Thesis on Arduino users

February 5th, 2010

Among the links passing around the internets lately is a thesis by Alicia Gibb, an art history & museum, library, and information science graduate student (hey, I know some people like that) on the Arduino microcontroller platform and the people who use it to create works of art. The thesis is called New Media Art, Design, and the Arduino Microcontroller: A Malleable Tool.

I think her thesis does a respectable job of covering the origins of the Arduino platform and why people find it an attractive starting point. I certainly agree with many of her points.

Gibb states that the Arduino was designed for a non-technical audience, people without deep knowledge of engineering or computer science. This design goal explains four factors that differentiate the Arduino platform from many others:

  1. It is inexpensive. An Arduino board costs around $30 (better than half the cost of most other similar microcontroller boards), so it is cheap to pick up and learn. It is also cheap to integrate into a project, leave there, and move on to the next project with a new Arduino board.
  2. It is packaged with an integrated development environment (IDE). The IDE is easy to install and get started with, even for non-technical users.
  3. It is programmed via USB, so additional programming hardware is unnecessary. While most microcontrollers communicate via traditional serial port, the Arduino’s USB port is more useful for communicating with a modern computer that is likely to have no serial port. (I would add the additional point that the USB port supplies power, so no additional power supply is necessary. Even when away from the computer, the USB port can be used for power, thanks to the ubiquity of spare USB wall-wart power supplies and cables.)
  4. It is supported by a community.

However, the Introduction page on the Arduino website adds and expands some other details that have also been important in its success:

  1. The IDE runs under Windows, as do nearly all other microcontroller platforms, but also under Mac OS and Linux, bringing a wider audience
  2. The software is open source and extensible, encouraging sharing, so people can easily add new features and borrow from the work of others
  3. The hardware is also open source and extensible. While there is official hardware that can be purchased, the design is documented and available for anyone to modify, improve, and extend.

Interactive embroidery project by Becky Stern

Gibb goes on to highlight some high-profile Arduino work done by artists and designers, as well as exhibitions that have featured them. She summarizes interviews that she conducted with members of the Arduino community, why they used the platform, and how it enhanced their creative work. There is a lot of artist-talk, and I found myself switching my brain to a more creative mode as I read along.

There are a lot more neat projects that need to be done, especially in workshops where young people can channel their enthusiasm and creativity. I am trying to hint that Emily should think about developing a program like this, though I know it is easy to volunteer someone else for more work. Reading Gibb’s thesis sparks the imagination, and I continue to look forward to seeing the next application that some tinkerer comes up with.

Christopher
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Two new food books

February 5th, 2010

I’ve read books by Michael Pollan and Tom Standage in the past, and they both have new titles available.

Pollan has been writing about the relationships between food, health, culture, economics, and industry. He makes interesting connections in tracing the details of how meals get to our table, and he gives clear, logical explanations for things like the French Paradox. His research process must be fascinating. In his previous book, he famously summarized a wise strategy for smart eating with the rules, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

Last October, the New York Times website had a fun and attractive interactive feature giving more “rules” for eating (I recommend taking a look). A new promotional piece in the New York Times continues the theme. However, not knowing anything other than the title of his new book, Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual, I have to wonder if he is not riding this horse into the ground. I continue to respect his work, so I hope that his latest is as interesting as his other writing. We heard him speak at Butler University some time ago, and I was jealous to learn that some friends are going to hear him speak at Indiana University soon.

As for Tom Standage, I enjoyed his last book, A History of the World in 6 Glasses. While not quite as smooth and quick reading as Pollan, I enjoyed reading about the parallel evolution of culture and the drinks of the times. Standage’s explanation in his new book of how some important turns of history are a result of food cravings should be interesting, as well. As I was catching up on podcasts this morning, I found an interview with him on Tuesday’s Planet Money podcast, where he reminds us that much of the European explorers’ motivation came from a profit motive in the spice trade. I love Standage’s unofficial bio as written by his six-year-old daughter.

And an older beer book

Another book that I just haven’t managed to quite finish yet, Beer in America: the Early Years, similarly tells history through beer goggles. Some of the primary points include the fact that any of the events around the time of the American Revolution were planned at taverns over pints of ale. Thomas Jefferson’s wife, Martha, was an accomplished brewer, along with many other women of the day. Taverns were also critical to the westward expansion of the country, providing a place to conduct business as the sparse infrastructure improved. There are many other interesting points and relationships noted in the book, but they either grew repetitive as the book progressed, or that the author was reaching too far when relating events to beer. I think I would have appreciated a perhaps bit less depth in exchange for a look into the 20th century.

