GuruBlog

I made a new version of the ical flowers sketch i wrote in dezember. This time it doesn't only show a flower for every event in my calender, it also shows

• the current weather (using the rubyweather library)
• the current temperature outside
• the min/max temperature outside
• the current temperature inside ( using my arduino i2c thermometer sketch)
• the sky color changes depending on the current time

the system consists of a ruby-proxy, an arduino sketch and a processing sketch.

the ruby proxy starts a web-server on port 2000. It fetches the current weather using the rubyweather gem, fetches the events from the configured caldav calenders, and fetches the current temperature from the arduino using ruby-serial

the arduino sketch is basicaly the same as in this blog post. the only change is that the arduino only sends the temperature when the host sends a 'C' over the serial line

the processing sketch finally fetches the data via http from the proxy and displays it ( using my icap4p library. the screen is updated every 1/2 hour using the method described here

the code can be downloaded here

it's published under the LGPL

have fun :-)

a while ago i posted images of my download-bots. this december my parents used them as their xmas-tree decoration.

now i have written some instruction to enable my dear reader to build his own download-bot - prefereably while downloading a big file.

i use 2 strip of wood one 2cm x 4cm, and the second one 1cm x 0.5cm

• cut a 2 cm long block from the bigger strip for the head
• cut a 4.5cm long pice from the bigger strip for the body
• cut 4 2.5cm long pices from the smaller strip for arms and feet
• cut a 1 cm long pice from the smaller pice for the nec
• now glue the pices together following the instruction graphic bellow.
• put 2 pins into the head as antennas
• and finally draw a funny face on the head block

é voilà - a download-bot!

i really would like to see a comment if you have build your own bot

on saturday i was asked by a ruby-newbie (sorry - i had to write it :-) ) whats the difference between a symbol, a string and a constant in ruby. even tough there are realy, realy many articles about ruby symbols ( a google search for "ruby symbols" results in 1,340,000 hits - so this is the 1,340,001 aricle covering the topic) there is obviously still some confusion out there. So i try my own definition here.

i have played a bit with python3.0 and this are the things that catched my eye:

• the new print syntax
• the exception-handling
• decorators
• the new io module
• classes in python

are no complete list of changes between 2.5 and 3.0 - and don't want to be. they are just a list of thing's i noticed. Some of them are already present in python 2.6 but i newver used that release - so i don't realy know.

a friend of mine found another monster - this one tried to camouflage as a tree

my latest processing-sketch is a generator for abstract art.

just click on the applet to generate a new image

http://www.processing.org/ the mother of all processing sites :-)

http://www.arduino.cc/ a language and a microcontroller board that that go very well with processing

http://mobile.processing.org/ a mobile phone edition of porcessing

http://www.openvisuals.org/ a site showing how to visualize data using processing

http://www.openprocessing.org/ a site collection processing sketches

http://www.processingblogs.org/ a processing meta blog

http://www.rmx.cz/monsters/ a collection of black'n'white monsters - coded in processing (one of them has been written by me :-) )

http://www.local-guru.net/blog/tag/processing my own site

two really great art collections using processing

http://www.complexification.net/gallery/

http://abandonedart.org/

some artists using processing

http://www.flight404.com/blog/?cat=1

http://www.toxi.co.uk/

http://www.benfry.com/

http://www.groupc.net/

Books:

make things talk

visualizing data

Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists

A while ago, a hook on our bathroom door fell down. First we thought it was because of some loose screws. but today i found out the real reason - there was a monster lurking behind it!

I have hooked up my c-control i2c thermometer-module (link in german) to my arduino and wrote some code to read the current temperature in Celcius.

The module uses the maxim DS1631 chip.

The temperature is send as a 2 byte value using a 12 bit resolution. in the MSB the first bit is used as a sign bit, the other seven bits are represent the part before the comma, in the LSB the first 4 bits are used as the fractional part.

the code below doesn't handle negative values yet. i want to use it in my livingroom - i never ever want it to deal with negative values!

a college of mine found another monster when she tried to eat her soup