“I never believed in Santa Claus because I knew no white dude would come into my neighborhood after dark.” - Dick Gregory |
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Arduino Project09/11/2011 06:42 PM Idle Hands For some reason, every once in a while I get the feeling that I don't have enough to do. I should realize I have many projects going on at once and should finish one before starting another; but I don't. Recently I heard about an issue my father has with a setup he has where he needs to take a temperature wirelessly and I thought "I'm not doing anything else, let me start a new project." And so started my long journey into the world of micro-controllers and Arduinos. Like Father Like Son I'm going to give just a little background about why my father needs to take a temperature wirelessly. You see my father is like me (or rather I'm like him) in that when we are idle we make up projects to do. One such project for him was to setup a wood boiler in the garage, to heat water, and send the hot water underground to his home. Where he could use it to heat his house, and be used as hot water for showers and faucets. He lives in a somewhat secluded place, surrounded by wooded areas. Every year a few big storms will go through and knock down a some trees. He will split it up, stack it for drying, and burn it during the winter to help cut down on the gas bill for heating the house. As an added bonus the extra heat put off by the boiler helps keep his garage warm in the winter, making it easier to work on the cars. When controlling this system it's important to know what the temperature is of the water inside the boiler, to help him know when to add more wood, and to adjust the amount of oxygen in the mix. There is also an automatic blower in the system that helps stoke the flame, and help the boiler burn more efficiently. Originally my father used a car thermostat to tell him the temperature of the boiler, from inside his house. He took the temperature sensor from a car, and put it in the boiler in the garage. He then ran the signal wires underground to the house, where he hooked it up to a temperature gauge from a car. This worked all right but the gauge's range was not too wide, and the gauge is too small to get a accurate reading. Also the wires underground are about 60 feet long. Much longer than the intended length of 5-10 feet that you have from the engine to your car dash, which gives an even more inaccurate reading. New Design So I set out to try to find him a wireless solution. A way for him to tell the temperature of some water from about 50 feet away. The temperature may get as high as 230F, but will likely be between 150F and 200F. I couldn't find an off-the-shelf product that was cheap and gave the ranges we needed. There are several weather devices that also tell humidity and forecast, but the temperature range only goes up to 150F. I realized the perfect solution would be either a Thermocouple or and RTD. The easiest way I knew of taking a thermocouple reading was with a level shifter and a DAQ card, but that would require 2 PCs talking over WiFi, and I didn't have 2 PCs and didn't want all the extra hardware. The perfect solution was something I had heard about but never used. Arduino. I knew that there were LCD displays, Wireless modules, and thermocouple devices for Arduinos, so I knew technically it was possible. But I wanted to do it as cheaply as possible. It also seemed a little overkill to use two Arduinos just to send one temperature signal. So I figured I could add a few features for a little more cost. Like the ability to read the temperature in the garage, or to know when the blower turns on. Initial Development I bought 2 Arduino Unos for development, and intended on making my own out of raw parts when I was done. I also bought a 16x2 LCD display, a MAX6675 Thermocouple reader, an LM35 ambient temperature device, a few bread boards for development, a perforated board for final build, a cheap wireless transmitting device, and a few other small odds and ends. I'll get to total cost later but my goal was less than $100 after shipping. If you plan on making your own feel free to use a different LCD and possibly LM36. Alot of these parts can be swapped out with minor (if any) changes to the software. My first experience with Arduino was a good one. For first time users there are tons of examples with the development software. I've used some other text based programming environments that are easier to use but for the most part it was good enough. I started by trying to interface with the LCD, and the MAX6675 thermocouple. Both had examples and libraries so it didn't take long to display the temperature on the LCD. I also allowed the back-light to turn on and off on the LCD by reading an analog in pin looking for a button press. Next I wired up the LM35 which takes an ambient temperature reading, which isn't as accurate, or as large of range as the MAX6675, but it is cheap and only takes one analog pin, where the MAX6675 takes at least 3 digital pins. The last thing to interface with was the blower. The blower it self is