tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-156445132011-12-24T15:13:41.601ZMy programming and my thoughts about programming in general.RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.comBlogger1311100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-83135058799640124972011-12-24T15:08:00.002Z2011-12-24T15:13:41.607Z

I added plastic right-angle section as edges and metal brackets and corner pieces. Front fast has plastic glass in front of LEDs.

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-36257651516299966122011-10-08T14:37:00.006+01:002011-10-08T14:59:38.075+01:00

I've thought about using Lua for game scripting (easier, more flexible, less freaky for others than our GameForth). Lua is used in lots of games, such as World of Warcraft, Baulder's Gate, Angry Birds, Civilization V, Escape from Monkey Island, Far Cry, Lego Universe, Homeworld 2, Plants vs. Zombies, The Sims 2: Nightlight, SimCity 4 ... [1]Anyway, assuming a need for one of my games, I saw

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-59698307544950417312011-06-25T12:14:00.000+01:002011-06-25T12:48:28.151+01:00

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-28398826000596784602011-02-13T13:11:00.010Z2011-02-13T14:38:44.788Z

I've been meaning to write an article about local variables for while.Parameter StackSo in the Forth programming language, normally most working data is kept on the stack - both parameters passed into functions and also local working data (which would be kept in local 'automatic' variables in C). You can also use named global variables for state data outside of this. (I'll ignore Forth

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-5050771366919593192011-01-22T20:50:00.001Z2011-01-22T20:50:14.409Z

One of Claire's graphics

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-44995761290026678322011-01-22T20:49:00.000Z2011-01-22T20:48:26.796Z

This is animated with twinkling lights, but that's obviously not apparent from this still shot.

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-67523120903560374722011-01-22T20:47:00.000Z2011-01-22T20:46:41.799Z

With 20 row and 24 column wires connected.

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-51742828797394634962011-01-22T20:45:00.000Z2011-01-22T20:44:38.034Z

Done last week - to avoid the horizontal column wires and vertical row wires from touching in the middle. They hold down the row wires and hold up the column wires.

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-79318819889718928162011-01-15T20:41:00.002Z2011-01-15T20:52:07.408Z

Now 479 LED's soldered onto the board. One LED must have got damaged - so I've ordered a replacement. (Claire did loads of winding and soldering - and found a location with two LEDs soldered on... what a wonderful wife!)Additionally I've got a 'computer emulation' of the display. It uses the same high level Forth display words and a different set of low level words to display it in a text

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-43456248229552931002011-01-04T17:25:00.003Z2011-01-04T17:29:34.914Z

(This was meant to be posted with the previous picture)One hundred exactly left to do. Lots of help from Claire, Ron, Linda.Made slightly more difficult by the fact that about 50 have resistors soldered on the leg of the LED right next to the head under plastic covering. Another good number had three or four wires soldered onto the LED which needed to be reduced to two.However, the general

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-44230635008743040612011-01-04T16:14:00.001Z2011-01-04T16:14:45.023Z

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-71506448094895843922011-01-03T20:23:00.004Z2011-01-03T21:06:18.582Z

Here is a bit of code that I've been using to test microprocessor pins (also know as ports).// ( port# -- ): test_port0 // program port as an output ." Testing port 0." dup . ." ->" dup p0_out_bit BEGIN dup p0set_bit ." 1" 500 ms dup p0clear_bit ." 0" 500 ms KEY? UNTIL KEY drop drop CR;This word turns the selected output on and off every half a second (500 milliseconds

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-27518228625409128842011-01-03T19:20:00.002Z2011-01-03T19:34:11.537Z

P0.2/P0.3 (port not going high) -- 10K pull up on each port fixed problem.P1.22 (port ok, row transistor not going high) -- solder short on output resistor on controller board. No danger to any device, short removed.P1.28 (port being low) -- This was a bit of solder between the actual microprocessor IC pins for P1.28 and VSS_A. Moved with a scalpel. (Most likely during construction of controller

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-199385462630982492011-01-03T13:06:00.000Z2011-01-03T13:05:54.717Z

Two things took longer than I expected. The biggest job was definitely soldering the 480 LEDs and that is still half done. Making and soldering the controller board also took longer than I expected. Part of this was transferring the design to stripboard - I'd 'paper designed' the chip and transistor pin connections but there were placement and wiring issues. Three placement/wiring issues worth

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-83162378709737778372010-12-31T17:33:00.000Z2010-12-31T17:32:50.749Z

Still needs the hardware testing and software writing.

