The drone comes fully assembled in a huge box. Inside you’ll find these components:

Additionally there is also a charger for the LiPo-battery. The battery has a capacity of 1000mAh.

The drone can be controlled by an smartphone or tablet (e.g. iPhone, iPad, Android phones) over wifi. You can also capture the video from the drone to your tablet or phone.

In the App AR.FreeFlight 2.0 from Parrot you can control the drone, watch the captured movies and upload new firmware to the drone.

This is the control panel. With the left virtual stick you can control forward and backwards and with right stick up and down and turn left and right. The buttons TAKE OFF will start the rotors and lift the drone up to 0.7m. Hitting the button EMERGENCY will immediately turn off the rotors.

Here is a video from a test flight in my garden.

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OLED I2C display

The OLED is connected to an Arduino Nano via I2C and it measures the current voltage of the solar powered batteries.
The OLED display is available at wide.hk for 16$.

Lightning Shield

The other project is pretty cool. I will build a new Arduino Shield for a lightning sensor (AS3935), just announced this week, from austriamicrosystems. Link to sensor page.
This sensor is accessible via I2C respectively SPI. It detects both cloud-to-ground and intra-cloud (cloud-to-cloud) flashes within a 40km range. The supply voltage range is from 2.4 to 5.5V.

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Recently I’ve found an quite interesting Arduino shield on: http://www.veear.eu/Products/EasyVRShield.aspx. Using this shield you can control your Arduino using speech commands.

The shield consists of these components:
- EasyVR Arduino Shield (includes EasyVR module)
- Microphone

On the website you can also find following free software downloads (see link above):
- User manual
- EasyVR Commander
- Arduino Libraries

Following shops sell the EasyVR shield: http://www.veear.eu/WheretoBuy.aspx
It costs around 40€ or 50$.

Demo

In this demo I control a LED with my voice and the EasyVR shield.

For this demo I also use an Arduino, that has been kindly provided by Farnell.com.

Overview Arduino: http://de.farnell.com/arduino
Arduino schematic: http://arduino.cc/en/uploads/Main/arduino-uno-schematic.pdf
Link to product page: http://de.farnell.com/arduino/a000046/board-arduino-uno/dp/1848687?ICID=i-9ec8-00001000

Step 1: Software Installation

Install the “EasyVR Commander” software [Link].
Before you run the software, make sure you run the program with administrator privileges.
But don’t start the software at the moment.

Step 2: Prepare hardware

Put the shield and the Arduino together and connect the mic to the shield (J11).
Put Jumper J12 at position “PC”.
Connect the Arduino to the PC via USB.

Step 3: Train the EasyVR Shield

Now run “EasyVR Commander” and connect to the serial port of the Arduino USB connection.
Click in the group list on Index 0 – Trigger. Add a new command, name it e.g. “ARDUINO”. Then click on “Train Command”. And speak the word “Arduino” in the mic. And a second time, when the software tells you so.

Click in the group list on Index 1 – Group. Add a new command, name it e.g. “LED_ON”. Then click on “Train Command”. And speak the words “LED on” in the mic. And a second time, when the software tells you so.
And add a second command “LED_OFF” and train this command as well.

Note: LED_AN is LED_ON and LED_AUS is LED_OFF.

Now your EasyVR is configured. We finally generate some code for the microcontroller inside of the Arduino. In EasyVR Commander click on File->Generate code.

Disconnect your Arduino from USB and change jumper J12 to SW.

Step 4: Some Arduino code

Install the EasyVR Arduino libraries (see first link) to the Arduino IDE library folder.

I slightly altered the previously generated code to control a LED. The LED is connected to pin 11:

#if defined(ARDUINO) && ARDUINO >= 100
  #include "Arduino.h"
  #include "SoftwareSerial.h"
  SoftwareSerial port(12,13);
#else // Arduino 0022 - use modified NewSoftSerial
  #include "WProgram.h"
  #include "NewSoftSerial.h"
  NewSoftSerial port(12,13);
#endif

#include "EasyVR.h"
EasyVR easyvr(port);

//Groups and Commands
enum Groups
{
  GROUP_0  = 0,
  GROUP_1  = 1,
};

enum Group0
{
  G0_ARDUINO = 0,
};

enum Group1
{
  G1_LED_AN = 0,
  G1_LED_AUS = 1,
};

