Personal projects status dump

August 30, 2015 nouyang 1 Comment

Open Source CAD (CAD extensible toolkit): Backburner (eta re-opening: Nov 1, 2015)

https://github.com/ilebedev/cadet
http://etherpad.mit.edu/p/CADet-demo
more thoughts, but very disorganized, here: http://etherpad.mit.edu/p/CADet

Relationship / Sex Ed Prototypes: Backburner (eta opening: Jan 1, 2016)

Role-playing games to establish healthy, inclusive, non-judgemental models of asking someone out / responding to that / dealing with that response
Can it be not corny? Even if it’s corny, can it still be effective?
Filling whatever gap PUA fills for guys

6.01 robots: Backburner (eta re-opening: Oct 15, 2015) — potentially escalate to Sept 5th, 2015

Feminist Apparel: Backburner (eta opening: Dec 1, 2015)

Snarky tshirts, IUD/LED earrings, elegant dresses with feminist quotes, stickers, necklaces, henna art, nails, pocket sewing kits, feminist bread and cake,

Hobbyist-Priced Small Waterjet: Backburner (eta re-opening: Feb 1, 2016)

Grad school: Active

Swarmbuddy robots: Active

co-conspirators: Ethan B., Chris A.
shift to nrf51822 chip (breadboard the circuit)
new board: nrf51822, 1s battery, usb charging,
new mechanical layout: with actual wheels, cheaper continuous rotation servos (or steppers? for easier zeroing than using a screwdriver), and an origami case
servo with pot broken out? $$$?
App Inventor + Android programming
New Android application

Hack4Fem: Active

More workshops
More speakers
More participants

Boatwork: Active

hook up solar panel to small lead-acid for bilge pump
Sand and urethane the gunwhals
Attach stern pieces
Take underwater pictures
Test generator and bring on board
Cut hole in engine compartment to diagnose leak
Call admiral and Crystal about winter haul out to fix keel leak
Hook up small battery and solar panel to bilge
Machine rope clutches from picture, two
Machine running rigging blocks, around four
Buy spring line cleats for mid ships
Make a roller furler for jib out of bike parts
Climb the mast install weather station and Masthead lights
Find radar?
Install red lights and wiring
also make a solar cabintop! diy solar panel, ?diy charge balancer?, diy battery pack? (no, get lead acids)

Youtube Channel: (backburner, eta May 2016)

Things to learn:

more math: 18.06, more statistics
electronics: power electronics, 6.302
sewing / fashion (ask on craigslist)
drawing / animation / video work (ask on craigslist)
makeup / cross-dressing / cosplay (ask on craigslist)
how to make html5 webapps easily and quickly
- skillswap
- website for house (splitting rent, household items shopping reminders, utilities, landlord contacting, parties, guestbook reviews :])

Short Posts, Software

Restarting Cinnamon after freeze without losing session information

August 28, 2015 nouyang 1 Comment

Whoo! For some reason, cinnamon freezes extremely often (multiple times a day) on my desktop, and I had been resorting to “ctrl-alt-f1” to get to a terminal and running “killall cinnamon-session”, which brings me back to login screen. Fortunately, there is a better solution, aka “ctrl-alt-esc”.

Here’s the relevant excerpt from the Cinnamon blog (http://segfault.linuxmint.com/2015/06/cinnamon-2-6/):

Desktop freezes

In case of a freeze or if you need to restart Cinnamon for any reason, you can now do so via a keyboard shortcut. The default key combination is Ctrl+Alt+Escape. Pressing this combination of keys restarts nemo and cinnamon-settings-daemon in case they had crashed, and launches a brand new instance of the Cinnamon desktop. Unlike Ctrl+Alt+Backspace which terminates your session and brings you back to the login screen, Ctrl+Alt+Escape simply restarts Cinnamon itself, which means your session is exactly as it was, you don’t lose any work and all your windows and applications remain open.

Uncategorized

NRF51-DK and Ubuntu 14.04: pt2, UART BLE Loopback with Android 4.4.4

August 27, 2015 nouyang

NRF Toolbox UART log showing sent and received messages

In the previous post I described three quick steps (well… sometimes mbed is pretty slow) to get started with NRF51-DK on Ubuntu 14.04.

Yesterday I was able to get the NRF51-DK to talk to my phone, which was pretty exciting.

In short

For NRF51-DK:

Open mbed compiler
Import > Click on “programs” tab instead of “libraries”
Search for “BLE_LoopbackUART” > Import
Note: Do NOT check “update libraries”, unlike what this Evothings post suggests, checking “update libraries” actually threw errors and failed to compile in the next step, whereas if I went back and re-imported checking “update libraries”, it compiled fine
Compile and save file
Copy to JLINK to upload.
Note: Make the NRF51-DK is turned ON and connected to laptop

On Android:

Using Google Play, install NRF Toolbox from Nordic
Open and click on UART
Click Connect (say “yes” to turning on bluetooth if you haven’t already)
Click the “…” > Show log
Write “hello” > SEND
Click “↵” on your android phone or scroll to the bottom of the log
You should see it say “hey” sent and “hey received” 🙂

In Long (with screenshots)

Open mbed compiler
Import > Click on “programs” tab instead of “libraries”
Search for “BLE_LoopbackUART” > Import
Note: Do NOT check “update libraries”, unlike what this Evothings post suggests, checking “update libraries” actually threw errors and failed to compile in the next step, whereas if I went back and re-imported checking “update libraries”, it compiled fine
Compile and save file
Copy to JLINK to upload.
Note: Make the NRF51-DK is turned ON and connected to laptop

On Android:

Using Google Play, install NRF Toolbox from Nordic
Open and click on UART
Click Connect (say “yes” to turning on bluetooth if you haven’t already) and select the “BLE UART” device near you
Click the “…” > Show log
Write “hello” > SEND
Click “↵” on your android phone or scroll to the bottom of the log
You should see it say “hey” sent and “hey received” 🙂
NRF Toolbox UART log showing sent and received messages