The Roomba Scheduler is possibly one of the coolest robots one can buy for the home today. I was amazed at how well the thing works. I can’t wait to use the Roomba Open Interface and my new BlueSMiRF to write crazy software, like the Wiimote/Roomba solution. Awesome.

Unfortunately, while my Roomba was out on it’s first vacuuming mission of the Living Room floor, it dropped a little yellow clip behind it. I quickly pressed the power button, and the robot halted immediately. The Roomba had broken it’s Brush Guard.

My experience with iRobot so far has been limited, but the interface that they provided for support is good. They have online chat, e-mail, and phone support, all of which is staffed reasonable hours. I sent an e-mail with attached photo asking for a part replacement. I hope they respond to it promptly, because I really want to get vacuuming : ).

I was disappointed, but these things happen. Mine was a reconditioned unit; perhaps the previous owner was not so nice to his robot. Roomba makes these cute melodies of beeps, and drives around and gets stuck, then un-stuck. Sick almost seems like a better word to describe it’s condition than broken.

So I added some new categories, and had no good way to fix them. Fortunately, just yesterday a few days ago a new version of Batch Categories was released that is compatible with WordPress 2.0, allowing me to quickly fix my categories. It was looking dire there for a few minutes. Enjoy better navigation and categorization!

I am somewhat, perhaps to an unhealthy degree, frightened of adhesive. Not of it’s contents, or it’s consistency; it’s texture or it’s smell, but of the permanentness of it. While I understand there are somethings that are worth making permanent, the assembly of an experimental galvanometer is by no means one of those things. I question both my ability to line up the parts without smearing the epoxy, and their placement. Perhaps the dimensions won’t even be correct!

Alas I am afforded a bit of consolation in the opportunity to “dry-fit” the components of the galvo project before committing to final assembly. No thermal epoxy or cyanoacrylate, no worries when things need adjustment. I seized the opportunity and have included a number of pictures (inside this post) demonstrating the details of the assemblies, as they finally resemble something that will actually work.
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When I moved http://www.joeyhagedorn.com to the new server, I thought I had the site working perfectly. And the website was, but with the best of intentions, I thought “Joey, we can delay configuration of Exim until later, when I’m ready to start handling my own mail.” This was stupid. The comments come through e-mail! Anyway, Exim has been configured, comments are restored, and I apologize for the short service interruption in saneness of my website.

Project Canary is the project that I’ve been working on in my User Interface Design & Implementation class–CS465.

Basically the idea is to have a server that sits on a wireless network searching for open DAAP shares. The server plays back music for a room full of people, attempting to select the most acceptable music for the group. How you ask? That sharp looking Dashboard Widget above is running on each of the laptops around the room, letting each user enter their musical preferences and their choices be known. Volume is also controlled collaboratively.

I’m pretty proud of the functional prototype we’ve implemented here; it’s certainly not ready for prime time, but with a bit of work, I think there is real potential.

Feel free to download and setup the prototype from the Project Canary project page.

A few weeks ago the most adorable little Päckchen arrived on my doorstep from Germany. Inside was the EasyLase USB interface by JM Laser. The EasyLase is a USB device that has a 25-pin ILDA compatible DB-25 connector to output analog signals for laser projectors. It incorporates 12-bit DACs for the X-Y channels for superior resolution.

Above: Interface, first output on Oscilloscope

In testing so far, it seems like it is going to be great, but there is plenty of coding to do yet to achieve the greatest performance. The card has plenty to give, and extra features like DMX512 In/Out–one less thing I need to buy!

Thus far, because the projector isn’t quite finished yet, I’ve been testing with a Tektronix 2440 Oscilloscope. My friend Sean helped code a 3d Torus(QuickTime video) demo. It worked quite well, but I’m still having trouble with FTDI’s D2XX driver for OS X version 0.1.0, perhaps the next version will solve some of the problems I’m having. Specifically, read and write calls are hanging when I know they shouldn’t.