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-12176797310320561902010-12-28T17:45:00.001Z2010-12-28T17:45:18.608Z

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-11817470391845495282010-12-28T17:44:00.001Z2010-12-28T17:44:31.258Z

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-88535766533001742932010-12-28T16:43:00.000Z2010-12-28T17:42:12.153Z

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-74302193854830962122010-12-28T16:42:00.000Z2010-12-28T17:42:21.701Z

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-87464546449143916142010-12-28T16:41:00.000Z2010-12-28T17:42:28.669Z

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-68620553509660800472010-12-28T16:40:00.000Z2010-12-28T17:42:37.831Z

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-396431489872090622010-12-28T16:39:00.000Z2010-12-28T17:42:56.991Z

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-28918452037944813682010-12-26T14:47:00.000Z2010-12-26T15:06:16.679Z

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-43753188131853051982010-12-26T14:17:00.002Z2010-12-26T14:21:15.455Z

TerminalsMy normal serial terminal program (ZTerm) doesn’t appear to allow manual control of DTR+RTS (as far as I can tell). I, however, need this control for a ByVac BV511 LPC ARM + Forth board http://www.byvac.com/bv3/index.php?route=product/product&path=20&product_id=49 which uses them to control the reset and program-enable lines. (I first saw the BV511 sold on ebay.co.uk by ByVac).I tried to

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-52674913170653690592010-11-27T17:45:00.000Z2010-11-27T17:46:23.122Z

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-84607197591452322452010-11-27T16:27:00.000Z2010-11-27T16:29:07.933Z

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-44741807253008502772010-11-27T15:29:00.000Z2010-11-27T15:40:08.137Z

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-5568285724372290212010-11-27T15:25:00.000Z2010-11-27T15:42:17.698Z

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-45298565069016310302010-11-27T14:51:00.000Z2010-11-27T14:53:41.451Z

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-26405511577616801352010-11-27T14:50:00.000Z2010-11-27T14:55:22.786Z

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-44325505984546321902010-11-27T14:39:00.000Z2010-11-27T14:40:11.207Z

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-31887225708765720442010-10-19T20:12:00.002+01:002010-10-19T21:01:15.223+01:00

Links Official web site: http://python.org/ This tutorial is really cool: http://docs.python.org/tutorial Reference: http://python.org/doc/A dynamic language. Interpreted not compiled. Sort of C-like syntax, close enough that certainly I felt comfortable in it. Also used as a scripting language. Easy to learn.Like C .... except the whitespace is significant in front of expressions: so no

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-75874591103590234472010-07-24T17:07:00.000+01:002010-07-24T17:09:37.682+01:00

So making changes to source files. Discover I need to set a Python file to UTF-8 from MacRoman. Look at nested settings ... workbench settings, project settings, file settings. Make some changes.Try to edit a file an Eclipse hangs. Force quit and launch ... look at settings - all seem ok ... try to edit... Eclipse hangs. Launch eclipse ... try to save the settings ... waiting on something else..

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-32018730914082077062010-03-06T21:20:00.002Z2010-03-06T21:21:03.151Z

There are quite a few programming quotes. These are a few I like. Computer programming is tremendous fun. Like music, it is a skill that derives from an unknown blend of innate talent and constant practice. Like drawing, it can be shaped to a variety of ends – commercial, artistic, and pure entertainment. Programmers have a well-deserved reputation for working long hours, but are rarely credited

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-7268399061057115392010-02-22T17:12:00.002Z2010-02-22T17:19:11.081Z

I know Steve has mentioned his voiced reasons - and I'm not going to say what I think of Flash itself except to say that, like all technologies, there are advantages and disadvantages.Several people are saying that the decision to not support the Flash on the iPad is to protect the App Store. I've this heard from several places. But I'm not sure it holds up as an argument. Two thoughts: 1. There

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-79637380332925555172009-12-14T21:16:00.006Z2009-12-14T21:30:04.153Z