powered by a 120VAC relay which is controlled with its own temperature sensor. The easiest way I thought of detecting when the blower was turned on, was to tap into the 120VAC signal that powers the blower, and put that into a voltage adapter, which would output a low voltage DC signal that can go to another analog in pin on the Arduino. So when the blower turns on the Arduino will see a voltage greater than zero volts. Wireless Issues All this worked just fine, so the next step was the wireless module. Wanting to go cheap I choose a Superregeneration transmitter and receiver pair with two Arduinos. The devices them selves are getting harder to find and I ended up getting the pair on ebay. I went with them instead of one Arduino and two Xbees wireless devices because of cost. Two Xbees definitely have a longer range, and better reliability than the cheap wireless modules. But I only needed to send about 4 bytes of data a second, nothing very high speed, and nothing system critical. If we lost half the messages the only repercussion would be that the LCD would only be updated every two seconds. For this system getting one update a minute would be sufficient. The cost of two Arduinos, and the wireless module is about $60 if I buy the Arduino Unos pre-built, but only about $30 if I build them from scratch. The cost of an Arduino and two Xbees is $75 if I buy the Arduino Uno pre-build, and $60 if I build it from scratch. I did have issues with the cheap wireless devices. The first issue was finding some. There are plenty of posts people have made, explaining how to use these cheap wireless modules for simple communication, but almost all of them say to buy them from SparkFun. Unfortunetally SparkFun no longer caries the Receiver, they do have the Transmitters at the moment for some reason. So I Googled and found a few places in Europe but I was hoping for some thing closer. I ended up going to Ebay and found a pair that seemed the same but they weren't. Even so the vendor said that they would work with an Arduino Uno. After receiving the transmitter receiver pair I had issues getting it to work. Eventually I convinced the vendor that it was broken and they send a new transmitter and receiver. After I still couldn't get it to work I realized that the transmitter and receiver were backwards. No where in their documentation do they say which is which. They just show which pins are Data, they don't say Data In or Data Out. In either case I got two transmitters and two receivers for $6 with free shipping. Prototyping Like most engineering challenges, it's a good idea to work your way up, proving out design as you go. So for me the first thing was to interface with the LCD. I figured I would use it to display debug information and it would help prove out the rest. I soon realized that the Arduino has a simple Serial Port monitor so performing debug information is simple. After that I hooked up the MAX6675 thermocouple, the LM35, and a switch to turn on and off the LCD display. I put all of this on one Arduino, but in the final build one Arduino will display the other will read data. Because of this it meant that all of the IO I needed to send and receive data could be on one Arduino. So in the future if I wanted to add an LCD to the transmitter I could without needing more IO, or any much code changes. Here are some pictures of the build at this point.   After the basics were working with the Unos I bought the parts to make my own Arduinos on a bread board or perfboard. It costs about $20 in parts for both Arduinos after shipping cost. After a few tutorials, and burning the boot-loader to the blank ATMega328s I had it working. I put them in a few nice boxes, added a few voltage adapters, and put the transmitter on a tether so we could get it as close to the receiver as possible. The two would be about 50 feet away, going through two exterior walls, which in my tests is about the limit of them so I wanted to improve my chances of getting valid data. I added some code to clear the display if an update isn't received within one minute. This means as long as there are numbers on the display, the data must be one minute or less old. I also added some code to average the last 4 valid data points, and to allow the display to be in degrees C or F. Here are a few photos, of the breadboard arduino and the perforated board for the receiver.   