A week ago, John did a story about businesses that use Twitter. I semi-seriously sent out a Tweet about making a John Campbell bobble head, where the head bobbles every time someone mentions the word “marvelous” anywhere in the public space on Twitter. A couple of people suggested I do it, so I decided to give it a crack. Why? Because it’s fun.

For the fellow geeks out there:
The bobble head is driven by our Telecontrol Project (click here to see more info). When a power and network cable is connected, it connects to our Telecontrol server. The Telecontrol server is monitoring Twitter for the occurrence of the word “marvelous”, and sends an instruction down to the bobble head every time the word gets mentioned. The head is rotated using a micro servo, typically used in RC models.

Enough of that, here is the video (my first actual appearance on video blog, I think I come across a little nervous at the start):

More information about the project can be found at this earlier blog post.

If the image is too dark to see the project, you can turn a light on.

If the camera feed doesn’t start, try this alternative link.

There is a bot running on the Telecontrol server which is monitoring the Twitter public stream for occurrences of pre-defined keywords in real time. As keywords occur, they’re recorded on the server along with the timestamp (in seconds) that the tweet was processed.

The Twitter Feed plugin is configured specifically for each Telecontrol device. The configuration states which keywords to monitor, and which shift register output to use for each keyword. The Twitter Feed plugin updates the shift register outputs once a second, and light all the LEDs that had activity for the previous second for 0.95 seconds. We use 0.95 seconds so that if a keyword is used for two seconds in a row, a quick flash will be seen to emphasis that the keyword has been used multiple times.

The video shows an example using data for the FIFA World Cup. There are a total of 35 LEDs. 32 LEDs are used for each of the team’s county codes, and 3 LEDs are used for the keywords “#worldcup”, “#kiwicount”, and “http://kturl.com/wc”.

The actual project can be seen online in real time via a webcam at the address http://kturl.com/wc.

If you have any questions or enquiries, you can message me via Twitter, the Contact page (found on the top menu), or leave a comment on this blog post.

You might be wondering why the firmware is being distributed pre-compiled and not as an Arduino sketch file. This is because the protocol needs to be protected. By “protected”, we mean that the server requires the device to respond exactly to the protocol specification, and allowing people to change the source code may lead to unnecessary performance issues for both the device and the server.

We will, however, have the libraries used available for download to contribute to the open source community.

Two items that you’ll discover you’ll need while watching the video:

• - The Telecontrol firmware hex file (you may need to right-click and save as): http://blog.kennedytechnology.com/storage/telecontrol_328p_0_4.hex
• - The command to flash: avrdude -C ..\etc\avrdude.conf -c stk500v1 -p atmega328p -P \\.\COM1 -b 57600 -U flash:w:telecontrol_328p_0_4.hex

The default configuration with the current version of the firmware (0.4.0) allows the device to perform the following tasks via the web service (api) and/or plugins:

• - Set the state of up to 12 digital outputs (the analogue input pins can be used as digital outputs).
• - Set a PWM (pulse width modulation) value on up to 2 output pins.
• - Get the status of up to 12 digital inputs (the analogue input puns can be used as digital inputs).
• - Get the input value of up to 6 analogue inputs (returns a value of 0 – 1023 representing a voltage between 0v – 5v).
• - Define and set the states of up to 2 sets of shift registers (allowing up to 32 shift registers per set), allowing up to a total of 512 digital outputs via the shift registers.
• - 10 timer slots for shift register instructions (for example, you can instruct an output to remain ‘on’ for X number of milliseconds, or up to approx 4.5 hours).
• - Send up to 128 bytes of serial data to the serial port on the device.
• - Get up to 128 bytes of serial data from the serial port on the device.
• - Define and set the position of up to 6 servos.

The following list explains the flash codes on the Status LED:

• 1 – Network configuration.
• 2 – Locating the telecontrol server address.
• 3 – Connecting to the telecontrol server.
• 4 – Successfully connected to the telecontrol server, authenticated and initialised.
• 5 – Successfully connected to the telecontrol server, however the module key is either invalid, inactive, or there is already a device online using that particular module key. Module will reboot after 30 seconds of displaying this code.
• 6 – Reboot instruction received from the server. Going to reboot.
• 9 – Connection dropped. Going to reboot.

If there is an error during the boot process, the module will flash the code that it failed on for a predetermined period of time. The module will then reboot.

The next chapters will show how to flash the firmware to the device, and how to configure the device via the web interface.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us via the Contact page, or via the comments section below.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us via the Contact page, or via the comments section below.

This is a simple introduction to the Arduino Microcontroller. We tried to keep it nice and simple for people to understand. It was pouring down at the time of filming, which can be heard in the background.

For more information about the Arduino, take a look at their website: http://www.arduino.cc.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us via the Contact page, or via the comments section below.

I’ve been pretty busy this year. Real busy.

As some of you will already know, my wife and I had a daughter in January. Trust me, babies take a lot of time! She’s just passed the four month mark and she’s progressing really well. We are both very proud parents.

On a professional level, I’ve been spending a lot of time developing a Telecontrol product based on the Arduino platform. For those not familiar with Arduino, it is a very user friendly micro controller platform. You can find out all about it at the official Arduino website, http://www.arduino.cc.

I want to take the Telecontrol product further, and I’m keen to find people out there who might be keen to help test it out. If you have an Arduino 328p board, and an Ethernet Shield, let me know if you’re keen to try it out. I’ll be posting videos to give in-depth (yet simple) instructions on how it works, and some neat projects that can be done with it.

It’s a very high level explanation. If you’re interested in playing around with the technology of telecontrol (it’s not just limited to Christmas lights of course, take a look at my other telecontrol project) then send me a message via the Contact page. I have ioBridge units available for sale, and can point you in the right direction for the Arduino product line. We’re also looking at putting together kits for the relay driver arrays. If you’re interested, let me know!

So, enough talk. Here’s the video:

Not only are we bringing it back, but we’ll be blogging instructions on how to do it yourself.

It doesn’t end there either. We’ve partnered up with Mindkits, who sell heaps of cool electronic gadgets to make your own robots and stuff. You’ll be able to buy all the required components from them to build your own telecontrol device.

Please support PacificLights by using this link to visit Mindkits.

Keep an eye on this blog if you are interested in following the progress. You can keep informed of updates by following Nathan on Twitter, subscribing to the RSS feed, or just keep checking the site!