Tri-duino

The last little bit of science for my upcoming project:

The Tri-duino!

Just a little proof of concept based on the dual core arduino

This one is 3 arduino chips sharing a power supply and a 16mhz crystal to keep in perfect sync. The final project is going to be running 16 of these.

Chuck Returns

Season 2 of Chuck airs a week from today, but Hulu has it now.

I've got mixed feelings about early online premiers...but of course, I watched it.

Without spoiling any of the actual episode for you, let me share with you, in 3 frames, my favorite gag in the episode.



Oh cereal.

Google Knows:

Yes, Google knows many things, but does it know how to love?

[via swissmiss]

Ryan Day!

I don't know if you read any webcomics. I do. ...quite a few. My bookmarks have 132 (that number is down quite a bit from a year ago) plus a few that show up in my livejournal friends feed.

My "I read a lot of comics and am generally a giant nerd" creds aside, Ryan Estrada, aka Mr Awesome apparently has 100 70 guest comics out there today.

One Hundred Seventy

Same as the number of pennies in a dollar seventy cents.
Or dollars in a hundred seventy dollars.
Or tens in a grand seven hundred...ok, I've gone to far with this bit wow it's an even worse bit now.

Anyway, so far I've found... 30ish (haven't been counting) 21 (I counted) but I know there are many more out there. I'm looking! You should too!

Why.

So, thanks to mem on the arduino forum, I managed to figure out the damage to the code:

Now it works!

Fixed! from Andrew Parnell on Vimeo.

What was wrong?
Short version: I was being really wasteful.

Long version: the way the code was written, each LED took a whole byte to assign. With the fixed code, each row takes a byte. (Taking it from 64 bytes per pattern, to 8. Serious savings!)

Code in the comments.

Why!!!!

Ok, this is my personal project update/post for the evening. (Also explains why I'm up at 4 am.)

I've found that adding 15 or more "characters" for the code to go through, totally breaks the matrix. 14 or less, fine. 15 or more, mess. Also 15 screws it up differently than 16+ (15 just freezes the loop, 16+ start creating garbage) What's weird is that there is nothing changed in the code except the length of the array, and the adding of a few more array entries. So I can't figure out why it's breaking like this.

Wanna see what I'm talking about? Sure.

Good

Working from Andrew Parnell on Vimeo.

Bad/Broken

Broken from Andrew Parnell on Vimeo.


And if you care, like last time, code is in the comments.

Also great:

Are these tables by Formtank made from a single sheet of metal:



I've been staring at them for a few hours now, and I think I finally figured out how they're cut. The seem on the supports is near invisible! (At least on the online photos anyway)

[via unplggd]