATA:

Running on 6s with a 14×7 prop gives 1381 watts of power at a max of just under 60 amps.

# Note – Flight Thu Nov 17 2011.
# Note – Thunder Tiger Trainer with ICE100.
# Note – Various props tested:
# Note – 13×7 session a b
# Note – 14×7 session c d
# Note – 12×6 session e
# Note – 13×6.5 session f
# Note – Max: 58.3a 25.3v (1382Watt recorded]

Ashley’s is the red one, mine is the blue one.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

R2DIAN:

Still flying at the time of writing this post (April 2013). In fact, I flew it today!

Fang – Mike Seyfang

I literally flew this thing to death. It just plain collapsed from EPP/Tarzan’s grip repair fatigue.

OSIRIS copy:

This one is a ‘Mike Schneider’ special. Cut from EPP foam with a home-made laser cutter in his loungeroom. These shots are the closest thing to an ‘instruction manual’ you will find. Wish I had recorded Mike’s narrative while he assembled the bits on his lounge floor.

The build for these EPP planes takes a couple of days and requires:

• Tarzan’s grip (glue)
• Some 1mm, 3mm carbon rod
• A length of carbon strip 3-4mm wide for wing leading edge
• Cut up old floppy disk mylar to make hinges that are glued in (Mike tells me that blenderm tape works much better, but I like the nostalgia and durability of the old floppy disks)
• No 13 hose Oring to attach prop to motor (Prop saver)
• Servos, Motor, prop, ESC, receiver, batteries (the orange list was hand written by Andy at my first appearance at Aberfoyle HUB indoor flying one Sunday morning (with input from Scott Gage, Mike Schneider and Bob Tait).

Fang – Mike Seyfang

Flew it once on Glenelg oval one calm morning and decided to put it away before I trashed it. Just love the hand-stitched hinges on elevator and rudder.

Decided I am going to fly it on the next calm morning – stay tuned for update.

UPDATE:

This morning was calm and fly she did – what a joy to control something that actually flies through the air – as opposed to being dragged around by brute force and ignorance. Such a graceful, gentle craft – totally affected by any tiny gust of wind or rising air. First flight was a tad hairy because I had too much up elevator trim – she would oscillate quite badly in a series of very gentle stalls while turning or on descent. Threw in about 20 clicks of down trim and all good. See for yourself on the sneaky iPhone video I took with one hand, while flying with the other!

Chatterbox:

2s 10a esc, TURNIGY 2204-14T 19g Outrunner 1450Kv motor, 8×6 prop. (also flew i2th 8×4.3 a tad under-powered if a quick burst of upwardness is required).

Fang – Mike Seyfang

Parkzone Radian:

What a fluke – this foam glider model by ParkZone turned out to be a real ripper and kick-started my radio controlled flying obsession and kindled a love for aircraft of the soaring kind. Having recieved a ‘looxcie’ bluetooth video camera (as a gift from friend and twitter follower mr VAF) I thought it might be fun to get some footage from a radio controlled airplane. A few google searches later I had discovered First Person Viewer (FPV) flight and a foam glider called the parkzone radian.

I (eventually) got hold of a ‘Ready to Fly’ version that included a Spektrum DX5e 2.4ghz transmitter for a couple of hundred dollars. I put it together on Christmas day 2010, and took it over to Glenelg Oval for a test flight. I was expecting to gently circle around a few times and land safely. I had no idea the radian was designed to climb rapidly then catch thermals and eventually land! After a brief but terrifying flight I decided to join a club (with a bit more space than a footy oval) and learn how to fly. I joined the Holdfast Model Aero club and was eventually (and somewhat reluctantly) granted my solo license on an electric glider.

My first real flying was done in Feb 2011 at the Bowman’s farm near Ororoo (site of my motorcycle accident). All pieces were carefully transported in the original foam box and I had a great time learning to glide about and land safely. I also learned a lot about charging the LiPo batteries and went back to basic electronics to revisit OHM’s law and to finally figure out the relationship between Coulombs, Amps, Volts, Watts and Amp-hours.