EasyVRBridge bridge;

int8_t group, idx;

void setup()
{
  // bridge mode?
  if (bridge.check())
  {
    cli();
    bridge.loop(0, 1, 12, 13);
  }
  // run normally
  Serial.begin(9600);
  port.begin(9600);

  if (!easyvr.detect())
  {
    Serial.println("EasyVR not detected!");
    for (;;);
  }

  easyvr.setPinOutput(EasyVR::IO1, LOW);
  Serial.println("EasyVR detected!");
  easyvr.setTimeout(5);
  easyvr.setLanguage(3);

  group = EasyVR::TRIGGER; //<-- start group (customize)

  pinMode(11, OUTPUT);
  digitalWrite(11, LOW);    // set the LED off

}

void action();

void loop()
{
  easyvr.setPinOutput(EasyVR::IO1, HIGH); // LED on (listening)

  Serial.print("Say a command in Group ");
  Serial.println(group);
  easyvr.recognizeCommand(group);

  do
  {
    // can do some processing while waiting for a spoken command
  }
  while (!easyvr.hasFinished());

  easyvr.setPinOutput(EasyVR::IO1, LOW); // LED off

  idx = easyvr.getWord();
  if (idx >= 0)
  {
    // built-in trigger (ROBOT)
    // group = GROUP_X; <-- jump to another group X
    return;
  }
  idx = easyvr.getCommand();
  if (idx >= 0)
  {
    // print debug message
    uint8_t train = 0;
    char name[32];
    Serial.print("Command: ");
    Serial.print(idx);
    if (easyvr.dumpCommand(group, idx, name, train))
    {
      Serial.print(" = ");
      Serial.println(name);
    }
    else
      Serial.println();
    easyvr.playSound(0, EasyVR::VOL_FULL);
    // perform some action
    action();
  }
  else // errors or timeout
  {
    if (easyvr.isTimeout())
      Serial.println("Timed out, try again...");
    int16_t err = easyvr.getError();
    if (err >= 0)
    {
      Serial.print("Error ");
      Serial.println(err, HEX);
    }

    group = GROUP_0;
  }
}

void action()
{
    switch (group)
    {
    case GROUP_0:
      switch (idx)
      {
      case G0_ARDUINO:
        // write your action code here
          group = GROUP_1; //<-- or jump to another group X for composite commands
        break;
      }
      break;
    case GROUP_1:
      switch (idx)
      {
      case G1_LED_AN:
        // write your action code here
        group = GROUP_0; //<-- or jump to another group X for composite commands

        digitalWrite(11, HIGH);   // set the LED on

        break;
      case G1_LED_AUS:
        // write your action code here
        group = GROUP_0; //<-- or jump to another group X for composite commands
        digitalWrite(11, LOW);    // set the LED off

        break;
      }
      break;
    }
}

Compile and upload this code. Your Arduino should now do something like this:

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When I first tried to get started with the LaunchPad, I had some difficulties with the Code Composer Studio, the software IDE for the microcontroller. I got compilation errors and whatever. But I think that is quite a common issue with Eclipse based IDEs. I also had my problems with ALTERAs NIOS II Studio.

Now half a year later, I tried the current version of the Code Composer Studio. And I had much more success.

You can download the IDE here [Link]. I had some compiling problems with the new beta 5.2.0.00032. So you may try the version 5.1.1.00031 instead.

Code Composer Studio also comes with a nice graphical programming tool, called Grace. Link to Grace introduction. Grace helps you with configuring the registers of the controller without to study the datasheet. Next to register configuration, it also gives code examples how to access the controllers peripherals with the C code.

In this tutorial we use the 3 on board peripherals, that are accessible by the microcontroller: two LEDs and one switch.
The LED at P1.6 will be toggled every 100ms and the LED at P1.0 will be controlled by the state of the switch at P1.3.

Step1

I assume, you have installed Code Composer Studio and you have one LaunchPad.
I installed the IDE at C:\ti\ and I put the Eclipse workspace at C:\ti\workspace_v5_1.

Step2

To create a new project you go to the menu and select File->New->CCS Project.

Choose a project name – e.g. grace_test.

Then you select the populated MCU in your LaunchPad (just read the ICs marking) – e.g. MSP430G2231.

Then select in “Project templates and examples” -> Grace Examples -> Blink LED from the CPU.

Step3

Then open the led.cfg file (for the Grace GUI) (1.). Select Device Overview, then left click on the Port P1 (2.)

Step4

Then you click on “Pinout TSSOP/PDIP”.
P1.0 and P1.6 must be configured as outputs. The other pins of Port P1 are inputs.

Now we finished the register configuration with Grace and can start to write some software code.

Step5

Open the led.c file in the project explorer. You can replace your code with this.

