Techno Gumbo

Concept Flash Player

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 15:42:45 EST

I didn't feel like writing, but wanted to clean up some alt tags on the images. First, here is a concept for my interactive flash streaming webcam player. Second, for fun; here is a visual history of all of my projects since I started working on projects.

Custom Prototype Circuit Boards

Mon, 24 Nov 2007 10:03:20 EST

I was writing an e-mail to one of my former professors about the etching method I am using, and wanted to copy it on here for future reference. See it below. After looking at how much it would be to do a small run of boards even at a reasonable place like sunstone circuits I did a lot of searching around. In any case, I have attached two images of a simple and very small board that I just etched using the subtractive method that is for a Atmel microcontroller and simple servo control. I wanted to share this method with you because I think it would be much more practical (as long as they take care with the muratic acid) for your students than paying a fabrication house to make a professional board. As you can see from the images, this method will work for surface mount parts too. The only down side is that you are limited to a two layer board (front and back). However, I wouldn't think any students in school would really need a multi-layered board any way.Instructions can be found about the methods I used at the following links:

The Iron On Transfer Method - http://www.instructables.com/id/Two-sided-PCB-using-toner-method/
The Muratic Acid + Hydogen Peroxide subtractive etch method - http://www.instructables.com/id/Stop-using-Ferric-Chloride-etchant!--A-better-etc/
The free software I used to make the schematics for the iron on transfer can be found here - http://www.cadsoft.de/index.htm
A great tutorial for the Eagle layout editor can be found here - http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/present.php?p=BEE-8-EagleSchematic

List of Materials for this method
1. Cheap Glossy laser printer paper
2. Black & White laser printer (I know all of the labs on campus have these)
3. Electric Iron
4. Muratic Acid 10mol - (Can be found as driveway cleaner or pool acid at Lowes/Home Depot)
5. Hydrogen Peroxide
6. Canister to do the etching in - I used a cut out washing machine soap container
7. Drill to drill the final holes in the board
8. Copper clad board (I think the radio shack in Mt. Pleasant sells this or you can order it online)
9. Rubbing Alcohol or Acetone to clean off the laser printer ink at the end
10. Something to cut the copper clad into a size that fits your layout

Its Hard to Get Ahead

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 17:22:35 EST

For the first time as long as I can remember I can confidently say that I am engaged in a very challenging situation. I have a week and two days in order to finish an original locomotion and electronics design that encompasses everything I have learned on my own since graduating from college. While that's going on I also have to waste my time working a 40 - 50 hour per week job. I am confident that I can meet the challenge, but I have learned when doing things new, that nothing ever goes the way you hope it to so there have been delays.I have been working on the mechanical design of the 1-servo walker pretty much all last week and this weekend. After putting my design together it doesn't work! It just dance's but doesn't walk. I'm going to try and put mini-castors on him and see if I can get it to skate instead of walk. In any case, if the design doesn't work, I have prepared the necessary parts in order to build a version that I know works. The main priority is making sure I can control the servo I am using via a custom circuit that I have not yet proven works.I wish that I could just relax and not have to worry about this stuff all the time, but like IBM's chief of research's dad told him when he was growing up; "nothings going to change if nothing changes". Now, back to work on my list of priorities for the week. If I get it done, ill post pictures/video of the little guy.

DARPA Urban Challenge

Sat, 03 Nov 2007 20:48:57 EST

I have spent the whole day watching the DARPA Urban Challenge, the super bowl of the science world. It is an autonomous vehicle race between teams to see who's vehicle can complete the course in a set amount of time. If sports fans get this excited about a football game, then they are pretty lucky to have one every Saturday. This thing only happens once every two years.Something I find pretty interesting is that the only apparent major automaker that is a sponsor of any of the teams, is GM. They seem to the the primary sponsor for Carnegie Melon. This begs the question in my mind if GM is hoping to get a head start on all of their foreign rivals that are currently handing them their lunch in the auto industry. If GM were the first to come out with a fully autonomous car, I would certainly buy one! Imagine how much time people waste driving to and from work every day. You could really use that time for other things...(Like sleeping!!!)

Circuit Board Fabrication Tips

Sat, 03 May 2008 13:46:22 EST

While recently putting together the PWM and RS232 boards I learned a few lessons about building circuit boards.There are quite a few ways to make them, but I use single sided copper clad boards, Eagle to make the trace pattern, the iron on transfer method, then chemical etching using muratic acid. These may be quite trivial to those formally educated in the art, but I wanted to put up a quick list of tips just in case.

