Got Lightstream

Another achievement unlocked. That's two in less than a week. Got LightStream fibre optic broadband. at home. My data doesn't come down a wire any more. It comes as light. Right into the living room. I could even undo the cable and take a look at it. Although this would do horrible things to my data rate (and probably my eyes too).

To be honest I was a bit meh about it. I've never had that much of a problem with the old wired connection, although it was annoying if Windows 10 tried to download an update when we were watching iPlayer. But having had it for all of four hours or so, I'm hooked. Stuff just happens faster. Or instantly. It even seems faster than the network connection in my office at work.

According to the speed test web site I'm getting around 10 times my previous speed. And that is over WiFi or USB network dongle. I've not tried a proper wired connection yet. I wonder what going back to work will feel like. 

Cube Floormat Excitement

Ordered some new floormats for my Cube .  Both surprised and pleased to find you can still get them at a reasonable price. Quite excited about getting them really.

Which should probably be worrying. 

The Shaper Origin is Amazing

This thing is completely amazing. So want one.

Kodak Photo CD Fun and Games

Twenty years ago, when I was still learning how to take photographs, Kodak Photo-CD was supposed to be the next big thing. Keeping photographic negatives and prints was going to be so old-fashioned in the new, wonderful, digital age. 

Of course I bought into it. I got four or five rolls of film encoded onto this magical, future-proof, media. Of course, twenty years on all my prints and negatives are still around and usable. And the Photo-CD? Well, if you dig  around long enough you can find a program called Irfanview which will convert the files into something you can view again. I spent a happy hour or so this evening getting a bunch of pictures of the disks and passing them around the family.

The one above came out sort of OK, although I seem to have got a perfectly focused foreground and blurry background. So, twenty years ago I was still making the same mistakes I'm making today, just with a lot less technology to help out. 

Ricoh Theta S 360 Degree Camera

click through to see the 360 degree scan on Flickr

I've seen the future. And it mostly works. On Saturday number one wife was injudicious enough to let me roam unsupervised down Tottenham Court Road, one of the more gadgety parts of London. Of course I came back with something. It's actually something I saw at the Gadget Show Live, but at the time I didn't think I knew enough about the device to be sure it was worth bothering with.

Anyhoo, with a bit of background research and a slight price drop I was able to nip into a shop and emerge with a Ricoh Theta S. It's a camera, but it does something that no other camera I've seen can do. It takes a full 360 panoramic picture in one shot. It is fitted with two wide angle lenses which are back to back. Each of them gives a 190 degree field of view, which means that there is enough overlap for two images to be stitched together to form the panorama. 

This is what a raw image looks like. The horrible pink bit along the bottom is my thumb and hand. It seems that things automatically know what to do with these images; when I uploaded one to Flickr it automatically uses a panoramic viewer when the image is opened. There's also a viewer you can use for your PC (which seems to produce higher quality images than the browser based ones) and an app for your phone (iPhone or Android) that you can use via WiFi to configure the camera, take pictures and download and view the shots. You can even display them as two images that you can pan around, which is perfect for Google Cardboard or the Samsung VR headset.

As far as image quality is concerned it is not great shakes. I think a good phone camera could probably out-perform it. However, you can set the ISO value (lower is better) and it has some HDR settings that improve things a bit. The images are fairly sharp, particularly close up, but I don't think the lenses have any form of aperture control and the shutters are electronic. 

However, for me the thing is not the absolute quality, but the fact that it can do this wonderful thing at all. I've had great fun playing with it. The pictures you get really give you a feeling of being there like no single image can. You can take video (although the quality is not that great) and you can also attach the camera to your PC and live stream 360 degree video.  You can send your images up to Google Streetview to add detail to places on the map. There's even an api that you can use to control the camera from your own software, and Ricoh seem pretty active with firmware upgrades and new software features. There are even some "professional" (i.e. expensive) things for sale in the App Store which take bracketed exposures and use them to create game environments.

There one hardware issue with the device itself that you need to be aware of though. The two lenses at the top stick out in a way that invites trouble. It's pretty much impossible to put the device down on a table without it being open to expensive damage. I've 3D printed a cover for the top which helps a bit, and I'll try to create a proper case of some kind.  The device itself is pleasingly chunky and very well made apart from that though. It has 8Gb of storage built in, enough for more than a thousand pictures or 25 minutes or so of video. Using it makes you feel a bit of an idiot though (or at least it did me). I ended up holding it on my head, which made me look very strange.

