cevinius

Fully 3D printed Hand Spinner / Fidget Toy

cevinius — Sun, 11 Dec 2016 12:40:59 +0000

Here’s my attempt at creating a fully 3d printed Hand Spinner. I’m using Thingiverse user emmitt’s awesome Gear Bearing in place of a skate bearing.

This could be a good Christmas gift for a fidgety coworker.

This plastic spinner does not spin as well as one that uses a skate bearing, but it spins well enough to use as a fidget toy. The more I spin it, the smoother it seems to spin… Spinning it to make it spin smoother is tapping into my OCD and becoming a bit of an obsession… so I guess the toy is doing its job!

You can find the 3D printable files at Thingiverse here:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1958605

If you print one, please write a message to let me know how it went!

Preview of the iOS app for MobBob

cevinius — Sun, 28 Aug 2016 16:40:14 +0000

Here’s a quick preview of the iOS app for MobBob. In the video, the app is running on my iPad Air.

The iOS version currently only supports Bluetooth LE connections. (Apple does not make it easy for people to publish apps that make use of regular Bluetooth).

Like the Android version, the app has speech synthesis, and computer vision. (It has the peek-a-boo functionality and also the ball tracking functionality.)

However, the iOS version also doesn’t currently support voice recognition. This is something I’m still trying to figure out a solution for.

I’m still tweaking and testing this version of the app, but I’m planning to release it on the iTunes store soon.

I’m working on MobBob app updates.

cevinius — Sun, 28 Aug 2016 14:47:51 +0000

I’ve spent this weekend working on the MobBob app. I still need to finish a few things and do more testing, but I’m hoping to have an updated app on Google Play soon, and also hope to have the first iOS version on the iTunes store as well.

Most of this weekend has been spent updating the code to use the latest versions of all libraries, and also updating the app to the latest version of Unity (5.4).

Things are looking good after the updates.

OpenCV is now using OpenCV 3 and is working well
Voice recognition seems to be working well
Speech synthesis is working fine
Regular Bluetooth connection is working well

However,

Bluetooth LE still seems unreliable when using Android 6. (It is working OK most of the time on Android 5.) I am continuing to look at this and am currently looking at redoing this code completely.

I’m hoping to have these maintenance updates completed soon. Then I’ll be working on extending the app. I have a lot of ideas for new functionality and interactions that I want to implement.

I’m excited to finally get an iOS version out soon (finally!). I know quite a few people have been asking for it, so I apologise for taking so long. The iOS version won’t have voice recognition initially, but the other features should be there.

I’m hoping to get these updates completed this week and will upload new versions to Google Play and hopefully also iTunes.

Another update on Tim Harvey’s Blockly app.

cevinius — Sun, 28 Aug 2016 14:35:57 +0000

Tim Harvey posted another update on his work with Blockly. Check out his comment here:
http://www.cevinius.com/mobbob/#comment-1020

Also, check out his Github page for more details about the app and also the course that he is creating.
https://github.com/tharvey/BlocklyBot/wiki

Really fantastic project!

Using Blockly with MobBob?!

cevinius — Wed, 17 Aug 2016 02:38:41 +0000

I wanted to give a shout out to the amazing work that Tim Harvey is doing to get MobBob working with Blockly.

You can read more about it here: http://www.cevinius.com/mobbob/#comment-989

I am looking forward to checking it out!

Serial Communication with the Bluno using Bluetooth LE

cevinius — Wed, 17 Aug 2016 02:32:17 +0000

When I first started working with the Bluno, I found the documentation didn’t really give me a clear idea how to talk to the Bluno.

DFRobot does provide example iOS and Android projects. However, as I was making my app with the Unity game engine. I could not use that directly.

So, I ended up going through the example Android and iOS project examples provided by DFRobot to “reverse engineer” information about the Bluno’s pass-though serial service/characteristic.

This post is a write up what I figure out (back when I first started working with the Bluno). This information should be useful for anyone who wants to connect to the Bluno by means other than a standard iOS/Android app.

(I’m writing this to answer Pablo’s question: http://www.cevinius.com/2015/09/19/detailed-mobbob-build-instructions/#comment-987. Let me know if this helps. I connecting using Bluetooth LE.)

At the time, I was brand new to Bluetooth comms and didn’t even really know how Bluetooth LE differed from regular Bluetooth.

The examples provided by DFRobot were based about using Bluetooth LE “GATT”.

After studying the supplied Android/iOS code, reading up on GATT, and some trial/error, I figured out how to use the Bluno’s GATT Services/Characteristics for doing serial communication.

