Rover Controls

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Using the internet for real world interactions.

STREAM IS LIVE!

Controls are below

Concept:  Controlling devices over the internet.  The web server is up and it's no bigger than a book of matches.  It's using less power than your mouse/keyboard right now.  Hooked to three large LED's in a dark enclosure.  Improved the server to respond more rapidly to commands. Please try to crash/overload it.

On

Off

Blink

Feel free to turn the lights on and off  - proof of concept only.


Adding controls for ROV

Forward

Reverse

Left

Right

A guide to rooting the ZTE Merit

Rooting the ZTE Merit proved fun and very worth the effort. However there was a lot of information to learn in a short period of time to make this happen.  Getting the USB drivers installed proved to be the hardest part for me and simply not knowing where to look.  Once that hurdle was passed everything seemed to go pretty smoothly.  So to help others get to that point I thought I would add the steps I used.

In this guide I will show you how to accomplish this. There are a few things you'll need to do before proceeding.  This was done using Windows 7 64bit.

Step 1: download the Android SDK from here.
 I recommend that you extract/install to a simple directory or folder such as C:\android or C:\droid
(You'll need to navigate through command prompt to get here)

Step 2: download the Java SE 7u9 JDK from here.
Once these are installed go ahead and connect your phone and turn on USB Storage.


You should see a new drive show up that contains the USB Drivers needed to get this working.

Open the the drive up by double clicking it and proceed to running the Autorun.exe located on the disc.

Once you've installed the drivers it is now time to get an adb(Android Debugging) shell going.  To do this take your phone out of USB Storage mode.

Go to: Settings, Applications, Development and check USB Debugging on your phone.
Also check Stay awake and Allow mock locations.

If everything was done correctly up to this point you should now see a new icon at the top left of your screen.  If you do not see this icon your phone is not actually in debugging mode. You may have missed something in the previous steps. It would be wise to read over the steps in the Installing Android SDK Guide.

If you've made it this far good job! You're on your way to super user success. #!

Launch a command prompt as administrator and proceed below.  The rest of the steps are in a second guide and do not need to be re-typed.


You'll need one more file called "su" in your platform-tools directory.  To finish the process and obtain the su file follow the link at the end of this step.  I am not going to re-write the rest of the steps as jcase has already done a good job of this.  To follow the rest of the process and download the "su" file please use his guide here.

Good luck and happy rooting!

Streaming live on blogtv schedule

The next project involves controlling devices remotely over the internet from anywhere in the world.  I will be setting up a hardware device for people to interact with and streaming the content live on Blogtv.com August 13^th – August 14^th. Feel free to stop by my channel for a chance to interact live. The concept of controlling devices from our smart phones and the internet is becoming a reality. . So I invite you to come help test out the capabilities and for a chance to interact with the environment through the internet.  More details will be posted Friday on specific times.

Edit: Wow what a huge turn out of people over 100 viewers at times thanks to all the supporters it was fun we'll have to come up with other devices to control and do it again sometime!

Internet driven car

Started a project where I will be controlling an RC Car from across my network/internet.  Still waiting to get a wireless camera for mounting on the car so it can be viewed remotely over the internet.  Here is a picture of the cars frame/wheels I am using.

Here is a picture with a lot going on.  The white breadboard on the left is controlling the transmitter for the car (forward,reverse,left,right) The white breadboard on the right is the Arduino/Teensy++ with a WiFly attached for wireless acceptance of commands over the internet.  

Ardunio / Teensy Photoresitive mouse

Using a Teensy++ 2.0 development board (Arduino Compaitable) with a few photoresistors and an LED.  It is possible to use shadows as a way to interact with a computer.  In this example I am controlling a HID (human interface device) by simply moving my hand over the resistors and generating a shadow.  The initial flashing in the beginning is a calibration of the current "light vs shadows" currently being generated by the ambient light in the room.  From there you can take an average of that number and filter out "non movement".      Thanks to [Julien] who was able to generate a simple way to store the values and find ambient light averages.