After eating dinner I took a nap; it was a long day. When I woke up I was famous. Well almost.

Apple World Wide Developer Conference Student Scholarship e-mail

It appears that several of MacWarriors–Chad, Matt, and myself are starring in the WWDC Student Scholarship application e-mail, going to ADC Student Members.

If you’re a student Mac developer, I highly recommend applying for the WWDC Student Scholarship (a US $1,595 value!). I had such an awesome time last year, learning so much in a few days, I sure hope I am accepted again this year. I’ve had a bit more time to focus on Mac programming since WWDC, and I think it will be even better this year. I can’t wait!

Now back to coding LaserLine, and drivers for the EasyLase USB. I have a suspicion there’ll be a release of something this weekend…

Finally there has been some progress with LaserLine, just in time for EOH. Last Thursday night I had a chance to get EasyLaseUSB support hacked in to our ILDAInspector program; allowing me to display ILDA frames and sequences on the oscilloscope.

First ILDA Test Frame output on EasyLase USB from my Mac.

I posted some additional videos and photos at http://www.acm.uiuc.edu/~hagedorn/EasyLase/

This represents good progress toward LaserLine 2.0’s core objectives. More information about what those objectives are, and how we’re progressing is available at our Trac site.

I’ll be spending whatever free time I have over the next couple of weeks implementing the optical position-detector system on the galvos (I finally gave up on the RF-PD) and fixing bugs in the EasyLaseUSB driver for Mac OS X. It is close, but still occasionally hangs; and that needs to be fixed completely. Engineering Open House is approaching quickly; so are due dates for assignments…

As previously mentioned, when I got my Roomba Scheduler, I had some problems. After getting the replacement brush guard, Roomba stopped making its beeping noises due to a defective speaker. Fortunately iRobot, just like with the brush guard, responded immediately and sent out a replacement robot. The person I talked to in online chat support was very polite and helpful.

Brand New Roomba Scheduler!

iRobot sent a brand new robot to replace my ailing one, and it is shinier than the original. So I thought I’d play with it via Bluetooth.

Bluetooth Adapter (another pic)

Over winter break I had built a Bluetooth adapter that connects to my BlueSMiRF so I can talk to the Roomba from my PowerBook. I am proud of the compactness of the board; I still am thinking about an enclosure–perhaps a test tube?

Upgraded swivel caster!

The joys of the new robot did not end with melodies emitted from it’s functional speaker, no, I had yet to flip it over! Underneath I discovered the new, stylish, swivel caster! I thought this feature was only available on the Create and Scooba, what a pleasant surprise!

I should really put Roomba on automatic mode and set some vacuuming schedules, but I still like watching it too much for that. Playing with Roomba is something that is going to happen when procrastinating assignments from here on out…

I’m sorry for any service interruptions there have been with my site, but it appears that the disk filled up, due to exim being out of control and faithfully logging all the spam it rejected. Thats fixed now. Oh man what a week.