But I think when people see what this can do they'll want one. I also think that it would be a perfect feature to add on to a phone, if you could find a way of getting the field of view without the protruding lenses. It makes every picture into a selfie; but not in a particularly bad way. I know that whenever I go anywhere from now on I'll take this with me and get shots that I could not get any other way. Well worth a look if you want to see what everyone will be using in a couple of years.

Ho Hum Gadget Show Live

These speakers are intriguing, but I think they have got left and right the wrong way round. 

I must admit that the Gadget Show Live this year was a bit disappointing.  It isn't actually the highlight of my year, but I like to think that it is one of them. On a par with Fish Pie at the Magpie in Whitby.  But after this show it has dropped a bit in the rankings, down to perhaps home-cooked sausage and baked potato level. 

Previous shows have had large scale exhibitors such as Sony, Microsoft, Dyson and the like showing off their latest technology. This one had a lot of much smaller stands, but nothing that really stood out.  There were some 3D printers, a chance to queue for a long time to drive a Tesla very slowly a short distance and a huge number of slightly different drones. And some hoverboards. But nothing that really impressed. 

There was some fun to be had and after all, at my age a trip out is a trip out, but I will be checking the list of exhibitors very carefully before I sign up for the next one. 

They did have some BBC Microbits there though

HTC Vive Hands-On

When we found out that there were doing live demonstrations of the HTC Vive just down the road from us in Leeds it was only a matter of time before we headed over there. We'd heard tales of how busy the event was, and of queues over the weekend so we got up bright and early and shot down the motorway to get there as close to opening time as we could. 

It was very quiet, which was great. Both number one son and myself had a good go at all the demos. My favourite was the Google painting program which was amazing. On the way down in the car we had discussed all the ways that the experience could be horrible. Poor tracking, slow updates, dodgy display, etc etc.

There was none of that. It just worked. Even over glasses. I could just about make out the individual dots in the display, which surprised me, but once I started moving around in a fully realised 3D environment I completely forgot about that.

It wasn't until after we'd finished that we remembered that there was a complete absence of any queasiness from either of us. The thing just works. The environments that we were in were a bit "cartoony", which is probably because the detail is dialled down a bit to keep the refresh rate up, but they were real. And the sensation of walking around in another world was very well realised.

The experience was quite unlike the Hololens that I tried last year. That device can overlay virtual elements onto your view of the environment. The Vive just makes a completely new one. Both systems have their place, and both work really well. 

Number one son ordered a Vive there and then. Me, I've got to buy a PC first as this kit requires some fairly hairy hardware to drive it. But I'm very tempted.

Fingerlights for robots and photographs

These look useful. Particularly if you happen to want to attach them to a robot so that another robot can see it and charge towards it. As you do. 

They might work well for light painting too. I saw them at the Science Museum yesterday in their gift shop. They are a set of battery powered coloured lights that you are supposed to attach to your fingers. You can find them on eBay (search for finger lights) at really stupid prices. I'm tempted to spend a tenner on 40 or so sets and go nuts with them. 

I wonder how long the batteries last?

Strange Technology..

We're selling an old Singer hand cranked sewing machine. I got it out to take some pictures for eBay. t's rather strange to come across a technology from the past which I know nothing about. 

I can figure out what the screwdriver and the bobbins are for, but everything else leaves me baffled. 

A Windows 10 Tablet for 35 pounds? Yes please.

I was in the embedded labs last week and the conversation turned to computers. As it is wont to do. One chap mentioned a 7inch Windows tablet they'd just picked up from ebuyer for the princely sum of thirty five quid. I was intrigued. Of course I bought one. It came in the less than deluxe packaging you can see above, but it seems to be dead ringer for the Linx tablet that I got a while back for twice that. It has 1G of RAM And 32 G of internal storage, plus an SD card slot and an HDMI output. 

For the price it is astonishing. Much is made of the amazing value offered by the Raspberry Pi, which gives you the internals of a computer for around 25 quid. This gives you the internals, plus a power supply, screen, WiFi connection and battery for only ten pounds more. It works very well too.