Cost MAX6675: $21.13 LM35, Protoboard, Button, POT: $4.13 Parts for 2 Arduinos, ATMEGA328, Sockets, Caps, Voltage regulators, Crystals: $17.69 Wireless Module (ebay): $6 LCD 16 X 2: 15.94 Total (including shipping): $64.89 Now this total is a little deceiving for a few reasons. For this project I also bought two Arduino Unos for development, and some breadboards. I also had some parts just sitting around. Here are a few things that I had that didn't cost me anything for the build, but would cost me if I needed to make more. 2 Voltage regulators, 6V-12V 400mA each. Voltage regulator, 3V 100mA 2 1KOhm resistors 1/4 Watt 2 Resistors of same size >500KOhm One small project box One medium project box One large project box 2 DB9 solider cup female 2 DB9 solider cup male 2 DB9 hoods Ethernet cable, about 5 feet Other assorted wires, total around 8 feet It's hard to say that if I had to buy all of these that the project would still be under $100. Voltage regulators new are over priced but any decent garage sale has them in the free box, or usually less than a dollar. In any case, here are some final images and video of the transmitter and receiver in action. Functionality Video Internals Video   DIY If your interested in making your own wireless temperature device, or you are just curious about how I did it, take a look at my source. As usual there is no warranty or any type of support with this source. The source has two libraries that are needed in addition to the ones that come with the Arduino development environment, one for interfacing with the MAX6675, and one for performing the wireless communication using the VirtualWire. Also included with the source is a text file that explains the pinout for the receiver and transmitter. Download: Source Code  |
Duke Nukem Forever Review08/18/2011 08:36 PM Duke Who?  Alright so I decided to play the finally released Duke Nukem Forever. If you don't know about Duke Nukem Forever go over to Wikipedia and read about the crazy development cycle and history of the game. Basically Duke Nukem 3D was a huge hit and people wanted a squeal, and they got it...some 15 years later. Now I'm a fan of the modern FPS games. I've played some of the older ones as far back as Doom 1 and 2, but I've never played a Duke Nukem game before. Since the development of the game was so long, I went into the game assuming that the style would represent more of a modern FPS than the older ones, and I was right. After reading about how many times the game changed hands I realized that at some point they probably just started from scratch, and took ideas for the game and put them into a new game, scrapping what they had done before. So this game was more like a Halo, than Doom 1, not that that is a bad thing. So what was the game play like? It was pretty good, I mean there are better games but it had a good amount of variety between gun fights, huge boss battles, driving, puzzles, shrinking puzzles, turrets, partially destructible environments, decent weapon variety, and interactive environments. But the majority of the game is running and gunning; not too much of a surprise it is a FPS. Guns So there isn't hundreds of gun types but there are the standards. A pistol, an assault riffle equivalent, machine gun, sniper, rocket launcher, turrets, and shotgun. In addition to this there are things like the Devistator, Enforcer, Shrink gun, and Freeze gun. This in addition to a few grenade types adds enough variety to keep it fun. The problem I had was that you only have two guns (like modern FPS Halo style) meaning if I have a rocket launcher and a shotgun, I can't get any long range enemies without draining rockets. Or if I have a sniper riffle and rocket launcher, I can't do much close quarters combat. The ability to carry three guns would have been much better. Health So the health system is similar to modern FPS games with a shield that recharges over time. At first this was a pain because I would always be hiding then run out and shoot then hide. But I found that if you stun an enemy (where they are close to dying) you can perform an execution on them and it will increase your shield (ego) instantly. This kept the fighting going because I didn't need to hide and wait. Later in the game with flying enemies this trick becomes harder to do and its back to hiding but, oh well. Another neat thing they did with health was allow you to increase it by interacting with objects. I haven't really mentioned this yet but Duke is kind of a bad ass, and a womanizer. So doing things like look up porn on a computer in the game will increase your health a little bit. Pumping iron, playing basket ball, looking at a porno magazine, killing a huge boss, all of these are fun little ways to increase your health. There isn't any item to heal your self with but there is drugs and beer. Drink beer and you become tougher (take less damage) but your vision becomes impaired. Take steroids and your punches are more powerful. I can't really say I think it was a good idea to promote drinking and drugs in a video game but I think the game mechanic works because of the character that Duke is. Attitude  The game has come under heavy fire for how women are treated in this game. This game does have a capture the babe multiplayer mode, and women are generally seen as defenseless sex objects. But I think that a game that has been in development for this long, and with this much anticipation, the developers had to push the limits of Duke's character and make the game as over the top (in violence and comedy) as possible. To that I think they did a decent job. I did find my self laughing at some of the jokes, which are mostly pop culture references but still funny. Done...now what? I'm a sucker for bonus content after beating a game. Like the behind the scenes, making of a videos, and luckily Duke Nukem Forever has some of