After a time, or few times anyway, the ratio of adventure to mis-adventure began to climb and I started to get the hang of basic flight control. Soon I would be ready for my first ‘solo’ flight as a fully fledged club member. Little did I know that my first ‘solo’ flight would include a head-on-collision with a large nitro powered plane!

I lost!

But that was not the end of this radian. It was repaired and resurrected as ‘franken-radian’ which subsequently had a few more crashes, was stiffened with carbon fibre and gave me the courage to attempt slope-soaring with zero tuition! At the time of writing (April 2013 – two and a quarter years later, the franken-radian was still flyable). This flickr set has more photos of my model planes and their flying adventures.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

This toy did not fly!

Fang – Mike Seyfang

• Re-visit my old NetNewsWire application I purchased for Mac OSX many moons ago (and check the landscape for equivalent applications).
• Bite the bullet and ‘selfDogFood‘ a server side RSS aggregator like Tiny Tiny RSS or similar.
• Find something new (bearing in mind the magazine style iOS apps that lack the ability to manage unread items).

p.s. Hat Tip to Leo and Stephen for getting me thinking about server side.

Good bye Google #reader – hello TT RSS. Finally found a suitable replacement. Time to de-google a bit more .. – .. bit.ly/XWkCvv

— Leo Gaggl (@leogaggl) March 18, 2013

Fang – Mike Seyfang

I wasn’t going to whinge about this until I met up with my esteemed colleague (and the other ‘mayor’ of most of the Womad stages) Michael Coghlan. He echoed my sentiment that it seems that the ‘success’ (ie growth) of WOMADelaide has gone a tad too far. With so many rules & regulations designed to protect financial interests it feels like one is cheating by trying to SHARE anything of the experience with others who have not PAID. By sharing I mean anything from extra tickets to photos, and heaven forbid – video recording from smart phone if you are lucky enough to get front and centre!

Now that I have that off my chest, I do want to say how grateful I am to have been there for the full four days to suck the marrow from the awesome array of artistry that the event attracts. With the help of a few well informed friends and the awesome program guide I was able to discover some real unexpected treats. What follows is my journal as compiled by my FourSquare check-ins.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

Here is the trick (courtesy of the ATO): Java Preferences are in the Utilities folder (not system preferences, not each browser).

3. Once Java and the AUSkey software are installed please follow the below steps:
– Click ‘GO’ from the top menu (if you cannot see ‘GO’ you may need to minimize your programs and click on the desktop)
– Click ‘Utilities’
– Double Click ‘Java Preferences’
– Tick the ‘Enable applet plug-in and Web Start applications’ button (This is located in the General TAB)
– Close Java preferences and try to use your AUSkey

This fixes the error with the SAML Pre-Request in Safari on OSX:

System Error 

An error has occurred while detecting your system configuration or accessing the required software on your machine.

Please click Close.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

After taking her AMAYSIM sim card out of the iPhone 3Gs, cutting it down to micro-sim for the iPhone 4, restoring from the last iCloud backup (which bought all apps, settings and data back very nicely) I kept getting the error message “Cannot Get Mail The connection to the sever failed.”

Worse, after much google searching, deleting re-creating mail accounts, etc we ended up with no contacts and no way of getting the ios 6.0 mail app working properly. By properly I mean the previous best practice of adding a Microsoft Exchange mail account which provided synchronisation of gmail contacts and calendars via activesync. This is the setup we both used up to now and it worked beautifully – calendar sharing a breeze, all our contacts managed by gMail with seamless updates from iPhone, web or anywhere else.