1. Place the most tricky parts on the etched circuit board first. It's a real bummer when you get 3/4 of your parts on a board and mess something up beyond repair. There goes a bunch of money that you will have to throw away. I had to do the PWM board twice because I didn't use enough flux and accidentally bridged a whole bunch of pins on one of my FTDI chips.I tried to use some smd removal compound, but accidentally tore some of the traces off of my board. I also waited to put the USB connector on last on the RS232 board. Bad idea as I had a ton of problems with one of the through hole pins due to bad drilling and almost had to scrap that board too.

2. Avoid through hole parts. As long as you have good flux and a magnifying glass, its best to just use surface mount parts. It takes a TON of time to drill all of the holes needed for through hole parts. Drilling takes extra time and also adds another step that could mess up your end product.Its pretty easy to drill traces off of a board if your bit isn't small enough. It also takes extra time to cut all of the leads. Through hole parts are also more difficult to secure on a single sided board because they can only be secured on one side of the board.

OEM GPS and Surface Mount Electronics

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 16:10:58 EST

When I originally started working with surface mount electronics the first thing I tried to make was a RS232 to USB converter. I basically gave up on this after a little bit because I figured USB to microcontroller communication would be a much better idea because I knew there was more to learn from programming a microcontroller as well.I used this configuration for the Electronic Control Using Flash project.

After having a lot of trouble around September of last year getting the FT232RL SSOP chip to work, I started a journal that I use to record everything I have done in a day and my hypothesis as to why this or that isn't working and the next days plan for solving it. It eventually turned out that the main problem with the FTDI and MAX chips were due to bad contacts of the pins. Being inexperienced at the time, it took me a little bit in order to figure out the best way to come to that simple conclusion.

Flex and Red5 Surveillance System

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:20:10 EST

After finally understanding AS2 well, I wanted to try my hand at Flex development using Adobe's free Flex SDK in combination with FlashDevelop and Red5.It also just so happens that my father needed some sort of security camera solution for his business. I thought, "hey Red5's ability to record streams would be a perfect solution for this"!

I was surprised how easy it is to use Flex(AS3) in comparison to AS2. Using Mtasc and Swfmill for hacking together AS2 applications has been completely replaced by Adobe's MXML. Adobe also fixed a lot of the complication surrounding event listeners and having to use external 3rd party classes like delegate for AS2. Flex is definitely not hacky like AS2 was and manipulating components with MXML seems a lot more similar to using controls in visual basic and ASP in visual studio.

Anyway, on to the details of the surveillance system. In a traditional surveillance system, the camera is always recording which wastes tape. I would also imagine that the tapes wear out fast and are expensive to archive and physically store. I built my application so that it will only record video streams once a certain level of motion is detected.The motion threshold is easily adjustable with a horizontal slider control. Basically you connect to a red5 server and once the camera detects enough motion it makes a stream to red5 and red5 then records 10 seconds of video. In my test setup I use a laptop with the swf client and webcam which is connected wirelessly to a local router.I also have the same machine connected wirelessly to the router. In this instance, it really wouldn't matter if someone smashed your security camera because the video stream would have already been sent remotely to wherever the Red5 video server is running. Other advantages would be that you could have a 3rd party manage and archive the video streams remotely for you and that you could implement this into your existing businesses wireless network.

Sprint EVDO for Rural Broadband

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 9:08:32 EST

My parents literally live in the middle of no where. Their house is seven miles directly in between two miniature towns with populations just barely over 1000. In the past, it has been hard to even get a mobile phone signal unless you were standing in the front yard on a clear day.Needless to say, it has always been hard to get any kind of reliable Internet connection for my parents. They are also unfortunately on the end of the phone line and there is periodic static which slows 56k dial up speeds considerably.

Due to the location of my parents, the only broadband option they had was a satellite connection. I was extremely skeptical of this service as I have never read good reviews for it. I decided satellite would be the last option.

Tips for Learning Complex Subjects

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 11:48:10 EST

Recently I have been working on teaching myself advanced calculus as well as additional concepts in electrical engineering. I have also been doing my best to catch up with all of the recent papers written for robot localization and signal propagation. I by no means have an expert memory.I routinely have trouble remembering names and normally have to cover material multiple times. There are a four techniques that I have started to use routinely which reduce the amount of time I have to spend covering material. I wanted to share them, because this methodology may be helpful to others.

1. When trying to learn a subject you know nothing about, pick material that is most relevant to what you are working on and attempt to read and comprehend it. If there are sections you don't understand just skim them for now.For example, I can understand many of the papers on robotics that I read, but there are certain cases where I can't comprehend the mathematical equations listed. I can skip the equations and still understand the concepts of the article.