Christopher
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Adventures in Gnucash on the Mac

February 4th, 2010

Why use Gnucash?

I switched away from Quicken about seven years ago because of Intuit’s greedy annual upgrade ransom fee and its insane crashiness. The final straw came when it managed to corrupt all the backups one day while I tried to recover from an error. I had it set to maintain its maximum of 8 automatic backup copies, but I apparently restarted the application at least that many times in the process of figuring out what had happened. My data vanished, trying to re-import from backups wasn’t working properly, and I was ready for a fresh start.

So, after doing some research into the available alternatives, I switched to Gnucash and have used it ever since then. It’s free and quite powerful, doing as much as I need it to, and then some. It’s open source, and it runs on Linux and the Mac, providing a bit of security against obsolescence. That becomes very important once you build a history with an application, as will happen with a financial package.

There are a number of other reasons why I switched, but they mostly boil down to trust. I lost faith in Quicken’s ability to reliably keep me organized. Conversely, I trust that Gnucash will be around for the foreseeable future, and that my data will continue to be useable without having to keep throwing money away for upgrades that don’t bring me bug fixes or any useful new features.

How to try it for yourself

Two projects distribute Gnucash for Mac OS: MacPorts and the Fink Project. I have used both distributions, and when they work, they work equally well. During the recent transition to Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard), the Fink folks were quicker to get get Gnucash operational under the new operating system, so I also moved to Fink when upgrading to Snow Leopard. Gnucash earned a reputation in its early days as being very difficult to install, but thanks to the work of the Gnucash developers, as well as the MacPorts and Fink teams, installation is no longer difficult, only time-consuming. Set it up to run overnight, and you shouldn’t expect any hitches.

Twice I have been caught by upgrades to Mac OS causing Gnucash not to run, while its maintainers worked to support changes to the operating system. Fortunately, this was not a large problem, because I just used Gnucash on the Linux computer in the mean time.

In the the four months that passed since I started writing this post, there is now a Mac-“native” version that is can be downloaded as a regular disk image and dragged to the Applications folder. This simple installation scheme will hopefully enable easier adoption by more Mac people. As of this writing, the 2.2.9 version that is available has an apparent bug that prevents the help system from functioning. All the help documentation is present, but it is hidden. The following links should make it easier to get to the documentation after Gnucash is installed in the Applications folder.

If those links are not helpful, locate the Gnucash application. Right-click on it, and choose “Show Package Contents.” Then navigate to Contents→Resources→English.lproj. You will see folders for “GnuCash Guide” and “GnuCash help.” The main page of the Guide is index.html. The main page of the Help is help.html.

The help files actually do a pretty decent at explaining how the double-entry style of bookkeeping works, and how to help Gnucash work for you. I have picked up a lot of hints over the years, and I’ll try to share some of them in the future as they come to me.

Christopher
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Hackerspaces

February 3rd, 2010

Emily heard NPR’s Tech Monday story on The Geek Group in Kalamazoo. She thought that this was an interesting concept. I found the story the next day in their online archive, and this place was exactly what I thought it was when she mentioned it yesterday. It’s like a do-it-yourself children’s museum and project workspace for grownups. I wish that there was a place like that around these parts, but the only listing near Indianapolis in the Hackerspaces registry looks like a dead end.

Other hacker spaces are more like workshop space for rent, with tools and supplies for its members to use in exchange for paying regular dues. I mean, who wouldn’t want access to welding supplies, circuit board etching chemicals, and 3D printers? As an added benefit, your wife wouldn’t have to get on your case about taking over the garage workbench once in a while. It’s a place for sharing ideas, and for geeks to get excited about doing geeky stuff.

I went to a couple summer camps at a place kind of like this called Discovery Hall in a warehouse by the railroad tracks near the old power plant downtown. It was sort of like a children’s museum, but there was a lot more junk lying around that people were tinkering with in unstructured ways. Rather than formal exhibits, there were areas with chemistry stuff, electronics stuff to take apart, etc. I have tried to find information about Discovery Hall before, but the place disappeared somewhere around 1991. I’m sure that the people who ran it were total sketchy college dweebs, but as a second grader, I wanted to be just like them when I grew up.

I’m sure that simply posting an entry on an obscure blog will stir up enough interest for one to spring up in Fishers overnight, of course. Because I’d absolutely be there trying Dangerous Things.