"This client is too old to work with working copy" --- some recent OS upgrade seems to have wiped my upgraded Subversion and replaced with 1.4.4 :-( Oh well, it's a quick fix to install new one. Must have only happened over the last few weeks...I'm sure you've seen this keyboard before http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/keyboards-mice/9836/. I like the look of it, although since I don't look at

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-41973469558108775512009-11-13T17:02:00.002Z2009-11-13T17:16:45.227Z

The good thing about software is that, generally, you can get things working pretty well.However, sometimes it doesn't always work first time. In my experience, this happens even more when you are dealing with the 'real world' more than usual, like in a Robot. Since I don't have a full mathematical model (or, in fact, any mathematical model) for the Robot work I'm doing, I have to use my mental

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-4728931470540432142009-10-18T21:15:00.002+01:002009-10-18T21:22:51.262+01:00

Human readable markup http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YAML ... strangely it's a lot like the LWC2 format!Should everything be addressed by a http verb and noun? Probably not but ... http://tomayko.com/writings/rest-to-my-wife - the big about all resources being addressed by a URI/URL is interesting I think.

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-41243604669116437802009-10-18T20:38:00.002+01:002009-10-18T21:08:55.677+01:00

We are going (slowly) on the desktop and laptop over to 64-bit machines with 64-bit pointers. Of course, there are still lots of people/organisations using 32bitXP - but let's ignore them.Would anyone want 128bit pointers?What if we want memory mapped hard disk systems? Not just memory mapped files but entire hard disks mapped to the byte (byte addressable effectively) by pointers.At the moment

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-74859166243115393762009-10-02T21:33:00.002+01:002009-10-02T22:53:34.775+01:00

As a user I dislike 'DRM' for software - it gets in my way. Even having to have a disk in the drive to play a game is a pain. What about if I don't have DVD/CD drive attached all the time?. However, as a small indie developer zero copy protection means lower or no sales.But you don't want to spend a lot of time on anti-features like DRM because they don't add value to the people who might buy

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-82825175879618176142009-09-22T22:38:00.002+01:002009-09-22T22:49:59.936+01:00

I was looking forward to a good evening's programming. I was dreaming about this bit of code last night, so I think I've already written it once (in my head at least).However, no coding has happened so far.Initially, I was looking up .pyc run problems. No problem - we will use .py.Tried LWC2 ... no weather station = quit. Stu pointed me in the right direction.The build Stu sent doesn't have a key

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-72949845413079961072009-08-25T20:19:00.002+01:002009-08-25T20:41:06.341+01:00

The main topic of discussion today between myself and Stu is a new Snow Leopard Mac OS X 10.6 technology called Grand Central Dispatch. The technical brief gives an interesting glimpse, with enough information to get you excited but not enough actually tell you what you need to know to write program.Of all the features of the new operating system this feature, I think, will be the most discussed

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-91246187311355448832009-08-21T22:30:00.003+01:002009-08-21T23:12:21.980+01:00

Whilst I'm not sure I've seen any scientific evidence that monochrome monitors, like amber or green, help with eye strain versus a modern colour monitor, they did tend to be sharper than the same generation/similar cost versions of CRT colour monitors. Today's colour LCD monitors are pretty good for sharpness, of course, so it's less of an issue. And people do love colour - take syntax

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-61626388067253667602009-06-27T15:48:00.001+01:002009-08-21T22:30:06.326+01:00

A good day with a bunch of schools competing and some really good runs in the maze solvers and time trails.

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-31998339210543486172009-05-21T21:27:00.003+01:002009-05-21T21:36:39.411+01:00

This is a copy of my post in reply to this comment about Tony's hate of starting the use of C arrays at '1':http://greenstripe.blogspot.com/2009/05/i-recently-read-design-document-which.htmlI think you know this, but you are confusing counting the number of something (to find the number in the set) with enumerating each item, thereby giving each one a numerical reference. For enumeration, there

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-1977845910292751172009-05-21T21:14:00.002+01:002009-05-21T21:25:10.446+01:00

In reply to Tony's blog post: http://greenstripe.blogspot.com/2009/05/computer-games.htmlZuma: I think PopCap is a very interesting company who've been able to capture the puzzle game market by good sales, contacts and marketing. But their games do have annoyingly good but simple game play. Zuma, specifically, is a fast paced arcade game, and as such increases excitement and fun factor (and

