Happy Robot Labs: Archive

6 tags

KiCAD: First Impressions

This weekend I decided to get some work in on learning KiCAD. I have not come very far, but I am starting to get oriented with eeschema and I have actually been enjoying it. However, I had to boot up into Ubuntu to work with it appropriately, because my Mac OS X install doesn’t quite like KiCAD, but then again I have trouble with Xilinx, iverilog, gtkwave, msp430-gcc, etc as well. KiCAD...

Nov 12th

5 tags

Controlling Music: Look Forward To OSC!

I have been using MIDI for quite some while now to communicate musical instrument based projects to my computer and visa-verse. My first MIDI project died, somehow and I never quite figured out how; however, before my MIDI Ribbon Controller died I was running into some troubles with MIDI. The base trouble stemmed from MIDI’s roots as a 1982 protocol for digital music communications to allow...

Nov 12th

Oct 21st

8 tags

Lessons Learned: Breadboards are Noisy and So Are...

While building my 7400 drum machine for Dangerous Prototypes’ 7400 Competition I made a couple of good discoveries: Those pre cut jumper wires which are very popular (the wiggly ones) are a blessing and a curse. For one they make things look messy, but they are easy to prototype with. However, their biggest negative is sometimes, combined with a breadboard, they can give noisy...

Oct 15th

1 tag

Drum Machine based on 7400 ICs

Dangerous Prototypes is having a competition based around building awesome projects using discrete logic components (7400, 4000) as a major part of the project. I had many ideas for submissions for this competition, for example, Pong (or another basic videogame), Game of Life, a real life color detector with readout to hex and an RGB LED. However, I decided on making a drum machine for this...

Oct 11th

3 tags

Wordpress Voodoo: Custom Post Templates From A...

So you are writing your grand Wordpress plugin and you have a custom post type which the user uses, so far so good. You write your single-awesome.php file to allow Wordpress to show a view for your custom type and put it into your theme, but wait a second I want my view to be portable! What are my options? One option is to give up and go along, write a bunch of single-awesome.php files for every...

Aug 27th

2 notes

7 tags

Projects: Reload-JS (v0.1)

Reload-JS is a javascript live loader whose goal is to be simple and light weight. I created Reload-JS while working on an Infographics Landing Page, and embedding solution, for Newlogic USA. I needed to load and check for any libraries I need (namely jQuery). The loading part has been taken care of in this version, but I am trying to figure out how to include tests for each library, to make sure...

Aug 21st

9 notes

IBM Announces Brain Based Microchip →

The things IBM has been up to lately are impressive. Between Watson and this Synapse microchip I am even more inspired to work hard, and get my education. When Watson was competing on Jeopardy! I attended an IBM sponsored event and the talks that were given were breath-taking. I can’t wait for some talks to come around about this new microchip. At risk of sounding like a fanboy it is...

Aug 21st

CSS Column Magic

These are a few classes I wrote to make columns a little bit easier. I tried my hand and making my own CSS helper classes and I think it worked out pretty well. Example: <div id="content"> <div id="main" class="column right two_thirds"> <p>hello</p> </div> <div id="left_bar" class="column left third"> <p>im a...

Jul 31st

Running Processes and Receive Asynchronous Output... →

This is a very rough little function which helps run and receive asynchronous input from processes (command-line applications). Useful for receiving and analyzing input from applications.

Jul 22nd

Working on an Art Project: The Tale of Ideagerie

Recently I have taken to doing more web development, even though I truly enjoy music and electronics. I have taken to doing web-based projects because I find them engaging, I enjoy the end results and the web is an essential skill. I have completed two projects thus far, Shears of Elegance and Ideagerie, and my favorite was the later. Why? Because it was an art project. Throughout most of my...

Jul 20th

A basic implementation of Rails Object.blank?... →

Object.blank? is a very simple construct, basically it just checks if an object is either nil or empty and does an error check to make sure that if empty doesn’t apply to an object it recovers gracefully. In a dynamically typed language like ruby constructs like these become very important to making sure that errors are handled elegantly and as expected, if a variable number of objects may...

Jul 19th

Ideagerie Final (mostly) →

And after about a week of hard work, learning Sinatra and falling in love with Heroku Ideagerie is launched. I am still making some UI tweaks here and there, but for the most part this is the final version and ready for prime time. Enjoy! A full post is coming soon.

