Jonathan Oxer
[Blog]
>> Interview with Cameron Reilly
Tue, May 27th 11:42am 2008 >> Tech Toys
A couple of months ago Cameron Reilly from The Podcast Network came by my place with a video camera and the funkiest microphone I've ever seen to do an interview about RFID and hardware hacking in general. The first part of the interview has just been edited and put online in Cameron's podcast (or see it on YouTube).
UPDATE: Cameron has just put up the audio from the rest of the interview
A couple of months ago Cameron Reilly from The Podcast Network came by my place with a video camera and the funkiest microphone I've ever seen to do an interview about RFID and hardware hacking in general. The first part of the interview has just been edited and put online in Cameron's podcast (or see it on YouTube).
UPDATE: Cameron has just put up the audio from the rest of the interview
>> I need a car
Sun, May 25th 10:29pm 2008 >> Tech Toys
I need to buy a car in the next couple of weeks. Anyone got a Mazda RX-8 or Audi TT at a decent price? Then contact me!
I need to buy a car in the next couple of weeks. Anyone got a Mazda RX-8 or Audi TT at a decent price? Then contact me!
>> Hacking a Rinnai hot water system
Tue, May 13th 12:12am 2008 >> Tech Toys
We have a Rinnai Infinity hot water system at home (you know, the ones with a keypad where you set the water temperature and it's heated on-demand to exactly that temp instead of being pre-heated and stored in a tank) and after seeing some of my hardware hacking trickery a mate who works at Rinnai got me an extra controller to hack.
The easy part turned out to be connecting up the buttons to an Arduino board so I could then use ser2net to expose the Rinnai controller as a network socket. It takes all of about 3 minutes, so I even made a dodgy little video of the process using my digital camera:
(YouTube link: Hacking a Rinnai hot water system for home automation)
Then, just because it seemed kinda cool, I made a crude web interface by taking a photo of the actual controller and sticking an imagemap over the top so we can pull it up on the TV. With the browser in kiosk mode it's a bit spooky having a monster-size controller on the screen that actually works when you "click" the buttons:
Then I went from macro to micro and did a version scaled to fit the screen on my Nokia E61 phone, so I can pull up the water controller on my phone and set the temperature.
The next step is going to be the tricky bit: reading which segments in the display are illuminated and using a lookup table to figure out what the temperature is currently set to, so that I can make the LED display on the web interface accurately show the current temperature setting. At first I thought this would be pretty trivial because it's just a 2-digit common-anode 7-segment display module, and I thought all I'd have to do is read the level off the cathode of each segment. I scratched my head for a bit when I got unpredictable results until I realised that the display controller is multiplexing its outputs so each segment is turned on for somewhat less than 50% of the time: the numbers look static to us mere humans whose eyes can't update faster than about 20 times / second, but to the Arduino trying to track it at the speed of electrons it's like "hey, it's on... no, it's off... nope, on again ... off ... on ... hey, what the hell's going on around here?" every few milliseconds.
It'll take a little bit of jiggery-pokery in both hardware and software to make the Arduino understand the multiplexing but nothing too difficult now I know why it's happening.
We have a Rinnai Infinity hot water system at home (you know, the ones with a keypad where you set the water temperature and it's heated on-demand to exactly that temp instead of being pre-heated and stored in a tank) and after seeing some of my hardware hacking trickery a mate who works at Rinnai got me an extra controller to hack.
The easy part turned out to be connecting up the buttons to an Arduino board so I could then use ser2net to expose the Rinnai controller as a network socket. It takes all of about 3 minutes, so I even made a dodgy little video of the process using my digital camera:
(YouTube link: Hacking a Rinnai hot water system for home automation)
Then, just because it seemed kinda cool, I made a crude web interface by taking a photo of the actual controller and sticking an imagemap over the top so we can pull it up on the TV. With the browser in kiosk mode it's a bit spooky having a monster-size controller on the screen that actually works when you "click" the buttons:
Then I went from macro to micro and did a version scaled to fit the screen on my Nokia E61 phone, so I can pull up the water controller on my phone and set the temperature.
