Monday, July 25, 2011
Arduino is Hard!
This challenge has not been going well at all! When I chose to do it I thought to myself, "it's only a couple of hours a day!" But it turns out that I don't have a couple of hours a day on a regular basis! I am still making plans and working out the details for the aquarium light but it's much slower going than I could have imagined!
Monday, July 18, 2011
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Wow, that last pictured sucked!
Wow, that last picture of the schematic sucked! Sorry about that! Here's a better one and a picture of the power supply I'm going to use!
Monday, July 11, 2011
Arduino Update
This week started out strong! I got the GPS hooked up after only a little trouble (it's amazing what having the right pin-out will do for you!) and I was able to print the raw NMEA message through the Serial Monitor. It was pretty much downhill from there. I am having quite a bit of trouble using the data that I get from the GPS. I can read the messages using a software serial implementation or through the actual hardware serial port and print it out but anytime I try to parse it and use it for anything it just completely stops updating. I started out using a software serial implementation and using String::substring() to get the parts of the messages but that was really ugly and didn't work so I wrote a String Tokenizer using strtok which also didn't work. The next thing I tried was to switch to using the hardware serial port and tweaking my StringTokenizer and that works some of the time. I don't know if there is an error in my code that crashes the Arduino or what! I have been working on it for the last four days so I think I may just move on to something new and come back to this! I got my USB Host Shield so I am going to try to get that working tonight with my Nexus S.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Friday, July 8, 2011
Still working on the GPS Code
I'm still working on parsing the NMEA messages that come from the GPS. I wrote a little String Tokenizer to help with that.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
GPS Code
This is a much less exciting set of pictures! Sorry about that! I'm working on writing the code to parse the NMEA Messages (the text from the last post) that come from the GPS.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
First Full Arduino Update
I hope you have been enjoying the pictures that I've been posting! Now to give a little more information about them! The first day I was getting the Arduino development environment set up and running some of the test sketches (A sketch is the name that Arduino uses for a program. It's the unit of code that is uploaded to and run on an Arduino board).
I stared out by blinking an LED and reading a button press so I decided to put those together and change the color of my common cathode tri-color led on a button press. I wired each of the anodes to a digital pin on the Arduino and rotated the active output each time the button was pressed.
The next day I decided to take this one step further and learn how to use the analog inputs. I used three 10K ohm potentiometers that were tied from +5V to ground and took the sweeper output and fed that into an analog input on the Arduino. I had one of these for each color and used the value I read from them to adjust the duty cycle of the colors in the LED in order to mix them to create any color you want.
Then I decided to try to get the LCD working. The code for this was really straight forward since someone has written a really nice library that takes care of all of the nitty gritty details but I had a lot of trouble getting it wired correctly. Thankfully Arduino is open source and has a very large development community! So after spending a long time struggling to make sense of the pinouts on my own I was able to find a really nice step by step guide to getting the LCD wired up complete with pictures from Ada Fruit! (Lady Ada is my hero!)
For the last project of the week I decided to try a more design centric project. My goal was to use the ability of the LCD to display special characters to create a set of numbers that filled both rows of the display. I found out that the LCD can only accept 8 special characters before it's memory is full and then it just starts overwriting the earlier characters. I spent a long time trying to get the parts that I needed down to only 8 characters and was not able to so I decided to cheat and use Google. A quick search showed that this is not possible and that the only successful "Bug Number" fonts are based on numbers that are 3x3 instead of 2x2. I still think there should be a way to do it by reprogramming the special characters before printing each number, but I don't know how slow that would be. I am going to shelve that project for now and move on to others that will help me learn more.
Keep checking back as I will continue to post pictures every day with a full description every week of this challenge!!
I stared out by blinking an LED and reading a button press so I decided to put those together and change the color of my common cathode tri-color led on a button press. I wired each of the anodes to a digital pin on the Arduino and rotated the active output each time the button was pressed.
The next day I decided to take this one step further and learn how to use the analog inputs. I used three 10K ohm potentiometers that were tied from +5V to ground and took the sweeper output and fed that into an analog input on the Arduino. I had one of these for each color and used the value I read from them to adjust the duty cycle of the colors in the LED in order to mix them to create any color you want.