//*****************************************************************************
//  Blink LED Example
//
//  Description: Toggles P1.6 by xor'ing P1.6 inside of a software loop.
//               Additionally the LED at P1.0 is controlled by the switch
//               at P1.3.
//
//
//                   MSP430
//             -----------------
//         /|\|              XIN|-
//          | |                 |
//          --|RST          XOUT|-
//            |                 |
//            |             P1.0|-->LED
//            |             P1.6|-->LED
//   switch-->|P1.3             |
//
//  zipfelmaus.com, S. Schuster, 03/11/12
//*****************************************************************************

/*
 * ======== Standard MSP430 includes ========
 */
#include <msp430.h>

/*
 * ======== Grace related includes ========
 */
#include <ti/mcu/msp430/csl/CSL.h>

/*
 *  ======== main ========
 */
void main(void)
{
    CSL_init();                     // Activate Grace-generated configuration

    while (1) {
        P1OUT ^= BIT6;              // Toggle LED on P1.6

        // Check P1.3 input status
        if (!(P1IN & BIT3)) {
            // P1.3 input level = logic high
        	// Drive P1.0 output high
        	P1OUT |= (BIT0);
        }

        // Check P1.3 input status
        if (P1IN & BIT3) {
            // P1.3 input level = logic low
        	// Drive P1.0 output low
        	P1OUT &= ~(BIT0);
        }
        __delay_cycles(100000);     // Wait ~100ms at default DCO of ~1MHz
    }
}

Step6

Save every altered file (led.c and led.cfg) and then click the Debug button, wait till the project is compiled and downloaded into your LaunchPad. Then hit the start/play button.

Step7

Your Launchpad should now do this:

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How 30 Minutes a Day Can Increase Your Intelligence

I totally agree. It also prevents you from burning out or getting stuck in your live. Stop wasting your time consuming stuff passively! Plan what you want to learn/consume and get it done..

Frighteningly ambitious startup ideas

Mr. Graham is right. Some of these ideas are so big, that I would never consider to pursue them directly. What I love about the essay is the section “Tactics” at the end..

Ask For Forgiveness Programming – Or How We’ll Program 1000 Cores

I really like this way of solving problems. Slightly redefine the requirements and new, ingenious solutions like this one might emerge

Dark Matter Developers: The Unseen 99%

To me it is not important if you are visible or not. Its important that you love what you are doing and want to get better at it.

The Personal Analytics of My Life

Amazing post! I track my weight online since a while and I have also a nice body of emails… Makes me really want to do something similar.

How A Russian Developer Hijacked Github To Help The Rails Community

I am not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand i’m not happy about the security flaw – on the other hand I think Egor did not behave like an adult. It’s easy to forget that he made the live @Github pretty miserable in the last week.

As long as a company reacts to an email and fixes a vulnerability within a reasonable amount of time you should not do something malicious with your finding.

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Give it five minutes

I should probably also let stuff sink in more often. I start to realize after my first years as developer, that it’s still a long way to go until I know everything better.

Every software project I’ve worked on has used the “Spanish Theory” of project management, and its likely yours have too

There are always 2 sides in this game. Working at a reasonable pace is the responsibilty of every employee. I learned the hard way that it makes sense to not work overtime.

Tmux book from PragProg

Very nice read. I use tmux for quite a while now, but there was still much to learn. The book is worth its price.

Pair Programming Considered Harmful

My experience is, that it is definitly a tool worth having. I believe that being alone might boosts new creative insights – but it does not distribute knowledge within the team and it does not help to keep you focused in a enviorement that is full of distractions.

The Lazy Perfectionist and other Patterns

It made me think in which group(s) I belong..

Why I Don’t Care If You Think Functional Programming Matters

I recommend this article because some aspects of the last few sentences resonate with me. If your motivation to learn and to do your Job is completely intrinsic it does not matter what others say – You just try stuff out, regardless of if its the next big thing or not.

Another aspect of this article I don’t like: The author plays fortuneteller and is certain that functional is the future. Stop.. I should Give it five minutes.

Have a nice week.

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Toolbelt Picture from brockamer. Licensed under CC BY 2.0

Mac OS X Software

1Password

1Password is my password manager of choice. Why a password manager? Well its the only realistic way of having a different password for every website. 1Password also hold password to servers, my serial numbers + my credit card info etc.

Apart from being more secure it also makes the whole password business much more user-friendly, fills passwords in and submits forms if I want.

There is one downside however: I don’t know my passwords any more. When I am at my friends computer I have to look them up in the iPad version of 1Password.