My plan is to use it on a robot and link it via Bluetooth to the motors and sensors. Should be fun. As I write this the tablet is happily downloading Windows 10 for its upgrade from Windows 8. If you are after an ultra-cheap but useful tablet you could do a lot worse.

Update: I apologise to anyone who doesn't use the proper coins of the realm and mistook the title of this post to refer to the weight of the tablet. Fear not. It isn't made of granite and can be lifted easily by one hand.

Adventures in 3D Printing #1: Tape Dispenser

I don't know what you think Christmas is the season for, but I reckon it is 3D printing. Plenty of time at home to keep an eye on the printer, and maybe even useful things to print. This is a tape dispenser that I thought might be useful for wrapping presents.

It works quite well, as long as you remember that the nut that holds on the roll of tape is screwed on with a left hand thread. If you forget this, as I did, you'll actually destroy your first print by trying really, really hard to "loosen" the nut. I got it to work but then I discovered this little gadget from Sellotape. 

You attach it to the knuckles of your left hand and you can just get tape as you wrap. It worked really well for me (I have slender and artistic hands - of course) although some of the reviews are less complimentary. Worth a look though I reckon.  

Robot Drawing

...message delivered...

I've finally got my message printed. The kit I'm using is the mDrawbot. You get the parts and instructions for four different drawing machines. The one I was playing with yesterday was a drawing turtle. Today I've switched to a robot drawing arm, which works a lot more reliably. There is also an "eggbot" for drawing on eggs and a dangling string based one that lets you draw huge pictures on an easel.

The kit is part of the MakeBlock family which are based on sturdy aluminium parts which you bolt together. It reminds me of Meccano of old, but with much stronger elements that you could use as the basis of proper devices.  You can even get a laser attachment for the plotter that you can use in place of a pen to perform laser engraving and cut thin paper.

Merry Christmas from me and the Robot

To be continued.....

So I spent a very happy chunk of today making a drawing robot that very nearly works.  I got the kit as my big Christmas present. This drawing robot needs a bit of calibration and I need to stop the paper wandering around the desk, But it was all lovely.  

I hope you had as much fun as I did.

Robot Visitor

Baxter the robot came to see us today. He's an interesting fellow. Vaguely humanoid, with a flat screen display that can show a pair of peering eyes and resiliently driven arms that mean he can work alongside humans without inadvertently knocking off heads, poking out eyes etc. 

We had a great demo of what he can do, which turns out to be rather a lot. We are looking at involving him in some future research, it would be great if we could get him on the staff at some point. 

I'm thinking robot lecturer. Oh yes. 

Bluetooth Arc Touch Mouse

While I was in Seattle earlier this month I took the opportunity to pick up some mice and keyboards. I got a Bluetooth version of the Arc touch mouse which is really nicely designed . It lies flat and you turn it on by folding it into an arc. Hence the name. It's more comfortable than I expected and it works very well. There's no scroll wheel, but the touch area in its place is a usable replacement. The mouse contains a sounder that "clicks" as you scroll up and down providing good tactile feedback. It's a bit pricey, but it does have a nice premium feel and the way it snaps flat is very pleasing.

GPUs and Surface Books

So, I was talking to Lilian from Microsoft last week, and explaining how I didn't think I needed to buy a Surface Book device because the only difference between it and my Surface Pro 3 is that it has a Graphical Processor Unit (GPU) in it.  I reckoned I that I had no need for GPU support because I don't play games or do graphical things. She reminded me that lots of programs, including Adobe Lightroom - which I use a lot - make heavy use of GPU hardware to speed things up. 

I tested this theory over the weekend, running Lightroom on my HP Sprout, that has a reasonable GPU in it. Turns out she's right. The GPU makes raw decoding of images much, much, faster. So now I want a Surface Book. The big one. With the GPU.

Thanks for that Lilian. 

Printer Bashing

This had better keep working...

You should never try and do anything when you have jetlag. Especially print things. Today was the day I needed to print up all the materials for the Three Thing competition. Like I did for the last few years I fired up my printer and, like it did for the last few years, it promptly proceeded to jam up with paper.

Some things about the modern world confuse me. We can put men on the moon (although that was a long time ago). We can fathom out the deepest mysteries of science. We can create vast and powerful networks that span the globe. But we can't make a device that reliably feeds paper into itself.

