Stowaway Keyboard for iPad

My iPad is turning out to be really nice. Games on it are fun, and the word processing and spreadsheet programs are definitely not toys, in fact they look to be very useful. However, typing at speed on the device is not too much fun. The best solution I've found is to put the device into landscape mode so you can use the larger version of the on-screen keyboard. This is OK, but the keyboard covers up a lot of the screen and I still don't really like the feel of typing on glass. Many years ago, when mobile computing meant a Windows CE device, there were lots of companies providing neat hardware you could use with your Pocket PC. One such company was "Think Outside the Box" who made a lovely little keyboard called the "Stowaway". I dug mine out this evening to see how it mingles with the latest technology.

The answer is "very well indeed". If you can track down a Think Outside the Box Bluetooth keyboard you should get one. The keys themselves are a miracle of folding cleverness. It looks like the company itself has gone now, but if you can track one down cheap I'd strongly advise you to. Paring the keypad with the iPad is a snap. Just hold down the CTRL+BlueFN+GreenFN on the keyboard until the green light flashes. Then get your iPad to discover the keyboard by going to the Bluetooth menu. The iPad will display a "magic number" that it wants you to type into the keyboard. Do that, remembering to hold down the BlueFN key as you type so that numbers are sent. Press enter when you have finished and, bingo.

The experience is so good, and the ability to type at speed so useful, that I expect we will see a return of gadgets like these, which let you make the most of these new fangled devices.

iomega Home Media Server

Now this is a useful device. The iomeaga Home Media Network Hard drive. It gives you 1 TByte of online storage that you can use at home. I’ve played with network storage devices before and found them quite useful. This is a bit more than just an online filestore though. It supports Apple Time Machine, so you can use it to back up your Mac. It also works as an iTunes and DLNA server, so that you can steam media to your Playstation or Xbox (or any other device including some TVs).

Finally it has things called Active Folders which are places you can lob files for background processing. One active folder will work with Bit Torrent, another sends files to your Flickr account and third will resize pictures placed into it. There are also ones to display slide shows to web browsers. I’ve used it with Macs and PCs and it seems to work fine once you have got the latest versions of the client programs on your machines. I’ve not tried the Active Folders much yet, I’m particularly interested in the Flickr uploader though. It also does network printing (which I must get around to).

If you are looking for a lot of storage that you can share around the house, or are looking at all the files you have spread around the place and wondering how to organise them, or you want to steam media to your consoles, then this is worth looking at. Particularly as from a price point of view it is only slightly more expensive than a USB hard drive of similar capacity. The best place to get them from in Hull is Staples, who have them at a very attractive 100 pounds at the moment.

Ipad Wifi Fix

I think I’ve fixed the iPad WIFI now. Thank goodness.  I had to reset all the network settings and then I’ve told my home network to always give it the same IP address whenever it connects. The device itself is lovely. I’ve put a few games on it and the user experience really is great.

iPad Review – Great apart from the broken WIFI

The iPad is a lovely device. It hasn’t made me any cleverer or better looking yet (but then I’ve not had it a day) but it is nice to use.  The screen is great to look at. Browsing web sites is a doddle (until you bash up against somewhere that uses Flash). The applications that you can buy look like they will be really quite useful. And number one wife quite fancies one too. The battery life looks good as well.

As of last night I loved it. This morning, when I woke it up and found that it no longer recognised my WIFI at home, I’m a bit less enamoured. I’d read about these problems when the iPad came out in the ‘states, but I presumed they would have fixed them before I got mine.

They haven’t.

I had to leave the house for work before I could do too much fiddling, and the iPad found the university network and is working fine at the moment, but I’m expecting a tussle when I get home. I’ll probably get around this by hard-wiring the network settings and with a bit of luck this will fix it. Otherwise I’ll have to wipe all the connections and re-connect. I can live with this, at a pinch, but I’m sure that number one wife wouldn’t like it much, along with anybody else expecting to buy an appliance.