The next step is going to be the tricky bit: reading which segments in the display are illuminated and using a lookup table to figure out what the temperature is currently set to, so that I can make the LED display on the web interface accurately show the current temperature setting. At first I thought this would be pretty trivial because it's just a 2-digit common-anode 7-segment display module, and I thought all I'd have to do is read the level off the cathode of each segment. I scratched my head for a bit when I got unpredictable results until I realised that the display controller is multiplexing its outputs so each segment is turned on for somewhat less than 50% of the time: the numbers look static to us mere humans whose eyes can't update faster than about 20 times / second, but to the Arduino trying to track it at the speed of electrons it's like "hey, it's on... no, it's off... nope, on again ... off ... on ... hey, what the hell's going on around here?" every few milliseconds.
It'll take a little bit of jiggery-pokery in both hardware and software to make the Arduino understand the multiplexing but nothing too difficult now I know why it's happening.
>> Media insanity
Tue, Mar 4th 4:20pm 2008 >> Tech Toys
Asher warned me that the story he was writing for SMH would make my phone ring off the hook. I laughed about that a bit because I did the RFID implant almost 2 years ago, and nobody seemed to care at the time. Since then I've talked about it at conferences all over the world and tech geeks seem to think it's interesting, but nobody else cared.
Then the SMH story came out and at 6am today my phone started ringing. And ringing. And ringing. So far today I've had 3 film crews through my house (embarrassing, in its current state!), done 6 radio interviews, and 5 more are scheduled. The story will be all over the place tonight and then tomorrow it'll be on Sunrise, with a live cross from the studio to my house so I can demo some of the hardware hacks I've done.
I had to rope in one of the guys from work to be my PA for the day just to give me a chance to talk to people one at a time. It's crazy!
I'm very curious to see what spin the various outlets put on the story. Previous experience has been that you never know what you'll get when you deal with the media. You can do an interview that you think goes very well on a certain message, and then when it comes out the final story includes nothing but a couple of off-the-cuff remarks that seemed irrelevant at the time and takes the topic in a whole different direction.
I'm almost too scared to turn on the TV tonight.
Asher warned me that the story he was writing for SMH would make my phone ring off the hook. I laughed about that a bit because I did the RFID implant almost 2 years ago, and nobody seemed to care at the time. Since then I've talked about it at conferences all over the world and tech geeks seem to think it's interesting, but nobody else cared.
Then the SMH story came out and at 6am today my phone started ringing. And ringing. And ringing. So far today I've had 3 film crews through my house (embarrassing, in its current state!), done 6 radio interviews, and 5 more are scheduled. The story will be all over the place tonight and then tomorrow it'll be on Sunrise, with a live cross from the studio to my house so I can demo some of the hardware hacks I've done.
I had to rope in one of the guys from work to be my PA for the day just to give me a chance to talk to people one at a time. It's crazy!
I'm very curious to see what spin the various outlets put on the story. Previous experience has been that you never know what you'll get when you deal with the media. You can do an interview that you think goes very well on a certain message, and then when it comes out the final story includes nothing but a couple of off-the-cuff remarks that seemed irrelevant at the time and takes the topic in a whole different direction.
I'm almost too scared to turn on the TV tonight.
>> I welcome our Slashdot overlords
Fri, Feb 15th 1:56pm 2008 >> Tech Toys
Last night just before I turned off the screen on my MythTV box to go to bed I pulled up the newsfeeds, and smack at the top of the Slashdot headlines was a story titled "Australia's Geekiest Man".
My immediate thought was "that should have been me - I want to know who around here is even geekier than I am!" so I clicked through to see who it was.
Sigh. It was me.
I don't know whether to be honored or offended about the label! AJ has already called me "Australia's manliest geek", but *that's* taking it just a bit too far ;-)
The story seems to have started a bit of a circus. I've already had about 6 journos contact me for follow-up stories, I've had 3 consulting job offers relating to RFID and automation just this morning, and two companies have offered to send me automation equipment to test out (no doubt so I can blog about it and get them more sales).
Now I just need "Australia's Geekiest Man" business cards.
