And Like That..: January 2013

It seems to me that if almost 20 years ago college kids could query a soda machine down the hall in their dorms we should be able to at least start some coffee with the touch of a button, by remote. It seems like we should be able to turn the TV off and on, connect to our oven and even query the contents of our refrigerators and pantry. I can't even get my water sprinklers to turn on of my garden is too dry.

I've always wanted the power of the computer to leave the desk, get off the LCD screen and do something in the real world, maybe the revolution is here. Maybe I'm still a few years too early.

Why can't my garage door opener work remotely, my water sprinklers automatically take care of my yard and my fish tank accurately recreation the conditions off the shore of Fiji? Why doesn't my thermostat automatically signal me to open a window when its nice outside? Where are the interactive toys that can reach my kids while they play? I guess its time to bust out my soldering iron and make it reality time,

Quite some time ago I started playing around with microcontrollers I think the PIC16 was just out or maybe that was a few years later. I started hacking electronic together back before I can remember. in In 1978, Star Wars hit the local theaters on the weekend of my birthday. My mom and dad took me. I remember it was awesome. I also soon received my very own laser gun. it was a brass and aluminum pistol shaped toy my father had created from spare parts around the garage and some machining at his workplace. My father was an electrical engineer and an electronic enthusiast his whole life. Anyways I digress.

So way back then, I got the usual stuff to work, flashing LED's and a Hitachi 16 x 2 LCD and I was pretty much content with my "skillz" and moved on to other hobbies and projects. Back then there were no Arduinos or RaspberryPi to play with no Lego Mindstorms Nxts or quad-copters. I think there may have been android phones but maybe not.. it wasn't germane to my hobbies so I don't recall. The development environments were much less refined. I built my code in pure ASM and used MASM I believe to compile it.. it was too hard to be much fun back then so I gave it up.

Years passed and I decided to check back in and see what's happened in the world of micro-controllers Not to bad. there are some IDE developments coming along and I think eclipse has been pretty well adopted so there's a decent GUI interface and it seems like I recall that with quite a bit of effort you could even use Microsoft's Visual Studio to write some code for your little device. Still the cost of the devices I had in my head didn't warrant the costs. I didn't see why I would pay $50 for a board in a plastic case that turned on and off a light but could be reprogrammed would be worth my time and effort. there was no need and the costs were prohibitive, the development environment was mediocre. again I moved on after I had successfully blinked some LED's and lit-up a display with my Hello World App.. What I wanted was connectivity to the real world. I got some temperature sensors and a 3 axis accelerometer, and made a tilting measuring device that was basically useless but a fun test of my hardware and software skills. it was no easy task to assemble every component my hand on a breadboard and then transfer it to a project board and solder all those wires everywhere or make it like a dead bug. either way I didn't have the equipment for SMD work not the necessity so I got involved in other things.

So this brings me to today. Wow.. a lot has changed.. hello RaspberryPi and the arduino. I thought stuff like that was $75?? Well it used to be but is not.. So I'm back in the game again. I've just gotten the eclipse environment all set up and even loaded the Processes and Fritz stuff on there. Interesting stuff. The example OpenGL app even ran on my phone. nifty..

So I'm thinking up ideas to put an arduino or other embedded system in on or about.. I'm thinking a small device connected to my garage door and I should be able to open it from my phone pretty easily.

Or maybe a smart baby mobile w/ a webcam attached.
Who Knows..