I went onto the Apple support site and they have acknowledged there is an issue here, which is nice.  They then said it might be a problem with “Third Party” – i.e. not made by Apple – routers. I found this a bit irritating to be honest. If I have twenty devices (and I must have used that number of WIFI devices at home over the years) and the 21st one doesn’t work I’m more inclined to blame the new device than anything else.  Some of the suggested remedies (“Turn down the brightness”, “Hold the device above your head”, “Stand on one leg” etc) strike me as a bit daft when the proper solution is “Get Apple to replace the driver software with some that works”.

My advice, for what it is worth, is don’t turn your iPad off. I shut mine down last night and the reboot is the thing that seems to have broken it.  Of course you might get the same effect when you wander in and out of range of your “Third Party” access point. Oh well.

Ring in the New

Some old gadgets. And a new one.

Been clearing out the cupboard in my office as part of a stocktaking exercise. Somewhat nostalgic.  Do you remember all these?

Running Windows 7 64 Bit on a Macbook Pro I didn’t know was old..

I’ve had so much success with 64 bit Windows 7 on my new Dell Laptop I thought I’d put it on my MacBook Pro. I got this around 2 and a half years ago and it has been quite reliable, only needing a new power supply, battery and system board so far. Thank heavens for AppleCare.

But I digress. I bought a new hard disk and got number one son to fit it. Then we installed OS X and fired up BootCamp which is the Apple program to partition the drive and put Windows on it. At the appointed time I put my Windows 7 64 bit distribution disk in the machine to begin the install. And I got a very strange error message, as if the disk was stuck at a menu I hadn’t seen before.

Turns out that the Windows 7 64 bit DVD uses a format that doesn’t work on old (i.e. made more than 18 months ago) Macs. After a bit of searching I found my way to a web site that explained how to make a new DVD that worked OK.  The command I used (with my not-working DVD in drive d:) is this one:

oscdimg.exe -n -m -bd:\boot\etfsboot.com d:\ c:\windows7x64.iso

The oscdimg program is provided by Microsoft for making disk images. Once it had finished I then had an image on drive C:  which I could burn to make a working disk. I still have it. I’m going to put it somewhere safe.

Anyhoo, that got Windows 64 bit working on my machine and then I hit a second snag. The machine is so old that Apple don’t provide a version of BootCamp for it. This means that I couldn’t do the automated install of all the Apple and other drivers to make it work properly. The good news is that I’ve got all the important bits working without it and I’m sure I can live without the light up keyboard. From a performance point of view everything is fine, and I can now use all of the 4Gbytes of memory the machine has inside.  If you have an older Mac I’d definitely recommend the move to 64 bit.

Steaming Idiot

Bought a steam engine today. It was a reduced price bargain. And it has a generator. And lights. So buying it actually made perfect sense. Took it home, got it out of the box and then dropped it on the floor.

Idiot.

Fortunately not much harm was done, except that the “very important pin” that the piston pushes seems to have born the brunt of the landing and is now slightly bent. I’ve straightened it to the best of my ability and it seems to work OK. The whole thing makes a pleasing chugging noise as it runs, and the lights even come on. Great stuff. I’m now wondering if I could power a .NET Micro Framework device from it.

Alice in Wonderland Movie Review

I like the bar in Cineworld

Alice in Wonderland the movie is a Tim Burton realisation of the story, as paid for by Disney. It doesn’t tell a Lewis Carol version but dials things on a bit to send Alice back down the rabbit hole in search of the Vorpal sword to kill the Jabberwocky or some such rubbish(very impressed with the spell checker here – it seems to know the word Jabberwocky).

The plot is actually a bit thin and you can almost hear them checking things off as we go through the film. Blue caterpillar – check,  Mad Hatter – check, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum – check, Cheshire Cat – check, all though we’ll call him Chess to make it seem a bit more modern.  Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter is a highlight, played as for Willy Wonka with a different hairstyle, no chocolate to speak of. And a hat.

I quite liked the film. It was in 3D, which made a difference to the price but didn’t add much else for me. I wonder if one day they might do an experiment, where they turn the 3D effect off for an audience and see if anyone notices. I doubt they will ever do this though, as they might find out that nobody does.