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-68728290903792557042009-05-17T12:37:00.002+01:002009-05-17T13:00:46.780+01:00

Been creating encrypted disk images on the USB key I carry around. I released I had various projects (not all mine) and personal data that wasn't protected. Created encrypted disk images - cross platform ... so it should at least slow people down :-) The thing with disk images is that you don't need to do a seperate encrypt/decrypt cycle, like you do with something like GPG.I also really want to

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-88097241837989669902009-05-02T12:13:00.001+01:002009-05-02T12:18:18.100+01:00

Came across these, referenced from macosxhints.com http://svn-finder.sourceforge.net/Looks interesting but haven't tried it yet.

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-3866486515550725112009-04-19T06:12:00.000+01:002009-04-19T06:13:01.728+01:00

Garry Bulmer - Kids doing electronics, Embedded Control, Robotics. Existing schools kits, hand outs, breadboards, class PCs. Arduino development board. Various projects around these - including line follower robot.Ken Hewitt - Overview of the Parallax Propeller ChipAlan Dibley - More diagonal paths.

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-44349201237155350812009-04-18T16:06:00.001+01:002009-04-18T16:07:41.396+01:00

Martin Barratt - IR-based wall sensing circuits, technical considerations and choice in detailMartyn Pittuck - Adaptive Control - Mouse overview, and technical overview of details. Sensor FFT. Applying adaptive control to skidding, predictive to next turn. Generating trajectories using Bezier curves. Estimating friction. Controller operation and cornering offset and exit angles.David Hannaford &

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-89364795426472745102009-04-18T14:03:00.002+01:002009-04-18T14:13:01.207+01:00

Good information this morning.1. Dave O. in-wall start/end detectors. Also update on accelerometer and gyroscope work.2. Duncan - "weightless communications" - Transmission of data using same IR LEDs used for wall sensing.3. Derek - maze solver work. 256 bits. 1 bit/square maze solver... do whole lot again on every single square. bit flood.Then 2 bits per square... four directions. Same thing..

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-10341761105088348922009-04-11T18:50:00.002+01:002009-04-11T19:12:35.570+01:00

The wall detector I've been working on has some pretty serious, but probably fixable, problems.1. There is not enough overlap between the walls and the detectors. There are three solutions, I think, here:a. Probably the detectors need to be wider (simple to do)b. The bearing looks like it is sometimes off - so perhaps I need to average using a second bearing line (a little work but possible).c.

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-43871878240109817722009-04-07T21:32:00.002+01:002009-04-07T22:06:33.526+01:00

Sorted out the segment processor going around corners ("corner cutting of the line detector"). Took me most of the time figuring out how process_segments worked (which is my own code)! Added some (more) comments on each block just in case I need to change it again. Once this was done, I basically added a very simple positive or negative gradient rule check into the segment processor that

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-30764305898310840202009-04-04T20:05:00.002+01:002009-04-04T20:17:19.620+01:00

Sorted out the plan image rotation problem. Simple problem: z instead of x in the rotation formula. Should have been:new_x = x * cos(A) - z * sin(A)new_z = z * cos(A) + x * sin(A)Still investigating the faint picture.Next up: Sort out the corner cutting of the line detector - the problem mentioned that when pointing at 45 degrees the image processor sometimes makes corners into a single line,

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-8761804498495313712009-04-03T19:14:00.002+01:002009-04-03T19:20:48.485+01:00

Last night, looked at the robot problem I was having with different lighting conditions between the robot operation and the picture download. Could I reproduce it? Of course not. But the lighting conditions were not the same - it was dark outside last night, but light when I noted the problem - so it could be an issue with that.So we (Alan and I) looked at why vertical lines seem to be rotated ok

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-78326940118516651622009-04-02T20:57:00.001+01:002009-04-02T20:59:42.322+01:00

I've posted this to the LWC forum, but I think I'll post it here as well - to document one of my other projects - the LWC wlk data importer.Currently the importer script changes a .wlk file, another script handles an entire collection of files and the basic GUI is together.Not too much to do now (hopefully).Things left to do for LWC v1 importer:Check/correct time in seconds in/out (This is

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-62230270592168373452009-03-30T20:53:00.003+01:002009-03-30T22:20:18.589+01:00