Then I decided to try to get the LCD working. The code for this was really straight forward since someone has written a really nice library that takes care of all of the nitty gritty details but I had a lot of trouble getting it wired correctly. Thankfully Arduino is open source and has a very large development community! So after spending a long time struggling to make sense of the pinouts on my own I was able to find a really nice step by step guide to getting the LCD wired up complete with pictures from Ada Fruit! (Lady Ada is my hero!)
For the last project of the week I decided to try a more design centric project. My goal was to use the ability of the LCD to display special characters to create a set of numbers that filled both rows of the display. I found out that the LCD can only accept 8 special characters before it's memory is full and then it just starts overwriting the earlier characters. I spent a long time trying to get the parts that I needed down to only 8 characters and was not able to so I decided to cheat and use Google. A quick search showed that this is not possible and that the only successful "Bug Number" fonts are based on numbers that are 3x3 instead of 2x2. I still think there should be a way to do it by reprogramming the special characters before printing each number, but I don't know how slow that would be. I am going to shelve that project for now and move on to others that will help me learn more.
Keep checking back as I will continue to post pictures every day with a full description every week of this challenge!!
Monday, July 4, 2011
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Friday, July 1, 2011
Arduino Challenge
What is Arduino?
From the Arduino website:
Basically, Arduino is a microprocessor that was intended to be used by artist and people with no technical background and was designed to be extremely simply to program and connect to a whole host of sensors so that it can gather information about the work around it and actuators so that it can affect that world.
The goal of this challenge is to learn to use the Arduino and some of it's myriad attachments.
Rules:
From the Arduino website:
Arduino is a tool for making computers that can sense and control more of the physical world than your desktop computer. It's an open-source physical computing platform based on a simple microcontroller board, and a development environment for writing software for the board.
Arduino can be used to develop interactive objects, taking inputs from a variety of switches or sensors, and controlling a variety of lights, motors, and other physical outputs. Arduino projects can be stand-alone, or they can be communicate with software running on your computer (e.g. Flash, Processing, MaxMSP.) The boards can be assembled by hand or purchased preassembled; the open-source IDE can be downloaded for free.
The Arduino programming language is an implementation of Wiring, a similar physical computing platform, which is based on the Processing multimedia programming environment.
Basically, Arduino is a microprocessor that was intended to be used by artist and people with no technical background and was designed to be extremely simply to program and connect to a whole host of sensors so that it can gather information about the work around it and actuators so that it can affect that world.
The goal of this challenge is to learn to use the Arduino and some of it's myriad attachments.
Rules:
Being that I don't know much about the gritty details of working with Arduino the rules for this challenge are going to be a little free form. There are basically three stages of each project:
- Designing
- Building
- Programming
- I will take a picture of the progress at the end of each day and post it to this blog.
- I will post an update each week describing what has transpired during the week. Fridays haven't really worked out all that well for me so I am switching to Mondays.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Fifth and Final Elliptical Update
Today marks the end of my very first Monthly Challenge and I have to say that I learned a lot! The things that I am most stuck by is how short a month actually is and how much working out doesn't suck! When I started this challenge I expected it to feel like it was never going to end and that it would be hard to motivate myself to keep it up but working out very quickly became part of my routine and didn't feel like a chore at all. I've lost just less than 10bs this month, which I am happy with, and I feel better overall. When I started this challenge on the low settings on the elliptical my heart was pounding out of my chest and I was gasping for breath, but now my heart pumps away happily and I just watch tv! I've also noticed this improvement in overall fitness in many other aspects of my daily life and I like it! It also feels really good to have laid out a challenge and to have met that challenge!
Looking forward I plan on keeping up the working out, probably not EVERY day, but I am planning on 4 days a week. I will post a little update here when I reach any important milestone with that effort. Thank you all for following me this far and be sure to check back tomorrow for the announcement of the next challenge!
Day 25 Saturday 1:00am:
Today we spent the day at Origins playing games late into the night so I didn't get to workout until 1am!
Day 26 Sunday:
We went back to Origins this morning and then spent 4 hours volunteering at ComFest in the evening. By the time we got home my legs were so sore I couldn't do the elliptical.
Day 27 Monday 10:30pm:
Day 28 Tuesday 8:30pm:
Day 29 Wednesday 10:30pm:
Day 30 Thursday 1:30am:
Looking forward I plan on keeping up the working out, probably not EVERY day, but I am planning on 4 days a week. I will post a little update here when I reach any important milestone with that effort. Thank you all for following me this far and be sure to check back tomorrow for the announcement of the next challenge!