In fact, I’ll put on my gadget pundit hat at this point and say that I don’t think 3D will ever really catch on.  This is not just because, with my dodgy eyes, I can’t actually see in 3D, but rather because we don’t really need it. Sure there will be set pieces like Avatar where the effect is very well integrated into the production, but if you had said to me last night “Two quid off the price to watch in normal 2D” I would have taken the money like a shot.

3D in the home sounds even more unlikely. Having to put on dorky glasses to get the full benefit of Question Time in 3D seems a pretty fruitless exercise, and I’m not really up to spending a huge wodge of cash on upgrading my TVs again just for that. And apparently in the wrong hands the effect can make you more than a bit seasick. Maybe I’m wrong here, but bearing in mind that we haven’t even got High Definition TV yet (which is worth the money by the way) then I think 3D will be a long time coming.

…so I built a centrifuge to find out

This post and video is amazing. I don’t think many people would build a centrifuge in their living room just to find out if a lava lamp would work on Jupiter.

DSi XL Console Review

DSi and DSi XL showing the difference in size

It seems that the fashion is for making bigger versions of existing things. Apple come out with their iPad, which is very big version of the iPod touch and now Nintendo come out with the DSi XL, which is a very big version of the DSi. (Actually, you could probably accuse Apple of copying Nintendo here, since the DSi XL has been out in Japan for a while and I think it has been something of a success there).

You get pretty much exactly what it says on the tin, in that the new DSi is just bigger than the old one. But the screen is also a lot brighter (the photo above doesn’t really do this justice) and the extra size does make a difference to gameplay. I found I was suddenly better at Ridge Racer, in that I could spot corners from further away, and Zoo Keeper looks really, really good.

Along with a dictionary you also get a free “taster” version of Brain Training built in. This told me my brain was 80 years old. Perhaps I should take the console back to the shop.  In fact a potentially large market for this device is folks like me who are a bit more advanced in years and appreciate the larger screen, although I’m surprised they didn’t make the buttons bigger as well.

If you have already got a DSi then the new one doesn’t really move things forward much, unless you are a bit short sighted like me. But if you have yet to buy one, I reckon you should get this one, along with a jacket with slightly larger pockets….

Using a Webcam as an Elmo Display

 

For those of you thinking about the fantastic toys, I’m afraid I must disappoint you (although the toys are great). I’m talking about the digital presenter tools which you use during talks to show things to the audience. I’ve used them in the past when doing talks about mobile phone development or to show small devices like the Micro Framework ones.

I did a talk today about the .NET Micro Framework and instead of using an Elmo I used a webcam. I tried using them ages ago but the quality of the pictures was so bad that I ended up using a camcorder instead. But this time I had one of the new Microsoft webcams, the LifeCam Cinema.  This boasts a proper 720P resolution and an auto focus lens made of real glass. And it works a treat. The quality of the pictures was excellent and it comes with a neat program that just shows you the camera view that you can use on screen. It also has some nice adjustments that you can use to pull down the brightness so that display screens look good.

This is a completely un-retouched picture of the Zune HD homescreen. There are some more shots on Flickr.

All I need now is little portable tripod and I have my own Elmo, which is much easier to use than switching video signals over.

A “Bustlectomy” for Jason the Micro Framework Robot

I did a bit of surgery on my Fez Micro Framework Robot yesterday. I took off his “bustle” at the back. I say his bustle, because my Micro-Framework robot is now called Jason, in honour of the JSON framework I’m working on to give him simple two way communication with a host machine.

The bustle was fine, but it hung out over the back a bit, and I wanted to make him (it?) a bit leaner and meaner. The new slim line Jason has all the sensors on his nose. He has a range finder right at the front and a pair of line followers underneath and coloured LEDs he can use to tell the world how he feels. At the moment he zooms around the living room nearly bouncing off things. I must admit it is great fun building him and writing programs to control what he does. You can write any number of desktop apps, but there is something very satisfying about seeing your code make the robot rush up to a wall, notice it, spin round and then vanish under the sofa. I’ll put up some more construction details later, when I’ve finished playing…

York Laptop Shopping

Went to York to do some shopping today. The weather was great for photographs. I took a quick bunch of the Minster and then stitched them together. The above isn’t perfect, there are some rather strange shadows here and there, but I’m still quite pleased with the result.