A bunch of changes over the weekend.Got the red level parameter working - added command line commands to set and read it. Also patched it into all the commands that require a red level - so you can specify it (and it will save it) or leave it off.Fixed the C++ arctan routine. There was an error for angle >45 degrees which the unit tests didn't pick up. I had actually implemented the unit tests

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-8680497062668794882009-03-27T20:01:00.002Z2009-03-27T20:06:28.972Z

Last night didn't do much - just finished off the parameter update for the non-volatile x-offset and camera angle.Going to add red level to the parameters tonight, program the code into the robot and see if the new 3D code works on the maze. Perhaps if Alan is about I can show him the RealBasic program that displays the robot results graphically. We might also discuss the arctan (need to talk to

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-89484865377702929232009-03-26T18:42:00.001Z2009-03-26T18:47:03.631Z

Hacked together a bit of Python to calculate an arctan table. Requires a bit of code to avoid using more than +/-45 degrees. The plan is that Alan and I will test this code in Python before moving it to C++. This is for the bearing calculation. We wouldn't have needed the actual angle for steering alone but we also need to rotate the plan view.Also moved revised 3D calculations from the Red

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-66137717836719864462009-03-23T23:44:00.001Z2009-03-23T23:46:39.651Z

Quick update .... bug was integer maths problem scaling by 1000 - a simple error in a constant. So it's ready for the transfer across to embedded land. Must send Alan a RedExtract picture to look at.Also must remember to book everything in both projects into Subversion tomorrow before I do anything.

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-89054960173079766912009-03-23T21:48:00.003Z2009-03-23T23:06:38.700Z

Hi,Tonight two things.Importer time/dateI've had a problem for a while which looked like the Python datetime reporting daylight savings time/summer time for all the LWC timestamps. I thought this was unlikely, but then again the other options looked more unlikely. I tried creating an UTC tzinfo class - but it didn't help. Today I created a new function from scratch to calculate dates from a

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-87639580975942362602009-03-22T18:02:00.002Z2009-03-22T18:10:42.118Z

A long time ago, I used to program fixed-point trigonometry maths for 3D engines using integer operations. Over the last few years, with good floating point on all the platforms I've been programming games with, why wouldn't you use float and double?Recently I've been doing a fixed-point trig for the ARM7 build on the robot. And I must say, it's a big pain - especially with looking out for

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-91173227392798416302009-03-22T17:26:00.003Z2009-03-22T17:52:54.227Z

Stu sent me a link to an interest post from Jeff Vogel of Spiderweb Software detailing how many copies of one of their games they sold and, importantly, how much it cost to develop.http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/03/so-heres-how-many-games-i-sell.htmlThere are very few good numbers for shareware, indie development or full corporate sales. The more the realistic information, the better, in my

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-4760931067713864002008-12-17T20:54:00.003Z2008-12-17T21:37:55.820Z

I don't look at the keyboard to type. But my wife Claire, George (a non-programmer friend) and Ian (a programmer friend) all do - even though they've all used keyboards for over 20 years.Even a whole bunch of programmers colleagues I know look at the keyboard to type. I find this strange and even mildly annoying when I spend any time thinking about it. The reasons for the mild annoyance I'm not

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-76720997456761354042008-11-29T14:00:00.000Z2008-11-29T14:02:36.599Z

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-55419433393917863512008-11-29T11:22:00.000Z2008-11-29T11:23:41.486Z

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-81763653864653540152008-11-29T10:12:00.000Z2008-11-29T10:13:39.039Z

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-78424932177474251572008-07-27T21:03:00.005+01:002008-07-27T21:57:51.766+01:00

I'm doing some PHP to drive some Flash gauges. But I've really not a lot to say about that. Instead something about another quick SVN Diff hack.Whilst my Automator right-click context menu hack worked, the sizeable delay (if 10 seconds is sizeable) was annoying me.Now, I know third-party tools might solve this problem more easily, I've sort of got a 'do it with things lying about on my machine'

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-90002941980097624332008-07-20T20:18:00.004+01:002008-07-20T20:27:28.160+01:00

I've created a prototype for a Micromouse maze file viewer/editor. I've uploaded it with some details to the Lightsoft 'more stuff' page.Two comments about writing the actual utility:1. It's a fairly small program - and the basics only took me a couple of evenings. But it still took a couple of weeks of evenings before it was in a fit state to release to other people including tiny features