Christopher
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Thanks, Toyota!

February 3rd, 2010

Toyota has gotten a lot of bad press lately surrounding the unintended acceleration issue. I’m sure that plenty of case studies will be written on the subject. On the other hand, one recent Toyota issue has remained quiet, and I am a little surprised.

It’s no secret that manufacturers and dealers make a hefty profit on replacement parts. We all go about taking this as the normal state of things. So, when we received a letter from Toyota last month announcing a price change for one type of part, I was surprised.

When translated from PR-speak into English, the letter states that Toyota has been screwing over their customers on the cost of replacement HID headlight bulbs, to the tune of $300 per bulb. (A quick survey of the web shows aftermarket bulbs run around $100.)

Further, this gouging is more egregious than other OEMs (car manufacturers). So much so, in fact, that they are responding to customer complaints by lowering the price from $300 to $150 in order to be more “competitive” with other OEMs. Cutting the price by half brings their price more in line with other OEMs — the same OEMs that everyone assumes are charging too much in the first place.

Not only are they reducing the price, they are going to retroactively reimburse customers who paid those crazy dealer prices to replace HID bulbs.

But wait! There’s more! Act now and Toyota will also reimburse customers who paid crazy dealer prices to replace the headlight control modules. Naturally, any control module replacements were almost certainly in error, as they are unlikely to have been faulty. Simply replacing the bulb would have been sufficient, but this is another example of the status quo, where dealers happily replace module after module at someone else’s expense, rather than actually doing any troubleshooting.

I cry to think that some people paid so much for a burned-out light bulb. A control module retails for $250. The bulbs used to be $300. Labor and tax probably brought the total to nearly $600. Insanity!

I suppose that if I were taken to the cleaners like that I would complain pretty loudly too. I’m glad that Toyota is fixing the wrong they’ve done, but even I am amazed that it was that bad.

Christopher
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Bringing a little bit of Right Brain to this website…

January 21st, 2010

Finally, Emily has learned how to post updates to the website!  Once in a while you’ll get the female point of view on our radically exciting lives (seriously…there is a picture of bacon on the front page of our website…and it’s not even cooked all the way).  Maybe it’s a way of softening the “all-geek-all-the-time” perspective that you’ve grown to know and love over the past eight years, or maybe it’s a way of breaking free of the snobby-snob restraints of the art world.  Regardless, I’m looking forward to having a little fun with this.  And in honor of my inaugural post, I give you this:

Because everyone should start off with a pair of “killer shoes”.

And really…who wants to see more bacon?

Emily
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In celebration of bacon of the month

January 19th, 2010

In celebration of the Indiana Bacon of the Month Club, here’s a tasteful backdrop for your mobile phone.

This month’s bacon was cured with sea salt and coated with toasted cloves and honey from local Brendle Honey Farm before being smoked over apple and hickory wood. And it was delicious. Can’t wait until next month!

Christopher
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Why it rules being an engineer

January 18th, 2010

I’m told that I had a fascination with stop lights when I was little, watching them intently from my car seat in the back of our yellow Vista Cruiser station wagon. My dad decided that I should have one of my own, so he somehow obtained an old decommissioned unit from the Illinois highway department. I have no idea how exactly this was arranged, and I have purposely never asked to hear that specific story. I guess the transaction was legitimate, since there are plenty of stop lights for sale on eBay.  I have a very sketchy memory of backing the car up to a warehouse early on a grey Saturday and returning home with a beat up 100 lb stop light in the trunk. This was a very long time ago, so this memory could even be a fabrication. I also have vague memories of my dad in the basement refurbishing and painting it, fabricating shrouds to replace the mismatched, broken, and missing ones, and replacing broken lenses.

It has always been a goal of mine to give it an upgrade. There were any number of things that could be done, whether turning it into some kind of game, automating it, putting it on a timer, replacing the individual pushbutton switches with something fancier… this was a big project just waiting to happen and begging to have something done to it.

At some point last year I happened to learn about a project someone did, and it provided a spark of inspiration. This person had modified his Rancilio Silvia espresso machine, the same model we have, outfitting it with an LCD display, microcontroller that automated the brewing process and precisely controlled the boiler temperature, all controlled from a repurposed Wii Nunchuck. This was the project that led me to discover the Arduino community.

(I’d love to do the same thing to our espresso machine, but I don’t want to become the kind of person who requires my espresso to be brewed precisely at 196 degrees and at a pressure of 8 bars, and so forth. But it sure would be fun project to take on!)

