Stokes' ProjBlog

Random idea: unique IDs on the Arduino September 23, 2009

I was thinking about ways to create multiplayer games/toys using the Arduino platform and realized a key difficulty: telling different Arduinos apart when there are more than two. Optimally, the system should not depend on one Arduino being the ‘boss’ and should be as simple as possible for the programmer. I think I have a solution.

This is the idea: modify the pre-compiler (or, more specifically, the IDE code that calls the precompiler) to automatically include a #define statement, defining MY_UNIQUE_ID as the last sixteen bits of the build time in milliseconds. The chances of two Arduino builds being done in the same thousandth of a second are extraordinarily low, effectively making the ID unique for all practical reasons. In the code, all the programmer needs to do is use MY_UNIQUE_ID as a variable.

I’ll have to take a look at the Arduino IDE source.

Update (9/24): A couple of people have commented on this on Facebook (where this appears via RSS), suggesting some dynamic, real-time solutions. These are good ideas, but the situation I was imagining isn’t one in which all the points would have access to each other simultaneously; instead, temporary connections are being made between units, probably by physical contact.

Further work on the Soda Machine Hack September 18, 2009

The W&B soda machine continues its march towards the Internet. Yesterday, Sam Gerstein (another W&B member) and I spent a couple of hours investigating its treacherous inner workings, figuring out specifically where the credit-emulating relay needs to go and testing the selection detection board.

Despite a couple of brief setbacks, the afternoon was a success. Virtually everything in the machine worked more-or-less as predicted. The CONTROL BOX did contain a couple of mysteries: a switch fixed in one position in by a steel plate and a couple of screws, a relay not connected to anything whatsoever, and color-coded wires that didn’t seem to match the schematic. Apart from those, however, it was fairly spacious and tidy inside. The machine had apparently been modified modified so that every item is the same price, so only one of the four circuits that denote credit is actually in use, and shorting this with the ‘hot’ connection registered as money having been deposited. The relay board will be easy to integrate.


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Wroughtbench September 11, 2009

Since I’m trying to update my project blog to reflect what I’m actually doing, I thought it worth mentioning the workbenches (and now shelves) I’ve been building for Willoughby & Baltic, previously posted only to Facebook.
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‘The Soda Machine Hack Project’ September 4, 2009

Willoughby & Baltic has acquired a vintage soda machine; if I were to guess, it dates back to the late 1950s or early 1960s. It’s a massive steel box with a wood veneer front, its sides an industrial non-color. In contrast to more modern machines, its only text is the words Cold Drink in small, white-on-black, sans-serif lettering above a narrow, horizontal window displaying a representative can of each beverage within. I should have thought to photograph it, but I was distracted by the interior. Inside, the machine is a wonder of space-age technology: as you can see from the schematic, everything operates on 110V AC line current, and its works are almost entirely electromechanical relays and solenoids. Frankly, it’s pretty cool.

Of course, the first thing that needs to be done to the machine is connect it to the Internet. Why? I don’t know. I’m only interested in the ‘how’ at the moment.


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‘The Control Panel Project’ September 2, 2009

I’ve long been interested in UI and usability; I took some courses back in school and I’ve pursued it on my own since then. A couple of months back, I performed a thought experiment: what would be the worst (plausible) user interface hardware? It occurred to me that bad interfaces keep the user from performing an activity, but what if the interface itself was the activity? In such a case, the regular rules no longer apply.

From that came my idea for a modular, expandable control panel composed of banks of toggle switches.

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