After much searching I discovered that it is a case of lousy timing and a typical game of vendors refusing to play nicely. Lousy timing because since we all set up our iPhones Google have discontinued support for the previous ‘best practice’ Starting January 30, 2013, users, other than paid Google Apps users, won’t be able to set up new devices using Google Sync. iPhone and iPad users should see Sync Gmail, Calendar and Contacts. What this means is that there is a new best practice that looks like this:

• Create a CardDAV account to sync gMail contacts with iPhone.
• Create an old-school Gmail account to synch google calendar using CalDAV (not a CalDAV account)
• Use the new gMail iPhone app instead of the built in ios mail app

These instructions came courtesy of this (26 Feb2013) update from Google:

This seems to work OK. The contacts are fine, the gMail app is a lot nicer to use (but is not as well integrated for things like e/mailing photos, links etc) and the calendars work well – as long as you REMEMBER to set the correct default calendar!

Here are a bunch of screen shots from my working setup:

Fang – Mike Seyfang

ALL PLANET TALKS at:
Stage 6 Speakers Corner

SATURDAY 9 MARCH – FOOD SECURITY & SUSTAINABILITY

TAKING CARE OF OUR OWN PATCH
Midday – 1.00pm / Hosted by Robyn Williams
Speakers: Simon Bryant, Ronni Kahn & Costa Georganis

FOOD SECURITY & SUSTAINABILITY
4.00pm – 5.00pm / Hosted by Bernie Hobbs
Speakers: Dr Dana Cordell, Prof Randy Stringer & Graham Brookman

SUNDAY 10 MARCH – ACTIVISM & CHANGE

CAN GOVERNMENT RISE TO THE CHALLENGE OF CLIMATE CHANGE?
1.00pm – 2.00pm / Hosted by Robyn Williams
Speaker: Giles Parkinson, Prof Ian Lowe, Anna Rose

ACTIVISTM & ‘SLACKTIVISM’
5.00pm – 6.00pm / Hosted by Bernie Hobbs
Speakers: Anna Rose, Miranda Gibson and Urthboy (The Herd)

MONDAY 11 MARCH – POPULATION GROWTH

POPULATION & CONSUMPTION
1.00pm – 2.00pm / Hosted by Robyn Williams
This will be a one-on-one ‘In Conversation’ between Paul Ehrlich and Robyn Williams.

THE ELEPHANTS IN THE ROOM: THE LIMITS TO GROWTH
5.00pm – 6.00pm / Hosted by Bernie Hobbs
Speakers: Paul Ehrlich, Graham Turner & Prof Corey Bradshaw

  
I will be doing some media work for the Environment Institute at the University of Adelaide at WOMAD this year. Last year we had a separate ‘EarthStation’ event, this year there will be a series of talks during the WOMADelaide event.

wp.me/pp6py-1lw Blog post about Paul Erlich’s involvement
@womadelaide
#womadelaide
#womad
@internode
@conservbytes

http://www.adelaide.edu.au/environment
http://www.womadelaide.com.au/getting-there – MAP
http://www.womadelaide.com.au/documents/womad2013-map–2.pdf

SATURDAY 9 MARCH – FOOD SECURITY & SUSTAINABILITY

TAKING CARE OF OUR OWN PATCH
Midday – 1.00pm / Hosted by Robyn Williams

With agricultural land being lost to urbanisation, climate change threatening productivity and the costs of production rising, we can no longer take the food we enjoy for granted. But is there anything we can do as individuals? By reducing wastage, selecting local and seasonal produce where possible, and even growing our own veggies, the panel discusses how a happier and healthier society might be as simple as taking care of our own patch.

Speakers: Simon Bryant, Ronni Kahn & Costa Georganis

FOOD SECURITY & SUSTAINABILITY
4.00pm – 5.00pm / Hosted by Bernie Hobbs

Is there enough food to feed the world’s growing population? What impact might climate change, water shortages, poor soils and crop disease have on Australian agriculture in the future? Does science have the answers to these questions or do we need to change our attitudes and behaviours toward food? Join our expert panel as they examine the pressing issues which underpin global food security.