On a more personal level, learning about other people’s Arduino projects assured me that this was the time to fix up that stop light and start having some fun! I learned about a handful of outfits on the web that cater to hobbyists and found some great arcade-style buttons, missile switches, and distance sensors, as well as a source for fabricating single copies of printed circuit boards. My dad, who originally indulged this whole stop light thing three decades ago, gave me an Arduino board for my last birthday, and so restarted the snowball.

After some initial tinkering with the Arduino to learn about how it all works, it was time to build a printed circuit board that would interface between the Arduino microcontroller and the stop light. I produced a schematic and PCB layout in Altium Designer, which is admittedly overkill, but if the tool is available, why not use it?

After an agonizingly long wait for BatchPCB to return the bare board (as they say, cheap and fast do not go together), I assembled the board and tweaked the microcontroller code that flashed the lights in sequence. The relays make a satisfying clicking sound when switching.

Currently, the controller implements six modes.

  1. The sequence mode turns the two sets of lights in a timed pattern, just as if at a regular intersection. The dwell time of each state is not currently programmable, but it will be eventually.
  2. A random flashing mode
  3. A railroad crossing mode that alternately flashes the left and right red lights
  4. A manual mode that is controlled via my MacBook’s serial console through the Arduino’s USB port. What’s the next logical step, a web interface? Emily will be thrilled!
  5. A parking mode that turns the lights from green to yellow to red as either of our two cars approaches its parking spot in the garage. The ultrasonic distance sensors are sensitive to about half an inch, and the current code allows the thresholds to be saved. Soon the cars can be parked farther back in the garage so as to maximize available space in the front of the garage. The parking mode is entered when the garage door is opened, tripping a magnetic switch attached to the garage door frame. No more hanging tennis balls from the ceiling!

Inspired by a “busy box” that my grandfather built out of dangerous old light bulbs, switches, buzzers, and motors, the brains of the stop light controller are visible through a Lexan cover. Connections to the button box, sensors, and indoor garage door open indicator are all color coded cat-5 cables. There’s still more work yet to do, but it’s exciting to see progress on a project that has been 30 years in the making. Who knows, perhaps this old stop light was the toy that predisposed me to become an engineer?

Christopher
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There I fixed the TDI

December 15th, 2009

Car batteries hate cold weather, and in my experience, it’s pretty much a given that they will give out on the first day with temperatures in the teens after the free replacement warranty period ends. Further, the battery will only die when it’s away from home.

Late last week this confluence of factors prompted me to replace the VW’s battery directly in front of the main entrance of my workplace. Given the nature of my workplace, there was a video camera watching the whole time.

battery replacement

The replacement went reasonably quickly this time around, given my numb fingers and the amount of stuff that needs to be shuffled around in order to make room to squeeze the battery in and out.

And, since something is never fixed without something else breaking to take its place, I snapped the plastic dipstick holder right off. Fortunately, I found a replacement dipstick tube online for about 1/5 of what the dealer probably would have charged. While it’s in transit, good old aluminum foil and a rubber band are doing a bang-up job of keeping stuff out of the hole.

IMG_5581

Christopher
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Kill-A-Watt results I

December 8th, 2009

41PwTUFlsYL._SS500_Adding up all our Christmas lights, indoors and out, our holiday cheer burns an extra 643 watts of electricity when we are at full tilt, according to my Kill-A-Watt meter. Our pre-lit tree alone clocks in at 286 W.

We only have two strands of LED lights, so I do not have much basis for comparison, but the LED strands do use remarkably less power. I have seen claims on boxes of 90% savings. That may or may not be pushing the truth, but it is clearly dramatic.

I am all for saving energy, but as with many new energy saving fads, claims about cost savings may be somewhat dubious. LED lights cost significantly more, and while they claim to last longer, the truth of these claims remains to be seen. From my observation, traditional lights have shown a correlation between purchase price and quality: better lights don’t flake out after the first couple of seasons. Only time will tell whether the same is true with the new technology. Throwing away old, inefficient lights and replacing them with new LED lights is (hopefully) obviously a waste of money and energy. Personally, I find it unlikely that LED light manufacturers are trying to sell us the last Christmas lights we’ll ever buy.

So, Clark Griswold, our 643 watts of Christmas lights, lit for 6 hours a day for the month of December, amount to 112 kWh of electricity use. That’s $12 in electricity cost, or less than the cost of one LED strand at this year’s prices.

Christopher
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