2. Write down concepts and terms you don't understand and keep reading if they aren't critical to understanding the subject. If the terms are critical, stop reading and look those up. When I originally started working with microcontrollers I didn't have a clue what some of the terms meant while reading the manual.By looking them up as I was reading, the subject became much more clear. Even while I am working on math, if I run into a symbol I don't know, or a term; I just look it up. Doing this is quite trivial due to the ease of searching on line.

3. Work on the complex material at your peak time of the day. For me; I have noticed that I can comprehend and do my best work in the morning while drinking coffee. This is also the time that I am the most motivated to work on extra material. It will be different for everyone, but I am sure that there is a peak time for each individual.

4. Later in the day, review the material you covered for repetition. I try my best to go over the concepts I have learned each day in my mind before bed, while driving, or just during down time. Repetition is always something that will help get the new concepts into your long term memory.

I hope these four tips help you increase your learning arsenal. They have repeatedly proved to be the most valuable part of my tool box.

Make a Wind Powered LED

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 21:55:10 EST

Have an old VCR laying around and don't know what to do with it? I am very proud to announce that the tutorial about how to make a neat light up LED pinwheel from an old VCR has been completed!You can now check out the whopping six minute video as well as the many still pictures and detailed steps. I would like to thank Matt Keinath for allowing me to temporarily make a mess of his nice sun room. What are you waiting for? Head over to the tutorials and check it out!

New Flash And Electronics Project

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 10:46:10 EST

A new project about electrical control using the flash player has been posted in the projects section of the site.There is a demonstration video as well as a short explanation of the software and hardware as well as future plans for the project.

The new LED pinwheel tutorial is really close to being completed. Unfortunately all of the blue LEDs I had were drawing too much power so I had to place an order for a smaller LED. Look for that tutorial soon..

Seeking Interactive Web Employment Opportunity

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 08:40:10 EST

Just in case anyone happens to run across the site, I wanted to post that I am actively seeking new employment.I am willing to relocate to any location in the United States for the right opportunity. I have an extreme passion for robotics, the web, video production, telepresence, and electronics. I am not afraid of long hours as if I am not at work, I am almost always working on a project of my own concerning one of the passions listed above.If you are interested, I would encourage you to examine my resume and contact me using the "Messenger" section of the website, or contact information provided on my resume.

The State of Learning in 2008

Thur, 06 Mar 2008 09:32:10 EST

One of the things that I have to say I enjoy the most about being alive is the pleasure that I find in learning. It has been my goal since I graduated from college in May 2007 to teach myself the principals of electrical engineering.I have to say that I have always been astonished with the sheer amount of information available on the Internet concerning computer science and electrical engineering. Keeping in mind the history of the Internet, I attribute this fact to the notion that the disciplines of computer science and electrical engineering are actually the two fields that contributed the most to the creation of the modern Internet.

I have observed that for other areas of interest, there isn't as much quality content available on the Internet yet. However, I have noticed over the last few years an increase in quality substance mainly from web 2.0 outlets. The movement of publishing streaming videos online, and advent of podcasting has also contributed to the increase in content for other subject areas.

Web 2.0 Content

The best example that I can provide for quality information covering a wide variety of areas is Instructables. There are many other sites popping up all the time, but I think that example is by far the most robust and developed. This site has tutorials on subjects that range from complex microcontroller programming to the eloquent art of preparing salmon for dinner.

Streaming Video Content

An example is that the BBC is now publishing most of their full programs online. Despite the fact that you have to be a British citizen to view the content, I have still found and viewed many BBC documentaries on Google video and Youtube that cover everything from Turrets Syndrome to Particle Physics. The online video movement is also filled with academic lectures that are available for free.A resource that I like to use for finding great documentaries is the Best Free Documentary Blog.

Podcasting

This is an area that has proliferated so immensely that you can pretty much find subject areas on everything. An aspect that is helping to saturate the subject coverage is that major media outlets such as NPR are publishing their shows in the digital form. Many businesses have also learned that this is a simple and relatively inexpensive opportunity for advertising.This isn't advertising in the traditional sense; it is much more subtle and also helpful to the user. For example, lets say that I am a battery manufacturer for automobiles. I may publish a series of podcasts that inform users on best practices for maintaining optimal battery life and subsequently explain how my product fits into that strategy.This is a win-win situation for the consumer and supplier because it provides helpful information for the consumer weather or not they buy the product and is a much more contextual form of advertising for the supplier.A few of my favorite podcasts are: Econ Talk, Futures in Biotech, Talking Robots, Security Now, This Week in Tech, and Science's general Podcasts.