And we bought a laptop. We managed to get quite a powerful beast for dad with 4G of RAM, 500G hard disk and Windows 7 64 bit edition. All for less than 400 pounds. Which got me to thinking. This is the entry level price for the Apple iPad when it comes out in 60 days and 60 nights or so. Why would you want to buy something small and shiny when you could get something much more useful for less money?

I remember coming up with a similar argument against the iPhone when that came out. For the same money, I reasoned, you you could get a really nice little 3G SkypePhone, and an eePC.  (You still can).  Much more sensible. And yet the iPhone was a roaring success and I’m expecting the iPad to do just as well. People are going to use it and fall in love with it. A whole section of users (those who don’t really aspire to an all powerful computer) is going to appear and, having had what the iPhone offers, buy the same on a bigger platform.  And number one wife quite fancies one too. Case closed.

.NET Micro Framework and the Fez Robot

Robot in Red

My robot arrived today. It is from TinyCLR, who are (I think) part of  GHI Electronics.  They have released a whole new set of boards based on Version 4.0 of the .NET Micro Framework. The boards are branded as FEZ (Short for "Freakin' Easy!") and there is even a picture of a Fez on the board itself. There are two FEZ boards, the FEZ Domino which is pin compatible with an Arduino and the FEZ Mini which is compatible with the Basic Stamp device.  Both of these new devices use a single chip implementation of the Micro Framework.

I’ve been saying for ages is that what we need is a set of boards and components that use the .NET Micro Framework, are sensibly priced and well supported. It seems that GHI agree, since that is what they have done. They’ve also produced a free book which you can download to find out how to use the framework. This is a nice introduction to the technology and to the Fez platform.  I’ve not had time to do much with the new hardware just yet. But I did manage to assemble the robot and make it try to jump off the desk. 

Robot in Blue

In the future I’m going to start putting some projects up on my Micro Framework pages as I play more with this lovely system.

More Chumby Fun

I hate it when programs lie to you. Just spent a chunk of time finding out how to reliably put images into Flash programs that run on my Chumby. Clue: It is not as simple as it probably should be.

You can find out what I have been doing in my Chumby blog.

Christmas Chumby

My “big” Christmas present to myself was a Chumby. This is a fun little internet appliance that you can write programs for.  I’ve started doing just that, and you can find out more at my newly minted Chumby pages.

Update on 2010-01-13 09:23 by Rob

My Chumby program is now live. In the unlikely event that you actually have a Chumby you can find it here:

http://www.chumby.com/guide/widget/Experiment%201:%20Slidy%20Clock

Eye-Fi Review

Every now and then you come across something that must be powered by magic (or perhaps pixies), since there is obviously no other way you could make it work. Such a thing is the Eye-Fi SD memory card that also contains a WiFi adapter and a microcontroller. What it does is rather nice; it lets you transfer your pictures directly from your memory card into your computer without the tedious business of either plugging the camera into the computer or removing the card and reading it.

The Eye-Fi card looks like an ordinary 4G SD memory card and to the camera that is just what it is. However, when new photographs are taken and stored the card will wake up and try to send them over WiFi to a computer running the receiving software. I found that it just worked. There is an installation phase you have to go through where you plug the card (via a reader that is included) into your computer and tell it the name of your network and any security keys but once you have done that the pictures just appear on you computer as though by magic. Or pixies.

I don’t think the WiFi range is quite as good as a “proper” adapter, but it worked fine around our house. You also have to be careful not to turn the camera off (or let the camera turn itself off) before the card has finished sending pictures, but apart from that it works a treat. You can set up multiple WiFi networks and you can also configure it to only transfer pictures that you have marked as protected, so that you can use the camera to select which pictures get sent. It worked fine in both cameras I tried. It will definitely have an effect on battery life, but I didn’t notice anything untoward when I was playing with it.