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-87184302227777373152008-07-19T15:57:00.014+01:002008-07-19T21:22:39.665+01:00

Hi,As I recently blogged, I've installing SCPlugin to get Finder integration of a (limited) set of Subversion operations from the Finder contextual menu. However, this set of operations does not include the subversion diff. I've therefore been looking for an additional solution since I really like SCPlugin as a client otherwise and have considered various methods and third-party tools.The

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-14905835249678325902008-07-16T21:10:00.004+01:002008-07-16T21:50:51.934+01:00

So as if converting 50 million archives to Subversion elsewhere wasn't bad enough (and you really have no idea how much work and stress that's caused) I wanted to get a GUI client working over here.Suddenly, a couple of days ago, I realised that using the command line - which I've been using for ages and generally is very intuitive for a command line tool - was slowing me and my use of Subversion

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-16328105694476079772008-06-29T10:42:00.002+01:002008-06-29T11:01:50.900+01:00

Some good entries yesterday. The schools from Singapore performed very well. Apparently the Singapore schools have a standard chassis and base software which has some sort of graphic front end. This means it becomes possible for the kids to compete in the maze solver competition. The individual mice performed significantly differently - not just going different routes with significantly times but

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-69116886843391207382008-06-28T11:29:00.001+01:002008-06-29T10:41:02.099+01:00

There seems be a problem with the infra-red starting gate and some of the mice from Singapore. Tony has suggesting that these mice can run in the heats at the end with manual timing.There have been two over-the-wall type mice. The first had a wireless diagnostic link back a PC. The second appeared to have problems with the walls and didn't complete.There was a couple of young guys that had flew

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-78662386691846699582008-06-28T11:14:00.000+01:002008-06-28T11:15:59.765+01:00

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-10210827725200188792008-06-28T11:06:00.001+01:002008-06-29T10:39:54.185+01:00

Alan & I are attending the Uk competition at the TIC in Millennium Point Birmingham.We got to design the maze for the maze solver heats.First heats are running at the moment.

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-76028520023947237232008-04-14T20:18:00.003+01:002008-04-14T20:39:03.225+01:00

At the end of the first day we had a really good meal at a local Italian restaurant and I think everyone got on really well and enjoyed themselves.On the second day, the main thing (apart from a very nice breakfast) was the competition. This was pretty informal and there was a good atmosphere. It was timed and scored for each run.Adrian divided the competition into heats and finals. The slowest

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-48122355466744708452008-04-12T23:04:00.001+01:002008-04-14T20:16:05.081+01:00

Today was mostly talks and presentations. There were a couple of 'practice' sessions where we took the opportunity to take some shots of a full size maze using the robots camera for off-line processing. A full maze is 16x16 cells and measures 2.88m square - so it's a bit big for my house. (We have a 5x5 practice maze).There were talks on accelerometers, intelligent mice, chassis design,

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-54529844329704390432008-04-12T08:50:00.001+01:002008-04-14T20:14:28.461+01:00

So Alan and I are on our way to this tiny conference. Got up at 4:50 (yawn) to get the significantly cheaper flight. The plane was overbooked but we were eventually able to get on anyway in the end (last two people on - it was close enough that they talked to us about bumping us to the next flight).We'd hoped to have our mouse running, but it's not quite there. We have done most of the

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-5172136801930260872008-03-17T21:10:00.001Z2008-04-14T20:17:32.469+01:00

So here I am posting to blogger via the email gateway. I know it's not exactly state of the art technology but I'm sort of hoping it makes posting from an iPhone easier. Certainly the iPhone email client is a lot faster that the blogger web client on the iPhone.I wonder whether this will mean I post more often? Doubtful :-)UPDATE: I originally sent this post to the wrong email address, so

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-19728011432022417902008-03-16T15:13:00.002Z2008-03-16T15:33:49.876Z

So I've been working on a program started in July last year (2007)* which wraps a terminal program I wrote to process image data for the robot. The encapsulation basically puts a nice (cocoa) GUI front end on it so that I can twiddle parameters dynamically. Like all things when you are not an absolute expert, some things take a long time - in my case it was 8 hours to put a raw bitmap on the

