Author: Steven A. Cholewiak

Arduino FIO Internal Voltmeter and Thermometer

Steven A. Cholewiak 2 Comments

Let’s extend the low power Ardunio Fio + Xbee setup that I previously blogged about.  I wanted to see if I could create a simple wireless temperature sensor that could allow for long(er) term logging.  Interestingly, the ATmega328P on the Arduino Fio has both a “secret” internal thermometer and internal voltmeter, meaning that I could (potentially) create a wireless sensor with no external additional external components (other than the Fio, XBee, and battery).

So, taking advantage of the available hardware and the code available, I went about creating a wireless temperature logger using an Arduino Fio (available from Amazon.com) and two XBees (one for the Fio and one for the coordinator).

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9,5° (“unstable” chair)

Steven A. Cholewiak Leave a comment

My research on the perception of stability often leads me down roads (especially on the information superhighway) that turn up very interesting objects and projects. 9,5° by B°Fex is one of those projects that makes you do a double-take.

From the designer:

…
The chair is tilted at 9,5 degrees. By tilting the chair and then elevating one end of the seat back to a straight angle, a triangle was created. This actually made the construction stronger and reduced the need for a stabilising cross rod.
In conclusion, it’s not always wrong to be wrong. The deconstruction of the original design served a higher purpose.
…

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Bionic Band – $0.22 of Silicone

Steven A. Cholewiak 2 Comments

Turns out that one of the manufacturers of the “Bionic Band” has unintentionally outed it as being a $0.22 piece of silicone. If you haven’t seen the “Bionic Band” or the multitude of “power enhancing” silicon bands in stores, mall kiosks, and online, it is basically snake oil that salesmen are pushing as a miracle cure for all sorts of ailments.

Unfortunately for the sales rep, one of the wholesale manufacturers posted a picture online of a set of bands they produced.  Check out SpeedyWristbands.com Wristband Pricing (look under “Deboss-Fill Wristbands”, here’s a direct link to the image and a mirror).  Purchased in quantities, you can get them for $0.70/piece for a lot of 100, or as low as $0.22/piece for 20,000.  These currently sell for $29.95 on the BionicBand website (see here or mirror here).

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Arduino FIO Low Power Setup

Steven A. Cholewiak 5 Comments

As usually, I have been very sporadic in posting new/updated projects due to my prioritization of my doctoral work (i.e., not much time for fun little electronics projects!).  However, I’ve been playing around with the Arduino Fio (available from Amazon.com) in my free time for a little while now, so I wanted to post some notes on a very low power usage setup that I was able to put together.

As my free hobby time has dwindled, so has the time I’ve been able to devote to debugging programs written for my little Microchip PICs.  So, given my limited time, I decided to dive right into Arduinos — which utilize a higher-level programming language, making things a little quicker and easier for me to tinker — and try to get some wireless communication working.  After looking through the possibilities, I settled on the Arduino Fio.  The Arduino Fio is a great little Arduino-compatible board that includes a socket for an XBee 802.15.4 wireless module along with a LiPo plug and charger circuit.

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QR code contact information stereogram

Steven A. Cholewiak 1 Comment

I felt that my resume/curriculum vitae needed a quick way for people to get in touch with me, so I generated a QR code to encode my contact information. The QR code is scannable using a barcode reader app on most modern smartphones and will automatically pop up with my email and website contact information. I wanted the code to stand out, so, rather than embedding a logo/image into the center, I decided to go the psychophysical route and create a stereogram!

To view, focus eyes behind the image (diverge) or in front (converge, cross-eyed) so that the two images combine into one.

The stereogram was created by shifting a surface of pixels to the left in one image and right in the other (see an example in Wikipedia’s Random Dot Stereogram entry). When the two images are perceptually fused, you perceive the shift as a change in depth of the surface (more info in Wikipedia’s Autostereogram entry). The shift needed to be small enough that the codes would still be scannable (see Wikipedia again), but provide a convincing amount of depth.

I’ve also attached an animated version (also scannable!) using the left and right images as frames (See Lee (1970) Binocular stereopsis without spatial disparity for additional discussion):
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Switching hosts

Steven A. Cholewiak Leave a comment

I’ve switched hosting providers, so I am currently transitioning my blog from the old provider to the new one. There are a number of broken links and a number of issues that I am trying to resolve (specifically with my old folder organization structure for JAL code), but hopefully this will all be cleaned up soon!

426 - Upgrade Required

Update 01/09/2012: Still slowly transitioning the old posts to WordPress. Unfortunately, there isn’t an easy way (that I am aware of) to convert my old static-page format into the dynamic WordPress format, meaning that I have to upload each image individually and fix the code in the posts. So, unfortunately, it’s taking longer than I would prefer. In addition, I have been transitioning from YouTube to locally hosted videos, but unfortunately, that has been a battle as well. So, things are in a bit of disarray at this point, but will get better soon (I promise!).

Update 02/29/2012: Ok, done! (I hope…)

200 - OK

Repel DEET Numbers Game

Steven A. Cholewiak 5 Comments

Repel produces a number of DEET products intended to scare away those little flying buggers that seem to be everywhere on these warm summer nights. While walking through my local Target, I noticed that there were varying concentrations available for purchase at my local store (please excuse the hand-held photos):

23% DEET 40% DEET 100% DEET

After looking a bit closer at the labels though, I noticed something peculiar in the “Active Ingredient” list…

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