Last night just before I turned off the screen on my MythTV box to go to bed I pulled up the newsfeeds, and smack at the top of the Slashdot headlines was a story titled "Australia's Geekiest Man".
My immediate thought was "that should have been me - I want to know who around here is even geekier than I am!" so I clicked through to see who it was.
Sigh. It was me.
I don't know whether to be honored or offended about the label! AJ has already called me "Australia's manliest geek", but *that's* taking it just a bit too far ;-)
The story seems to have started a bit of a circus. I've already had about 6 journos contact me for follow-up stories, I've had 3 consulting job offers relating to RFID and automation just this morning, and two companies have offered to send me automation equipment to test out (no doubt so I can blog about it and get them more sales).
Now I just need "Australia's Geekiest Man" business cards.
>> Tech Talk about Second Life integration
Mon, Aug 6th 3:53pm 2007 >> Tech Toys
And the traveler returns! Today is my first day back on deck at IVT after tramping around the US for OSCON followed by a meeting at Adobe and a Tech Talk at Google. Andrew Pollock and Leslie Hawthorn were kind enough to arrange for me to do another Tech Talk, this time on Real World / Second Life Integration. The talk seems to have been pretty well received even though the main demo in the talk actually failed!
Also, I've gotta do a shout out to Google's A/V folk. They'll probably never read this but I don't know how to get in touch with them so this'll have to do. Basically, they were very slick. The gear all worked perfectly, the A/V team were right there on the spot the whole time and immediately responsive to my questions, and the video was up online within hours with views of both the slides (which were capped from the VGA feed) and the video itself edited together. Before the talk one of the audio guys fitted me up with a lapel mic, turned it on, and muted it at the desk until the moment I started speaking. That sounds really trivial but it shows the little ways they care about making the process super-smooth: just about every presentation I've attended has started with the speaker fumbling around with his mic transmitter for a few seconds figuring out if it's turned on, then checking if the audience can hear them, etc. None of that in this case though: I just stood up and started talking, and everything was set perfectly from the moment I opened my mouth. I didn't even think about the A/V during the whole talk because I didn't have to. And after the talk was over and people were crowding around asking questions the mic was quickly and surreptitiously unthreaded from my shirt and removed by a tech without interrupting the ongoing discussion.
That's the sort of slick professionalism that often results in people being overlooked, which is a shame. Just like an outstanding UI, the better the A/V folk are the less they'll be noticed. And so they don't get the credit they deserve. So, Google Tech Talk A/V people: you get a clap from me. And I apologise that I didn't thank you in person at the time, because it was only in retrospect that I realised how slick you were. Which of course is how it should be.
For those who are interested, the video of the talk is up at
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3850910409804844384
And the traveler returns! Today is my first day back on deck at IVT after tramping around the US for OSCON followed by a meeting at Adobe and a Tech Talk at Google. Andrew Pollock and Leslie Hawthorn were kind enough to arrange for me to do another Tech Talk, this time on Real World / Second Life Integration. The talk seems to have been pretty well received even though the main demo in the talk actually failed!
Also, I've gotta do a shout out to Google's A/V folk. They'll probably never read this but I don't know how to get in touch with them so this'll have to do. Basically, they were very slick. The gear all worked perfectly, the A/V team were right there on the spot the whole time and immediately responsive to my questions, and the video was up online within hours with views of both the slides (which were capped from the VGA feed) and the video itself edited together. Before the talk one of the audio guys fitted me up with a lapel mic, turned it on, and muted it at the desk until the moment I started speaking. That sounds really trivial but it shows the little ways they care about making the process super-smooth: just about every presentation I've attended has started with the speaker fumbling around with his mic transmitter for a few seconds figuring out if it's turned on, then checking if the audience can hear them, etc. None of that in this case though: I just stood up and started talking, and everything was set perfectly from the moment I opened my mouth. I didn't even think about the A/V during the whole talk because I didn't have to. And after the talk was over and people were crowding around asking questions the mic was quickly and surreptitiously unthreaded from my shirt and removed by a tech without interrupting the ongoing discussion.
