[Alex Busman]’s first foray in iOS programming looks like a pretty useful tool. He came up with Ohm Sense, an iPhone app that will take a picture of a resistor and calculate the value based on the color bands. It’s a great tool that we wish we had when we were starting out. At 99 cents, the app is also much cheaper than the emotional cost of our relationship with Violet.
Continue reading “Ohm Sense Makes Sense Of Resistor Color Bands”
[The Cheap Vegetable Gardener] wanted to check in on his garden from the road so he wrote a control app for his WinPhone. The hardware work is already done; having been built and tested for quite some time.
The implementation comes in two parts, both shown in the chart above. The grow box is behind a firewall as you don’t want random folks turning on the water and grow lights on a whim. The first part of the interface takes care of this separation by providing a set of functions on the host machine. The second portion is the phone app itself which calls those functions and displays all the pertinent information from the status of the lights, heater, exhaust, and water pump, to the current temperature and humidity. He’s even used Google Charts to graph data over time. The app itself took about two hours to code with no prior experience, a testament to the level of approachability these tools are gaining.
When the tipline popped up with this LED suit, part two, by [Marc DeVidts] we were expecing a simple led version of the previously known EL coat.
Well we were right and wrong in the same instance. Correct in that like predictions, the outcome is stonking great. Wrong in that this suit far outpaces EL in abilities we weren’t expecting. Namely to start off, an iPhone app over WiFi dictates to some 200 Arduino multiplexed RGB LED modules to dance randomly or follow patterns; an accelerometer and microphone are also implanted to further some effects. And finally if the suit isn’t enough to make you giddy, his PCB and enclosure milling surely will. Catch a video of the entire setup after the break.
[Ewan Hemingway] tipped us off about his new Android app, Androidome. This is the first one he’s turned out after going through our Android development tutorials. It combines an app running on his Android 2.1 device with a computer running Max/MSP 5. The two don’t needed to be tethered, they just need to be on the same wireless network. This won’t be the best solution if you’re doing live performances, as the buttons on the screen end up being quite small. But as you can see after the break, it’s a great way to get into working with the Monome interface and decide if you want to build a dedicated physical version of the tool.
This article will focus on developing a simple hello world program for android using Java. Google has recently released a “cute and fuzzy” programming environment for beginners to get into but I haven’t had the chance to try it, so we will be focusing on the Eclipse IDE here, which you should have set up in the last post. When creating a text based project there are two very important items. It will involve creating an android project, going through the necessary steps to complete both the (1) XML files and the (2) Java file and get this project ready for production and eventually deployment. The requirements of this project are simple, know the basis of XML (for new comers if you don’t that’s OK too, you will learn) and know Java (very basic knowledge but you will learn as we go and we will modify a few parts of the java file today).
Continue reading “Android Development 101 – Part 1:Hello World”
Android is the prime OS for developing applications in today for many reasons. The main reasons being that it is Open Source and Intuitive. In addition it uses Java for development, which is quite an easy language to get used to and develop in. This being said, a lot of you have great ideas for Android applications or applications in general but don’t know where to start. This series will take you behind the scenes and introduce you to the software that will be your best friend while developing for android. On this journey we will start with a “Hello World” and move on from there to create a database driven application with a touch and scroll interface. The final result will look something like this:
Continue reading “Android Development 101 – A Tutorial Series”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46s7nE72nvI]
[Chris] wrote in to tell us about this project he did while living in the dorms. He built a system to automate his dorm room door. It handles unlocking and opening/closing the door via iPhone, secret knock, and even the key. The lock/knob portion is handled by a servo while the opening/closing action is hydraulic. After living with it for a year, he says that it never gets old, but there were a few bugs. Apparently it would randomly open in the middle of the night sometimes. If you’re interested in doing something like this, but not damaging the door, maybe you should check out the RFID dorm door lock project.