Day 25 Saturday 1:00am:
Today we spent the day at Origins playing games late into the night so I didn't get to workout until 1am!
| Crossramp | 6 |
| Resistance | 11 |
| Time | 15:00 |
| Calories | 237 |
Day 26 Sunday:
We went back to Origins this morning and then spent 4 hours volunteering at ComFest in the evening. By the time we got home my legs were so sore I couldn't do the elliptical.
Day 27 Monday 10:30pm:
| Crossramp | 6 |
| Resistance | 11 |
| Time | 15:00 |
| Calories | 228 |
Day 28 Tuesday 8:30pm:
| Crossramp | 6 |
| Resistance | 11 |
| Time | 20:00 |
| Calories | 315 |
Day 29 Wednesday 10:30pm:
| Crossramp | 6 |
| Resistance | 11 |
| Time | 15:00 |
| Calories | 229 |
Day 30 Thursday 1:30am:
| Crossramp | 6 |
| Resistance | 11 |
| Time | 10:00 |
| Calories | 152 |
Monday, June 27, 2011
Fourth Elliptical Update
I weighed myself on Friday and I have lost an additional 2.2lbs for a total of 7.7lbs since I started this challenge! I am happy with that progress and hope to continue at that pace!
I have found that if I work out as soon as I get home it goes much better for me. I can do my workout, shower and then have a nice, relaxing evening. There are times when that doesn't work out for one reason or another, but I am going to try to do it that way as often as I can. I have noticed some visible change as well which is very encouraging! On to the details!
Day 18 Saturday 9:00pm:
I spent this day at the Columbus Pride Festival including marching in the parade which was a good distance. By the time I got home my legs were sore and I was tired so I counted the marching as my workout for the day. This made me realize that, in the future, I need to more clearly define my challenges and think through allowable deviations.
Day 19 Sunday 11:00pm:
Day 20 Monday 7:00pm:
Day 21 Tuesday 7:00pm:
Day 22 Wednesday 10:40pm:
Day 23 Thursday 11:00pm:
Day 24 Friday 11:30pm:
It had been a very long week after a very busy weekend and I was just exhausted by Friday!
I have found that if I work out as soon as I get home it goes much better for me. I can do my workout, shower and then have a nice, relaxing evening. There are times when that doesn't work out for one reason or another, but I am going to try to do it that way as often as I can. I have noticed some visible change as well which is very encouraging! On to the details!
Day 18 Saturday 9:00pm:
I spent this day at the Columbus Pride Festival including marching in the parade which was a good distance. By the time I got home my legs were sore and I was tired so I counted the marching as my workout for the day. This made me realize that, in the future, I need to more clearly define my challenges and think through allowable deviations.
Day 19 Sunday 11:00pm:
| Crossramp | 6 |
| Resistance | 10 |
| Time | 20:00 |
| Calories | 324 |
Day 20 Monday 7:00pm:
| Crossramp | 6 |
| Resistance | 10 |
| Time | 30:00 |
| Calories | 487 |
Day 21 Tuesday 7:00pm:
| Crossramp | 6 |
| Resistance | 11 |
| Time | 13:00 |
| Calories | 213 |
Day 22 Wednesday 10:40pm:
| Crossramp | 6 |
| Resistance | 11 |
| Time | 15:00 |
| Calories | 231 |
Day 23 Thursday 11:00pm:
| Crossramp | 6 |
| Resistance | 11 |
| Time | 20:00 |
| Calories | 316 |
Day 24 Friday 11:30pm:
It had been a very long week after a very busy weekend and I was just exhausted by Friday!
| Crossramp | 6 |
| Resistance | 11 |
| Time | 10:00 |
| Calories | 128 |
Monday, June 20, 2011
Third Elliptical Update
There were two days over this last week where I experienced a bit if a setback. I think was due to an adverse reaction from having an allergy test since the way they test if you're allergic to something is to inject some of the stuff you are most likely to be allergic to into your arm. The day of and the day after the allergy test I felt dizzy and light headed. There was even a moment when I was certain that I was going to pass out at my desk. I have never passed out so I could only guess that that was what was going to happen, but I stopped being able to hear and think and the room went kind of wavy and brown. I weighed myself and after losing 5 lbs last week I only seemed to have love 1/2 lb this week. I also decided that since I wasn't really making any progress with the higher resistance settings to dial that back a bit and increase the crossramp.