I got the cheapest version, at 49 pounds, which just lets me transfer pictures to a waiting computer. More advanced (and expensive) versions of the card have a feature which lets you upload your snaps directly to Flickr, Facebook, Picassa or other photo sharing sites. This should be possible with the cheaper one, if you pay a ten dollars a year subscription, but at the moment this only works if you are US or Canada based.  There is also an option to have your pictures Geotagged as you upload them. This uses the location of the WiFi access point to transfer them. For a moment I thought they had managed to shoehorn a GPS system into the card, now that would have been very impressive...

Of course the device isn’t really magic. You can even take a look inside if you want to see how it does its stuff. However, it is very useful. Proper, professional, cameras can be fitted with WiFi adapters, but these cost an awful lot of money. I’m very tempted to splash out on the professional version of the card which also lets you transfer raw files as well as jpegs from your camera, which would be very nice. Maybe next year. As far as the card itself is concerned, I strongly recommend it.

Christmas Bash Tickets on Sale Today

The Christmas Bash tickets went on sale today. Nearly put a picture of one here, which from a security point of view might have been a bit of a faux pas.

Instead, here is a picture of the packing material that my Chumby arrived in. I’m not allowed to play with it until December 25th, which should make it a proper “Gadget Christmas”.

Windows 7 on Artigo PC

Some time back I got an Artigo PC to play with. This is a lovely little PC in a tiny box which will fit into the drive bay of a “proper” computer. It was supplied running Windows CE, which is a very nice operating system, but I wanted to do a bit more with it. I wanted to run Windows 7 on it.

I started small, with the Windows Embedded Standard 2011 CTP2. This is the latest version of Windows Embedded, basically a componentised version of Windows 7 where you can select just what you want in your installation. The idea is that you can make small footprint, customised, builds of windows for things like kiosk displays. My plan was to get maximum performance by just including the bits that I needed to let me watch recorded TV over the network and BBC iPlayer from the web.

It really is easy to install. If you have had horrid experiences of customising operating systems this will be a revelation.  You just boot your target device from the distribution image and then start selecting what you want to have in your custom Windows 7 deployment. There are a number of templates you can use as a starting point, or you can build your configuration from the ground up. You can pick which components that you want and the installer checks the dependencies and tells you the size of the footprint on the hard disk that you will end up with. The idea is that once you have made a machine that that works the way you want you can pull this back off the device and use it to manufacture as many more as you need. 

Works a treat. I quickly had a version of Windows 7 running with just Media Player and IE. This kind of thing would be great for use in open areas. It removes the need to worry what people might do with things like the command prompt, since there isn’t one there from the start.

The hardest bit of the job was upgrading the BIOS on the Artigo so that it would work with later versions of Windows. To do this I ended up making a boot floppy (I’ve not touched a floppy disk for years) and using that to boot the Artigo into Windows 95 and run the BIOS upgrade program.

If you fancy having a play with this you can get a free download of the entire thing by signing up on the Microsoft Connect link above, and the software will run for 180 days (until summer next year) so it might even be properly useful for a while.

As for me, I found that Windows 7 ran so well on my tiny machine that I thought I’d go for broke and put Windows 7 Ultimate on it. This worked very smoothly.  The only problem was with the drivers for the graphics display, where I’ve had to use the original ones that were designed for Windows XP. These mostly work, but at the moment the video playback is a bit choppy for full screen viewing, although it works fine in a reasonably sized window on the desktop.

Great fun though, and a very interesting exploration of where Windows Embedded is going in the future.

Remote Power

I’ve always liked the idea of remote controlling devices. I particularly like the idea of making stuff work without having to reach around to plugs and sockets. Today I went to Maplin and got some of these. They are not that expensive and they work really well. If you want to turn things off properly and remove the “curse of standby” I reckon they are worth a look.