SRJM.co.uk » Hardware

An Update (Christmas 2009)

Simon — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 12:48:22 +0000

Here is an update on some bits and pieces I have been doing since starting my new job way back in October now.

Misty winter morning steps to work.

Arrival of the massive box for my new PC.

Because there was a video on YouTube of the PC game Witcher’s strange monkey creature, or Mamune which has subsequently been removed I decided to record my own and upload it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEQlT8WVhVs

http://witcher.wikia.com/wiki/Mamune

New Site, Old Browser

Simon — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 07:57:55 +0000

Even though I started this new design with the feeling that I should just ignore Internet Explorer 6, I did realise that there were still visitors doomed to using this browser, either because of their hardware/operating system limitation, familiarity or their company’s refusal to update. I also had all the bits and pieces for adapting a site for 5 and 6 compatibility already in place, and had been adding them as and when I recognised old scenarios that needed them.

So I took this opportunity to start up my old computer, which is running a pretty much clean install of Windows 98 updated as far as it was supported, all on a Pentium 4 with 512mb of RAM and the high-end Geforce 2 GPU: astronomical power compared to what 95 and 98 were intended to work with normally. And then there is Internet Explorer 6!

I was a little bit astonished to discover that despite my fears that the new CSS would collapse in a heap, everything was generally rendering exactly where it was meant to be. The only issues were superficial ones, such as transparent PNGs rendering as grey which were easily fixed. In the end I did make an effort to ensure that users browsing with IE6 do have a reasonable experience.

Finished Final Year Project

Simon — Sat, 30 May 2009 09:29:54 +0000

Presented in the last half hour of the first day… Here are a couple of photos I took while waiting after setting up in the middle room of Babbage floor 2.

The DVDs ready for submission:

Project Update

Simon — Wed, 20 May 2009 21:50:22 +0000

A typical picture update of the project from both aspects, the 3D and the physical interface.

Digital Atmosphere

Terrain Spikes

Testing the spike generator for visual feedback on the terrain:

Pulse Rate Sensor

Sensor in the Handle

Electronics

Simon — Tue, 12 May 2009 21:16:11 +0000

Although I’m still waiting to find out if the PCB I requested a week ago is ready I have been able to get on with trying to produce the remaining electronics.

I’ve found out that the Analogue-to-Digital-Converter of my USB board is pretty sensitive and simply connecting my circuits resulted in extreme noise rather than a smooth stable reading. So in order to solve this I’ve placed some beefier 1uF (rather than the 0.1uF on my GSR circuit) capacitors between the output and the ground which seems to stabilise it perfectly.

Powerful LEDs

Hopefully they will illuminate the centre of my handle, which now has acrylic beads glued into the holes in order to catch the light. I took this photo with my light on, not in the dark…

Thermistor Circuit

Note the purple capacitor across the thermistor. Without it the circuit gives out a perfectly stable current, but the ADC doesn’t seem to think so.

Power Socket

After soldering my socket onto a small piece of board (with the intention of simply attaching the other circuits’ power wires) I thought that maybe I should do a diode bridge to ensure polarity. Hence it was a challenge but I nicked the diodes from a broken AC to DC transformer and managed to fit them onto the board with enough room for soldering the wires on the end. Now it doesn’t matter which way around you connect the power :)

A Few More Production Shots

Simon — Wed, 06 May 2009 20:37:28 +0000

Just a couple more photos I’ve taken along the path of producing my biofeedback interface handle.

Simple biofeedback measurement and amplification:

After I had started making finger grooves:

Turned Wood

Simon — Mon, 04 May 2009 20:23:35 +0000

I decided to take a quick shot as a preview of the turned banksia nut wood before further processing. The material of the first one (bottom) was too soft to produce my modified bullet shape design, so I reverted to the simpler shape for the second nut.

The two banksia nuts turned into the handle shape.

The next stage will be to hollow out the centre of the handle to allow light and wires through.

Adding a Joystick to DirectX

Simon — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 18:37:24 +0000

Having acquired a joystick I was eager to try it out in my DirectX project. This is theoretically a very easy thing to do, but of course, it isn’t turning out that way. While the sample project and tutorial instructions are incredibly easy to follow, and the sample project compiles and runs perfectly well, starting to apply this code my own project is not straightforward.

Something which I am now starting to accept is pretty typical of Microsoft’s code is that they do something totally differently to the way that they themselves have said it should be done, and don’t bother explaining WHY.

Nevertheless I shall persevere with adding this to my project with the intention of linking camera control to the joystick, but the responsiveness of the motion will be dependant on the strength of biofeedback signal.

Update: I discovered I was trying to fix an issue that didn’t exist when all that was required was including the dinput8.lib file to the project…

Joystick

Simon — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:15:55 +0000

It was only bought for its components, but before doing anything with it I needed to test it was working correctly and what sort of functionality it has etc.

Arrival of Packages

Simon — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 11:13:38 +0000

As I suspected, my two separate orders arrived at exactly the same time, so I’ve been unpacking my banksia nuts courtesy of axminster.co.uk and my cheap joystick from amazon.

They certainly looked better as mysterious parcels.