Tag It!
[2008.05.23] 
I picked up one of the final collector signs from Public Works today, and brought it home along with some strange looks I got as I carried it past the the hordes outside of various pubs. The final part in place and it's all working well, save for the circuit being wired anti-clockwise, though that's easily solved.
Putting it all together
[2008.05.22] 
After a long block soldering, unsolder, re-soldering, I've finally managed to get all of the data collector box together, and this is what it looks like before it's boxed up. I've soldered the extra components and controllers onto an Arduino 'ProtoShield'. I made a few silly mistakes, but they were easily fixed.
The protoshield means I can easily replace the various components if there is a failure, especially as the cables are all attached via screw down terminal blocks. The code for the Arduino board is pretty much complete, but I want to do some thorough testing before I finally load it onto the microcontroller without the Arduino Bootloader.
'Dorian Moore Project'
[2008.05.22] Andy just pointed out this listing on the Zero 1 home page made me sound like the Alan Parsons Project
0 Comments:
Start & Stop
[2008.05.19] A small milestone, seeing the start/stop buttons work in context as I do final tests to the prototype
A third and final prototype..
[2008.05.19] 
I've made the final prototype for the data collector, complete with stat-stop switches and a status indicator LED. It's much much simpler than I expected when I started this project, and that can only be a good thing in my book. Now to get soldering and get it all into the box, which I picked up from Public Works today.
Whilst I was at Public Works earlier Andreas showed me some of the signs, and I also picked up the final box for the data collector, and started fitting it out.
Memory Maps of San Jose
[2008.05.19] I'm going to be heading out to San Jose ('do you know the way?') next week with Julie Myers to work on some workshops with her, as part of Zero 1 festival.
More details on the workshops here
Prototype 2 (or 3?)
[2008.05.13] 
Having waited for the Tirna Electronics to mount the one-wire controller chips from Maxim I've inserted their chip into the circuit and was more confident that it's my dodgy code that's the problem reading the one-wire network, so I got back into the code and now have it working, a set of code for searching and manipulating a 1-Wire network via IC2 and a DS2482-100 One Wire Controller... the next step is to swap in a DS2482-800 and try and read multiple inputs.
Opinions are the mind's way of making dung,
[2008.05.09] Something said elsewhere reminded me of this postcard my mum sent me in 1997. I've had it by my desk ever since, and is an adage I remind myself of often, one of my tenets in life. It was even my .sig for a while.
Opinions are the mind's way of making dung, they are what is left after we have stopped thinking.
I wondered who had originally said it, and so did a search: no references. Anyone? perhaps it was just the typographers - Typochondriacs, whoever they are/were - thoughts. It seems this card is perhaps long forgotten, so I thought I'd post it and save it. And the nice message from my mum - 'another obscure bit of designer typography for you'....
See also:
Opinions are like assholes; everyone has one and most are full of shit.
1 Comment: what a fantastic bit of typeography
Lots of Bits
[2008.05.08] 
Wow, loads of stuff just arrived for me for building the controllers: Here's what came from where:
A couple more Arduino Boards and some spare ATMega processor chips from Tinker.it
I've got a programmer for the ATMega processors from ebay seller Sure Electronics in china: £15+shipping vs £100 in the UK. I hope it works...
The Maxim One-Wire controller ships have been soldered onto mounting boards [incredibly quickly] by Tirna Electronics
There is some more RAM for the MacBook from Offtek
A nice box mounting USB connector from Maplin
And the start stop switches which Andreas sourced from I don't know where.
Application Design
[2008.04.29] 
I've come up with a final application design I'm happy with and confident will work. Now to start implementing it all.
There will be numerous components in the system, and it's a pretty loose description, but it will do the job.
This will be based in the collector box, running a piece of software on an Arduino base ATMEGA Micro Controller. The program will check for presses of the start button, signalling a listener application on the connected MacBook that the mapping has started. It will then wait for the stop button to be pressed, and collect the data from across the 8 wire networks it can be attached to, and transmit that information to the main computer along with a stop signal.
This will be a background application on the MacBook, which will listen for signals for the data controller. Upon a 'start' it will create a new mapping, and grab co-ordinates for the floats location from the GPS device connected to the macbook, as well as logging the start time and creating a unique ID for the map. When the stop signal is recieved it will log the information gather from the various circuits into a database.
As we won't have a 'live' internet connection on the float this application will also listen for an active internet connection and upon receipt start synchronising data with he primary server were the website lives, uploading new maps and downloading any data that's changed on the website.
This will be an application that will run on the laptop on the float, and also on the website for the project. It will work slightly differently for each context, but visually will be mostly identical. It will display the latest map available, as well as allowing exploration of the maps and augmentation of the data collected.
This will be a backend application that will be triggered by the listener application, and handle the details of synchronising data with the main server.
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