We are planning an Arduino Introductory training course this Saturday 19 May at House4Hack in Centurion.

An overview of the course, where it is etc is here: http://www.house4hack.co.za/?page_id=453

The course cost is R600 and includes the Arduino UNO, cable, breadboard and everything you would need to complete this course.

Please bring a laptop and if possible, install the software beforehand

Course will start at 9:00 and run till 13:00.

Pizza will be served for lunch.

Mail me at schalk dot heunis at gmail dot com, if you are interested or have questions.

The basic idea

Throw something at the wall, if you hit the tune currently playing will we changed.

Platform

Will use arduino of course and the PC interface via a Mac and Itunes.

Help Needed

Anyone knows how to inject keystrokes to the active window on the MAC using PYTHON? I have used SendKeys on the Game hack, but I think that is only available on Windows platforms. (found one answer here)

cheers

Tobie (tooblippe)

PS: Philip made a POC and video response on this posting, see video way at the very bottom of this posting.

Philip’s response: A working POC that even changes the tune to a video tune:

Hi Tobie, I made a working POC and captured everything in the video hereunder. It uses VLC. Can work on Linux/Mac/Windows … actually any OS. Did not have access to Mac/iTunes though. Hopefully there’s something useful in the methodology. Arduino->Python->SocketConnection->VLC_Remote->ChangeTune.

ciao

Philip (zer0tilt)

BluMote is a bluetooth remote control and app for your smartphone. It can act as a panic button to:
- Automatically place an emergency call
- Send out SMS with GPS location and other data to selected contacts
- Covertly record audio (for anti-corruption)
- Open doors and gates by integrating with the openSHAC project from House4Hack
- Anything else we care to program!

Launch at MOMO Joburg

The above video is the BluMote presentation at MOMO Joburg that won the competition – “Changing the world through innovation”. Zombie video recorded at House4Hack. Development version PCB for BluMote created by www.openhardware.co.za.

Open source

BluMote uses Arduino on the AT Tiny 2313 and the arduino 1.0 files are here https://github.com/house4hack/BluMote/tree/master/arduino

The Android code for the app is here https://github.com/house4hack/BluMote

Eagle design files are booked in under https://github.com/house4hack/BluMote/tree/master/eagle

Photo Gallery

Video shown on CNBC Africa – Tech@Work:

House4Hack is helping Africa Utility Week (http://www.african-utility-week.com/water-expo/) to organize a 1 day water hackathon on Monday 21 May 2012.

You want to meet like-minded people and have fun.

Challenges

There are some really high impact challenges and here is a taste

Map the poison - This should be a web based application that will be used to map spots along a wetland system where poorly treated and potentially poisonous effluent is being discharged into the system.The program should be able to specify which kind of components of the toxic effluent are being discharged where.  The problem is that in Africa, Leather tanning and other industries are still thriving while releasing poorly treated effluent directly into our wetland systems. The reason they go undetected is lacking a GPS system that will track these activities so that the culprits are apprehended and corrected. This would go far in solving this issue.

Power surge prompt - A system that alerts plant operator on duty through their mobile phone whenever there is low, high or fluctuating voltage that could cause damage to pumps, motors etc in the plant. Report to technical manager or supervisor daily indicating time, nature of occurence and action taken as well time of normalisation of system.

Water usage map –  In order to help managers understand water use patterns and how they vary geographically, a mapping application (e.g. Google Earth app) could link water meter data with meter GPS co-ordinates.  Such maps could inform decisions around planning and investment for areas with low consumption or connection density (often poorer neighbourhoods and marginalised communities).  The ability to include additional demographic data would allow for richer analysis (http://www.sanmap.org/)  for a taste of this type of visualisation.  Overall, the ability to visualise this data on an interactive map would assist managers in their decision-making around demand management and distribution losses. They could even single out households with suspiciously high or low water usage (helping to fight leakage and corruption).

Where?

Expo Center in Johannesburg (http://www.african-utility-week.com/about-the-venue/venue-directions/)

Agenda

08h00  Registration and breakfast
09h30  Schedule and logistics announcements
10h00  Subject matter expert briefing
10h30  Begin coding
13h00  Lunch
13h30  Coding continued
14h30  Optional progress briefing, coding continued
18h00  Coding ends  / Presenting solutions
19h00  Dinner / Judging / Prize giving
20h00  End (to be continued at RHoK on 2 – 3 June 2012)

Registration

Registration now open http://waterhackathon.eventbrite.com/

The number plate control consists of

• An actuating button and status LED on the handle bar
• A dc motor with gearbox for rotating the numberplate holder
• Arduino Nano with H-bridge motor controller to tie everything together

The result is seen in the following clip:

The design was made in such a way as to prevent the number plate holder from accidentally rotating.  This was one of the main considerations for the design and ensures that the vehicle is road legal when not on the track.  However, when on the track, the number plate can easily be rotated for maximum performance.  A status led gives a visual indicator of the rotation angle to the driver at all times.

Below are some photos of the build process and the final product.  The controller is housed below the seat in a waterproof box .  The numberplate holder is rotated using a custom lever arrangement.   It is attached to a powerful gearbox, which was recovered from an old copier.

The code for the Arduino is here: https://github.com/tobykurien/BikePlate, including the schematic of the circuit (thanks to Murray for his excellent Eagle course!!!)

Freddie is busy testing the poc implementation, but told me he is impressed with the results so far.  There has even been talks of using this as a prop in a local commercial

and we have been toying with the idea of making this interactive.  On Saturday, I hacked together a RFID based sound player, which could be the beginnings of this interactivitiy:

I think it could be fun to tackle this as a group, building up some collective learning on the way and having a sellable product as the end result.  We could tackle this with the following modules:

• CNC basics, simple design and first cuts
• Building the Wave shield – play music with your Arduino
• RFID Hacks
• Product design – features, price point, market research
• Building the prototype
• Setting up an eCommerce site and marketing the product

Everyone would cover their own costs, but the modules would be free for House Members and R200 for non members.

If you are interested, please let me know – we will most likely start next Tuesday 1 May.

Project wiki: http://house4hack.co.za/wiki/index.php/Interactive_kids_table

SHAC (our smart phone based house access control system) was nominated to be presented at Tech Demo Africa.

The other MOMO startups were:
- Mushroom Cloud – iPadvertise
- WIP – What I Mean Application – Kurt Mbanje
- SHOUT – Cytrus

Much to our surprise, after the presentations it was announced that the judges would decide the winner – nobody even knew this was a competition

Then they announced the winner – House4Hack! and the prize a Samsung Galaxy Note!

We have started moving some of it. We need people to assist. Please let us know.

You can find some of tomorow nights Python Course material here already.

www.house4hack.co.za/wiki