Maqetta

Today I discovered Maqetta - http://maqetta.org/ - which is exactly what I was looking for about a month ago. It's a browser-based HTML5 editor for creating mobile web app thingies without having to actually know anything about mobile CSS.

Syndicated 2013-04-05 21:20:42 from Notes In The Margin

A Haiku, in honor of today's meeting

For a brief moment,
I thought I had no meeting.
It was very nice.

Syndicated 2013-04-05 12:48:23 from Notes In The Margin

FitBit - Not what I was looking for

This evening I returned the FitBit I purchased a few days ago. It wasn't what I was looking for.

So I guess it's best to define what it is that I was looking for. Basically, I want everything that Strava does without having to lug my phone around. I thought that the FitBit was that, but it lacks one important element - a GPSr. I thought it had GPS fu in it, but it appears that I was mistaken.

So, instead, I've ordered a cheap armband thingy so that I can carry my phone without wearing a fanny pack. And maybe that'll be all I want.

The alternate is a $150 watch from Nike, and that's just a little too much to pay.

Syndicated 2013-04-02 00:44:16 from Notes In The Margin

Chores

Disclaimer: I don't require, or even particularly care about, your approval of my parenting style. I will cheerfully ignore any parenting advice you offer. Unless you're my parents.

My kids are very goal-driven. My son wants to save for a new iPod. My daughter wants a particular pair of shoes. These things motivate them.

But when it comes to something as pointless as taking out the garbage or vacuuming the living room, it's hard to get them to see the point. They'll do it when told, but they're not likely to think of it on their own.

We've gone through a number of experiments in getting them motivated to do their chores, including tying what chores they do to how much allowance they get. But that's a huge hassle to keep track of.

Last week I decided that since I like hacking on Open Source anyway, I'd throw something together to both track what chores they're doing - so that it's less work for us - and also to provide them with some incentive.

So, here it is: Chores is a PHP/MySQL web app to track what chores they're doing, and tie their allowance directly to that. I chose PHP because it's easy and, more importantly, I thought it might lower the bar to getting other folks to pitch in, whereas mod_perl or mod_lua might make it certain that I'd never get any help.

Chores is currently very simple, allowing you to:

• Manage user accounts, and define how much money a point is worth for those individuals, so that each person can have a different base allowance.
• Manage chores, and define how many points each chore is worth, and how frequently it may be done.
• Track when a chore has been done, who did it, and when it can be done again.
• Tell you how much you have earned today, and so far this week.
• Provide reports of allowance earned for any given time period.
• Formats nicely on the iPhone, iPod, and Nexus7, so that the kids can use it from whatever mobile device they have in their hands at the time.

I have other stuff planned, but for the moment we're kind of in a testing phase, to see if this actually works to motivate them.

I don't yet have a packaged distribution, because I don't have any documentation written, other than very rudimentary install docs. But you can check it out of svn if you want a copy. Patches are eagerly accepted, and if you'd like to participate on the project I'd be glad to add you to it.

Syndicated 2013-03-10 17:15:01 from Notes In The Margin

Getting your CM19a working on Linux

I recently acquired a Raspberry Pi, and my main project is to get X10 stuff working again in my house.

To that end, I purchased a CM19a. I'm going to chronicle the process of getting it working here, so that eventually this will be a helpful howto. At the moment, it's just a collection of notes and frustration.

First, plug in your CM19a to the USB port.

Run dmesg. You'll see something like:

[ 11.236260] input: X10 Wireless Technology Inc USB Transceiver as /devices/platform/bcm2708_usb/usb1/1-1/1-1.3/input/input0
[ 11.436218] usb 1-1.3: Weird data, len=1 ff 00 ff 00 00 00 ...
[ 11.447235] usbcore: registered new interface driver ati_remote
[ 11.584656] ati_remote: 2.2.1:ATI/X10 RF USB Remote Control

Also, when you run lsusb you'll see:

Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0424:9512 Standard Microsystems Corp.
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0424:ec00 Standard Microsystems Corp.
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0bc7:0002 X10 Wireless Technology, Inc. Firecracker Interface (ACPI-compliant)

And in /dev you'll see:

rbowen@raspberrypi ~ $ ls -la /dev/usb*
crw------T 1 root root 189, 0 Jan 1 1970 /dev/usbdev1.1
crw------T 1 root root 189, 1 Jan 1 1970 /dev/usbdev1.2
crw------T 1 root root 189, 2 Jan 1 1970 /dev/usbdev1.3
crw-rw-rwT 1 root root 189, 3 Jan 1 1970 /dev/usbdev1.4

So far, so good. Linux sees it.

You'll need to create /dev/ttyUSB* to go along with that. Paste this at the shell:

for i in 0 1 2 3 4; do
sudo mknod /dev/ttyUSB$i c 188 $i
done

Note: 1) This is a magical incantation. I don't yet know what the args to mknod mean. 2) I did 0..4 because lsmod shows devices up to 4. If you have more, make more.

I'm fond of heyu, so go install that. There's a sample config file that should get installed at /usr/local/etc/heyu/x10config.sample - copy that over to ~/.heyu/x1config and tinker with the settings in there.

Now, from here, I'm making it up as I go along. Please let me know if you know something I don't. Next step seems to simply be figuring out how to map a serial device to the USB one, since heyu seems to only know how to talk serial. Hopefully this is an easy thing to do, right?

Syndicated 2013-01-02 15:57:42 from Notes In The Margin