that. The game includes all of the trailers for Duke Nukem Forever that have been released in the 15 years that it was being worked on. It also comes with a neat time line view that tells a brief description of what happened and when. As for other things like replay value, you won't find much. There are a few achievements I missed out on, and some ego boosts I missed, but not much else. There is also a multiplayer mode but it feels like that was an after thought just tacked on for good measure. When being shot try to avoid bullets  Worth it? So over all I think it is a decent game for an adult male who likes blowing crap up. But would I pay the $60? Which was the price when it was released? Nope. Would I pay $40? Maybe but still not likely. For $30 I would say pick it up, and with all the bad reviews Duke has been getting it won't be long until you see this game in the bargain bin at Wal-Mart.  |
Three Words...Apple...Video Games07/08/2011 02:34 PM  So I was thinking about the whole PC versus Mac situation. There are several ways that PCs and Macs are different, not one better than the other just different. The obvious difference is the fact that PCs are generally less expensive for the same technical specifications. But (in my opinion) Macs are better designed and are better in quality. I can attribute this to the fact that Microsoft doesn't make the hardware, where Mac hardware is designed and built by Apple. But this post isn't about that, this post is about where Microsoft has the upper hand over Apple. Microsoft has been making plenty of money with their video game system. Their console "turned a profit" back in 2008, and has seemingly been doing great in 2009, and 2010. They have been making money not just in hardware sales, games, and accessories (ways to make money with video games traditionally) but also with digital sales of full Xbox 360 games, Arcade games, and Live membership cost. On top of that Microsoft has been making plenty with partnerships with the Xbox. Partnerships with companies like Hulu, Netflix, ESPN, and MSN. So as I was thinking about the whole Apple and Microsoft comparison, I realized that Microsoft does alot more than just software. Apple of course does a whole lot more than just computers as well. They have alot invested in the IPod, IPhone, IPad, ITunes, Apple TV, and network hardware. Now Microsoft has dipped its toes into the water a little in these areas. Microsoft had three generations of its IPod competitor (the Zune), which was met with some success, but to the public it is considered a failure. Microsoft also has a music store, and had the TV/DVR market before Apple TV (with Windows Media Center). Microsoft has also been in the phone market longer than Apple with the Windows Mobile platform (Previously Pocket PC from 2000, and the first Window Mobile for phones in 2003). We've seen Microsoft have some success in market places now dominated by Apple, but what about the reverse? But PC Has Games When ever I hear the classic arguments for PC over Mac, or why a Mac is better; I always think about gaming. While the PC gaming market for Microsoft has been declining (independent games, and Steam seem to grow), one weakness of Macs has always been gaming. There are several reasons for this, and this post won't go into them, but the point is that Macs have been lacking in the gaming department when compared to PC gaming for at least 12 years. Now this may be a tactical move by Apple. They may want to focus more on style, design, and usability of their current products. But what would a gaming market look like if Apple decided to go full force into it? IGame? If Apple went into the gaming industry I would like to think that they would do something similar to the Apple TV. Where they would make a video game console, instead of trying to make games for the Mac operating system. I would bet that the system would be running their IOS or some variation of it. This way all the current games for the IPhone/Ipad could be used. Games would likely be available for download, but I think it would be a good idea to have physical medium as well, maybe they would be on DVDs. Blu-Ray could be a possibility, but in the past Steve Jobs has mentioned how he's not a fan of Blu-Ray. However his opinion may have changed since making those comments. Other things that Apple does well would likely be seen in this video game system. I would imagine this video game system, lets call it the IGame, would also be very easy to use. Most apple products are easy to use, partially because they control the hardware and can control the experience that the user will have. Controllers would be an interesting one. I'm guessing that IPhones, IPads, and IPod touches could be used as a touch screen wireless interface via Wifi. I think it would also be a good idea to have a cheaper controller that is a more traditional analog sticks, shoulder buttons similar to PS2/PS3 controllers. So what would make this IGame so good? What would make people want to buy it? Coming into a new market would be very hard. Microsoft had a very difficult time with the original Xbox but got