I'm back (sort of)

It's been way too long since I wrote anything here.  I can't really cover what I do at work so I'm pivoting to cover other topics that interest me like travel and photography. 

If all goes as planned I'll publish a post every day or so about my trip Peru this summer. 

Fellow early bird

It was a great morning to get some exercise.

Parco Bresso ~7am

Bye, bye Linate as a motorbike friendly airport

One of the things I really liked about Milan Linate airport was the free motorbike parking next to the checkin area. I have saved a lot of time, and money, over the years by going by motorbike.

That changed last year when they "upgraded" the free area with subpar asphalt which made motorbikes fall over:

It's weird, but it's cheaper to fly London and back than to go to the airport and back by taxi or park your motorbike for a business trip...

Arduino Halloween

Had fun with the kids yesterday preparing for Halloween

Ingredients:
1 pumpkin
1 recycled Happy Meal toy (I think)
1 Arduino Duemilanove
1 distance sensor
3 yellow LEDs
3 red LEDs
2 blue LEDs
1 9V battery
1 300 Ohm resistor

I love hacker friendly toys

My old Nabaztag was the first victim.  This time it's the turn of a Nerf Blaster clone:

After removing some standard Phillips screws, I got exactly what I wanted:

• The orange "launch" module in the bottom left of the picture. It's a standalone piece that's originally powered by 3 AA batteries but should work fine on a Arduino friendly 5V (or higher :-). Even the mounts can be recycled for the project I'm working on.
• The orange "piston" at the top of the picture. I had a simpler design in mind but this one is more compact so it will work even better.

I bought this toy in a local store but I usually go to the flea market in Cormano where I can pick up a R/C car / toy without remote control for a few euros. Way cheaper than buying individual components like wheels, engines, and electrical components piece by pice.

Photos / video of the final project should be available "soon".

How to configure WiFi connection on a HP F4580

Just a note to myself as I wasted more time than I should have fixing this.

I recently changed the WiFi access credentials and my HP F4580, obviously, stopped working. Neither the Mac nor the Windows drivers I had let me edit the WiFi settings but I finally found a way to reset the WiFi configuration:

• Turn on the printer
• Click and hold down the Cancel button
• Click and release the WiFi button
• Release the Cancel button

This creates a ad hoc network called hpsetup that you can connect to via WiFi to configure the router.

Android table rover

This guy is the reason is the reason I haven't gotten any more work done on my Android powered rabbit.

I started off using 3 MaxBotix MB1000 sensors (downwards left, forward, downwards right). The forward sensor always worked pretty well but I had problems getting fast and accurate readings from the sensors pointing downwards. Without calibrating the sensors (making sure they were pointed away from any object) I got results that where to inaccurate to use for table top navigation.

Tonight  I tried the Sharp GP2Y0D810 sensor from hobbytronics which makes a huge difference. It's lightning fast and it has a small red LED which is lit when there is an object within a 2-10 cm range which is a great help for debugging. The sensor may be less versatile then the MaxBotix sensor as it only gives a true/false result for a limited range but, in my experience, it's fast, accurate and developer friendly which I exactly what I need. It also cost a lot less :-)

The rover in the video is using two Sharp GP2Y0D810 sensors pointing downwards and a MaxBotix MB1000 for obstacle detection.