Alfred

Alfred is a marvelous application launcher. I tried Quicksilver and Launchbar but both are not as nice as Alfred.

Apart of the use as app launcher, Alfred is a perfect keyboard interface for iTunes and my clipboard history.

BetterSnapTool

BetterSnapTool manages my windows in an intelligent way. With soon simple grips on the keyboard: I can move them from one screen to another, or arrange them in split view to the left and the right side.

Chrome

One of my most important tools is Chrome. Not only is it a nifty, fast and clutterfree browser, but also a perfect tool for web developers.

The developer tools are right build in and contain everything that I need on a daily basis: JS Console, network activity, debugging facilities for CSS and some basic checks for front end performance.

iTerm 2

I spend quite a lot of time in the terminal. I use iTerm instead of the build in Mac OS terminal. I like the split-pane view, Tmux-integration and that it just kind of feels much better then the normal build in terminal.

OmniOutliner

OmniOutliner is a handy tool for planing new features, thinking about a problems, organizing ideas, breaking down tasks and to understand stuff. There are probably many other Outliners out there – but I am not sure if I could get used to them after all those years..

PHPStorm / Rubymine

Many people don’t use IDE’s – because most of them suck. In my day to day work I couldn’t live without PHPStorm. I love the editor, the code completion, the refactoring support, the GIT integration and the fantastic SFTP sync. Its the first IDE fits my needs and I am very greatful. All my bad experiences with Eclipse, Netbeans, ZendStudio etc are history.

PHPStorm costs ~100€ every year – I rarely pay that much for Software. But PHPStorm is worth every penny.

PHPStorms brother RubyMine is another flavor of the JetBrains IDE. I use it for tons of private projects in Sinatra / Rails and I really like the fantastic integration with Bundler, RSpec, Cucumber and the rest of the Ruby world.

Pomodoro

I am a big believer in the Pomodoro Technique. When I started, I used a tomato-shaped kitchen timer. But it constantly fell of my desk and the ticking annoyed my environment. Thats why I choose to use the little app with the name “Pomodoro”. Its gorgeous. It has Things Integration and lives in my menu bar.

Also it has Apple Script integration. Once I used it to set my status in Adium to away etc, and auto reply during pomodoros. Wasn’t a big hit with my colleagues – Well but that is probably another story..

Reggy

Reggy is a small program that helps you create and test-drive regular expressions. Its quite simple and saves a lot of time. I can’t imagine how to create complicated regular expressions without rapid feedback any more.

Some of my colleagues had a look at Reggy and instantly wanted this kind of instant feedback for regexe’s as well. If you don’t have a Mac an alternative might be Rubular

Sparrow

I hate email! They suck the energy out of me. I tried many different clients over the years: Mail, Entourage, Postbox, Thunderbird, GMail. They really don’t work for me.

Recently I discovered Sparrow. I like it because it makes email as convenient as using Twitter. You can reply fast and it resides in your menu bar and does not use space in the dock.

What I also like is that it automatically uploads attachments to dropbox and I dont have to send 10 MB big attachment bombs through the internet.

I still don’t like emails.. But they are a lot nicer now..

TextExpander

TextExpander stores snippets of texts that i use over and over again. For example boilerplate code that I have to write in PHP to create tests, or email signatures, Lorem Ipsum snippets and such..

TextExpander syncs itself via Dropbox, so that you can share your snippets between different computers.

Things

Things is a pretty neat store of the stuff that pops into my mind, while I am working on hard problems.

I can revisit this stuff later and continue to concentrate on the task at hand.

It allows me to plan Tasks, schedule them, create little projects.

Since the last weekend I also use Things Cloud beta, to syncronize my tasks between my Imac at work and my Macbook Pro at home.

Sequel Pro

I already recommended Sequel Pro in the past a while ago. In the meantime it even got better.

If you work with MySQL and a Mac and you don’t have it – get it. Now!

It makes working with the database fun again. You can have favorite queries, browse your database, alter tables, kill queries in a simple, elegant and time-saving way.

Terminal

Homebrew

Homebrew is the missing package manager for OS X. It my preferred way to install *NIX tools. It works like a charm and just feels better than the alternatives.

Bashmarks

Bashmarks is a little shell script that allows you to save bookmarks to directories. With a few keystrokes you can jump everywhere in the system.