lucky with a few good titles, and then hit a home run with Xbox Live. What I think would set Apple apart in this industry already full of contenders is the quality of their games. I would expect the games that come out of Apple to be very artistic, very clean, professional, and fun. They tend to do things right most of the time, because they invest so much time and effort into a project. I don't have any inside information, it is just something I was thinking about while doing dishes and thought it would be a great idea to play a game designed by Apple, played on an Apple video game system. Now would it be over priced? Probably. Would it sell? No idea. But I would imagine it might be like the Neo-Geo was. A system that was appropriately priced for what it did, but too expensive for most people, causing the market to not accept it. Edit: So I Googled IGame, and was scared to see that last April there was information about a gaming system from Apple...it was on April 1st. Hears hoping we'll have a real announcement in the future.  |
God of War and Heavenly Sword04/06/2011 02:43 PM My PS2 Past  When I was younger I owned a PS2. I had a few good games for it but unfortunately it was an early model and the laser died after a few years and I just decided to get rid of all the games I had. Soon after I got rid of it a bunch of really good games came out for it, and a few classics went on sale. One of those games was God of War. Recently I got a PS3 from a friend of mine, and my dream had finally came true, I was going to play God of War, and God of War 2. Two games that I heard so much about but had never myself played.I wasn't living under a rock, I knew what God of War was about (or at least the basic story) and I knew what kind of game it was. I had also seen friends play parts of the series, but I my self had never played it. I realize the game is relatively old (PS2 remember), and I know that there are a bunch of reviews of the series already, but I wanted to get out there what my opinion of it was, pros, cons, and then compare it to another game that is similar which is Heavenly Sword for the PS3 (again the comparison has probably been made) Spoiler Alert!!!  Now in the present day, the city of Athens is being destroyed by Ares, and Kratos goes, guided by the other gods, to kill Ares. He does this by acquiring Pandora's Box. After eventually killing Ares, Kratos decides to kill him self by jumping off the cliff we saw at the beginning of the game. The gods save him and make him the new god of war. (end of GOW 1) God of War 2  GOW Likes What I loved about the GOW series (the 2 I played) is the story, and the back story. I wanted to know more about Kratos, where he was from, what he did while enslaved to Ares, more about his battles as a mortal. It was all very epic, and very theatrical. The game it self had a 300 feel, which was good, not necessarily accurate but good. The game play was great, very violent, over the top in some places, but still very rewarding. It makes it almost believable that I single person could take down a huge monster, if done in stages like the game does. The quick time events were good, but at times made it difficult to enjoy the action going around, I was just concentrated on pressing the button at the right time. One other thing I loved was the bonus content. There were making of videos, and other behind the scenes videos that shows all the work that went into the game. The graphics were not that bad either for a 6 year old game, upgraded to HD graphics. The puzzles are challenging, but are doable. The extra challenges and God mode difficulty on the other hand were too much for me on my first play through. The music was very well done, it always set the mood for what every is coming. And the voice acting is pretty good. As I said earlier it is more of a theatrical experience when it comes to the videos and cut scenes. GOW Dislikes What did I not like about the GOW series? For me there isn't much, but others may not like it. I understand the game is very violent, very violent. And the game isn't accurate to the Greek mythology, not that I'm into that kind of thing. The second GOW is a little more boring, partially because there wasn't much new information about Kratos's past because we explored so much of it in GOW 1. And the replay value is a little lacking, but it always will be for these kind of linear games. There is added difficulty after you beat the game, but the second play through is the same as the first, with the exception of GOW 2 where you can turn on special cheat codes if you've earned them. Heavenly Sword After beating GOW 1 and 2 I choose to play Heavenly Sword, a game that I knew would be similar to GOW but I didn't know too much about it. I played the demo in game stores when it first came out, so I knew the gameplay would be similar.  