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-80611756570495838962008-02-29T23:37:00.003Z2008-03-01T00:01:35.069Z

I've got the images properly coming out, in their proper colours, now. And as we suspected, I've had no problems with getting images - so it was the fact I hadn't set up the ports before initializing the camera. I've attached an image for your interest.(it's a bit yellow because of the lighting)As for the colour order, well, I was trying to understand why it wasn't BGRG as per the manual, but

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-26254579619432972322008-02-10T11:59:00.000Z2008-02-10T12:05:04.799Z

Stu has been doing lots of threading recently and seems to be having lots of fun. I makes me want to incorporate threading in the programs I'm working on at the moment!It appears that there is one big advantage and one big disadvantage:Advantage: you can avoid explicit state machines - sometimes essential with other peoples code you have no control of (e.g. OS calls, library calls, etc that just

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-82896157974835247262008-02-10T11:35:00.000Z2008-02-10T11:58:55.148Z

http://math.hws.edu/javanotes/c8/s1.html#robustness.1.1You know, I thought that access to vectors via [] would be fine in, unchecked, in programs you understand totally yourself. However, a recent medium complexity C++ program* (a text converter in this case) showed that me that this is not the case. It was crashing on the gcc build. I compiled it with VS2005.Net (to debug) and luckily the debug

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-48780688401086684202008-02-03T08:49:00.001Z2008-02-03T09:39:34.010Z

What a huge gap! I didn't realise I hadn't posted for this long.An interesting realisation I had last week (that is probably obvious to many people) is that everything we do is shaped by our limitations as humans - that includes physical and mental abilities.I want to talk about lifetimes - but I'll digress for a bit.One of the things I mentioned several times last year (maybe even on this blog)

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-73649298798616175312007-08-31T18:05:00.000+01:002007-08-31T19:01:19.053+01:00

As has been mentioned elsewhere, I'm currently moving our internal version control from cvs to subversion.Thing is, that I do so little work on the system (usually just backups) between installations (which are very rare), I have to learn how the old system works before I put the new one in place!Oh well, perhaps tell you more later on.

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-44537279040364907222007-07-19T20:32:00.000+01:002007-07-20T13:28:40.502+01:00

These are some ad-hoc rules of thumb about programming. I'm sure they are not true all of the time. I'd like to hear if your experiences are different - or the same.In no particular order:Keep it simple, stupid!Don't add code hooks for extension unless they are going to be used in this project and there is a definite need.Often getting something working quickly (call it prototyping if you like)

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-18436639437326314792007-07-19T20:04:00.001+01:002007-07-19T20:25:43.009+01:00

This is about Light Emitting Diode (LED) driver function design. I guess this is quite an embedded article, but I think the design questions also are the types you ask in PC programs as well.You might have the following functions to manipulation the LED:void ledInit();void flash_led(int number_of_times);void led(bool state);Whilst this is fine, you might instead code this up as a class:class Led

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-35146572188527360582007-07-14T08:00:00.000+01:002007-07-14T08:30:30.602+01:00

Occasionally this has been a topic of conversation. My answer is I don't think so.Whilst most people I've talked to say most people just word process or surf the internet as the only things the do on a 'computer' and hence computers are fast enough.I can think of several things that take too long today:Putting home movies onto DVDs - can take a while,Games - require both more CPU speed and more

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-49502534740022201862007-04-23T21:03:00.000+01:002007-04-23T21:08:45.416+01:00

Got to mention this post on Slashdot:http://games.slashdot.org/games/07/04/23/1214256.shtmlAlthough this the Sinclair ZX Spectrum was not my first computer, it was an (large) extension of my first (ZX81) and had a huge impact in my programming and game playing habits.I also wrote an article about games on the machine ages ago:http://www.lightsoft.co.uk/PD/rob/speccy_g.html

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-13558144848275043722007-04-09T20:27:00.000+01:002007-04-15T16:59:08.763+01:00

Guess I missed telling you about a decision on the robot project.We'd been doing mostly motor control and related sensing and got the robot to move a fixed distance and turn (albeit with less accuracy than in a straight line).Rather than make the position control really, really good, I thought we should work on something we don't know whether will work at all; the camera.Most of the maze solving

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-30033801064221165372007-04-09T20:11:00.000+01:002007-04-09T20:23:05.124+01:00

