Eightlines Creations

Experiments in Physical Computing

Balloon Powered Boat

Toy Boat Originally uploaded by Eightlines By no means original, this was a really simple design I had to build. The hull is cut with a bandsaw at 15 degrees, 1/2" dowel with a 3/16" hole in the middle. Glued and bisected by another 3/16" hole out the stern. A balloon is ...

Augmented Reality

Recently Saqoosha's port of ARToolkit from C to Flash has taken the Flash world by storm. The biggest hurdle for me was that the comments in the source were all in Japanese. That was until Mikko Haapoja published a getting started in FLARToolkit entry. Now we're witnessing an onslaught of ...

Registration Points in AS3

One of the frustrations with the Flash Player 10 3D API has to do with the registration point of a DisplayObject. The crux of the issue is that when you create an object it will be placed at the 0,0,0 point. This makes the anchor point of the object in ...

Calculating Δv to Maximize EEPROM Storage

After a round of clarity (read: beer), Noel thought up a good way of maximizing the EEPROM memory in the data logger. Unfortunately it didn't quite work, I'll demonstrate below. To reiterate, the RPMs I was recording off of the Hall Sensor would increase to a rate of over 255 revolutions ...

Thinking out loud — Arduino as Webcam

Lately much of my work has been dealing with getting Flash to talk to the Arduino. There's no real functionality to do this on its own, so you have to rely on some other components to host the conversation. There's a whole host of methods you can use here: Socket Connection ...

Does it end at 12¢’s?

[Note: Anna's relayed too many stories lately of the extents to which other mothers go to fix their strollers. Its prompting me to write this post.] Are you the owner of a Graco stroller? (possibly other brands) Has the wheel fallen off? Have you: Thrown out the stroller and bought ...

Machining a Maple Case for the GPS

GPS Case Originally uploaded by Eightlines Playing with code is fun, but when you do it all day for work it's nice to come home and build something tangible. I picked up some scrap Hard Maple from the baseball bat manufacturer that happens to make Barry Bonds' bat of choice (purportedly). Now ...

Mapping GPS Data

When I last left the data logger project off I was having quite a few issues with managing the size of the data in the allotted EEPROM space on board the Arduino. I built up an SDCard writer based on several specs I found in the messageboard and it worked ...

A Maker’s deep-dark secret

I'm just going to put this out there, I feel its something that isn't talked about often and can be an influencing factor when making things. Building things yourself will almost certainly cost you more than if you buy the object in the store (if it exists already). On almost ...

Conversation Clouds with Physics

So after posting the previous entry I went to sleep, only to find myself thinking about improving the visual aspect of the Conversation Cloud. I decided that adding physics would be the way to go, it would allow words to deflect off of each other, grow and gain mass, and ...

June 9th 2010
Tags: Code, ObjectiveC, Three20, Tutorial 0 Comments

Three20 TTTableViewController commitEditingStyle

This post is mostly for my future reference. I found the documentation of the TTTableViewController's commitEditingStyle to be lacking. Some of the comments on StackOverflow provide the right answer, but the code wasn't posted so I struggled for a bit. Below is an example of the version I managed to ...
September 11th 2009
Tags: Found 0 Comments

TGIMBOEJ

The Great Internet Migratory Box of Electronics Junk (TGIMBOEJ) is a box. It's a box that arrives on your doorstep after you drop your name on a wiki page and wait a good deal of time. It's a box that has electronics junk inside and it works off the premise ...
August 9th 2009
Tags: Ideas 0 Comments

Power Monitor Packet

As Hugo helpfully commented in a previous post, here is the link to the Power Monitor Patent. The specific page I'm linking to is the Packet model. Lots of reading to do here, but its pretty interesting. One of the things I find most interesting about this patent is the citations ...
July 26th 2009
Tags: Ideas 0 Comments

Building a Scooter Bike for Kids

Ages ago I bookmarked a design posted on Make for a Scooter Bike, as I intended on building one when my daughter got old enough. On a recent trip to the surplus store I picked up a wheelset for $3 and figured what better time to start than now. I ...
June 10th 2009
Tags: Ideas 0 Comments

Arduino Packet Analyzer

Following the previous success where we managed to see the transmissions from the Black & Decker Power Monitor, Andrew Kilpatrick and I went about trying to capture the packets. Without an access to an oscilloscope with packet capture capabilities we built our own with an Arduino. Essentially, the code waits for ...

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