Access to Quality Content

A major concern of mine is that much of the streaming video content is only available to a segmented percentage of the population. Namely, those with access to high speed Internet connections. If you take into account my argument that quality content for new web subject areas are mainly being dispersed via streaming media, this leaves people without access to high speed Internet subsequently not having access to these exciting new subject areas either.

In conclusion I think that it has never been better if you are in the computer science or electrical engineering fields. The rest of the subject areas are slowly catching up due to the nice abstraction that social media and web 2.0 are providing the common user which is leading to easier methodology for them to publish content on the web. Happy learning.

New Tutorial About Open Source Flash

Thur, 28 Feb 2008 20:19:33 EST

I have posted a new tutorial about open source flash development. You can learn how to create an open source flash video preloader. A preloader makes it so thatall of the content of a flash project is loaded before it actually plays. We have all seen preloaders before. Many movie web sites have a little percentage loaded gadget that has toload the entire site before they will let you enter it. Head on over to the tutorials section to check it out.

I have also made a few subtle updates to the style sheets for the site in order to change colors and alignment. By the way; the picture is of the next tutorial I am working on. I think this onewill be everyone's favorite. Make sure to subscribe to the feed, so that you get notified when I release it.

New Videos Added More to Come

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 09:57:00 EST

I have added videos to the GPS Robotics Project and also to the Stove Top Coffee Roasting Tutorial. Props to YouTube. If you have a connection that is too slow to stream the videosfrom YouTube, please let me know. I would be happy to re-compress them and provide local downloads if they are needed. I just uploaded the GPS Robotics video, so it may not be available through the embedded player yet.I have also changed how the RSS feed works. Instead of trying to just show the first three sentences of each post, I have provided the full posts verbatim.

In other news, the problems with loading the home page have hopefully been resolved. The problem lies with Ioncube and the Expat xml parser. There are two more videos in the works right now.

1. How to Make an Open Source Flash Preloader - I just have to re-write some code for this
2. How to Make an LED Pinwheel out of an old VCR - Currently doing lighting tests and getting a rundown ready

Thanks to everyone who has been stopping by to test the site!

How to Avoid Using Server Side Includes

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 19:22:20 EST

At my previous job I worked on a web development team of a fortune 100 company.We had a core production team of about 7 people and an auxiliary team of about 20 people that were in charge of generating content for the various web sites throughout the organization. Wedealt with over 100 unique product and market driven web sites which were all centrally managed using Interwoven's Teamsite CMS.

Needless to say, implementing infrastructure changes across all of the websites was a nightmare.One of the very common techniques we used in order to have a handle on the massive amount of sites,was the use of Server Side Includes or SSI. The company's infrastructure was built upon IIS, but you can use SSI with Apache as well.

A server side include is simply a reference to another file that you want to be virtually includedin the code of a web document at load time.
Take a look at the simple hello world page below that uses a server side include for the text file hello.txt:

<html>
<head><title>Demonstrate SSI</title></head>
<body>
<h1>
<!--#include virtual = "hello.txt" -->
</h1>
</body>
</html>

Contents of hello.txt
Hello World!

The final page will be rendered as html with the text "Hello World!" inside a h1 tag. If you had a website with 20 pages and wanted to be able to update all of the content on them at once, you could use a server side include to easily do the job.The problem with this approach, is that special configuration must be done to Apache and IIS in order to enable the use of SSI. Enabling SSI can also cause conflicts with other sites or applications running on the same server. Needless to say, SSI is generally frowned upon by server administrators.So how else can we accomplish what a server side includes does without the use of it? The answer is to take advantage of the built in functionality of your favorite server side scripting language. I will be using PHP for this example because it happens to be my favorite language.
Here is our typical html document again, but this time using php to replicate the same functionality as the SSI. We will use php's "require_once" function that is usually used for including external classes or functions

<html>
<head><title>Demonstrate SSI Using PHP</title></head>
<body>
<h1>
<?php  require_once("hello.txt"); ?>
</h1>
</body>
</html>

And there you have it. The same functionality as the SSI example above, but only using php. You can do the same thing with other common server side languages as well. I routinely use this technique throughout TechnoGumbo for components such as the footer and header. It makes site wide changes much easier. Have fun!

Welcome to Techno Gumbo Version Two

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 15:46:45 EST

So welcome to the first posting of 2008 and the much improved Techno Gumbo Version 2. I built this version of the site with a modular feel in mind. I also wanted to capitalize on SEO, modern web practices,ease of full site updates (for me), and finally a place to house even better content then I could offer before. I always think it is fun to take a look at my concept drawings and compare them to the final product.I think in this instance you will agree with me that the final product turned out way better then the concepts.