(Hopefully this won't end up as a robot blog!)I've been working on the camera command interface, which is a I2C serial interface.I've split this into two sections:1. A lower part that communicates with the on-board i2c peripheral registers and just reads or writes a data stream (although it also handles the device address and read/write bit). As with all low level drivers, this turns out more

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-21377150422477454252007-02-21T22:37:00.000Z2007-02-21T22:45:26.235Z

On Saturday I blogged about not needing new and delete. However it turns out that on Sunday I found out a use for new and delete. Typical.I have a command line interpreter that has various control and testing commands. It's very simple (and was fairly fast to write) but it's really proven it's worth in testing. So much so that (together with the ability to write back to the PC terminal via the

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-84862170281311799252007-02-17T21:38:00.000Z2007-02-18T09:00:07.067Z

Thought someone might be interested in this...I spent Thursday night and Friday night investigating some link errors I was getting on my robot project, which is small embedded ARM7 target compiling C++ code under GCC.So here is the detail of the errors:speed_control.o: In function `~Speed_Control':source/speed_control.cpp:35: undefined reference to `operator delete(void*)'speed_control.o: In

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-1162332746388432562006-10-31T22:03:00.000Z2006-10-31T22:12:26.400Z

Nothing really happening.Logging objective-C message sends. Trying to figure out how to log only a small subset before a crash. Not really a problem, just a bit of thinking. Plenty of blogs about various details. No complete solutions for exactly what I want. So thinking and understanding is required.Just saw a tv program about the Robot cars making it across the desert. Very cool.Reading "Death

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-1159648799873257412006-09-30T21:20:00.000+01:002006-09-30T21:39:59.886+01:00

Why does OO have a list of critism (and also mention lack of Evidence) but the other programming Paradigms don't on Wikipedia?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programmingSurely the 'others' don't have good evidence they make programming faster/better either?Some examples:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_programminghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_programminghttp://

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-1159647602888396932006-09-30T21:17:00.000+01:002006-09-30T21:43:41.576+01:00

http://norvig.com/design-patterns/http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?AreDesignPatternsMissingLanguageFeatureshttp://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?DesignPatternsInDynamicProgramming(The next one I think I've linked to before. The bit you want it right at the end!)http://www.paulgraham.com/icad.htmlShort Language comparison (obviously biased?)http://www.paulgraham.com/accgen.htmlAnd also...http://en.wikipedia.org/

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-1158487939781688412006-09-17T10:57:00.000+01:002006-09-17T11:12:19.803+01:00

Good article about the inaccessibility of programming as relating to kids:http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2006/09/14/basic/index.htmlI’m glad he mentioned Python and Chipmunk basic. Otherwise I was going to dismiss him as a crank.Some language (say that could be used in the command prompt) would be a better than the current situation on Windows (and let’s not talk about batch files :-D ). At

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-1156671408561230432006-08-27T10:31:00.000+01:002006-08-28T20:55:02.636+01:00

Head First Design Patterns, Freeman & Freeman, Published by O'Reilly.For a design patterns book it's very readable. You need to understand some Java (no hard problems) and it's an introductory text (to medium level) - but that's ok I'm still learning some of the patterns.Lots of fun examples (e.g. Pizza shop, chocolate company, duck simulation package) code and pseudo-UML diagrams. Multiple ways

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-1153942483805081602006-07-26T19:26:00.000+01:002006-07-28T22:49:22.996+01:00

RobotSo since the last blog we've actually burned some programs in so that the robot wheels move! Writing in sort of C at the moment, although I'm using g++ compiler on a C++ file. It's straight C mostly because it is test stuff at the moment. The next step is to get it moving in a straight line and at a speed that we can set. Then we can get the input sensors working. It's exciting - but it's

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644513.post-1150106615148440732006-06-12T11:03:00.000+01:002006-06-12T11:22:40.696+01:00

Zex is currently under play test. It so easy, especially when you have a bugs list, to just fix bugs and think it's done.Part of the reason we do beta test releases is to get real play-test feedback. But it's critical that we actually use the software we are developing before doing alpha or beta test releases.Then, after we think it's ok and release the test versions, the next thing is to fix the

RobZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881790845658350120noreply@blogger.com0