The service and characteristic to use for serial comms is:

Service UUID : 0000dfb0-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb
Characteristic UUID : 0000dfb1-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb

Note, the above UUID were reported back by Android when I queried the Bluno. When I queried it from iOS, the Service/Characteristic were identified by:

Service : DFB0
Characteristic : DFB1

So how do you use these to communicate with the Bluno?

On the App Side:

Connect to the Bluno. I scan for devices that offer the above Service, and connect to that. (The device offering this particular service will be a Bluno!)
After connecting to the Bluno, the app needs to subscribe to notifications on the above Characteristic. This subscription is needed to receive data back from the Bluno.
To send data to the Bluno, write the data to the above Characteristic
When data is received from the Bluno, the App will receive a notification via the Characteristic subscription that we did on connection.

On the Bluno Side:

To send data to the App, write it to Serial (e.g. Serial.write() )
To receive data from the App, check for it on Serial (e.g. Serial.available(), Serial.read() )

That should be the main pieces of information you need to start talking to the Bluno!

For my app, I bought an asset from the Unity Asset Store (for about $10) which wrapped the iOS and Android Bluetooth GATT APIs into a platform independent API. I then used this library for doing communications between the Unity app and Bluno. (This enables me to deploy the Unity app to both iOS and Android.)

New MobBob parts are now on Thingiverse

cevinius — Mon, 16 May 2016 08:39:51 +0000

Sorry it took so long, but I’ve uploaded some new MobBob parts to Thingiverse.

Nexus 6 Phone Holder:
This part is a phone holder designed for the Nexus 6 (that accounts for its curved back).

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1566146

It looks giant next to the Nexus 5 version!

Bluno Beetle Backpack:
This set of parts form a “backpack” that fits onto the V2 mounting points that is designed specifically to fit a Bluno Beetle.

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1566136

Let me know if you try these parts out for yourself! Have fun!

Kevin

My Day Job!

cevinius — Thu, 21 Apr 2016 07:51:13 +0000

Hi all,

Sorry I haven’t posted any robot updates for a while!

My day job has been keeping me really busy lately. In “real life”, I’m a Game Developer at Robot Circus (http://www.robot-circus.com/).

About a month ago, I went to San Francisco for GDC (the Game Developers Conference). The conference was AMAZING, and I got to be part of Good Game’s GDC Special!

Good Game is a fantastic, Australian TV show about video games. The special is awesome and has a lot of great info about GDC.

The show aired on TV here this week, but you can also find it on YouTube here:

The game that we’re working on at the moment is called Ticket to Earth. It has a game mechanic that blends the genres of Puzzle RPGs and Tactical Combat games. It’s a lot of fun, and I’m looking forward to getting it out there for everyone to play.

You can see a trailer of our game here:

I promise there will be some robot updates soon! I have a long todo list for MobBob and for Sphero Companion. I also have some new parts that I want to play with. This upcoming weekend is a 3-day weekend and I’m definitely planning to work on some robots then.

Updates soon!!!

Thanks,
Kevin

Updates to Apps and MobBob parts soon!

cevinius — Mon, 01 Feb 2016 12:44:00 +0000

Sorry I have not been posting much recently. I just moved to a new apartment and have only just recently setup my “lab” again. (The new space is much, much better!)

Now that I’m settled into the new place, I’ll be doing app updates and designing new robots again.

I have been working on some hardware updates to MobBob and I’ll post details (and STLs) soon!! Here’s a sneak peak of this update… This MobBob iteration has a Nexus 6 phone holder (Phablet!) and with a newly designed case for the Bluno Beetle to keep the wires hidden away and tidied up!

Tip for Bluno Connection Issues

cevinius — Mon, 01 Feb 2016 12:26:38 +0000

I’ve just built a new MobBob, and I encountered some Bluno connection problems when testing/configuring this new MobBob.

What I found was that the app would sometimes have difficulty connecting to MobBob. And even after it manages to connect, the connection would be lost after one or two animations.

“Dana Hom” posted in the blog comments about a similar issue, so I thought I’d post how I solved it in case it’s helpful to other MobBob builders!

It turns out, the problems went away after I used the Bluno Beetle’s AT command “AT+SETTING=DEFAULT” (The DFRobot website has detailed instructions on how to do this: Link)

I’m guessing that either the Bluno Bluetooth settings were never initialised properly during manufacture, or they got corrupted at some point before reaching me. This command seemed to correctly reset the Bluno’s bluetooth configuration.

Using that command seemed to fix the issues I was having. After doing that I was able to connect and had MobBob walking around my desk for about 10-15 minutes straight without any connection problems.

So, if you are having connection problems, give this a try!