GIT

My swiss army VCM system. I use it for nearly everything that is related to text. For example also to write blog-articles:

toolbelt.md on GitHub

Links

Mac OS X

• 1Password
• Alfred
• BetterSnapTool
• Chrome
• iTerm 2
• OmniOutliner
• PHPStorm
• Pomodoro
• Reggy
• Sparrow
• TextExpander
• Things
• SequelPro

Terminal

• Homebrew
• Bashmarks
• Git

I am quite obsessed about trying out new stuff. So i am really interessted in the tools you use. Tell me

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Some of these links contain real wisdom and made me think and the link “game of thrones” made me laugh hard I also like that next week, when I am out of bed – there is 1 nice new Codeschool course waiting for me.

Programming

• Rediscovering the RSync Algorithm
• Stumbling on the escalator
• Stuck in an overlong Agile stand up? Try the two hands rule
• Should All Web Traffic Be Encrypted?
• Lord of the Files: How GitHub Tamed Free Software (And More)

Learning

• In defense of doing it the “hard way”
• New Codeschool Course: Rails Testing for Zombies
• Play by Play: Aaron Patterson
• Learning is Dead

Misc

• uninterrupted flow considered harmful
• game of thrones
• The Piracy Threshold
• Performance-Messung mit GTmetrix

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Though I again found some interesting gem’s that I do want to share with you.

Programming

• Lisp: It’s Not About Macros, It’s About Read
• musicForProgramming();
• Coding tricks of game developers

Other interesting stuff

• What I’ve Learned About Smart People.
• How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy

My Software pick of the week

• Mou – The missing Markdown editor for web developers

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It comes bundled with XCode. You can find it under:

/Applications/Utilities/Network Link Conditioner/

Double click and you will have it in your system preferences. I know that there are more advanced ways of doing it – but you should have a look at this. For me its good enough.

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Programming Meta

• Why are software development task estimations regularly off by a factor of 2-3?
• Why there often is no single root cause for problems
• Suffering-oriented programming – a nice concept to think about.
• Why You Shouldn’t Hire More Developers
• Most Pressed Keys and Programming Syntaxes

New stuff to learn

• A new MIT course on “Advanced Data Structures” is online.
• New Peepcode on HTML 5 Browser Caching

Misc

• A point and click adventure raised over 1 million dollars in one day on KickStarter
• Sneak peek at the greatest toy robot ever invented

Image by psiaki licensed under CC BY 2.0. Thanks!

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To come by these links I use Fever°, Zite, Twitter, Read It Later + Favs App Beta

• SSH: More than secure shell
• How Sitting All Day Is Damaging Your Body and How You Can Counteract It
• Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs of Software Development
• Mythical man month : 10 lines per developer day
• 30 books everyone in software business should read (and why)

Image Credits: Nathan Wells – Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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The shipping to Germany took it’s time, about four weeks or so. I received the package just this week. I ordered 2 Monkey Lights. Here you can see what is inside the package:

The battery pack holds 3 AA batteries. A rubber seal prevents moisture to get inside the battery pack. The light electronics are enclosed in flexible clear plastic.

And here is a little demo:

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Bildnachweis: “Learning Dream” von twenty_questions. (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Codeschool

Codeschool is a website, which publishes nice tech-courses on a regular basis. They consist of videos + an interactive part, where you have to solve quizzes. I find this way of learning most entertaining. It sticks much better then to read a book. As a bonus you get a nice public profile, that you can use to brag about how much you learn.

Treehouse

Treehouse offers a introduction to Webdevelopment and iOS-Programming. The course consists of Videos, Quizzes and Code challenges. Its more addressed at beginners then at pros, but I found that its worth revisiting the basics after a few years. The explanation of the topics is really sound and I was supprised that I missed some subtleties of perfect markup.

I highly recommend it to beginners. In my opinion this way of learning is way better then buying a books and reading

Destroy All Software

Destroy All Software is an awesome paid screencast. A new video is published weekly. Topics are Unix, Git, Testing, Ruby, Vim and good OO Design.

Clean Coders

Clean Coders is a series of videos created by “Uncle Bob” Martin. I really like his “special” style and had some good laughs, as he appeared as Spock. He pays much attention to presentation and keeps you engaged for hours.

Peepcode

PeepCode Screencasts are awesome. They cover all kinds of topics: Rails, Js, Testing, Productivity, UX Sketching and many more. The presentation is awesome and they are perfect to get you started in a topic.

Pragmatic Programmers

I am a big fan of the books of the Pragmatic Programmers. They are worth every single cent. They cool features like automatic push to your Kindle on every update of the book.

Happy learning

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Hier übrigens der Amazon-Link.

(Listenbild: Motivation Stickers von rosipaw)

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