Speakers: Dr Dana Cordell, Prof Randy Stringer & Graham Brookman

SUNDAY 10 MARCH – ACTIVISM & CHANGE

CAN GOVERNMENT RISE TO THE CHALLENGE OF CLIMATE CHANGE?

1.00pm – 2.00pm / Hosted by Robyn Williams

Our politicians have available to them most of the good advice and information that they need to be able to address a coherent response to climate change. Yet the response thus far has been slow and piece-meal, with both ideology and fear of the political consequences of radical action de-railing or holding up key policy initiatives. How can we play politics with the very future of the planet and human civilisation on the line? What are the barriers to decisive action? Can the democratic system actually deliver the necessary response in time? Our panel of political insiders and commentators probes the most confronting policy issue facing leaders around the world.

Speaker: Giles Parkinson, Prof Ian Lowe, Anna Rose

ACTIVISTM & ‘SLACKTIVISM’

5.00pm – 6.00pm / Hosted by Bernie Hobbs

How can you draw attention to, and fight for, the issues you care about? Can a social movement or a change to government policy come about by simply ‘liking’ something on Facebook, or is that a feel-good, slacker’s form of activism? This session’s panellists have used their powers of persuasion in many diverse ways; through books, music, docos, the internet and social media. They will talk about engaging, successful and modern forms of activism and advocacy.

Speakers: Anna Rose, Miranda Gibson and Urthboy (The Herd)

MONDAY 11 MARCH – POPULATION GROWTH

POPULATION & CONSUMPTION

1.00pm – 2.00pm / Hosted by Robyn Williams

For the first time an array of interconnected problems is moving a global civilisation toward collapse. Driven by increasing overpopulation and overconsumption by the rich, these dilemmas include climate disruption, loss of ecosystem services, global poisoning, depletion of resources (especially soils and groundwater), and the threat of vast famines, epidemics and resource wars.

This will be a one-on-one ‘In Conversation’ between Paul Ehrlich and Robyn Williams.

THE ELEPHANTS IN THE ROOM: THE LIMITS TO GROWTH

5.00pm – 6.00pm / Hosted by Bernie Hobbs

214 years ago Malthus wrote: “The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man”. In 1972 the Club of Rome commissioned The Limits to Growth. This landmark report,using a sophisticated model to simulate the interactions between the Earth’s systems and mankind’s relentless development, proposed that unchecked population and economic growth would lead us to exceed the planet’s carrying capacity.Recent updates by the authors and others, along with analysis advanced by writers such as Jared Diamond (Collapse) have led to grave concerns that we are heading for a precipice of societal collapse. Are population growth and a commitment to endless economic growth not the twin ‘elephants in the room’ of the sustainability debate?

Speakers: Paul Ehrlich, Graham Turner & Prof Corey Bradshaw

Fang – Mike Seyfang

I did.

But what happened to February? According to my calendar it is March already and I have not even thought about a blogging regime for 2013. One thing I have noticed is that my occasional tweets and facebook posts seem to be falling on deaf ears. Could this be the year where we leave those walled-gardens aside and return to much more productive on-line activities, like blogging?

I hope so.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

• itunesu.itunes.apple.com – course manager
• Links for today: pinboard.in/u:fang/t:aphs+mon3 – including the Start Here blog post on creating your own textbooks.
  
• pinboard.in/u:fang/t:aphs – a longer list of links collected (since April 2012)
• Exercises:
• ENROL: in Mike’s iTunesU course https://itunesu.itunes.apple.com/enroll/JNN-MSP-922
• ENROL: in Jak’s iTunesU course https://itunesu.itunes.apple.com/enroll/KR5-V8A-CK4
• Patterns: TPCK, SAMR, ReMix / Mashup small chunks of text, image, audio, video.
• A definition of OER (Open Educational Resources) that mentions remix and attributes Stephen Downes, author of OLDaily and a significant influence on my own thinking.
• Tips from the day:
• iBooks Author: many small books are better than one big book with many sections, use video in books sparingly,

IMAGES:

Fang – Mike Seyfang