Day 11 Saturday 9:00pm:
Day 12 Sunday 10:30pm:
Day 13 Monday 11:00pm:
Day 14 Tuesday 10:00pm:
This was the day of my allergy test. Even though I only went for 5 minutes I stopped twice and had to force myself to start again!
Day 15 Wednesday:
This was the day that I almost passed out at my desk. Once I got home I couldn't bring myself to work out.
Day 16 Thursday 7:00pm:
Day 17 Friday 11:00pm:
Day 11 Saturday 9:00pm:
| Crossramp | 4 |
| Resistance | 12 |
| Time | 13:30 |
| Calories | 238 |
Day 12 Sunday 10:30pm:
| Crossramp | 5 |
| Resistance | 10 |
| Time | 25:00 |
| Calories | 481 |
Day 13 Monday 11:00pm:
| Crossramp | 5 |
| Resistance | 10 |
| Time | 30:00 |
| Calories | 481 |
Day 14 Tuesday 10:00pm:
This was the day of my allergy test. Even though I only went for 5 minutes I stopped twice and had to force myself to start again!
| Crossramp | 6 |
| Resistance | 10 |
| Time | 5:00 |
| Calories | 72 |
Day 15 Wednesday:
This was the day that I almost passed out at my desk. Once I got home I couldn't bring myself to work out.
Day 16 Thursday 7:00pm:
| Crossramp | 6 |
| Resistance | 10 |
| Time | 15:00 |
| Calories | 252 |
Day 17 Friday 11:00pm:
| Crossramp | 6 |
| Resistance | 10 |
| Time | 15:00 |
| Calories | 242 |
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Second Update
So this has been the first full week of my challenge and I have learned a lot! It turns out that there are a lot of tings that affect how your performance when working out! Some things that I have found that really negatively affect it are spending most of the day walking around in weather that is 90 degrees and nearly 90% humidity. Forgetting that you have to exercise and trying to do it at 1am really affects the next day! I have also found out that with just a little effort I have managed to improve my cardiovascular fitness significantly. Now the issues I run into are either that my legs get tired or I get really bored.
Day 3 Friday 11:30pm:
Day 4 Saturday 4:30pm:
I thought this was going to be my day! My wife and I had spent the morning at an arts festival and it was crazy hot but we came home and got some rest. I was getting an early start on my workout, I figured out how to put my name and height and weight into the elliptical. It was very nice and greeted me by name! But later I realized that it was being friendly so that I wouldn't suspect it when it tried to kill me! I put the setting on "Fat Burner" and it kept changing the ramp and resistance values and told me not to drop below 120 strides per minutes. I didn't make it very long that day!
Day 5 Sunday 10:30pm:
Day 6 Monday 10:45pm:
I came home from work and made a nice dinner. My wife and I watched some tv and cleaned up the kitchen. We put Bart (our Yorkie) and Gabriel (our rabbit) to bed. I was brushing my teeth and getting ready for bed myself when I remembered that I had not worked out yet! Talk about a test of resolve! But I managed, I went and ran on the elliptical.
Day 7 Tuesday 10:00pm:
Day 8 Wednesday 1:00am:
I was working on a project on my computer and before I knew it had happened it was after midnight! But I still had to run. I also decided that since I had done a fill thirty minutes yesterday that I should bump up the resistance.
Day 9 Thursday 10:30pm:
Exercising after not having gone to bed until almost 2am the previous night is hard!
Day 10 Friday 10:00pm:
Day 3 Friday 11:30pm:
| Crossramp | 4 |
| Resistance | 6 |
| Time | 30:00 |
| Calories | 274 |
Day 4 Saturday 4:30pm:
I thought this was going to be my day! My wife and I had spent the morning at an arts festival and it was crazy hot but we came home and got some rest. I was getting an early start on my workout, I figured out how to put my name and height and weight into the elliptical. It was very nice and greeted me by name! But later I realized that it was being friendly so that I wouldn't suspect it when it tried to kill me! I put the setting on "Fat Burner" and it kept changing the ramp and resistance values and told me not to drop below 120 strides per minutes. I didn't make it very long that day!