That's the sort of slick professionalism that often results in people being overlooked, which is a shame. Just like an outstanding UI, the better the A/V folk are the less they'll be noticed. And so they don't get the credit they deserve. So, Google Tech Talk A/V people: you get a clap from me. And I apologise that I didn't thank you in person at the time, because it was only in retrospect that I realised how slick you were. Which of course is how it should be.
For those who are interested, the video of the talk is up at
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3850910409804844384
>> Second Life Integration site goes live
Mon, Jul 16th 1:25pm 2007 >> Tech Toys
As usual I'm only days away from a conference I'm meant to be speaking at and I'm still way behind on preparation. Other than possible problems actually getting the hardware kits in time the Real World / Second Life Integration tutorial is coming along nicely though, and since there'll be a heap of source code for the participants to work their way through I thought it'd be best to create a website for it. At least that way I can keep giving them updates even after the tute.
And so Real World / Second Life Integration was born. Not much yet, but gotta start somewhere. There's already an SVN repo with a couple of code examples (including for a door in Second Life which can be unlocked with my implanted RFID tag, which should be a good way to freak people out) and I've created a group in SL called "Second Life Integration" in case anyone else is actually interested in this.
As usual I'm only days away from a conference I'm meant to be speaking at and I'm still way behind on preparation. Other than possible problems actually getting the hardware kits in time the Real World / Second Life Integration tutorial is coming along nicely though, and since there'll be a heap of source code for the participants to work their way through I thought it'd be best to create a website for it. At least that way I can keep giving them updates even after the tute.
And so Real World / Second Life Integration was born. Not much yet, but gotta start somewhere. There's already an SVN repo with a couple of code examples (including for a door in Second Life which can be unlocked with my implanted RFID tag, which should be a good way to freak people out) and I've created a group in SL called "Second Life Integration" in case anyone else is actually interested in this.
>> Partial sync success on the Nokia E61
Sun, Jan 7th 8:55pm 2007 >> Tech Toys
Ultimately I want to figure out some way to get my E61 to sync with Evolution (or possibly SiteBuilder) but in the meantime I just want it to sync with *anything* so I've been trying it with every piece of sync software and service I can find. And at last I've had success: GSMSync works like a charm! So now at least I can back up the contacts, calendar and tasks from the phone, and maybe use GSMSync as an intermediate point to then sync to/from other places.
In the meantime GSMSync provides a web interface to their service so at least I can use a browser to manage it from my desktop. Not quite as nice as syncing all the way back to Evo or SB but at least my phone is just a bit less disconnected now.
As part of my quest to get the E61 to talk to me I've spent a bit of time playing around with a SyncML framework but unfortunately the system I'm using only supports syncml+xml, which is what I thought the phone also used until I added some debugging to the SyncML framework and discovered it was actually talking syncml+wbxml. Only 2 letters difference in the name, but a world of difference on the wire. Turns out wbxml is a bandwidth-optimised variant so it's no wonder I haven't had success with other things I've tried, but at least I have a lot more information now and I've found a wbxml library which I'll try patching into the SyncML framework.
Ultimately I want to figure out some way to get my E61 to sync with Evolution (or possibly SiteBuilder) but in the meantime I just want it to sync with *anything* so I've been trying it with every piece of sync software and service I can find. And at last I've had success: GSMSync works like a charm! So now at least I can back up the contacts, calendar and tasks from the phone, and maybe use GSMSync as an intermediate point to then sync to/from other places.In the meantime GSMSync provides a web interface to their service so at least I can use a browser to manage it from my desktop. Not quite as nice as syncing all the way back to Evo or SB but at least my phone is just a bit less disconnected now.
As part of my quest to get the E61 to talk to me I've spent a bit of time playing around with a SyncML framework but unfortunately the system I'm using only supports syncml+xml, which is what I thought the phone also used until I added some debugging to the SyncML framework and discovered it was actually talking syncml+wbxml. Only 2 letters difference in the name, but a world of difference on the wire. Turns out wbxml is a bandwidth-optimised variant so it's no wonder I haven't had success with other things I've tried, but at least I have a lot more information now and I've found a wbxml library which I'll try patching into the SyncML framework.
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