Throughout the game alot of things remind me of GOW. But I discover and enjoy some of the differences. In HS (Heavenly Sword) you play as one of two characters and switch back and forth throughout the game. When you play as Nariko the game play is similar to GOW in that it has button combos and you swing around your swords in acrobatic moves. But HS differs from GOW in that there isn't a magic bar with spells, instead you hold a button for quick attacks, a different button for powerful attacks, and no buttons for normal attacks. This becomes critical because to block an enemy you need to be holding the appropriate quick button, or hard buttons. HS also has you playing as Kai, who doesn't attack with swords, but instead a crossbow. The neat thing is that you can control her arrow in mid air, and you can turn off the 6-axis controller so you can just use the analog stick. HS starts in a similar way to GOW. You start the game at the end, then work your way back. You begin with a huge army around surrounding you. After mashing some buttons huge waves of guys start dying, and flying around like rag dolls. After a little while you die for seemingly no reason, then you get taken over by this sword with odd writing all of you, then you are apparently in Heaven, where you begin the game 5 days earlier. In HS you are a member of a clan that protects the heavenly sword. A sword that a warrior brought out of the heavens in the time of the great need. Once the warrior defeated the enemy he left his sword. The clan that you are a part of has the responsibility to protect the sword because of its great power. However anyone that uses the sword will have their life drained. So Nariko ends up using the sword in an attempt to save her father from the evil King Bohan, who is using her father to get to the sword. As she works her way closer to him she meets and defeats several of his lackeys. As mentioned before you also play as Kai some of the time as well which is good for variety. Eventually King Bohan catches up to the clan, and he sends all of his army at you. With the power of the sword Nariko takes out wave after wave of men until she falls to the sword's draining powers (this is the opening fight where she dies). Nariko then reasons with the sword, which is now more like a god, and explains how she can beat him and that she needs time, and that the sword would just be taken up by Bohan as a trophy never to be used again. So Nariko gets another chance and goes down to finish off Bohan. Nariko saves the village and then dies, leaving the clan in peace with Kai. HS Likes Some of the things I love about HS is again the bonus content. There are some making of videos, and interviews with the game designers that is very interesting. The game is beautiful. The environments are very huge and you can see for a very long distance making it easier to appreciate the beauty in the game. The models contain tons of details. During the cut scenes you see so many different ways that the faces are animated to look so life like. HS is very epic in that it feels like a movie, like a high budget production, with high quality music composure, sound effects and top notch acting. The actors they used had to go through some of the most in depth motion capture I've ever seen. The number of enemies on the screen at one time can be in the thousands. It is the best graphics I have seen in a video game ever, but they are only 720 not 1080.  There are also some puzzles (not as many or as complicated as GOW), but still rewarding. I have to put this in one of the things I liked. Nariko is alot nicer to look at for several hours than Kratos, just saying. HS Dislikes Things I don't like? The bulk of the fighting is done by Nariko, and most of her battles can be won with simple button mashing. I like the whole block and counter mechanism but I still would have liked having some kind of magic meter with spells like GOW. HS has quick time events, but here they are alot less forgiving. I found my self some times messing up the quick time event in a boss battle, and every time I got it wrong the enemies health would fully replenish. It also felt a little short, I think I beat it in around 7 hours. The game started getting repetitive because of the fighting mechanic so I'm kinda glad it didn't drag out for 30 hours, but the story and cut scenes were interesting enough that they were like little rewards, and it could have been twice as long and it would have been okay. Both GOW and HS had great story telling, but I was more drawn to GOW possibly because of all the back story and mystery around Kratos. Conclusion GOW and HS are both great games. The amount of time and money that went into them were no doubt tremendous. They both make great games, in terms of their story telling and game play. If I had to recommend one over the other it would be for GOW no doubt. But that is partially because there is a running series with GOW, while the HS squeal has not had any serious discussion. Also to be fair, the genre that HS was likely made popular by the GOW games that came before it. Some have even said that HS was attempting to copy GOW in some of the game's mechanisms. I think other games are more blatant rip offs of GOW (I'm looking at you Dante's Inferno), which don't add much of anything to the genre, where at least HS has some new game play mechanics, and new story telling methods.  |