Jul 17th

CSS Centering →

A few classes to help with centering in CSS

Jul 14th

2 tags

Video of Ideageries Current State →

We have some more layout fixes and a database… More than a database we can see the pictures, which have their locations stored in a database!

Jul 14th

Jul 11th

Giving Hugs To People Using Ruby →

Ok, this is really just a cute piece of Ruby code that doesn’t do anything productive, but I find it fun. I find parts of it almost poetic and yes I wrote it. I want to eventually make the People act more like Actors/separate threads in the future which can send messages to each other.

Jul 9th

Jul 5th

Glowing Heart Card: Transistors and Hearts →

This is a nice little project I did as a present for my girlfriend. The inspiration came from a video on transistors by MAKE Magazine and I really wanted to make the circuit to help me start to understand transistors better (I still need work on that). Feel free to make these for those you love, like and cherish.

Jun 27th

Jan 12th

3 tags

Review: Tristan Perich — 1-Bit Symphony

Tristan Perich’s 1-Bit Symphony is, regardless of any musical sensibility, a great concept. Surely, the music itself may be too shrill or rough for some, but the concept is a success. When I first picked up the CD case I was amazed, this little case contained more than just music, it also contained art and technology. The layout of the circuit is streamlined and has a particular...

Jan 8th

2 tags

High-Low Tech Lab at MIT Media Labs →

Some cool projects and ideas over at the high-low tech lab. My favorites include the tutorials for programming ATTiny85s with an Arduino (planning on doing this soon). The copper paint and paper circuits are also really interesting.

Jan 5th

4 tags

Poster and Scripts

Some new projects are going on. I changed up the format of my github so that I have three projects at the moment. The first one is Poster.rb, which I will expand upon later. The second is, scripts-and-stuff, which is just a dumping ground for whatever I am working on. I was inspired by some articles I read about _why to try out the concept of shipping and just getting my code out to the world,...

Jan 4th

2 tags

Review of 2010

2010 was a busy year for me. It started in chaos and ended quite enjoyably. When I started this year I was a senior in high school confused about what I wanted to do with me life, now I am a freshman in college, still confused, but with an inspiration to create. I am pretty set on engineering now, but more than that I am excited to just make things, DIY things and ultimately express myself through...

Dec 31st

2 tags

“When you don’t create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than...”

– Why the Lucky Stiff

Dec 30th

R.I.P. MIDI Ribbon Controller

Sadly after I demonstrated my MIDI controller to me EK132 (Engineering Module) class it died. The demonstration was successful, but I had a few bugs to work out so I brought it home from university with me. However, it was unable to make the trip back home and I can no longer get it working. I wanted to write up more about this project, but it doesn’t look like that is going to happen. I...

Dec 21st

3 tags

Python Development 1: Brushing Up and Google APIs

I started brushing up on python recently. In actuality there was not a whole lot of brushing up to do. In fact, the process was fairly straight forward. I remembered the syntax and most of the basic concepts behind the language. I also started working on a “List Cruncher” for http://www.onethirtybpm.com (a music site which I co-founded, but currently am uninvolved in). While being updated on the...

Dec 16th

2 tags

Project Updates

Currently I am working on a project I call “Finals Week,” but here are the rest of my projects as they stand, including things I want to do: Arduino Powered MIDI Ribbon Controller (code, schematic, and project diary coming soon) RHoK HeightCatcher (contributions to the UK version) Brushing up on Python and learning Django Brushing up on Java and learning Android

Dec 15th

Thoughts on Random Hacks of Kindness

Visit: RHOK From 10am to 6:25pm on Sunday, December 5, 2010 I spent my time on Boston University Campus—in CAS—ignoring my homework and hacking away at a good cause. When I first walked into the room I was unsure what was going on. I signed in, got myself some much needed coffee and settled down with my laptop, ready for whatever was to come next. To be honest, I had no intent of going the...

Dec 8th

Currently at Random Hacks of Kindness Boston

I am currently working on HeightCatcher at Random Hacks of Kindness. You can follow what my group is doing on my twitter (http://twitter.com/#!/cjwoodall92). I will give an update of our progress as the day goes on and and overview on this site when we are done.

Dec 5th

Dec 4th

Idea Submitted

The idea has been submitted to Imagine Cup for Automaton.

Oct 17th