Up until now I've just fixed all the paper jams and carried on, repeatedly printing until I get all the copies I need. But today I had jetlag, which reduced my tolerance of such foibles to avery bare minimum. So that, and the realisation that I'd have to do exactly the same thing next year, and the year after that, made me pick the printer up, throw it in the car and take it to the tip.

Then I went on to Staples and picked up a replacement printer. I think I may have annoyed the staff by the way that I went along the row, typing product numbers into Amazon and looking for a device with a set of good reviews. Turns out that there aren't that many in that situation. Which confuses me. (see above)

Anyhoo, the HP Envy device that I selected was well reviewed and comparatively cheap. It will cost a huge amount to keep going - of course - but I'm hoping that it will print reliably for a year or two.

HoloLens Experience at the MVP Summit

They wouldn't let me take a picture of the HoloLens device...

It wasn't quite a "Golden Ticket" in the Willy Wonka style, but it did open up a rather interesting new world. On Sunday night, at the party, I was given a ticket to a session at the rather grandly named "Holographic Academy" on the Microsoft Campus. Today was the day that I got to try the new augmented reality.

From what I can tell, the academy is a large room with a bunch of powerful PCs, some tables and couches, and of course some HoloLens devices. I initially thought that the PCs were there to perform the rendering for the headsets. I was wrong. The headsets are completely self-contained. They are also very well made and looked "production quality" to me. They even fitted over my rather large glasses.

The 3D augmentation effect that they produce is totally believable. I placed a virtual "cat" on a table, walked the length of the room and then went back to it. The cat was still in exactly the same place. I looked up and down, let and right and the virtual objects in the scene all moved exactly as they should have done with no discernable lag or flicker. The sound experience is worth mentioning too. I could place objects in 3D space with my eyes closed, just by listening. And if I turned my head the objects moved as well.

The only real issue is that the region of filled with the virtual objects is only about a third of your field of view. This is a limitation of the display technology they are using. Perhaps over time the field of view will improve, but even now it is good enough to give a very impressive experience.

After a few minutes I took my headset off and was intrigued by the spectacle of a whole bunch of people wearing the headsets and moving round the room looking at things which just were not there.  You could tell where they were looking, you just couldn't see what they were looking at.

A future with these devices in it is going to be a very interesting one indeed.

I want a Surface Book, but I'll settle for a Surface Pro 4 Keyboard for now

I watched the Microsoft Devices event on Tuesday expecting some nice stuff. And there was. The new Surface Pro 4 looks like a nice evolution, as does the Microsoft Band. I can't afford a HoloLens and I don't live in the USA, so I'm afraid that's the end of that dream for now.

And then came the Surface Book. I so want one of these. I'd even sell a camera to get one (and I probably will). The way I see it, you get a Surface Pro and a MacBook for the price of one. And the hinge and the docking stuff looks awesome. We've not got a delivery date for the Surface Book in the UK just yet (sad face) but we do have delivery dates for Surface Pro 4 and all of its accessories. So I've placed an order for a Surface Pro 4 keyboard. It will work with my Surface Pro 3, and might even help me convince people I've bought a Surface Pro 4. My blue keyboard still works OK, but the new version has a proper glass touchpad and the reviews all say that the new individual keys have better travel and separation, which is nice.

The only piece of bad news is that the versions of the keyboard sold outside the USA will not have the rather useful fingerprint sensor, which is a bit sad. The new keyboard is the same price as the one it replaces, and I'm getting a bit tired of blue, so I've gone for the nice bright one you can see above.

One other thing, if you have a Surface Pro 3, the new Surface Dock is now also available for pre-order in the UK. This works with Surface Pro 3 and provides a really good selection of ports, including two monitor outputs which is really interesting. I've not ordered one yet though, I'm saving up for that Surface Book....

Amazon Lockers on the Hull Campus

Amazon are one of those companies that divide opinion a bit. Every now and then they hit the headlines for something unseemly that they are doing, or planning to do. Seems to me that they behave like every other huge company with lots of shareholders and stuff and a desire to stay in business. Like Starbucks, Google, Apple and so on. And they are very useful when you have an urgent desire for a particular kind of cable and an adapter that will let you attach Canon lenses to your Fuji camera.

Anyhoo, I placed the order today and I was pleased to find that there are now some Amazon lockers on the university campus in the Student's Union. I can get them delivered there and pick up the bits and bobs tomorrow, which is nice.