EvDog
Member Since: February 13, 2010
Country: United States
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And that, my friends, is how opening up hardware led to my planet's intergalactic exploration program. You truly are the pioneers of tomorrow's world...
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I'm working on something similar too - please get in touch (gmail - evan.j.davey) if you would like to share ideas. Here's a
quick writeup of my very basic working prototype. http://www.getoutsideandlive.com/2011/03/self-contained-aeroponics-prototype-system/.
I'm waiting for a few solenoid valves to arrive and then I'll begin working on a central nutrient distribution system that will do ph, water level and nutrient measurements / adjustments. -
Some of my favourite ted videos by Robert Full are on the topic of using biology to build robots: http://www.ted.com/speakers/robert_full.html
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I like DropBox for the same reason I like your business.
1. Put a wrapper around something already existing but complicated / disjointed and made it super accessible (I think it might run on subversion in the back end) - you don't have to think about backup, versioning or checkin / checkout just drag and drop
2. Strong branding - focus on the look and feel
3. A sense of community / transparency - creates brand advocates
These are the reasons why I think companies like Apple are so successful as well. -
I've had success getting two (series 2) xbee's to talk (using mbed) with the same setup (xbee regulated and usb explorer). I couldn't get it to work out of the box either so used the XCTU tool (via VirtualBox and Windows XP as on a mac) to set one as a 2.5 Router and the other a 2.5 Coordinator with both Pan IDs set to 332. I left the baud at 9600.
I used minicom in two unix terminal windows to test the output of one xbee went to the other (both were connected via usb, one via the mbed and the other via the xbee explorer). Flashing of the leds on the breakout boards was useful to test that the transmit and receive worked as expected (eg: as you type in the terminal of the xbee explorer connected you should see tx flash so at least you know that side is working).
Found this helpful: http://blog.kevinhoyt.org/wp-content/xbee-setup.pdf
Mbed reference: http://mbed.org/projects/cookbook/wiki/XBee (includes wiring diagrams which could be useful). -
Thanks for the quick response. I was getting concerned looking at something like this http://www.openpcd.org/openpicc.0.html and this article http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.05/rfid.html.
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Is it possible to read encrypted cards / anyone have any thoughts on how this reader could be made more secure for a front-door entry application eg: paired with keypad and pin?
No public wish lists :(