| Crossramp | ?? |
| Resistance | ?? |
| Time | 13:00 |
| Calories | 146 |
Day 5 Sunday 10:30pm:
| Crossramp | 4 |
| Resistance | 10 |
| Time | 23:00 |
| Calories | 448 |
Day 6 Monday 10:45pm:
I came home from work and made a nice dinner. My wife and I watched some tv and cleaned up the kitchen. We put Bart (our Yorkie) and Gabriel (our rabbit) to bed. I was brushing my teeth and getting ready for bed myself when I remembered that I had not worked out yet! Talk about a test of resolve! But I managed, I went and ran on the elliptical.
| Crossramp | 4 |
| Resistance | 10 |
| Time | 20:00 |
| Calories | 324 |
Day 7 Tuesday 10:00pm:
| Crossramp | 4 |
| Resistance | 10 |
| Time | 30:00 |
| Calories | 448 |
Day 8 Wednesday 1:00am:
I was working on a project on my computer and before I knew it had happened it was after midnight! But I still had to run. I also decided that since I had done a fill thirty minutes yesterday that I should bump up the resistance.
| Crossramp | 4 |
| Resistance | 12 |
| Time | 15:00 |
| Calories | 235 |
Day 9 Thursday 10:30pm:
Exercising after not having gone to bed until almost 2am the previous night is hard!
| Crossramp | 4 |
| Resistance | 12 |
| Time | 13:30 |
| Calories | 236 |
Day 10 Friday 10:00pm:
| Crossramp | 4 |
| Resistance | 12 |
| Time | 20:00 |
| Calories | 326 |
Monday, June 6, 2011
Elliptical Mini-Update
I weighed myself this morning and I weighed 336.8 lbs, which means that in the first week of this challenge I have lost 5 lbs. I am going to start weighing myself on Fridays so that I can have the most recent information on my weekly posts. I just wanted to post this mini-update because I was excited by the progress!
Friday, June 3, 2011
First Update
It's already time for an update; this has been a short week! So far everything is going well, though I only have two days under my belt.
Day 1 (Wednesday 10:30pm):
I set the Elliptical to a Crossramp of 2 and a Resistance of 4 since I wanted to start out kind of easy to see how it went. I managed to go for 20 minutes and the computer said that I burned 161 calories.
Day 2 (Thursday 8:30pm):
I was feeling pretty good on Thursday so I decided to ramp it up a bit and see how that went so I put the Crossramp on 4, the Resistance on 6 and I managed to go for 21:00 burning 183. I started out pretty strong and feeling good but it got significantly harder as it went! I think that's a good thing though. I means I am going to get better at it!
Day 1 (Wednesday 10:30pm):
I set the Elliptical to a Crossramp of 2 and a Resistance of 4 since I wanted to start out kind of easy to see how it went. I managed to go for 20 minutes and the computer said that I burned 161 calories.
| Crossramp | 2 |
| Resistance | 4 |
| Time | 20:00 |
| Calories | 161 |
Day 2 (Thursday 8:30pm):
I was feeling pretty good on Thursday so I decided to ramp it up a bit and see how that went so I put the Crossramp on 4, the Resistance on 6 and I managed to go for 21:00 burning 183. I started out pretty strong and feeling good but it got significantly harder as it went! I think that's a good thing though. I means I am going to get better at it!
| Crossramp | 4 |
| Resistance | 6 |
| Time | 21:00 |
| Calories | 183 |
I still have to do my run for today, but my wife and I are going to see a movie so it's going to be a bit late and I wanted to get this update out there. The update next week will have a lot more information and I should have a much better feel for how this challenge is going by then!
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
The Elliptical Challenge
I am a Software Engineer and that is a pretty sedintary profession. I wake up and sit in the car as I drive to work. While I work I sit at a desk until it's time to sit in the war and drive home. When I get home I usually either sit and watch television or sit at my desk and tinker about on my computer. This has lead to some weight gain. Recently I have been trying to lose weight by counting calories and making an attempt to eat right but I have decided that I need to pair this with some physical activity so, for my first monthly challenge I will run on the Elliptical everyday. It has been some time since I have done this so I am hoping to start out at 20 minutes per day and work up from there.
Rules:
- I must run on the Elliptical every day.*
- I must make make it a quality run, not just a bit to get it done.
- I will keep track of the times that I ran and the calories burned during each run.
- I will publish the above information in the weekly blog post along with any changes in weight.
Pertinent State:
I am 6'7" tall and at the beginning of this challenge I weigh 341.8 lbs.
* - For the purposes of this challenge a day will be defined as the time between when I wake up and when I go back to bed.
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