Time Lapse photography/filming is a technique to show very slow processes. It is the opposite of high speed video. Everything is shown a lot faster then it actually happens. To make a time-lapse video you take a picture every n seconds and merge them to a video. If you take a picture every 5 seconds and put them in a 25fps video the speed increase is 5×25 = 125x. More information on Timelapse can be found on Wikipedia.
Timelapse video of clouds. Made using MFTimelapse with 5 second interval and a Samsung ES15.
There are camera’s that have a time-lapse function build in. This is of course the easiest method. There is only one drawback. Making a time-lapse video is not good for your camera. For a short video you’re making thousands of photos, for each photo the shutter has to open and close. Therefore your camera will wear out very vast.
You see them more and more, on phones, computers, MP4 players, etc. Widgets. And I think it’s logical becouse the user can now choose what he or she has on her display.
I tought it would be usefull to have some sort of Widget system on .NET Micro Framework. An example: a termostat has multiple sensors for humidity, min/max/current temperature, etc. Some users find the humidity very important but others are more interested in the minimum temperature. With Widgets they can choose what to see directly.
I introduced it before, MFBrix, a simple ball game written to test out the new board from GHI, The ChipworkX. It uses the onboard acceleration sensor and onboard MP3/Midi decoder.
The object of the game is to remove all purple bricks by bumping into them. But you have limited time to do this. And if you would bump into a red block you loose 5 seconds.. The game has 5 levels/rounds. Each level getting a little harder.
Ofcourse there is some room for improvement, so if you find this a fun project you could add new levels, add a highscore system, download levels from the internet, you name it!
Youtube movie:
You can watch a movie of the game below:
Download:
You can download the Visual Studio 2008 solution: MFBallV2.zip
I want to write a simple but fun app that could showcase/test the functions of the new ChipworkX board. I tought of a simple ball game that could be controlled by moving the board. This is done trough the onboard BMA020 accelerator sensor.
It took me some time to figure out how to do the collision detection but I have an initial version ready. The idea of the game? You have to blast away the purple bricks in the game without touching the red bricks. I’ve done some testing and it’s harder then you think
The game isn’t ready yet. The video/source is as demonstration only! The red walls don’t harm you yet and there is only one level. When it’s finished I will upload it to microframeworkprojects.com
You can whatch a YouTube video below:
And download the Visual Studio 2008 solution: MFBall.zip
Just before I started with my DreamQuest project I was working on a project called HomeTerm. HomeTerm is a web-enabled thermostat. The idea is that you have your HomeTerm device at home controlling the temperature just like a normal thermostat but with the added bennefits of the Internet.
You can control and monitor the temperature of your room from almost anywhere. You can enter a detailed temperature plan from the comfort of your computer. Also detailed graphs are available for temperature and humidity.
I have a Meridan/P from Device Solutions but never given it a propper introduction. The Meridan/P has the same connections and powerfull functions as it’s bigger brother the Tahoe II but in a smaller package (50mm x 50mm). It lacks the screen and the ethernet connection but both can be added externaly should be needed. The pinout of the connectors match up with the connectors on the Tahoe II so converting your project to this new board is easy!
I use the Meridan/P in my HomeTerm project now as external temperature sensor. The baseboard (Tahoe II) is connected to the Meridan/P with Xbee. The Meridan/P also controls an RGB LED matrix allowing you to put the temperature sensor in sight. The baseboard sends the current time and external temperature from Yahoo Weather to the Meridan/P and in response to that it sends the current room temperature back.
As promissed in the last blog item i’m releasing the sourcecode of the basic interpeter that is used in DreamQuest. I’ve called it MFBasic and made a logo for it
Not all functions that are available in the DreamQuest version are available (Mostly math functions) are available yet. I didn’t want MFBasic need other libraries. I will recreate those functions later.
It’s released with a GPLv2 licence meaning that you may use the code in your projects (also commercial) but you have to release the code of that creation. If you want to use MFBasic in a closed source project you can contact me trough the contact form.
Some of the supported features:
WHILE -> WEND
IF, ELSE, ENDIF
FOR -> NEXT, STEP
Line numbers of QBasic like labels
Custom variable names (Variables ending with $ are string variables others are considered floating point)
Easy to create custom functions
Basic sourcecode is precompiled to run faster
It’s in alpha state right now.. I’m currently working on a State storage to store and restore current running state. Also I will add more functions and hopefully implement arrays
It’s been a long time since my last blog, I know, I have been consumed by my work and moving to my new appartment. But now I have some happy news, I submitted my video for the Dare To Dream Different Challange and I also want to share it with everybody.
The project is called DreamQuest. As you can see in the video it’s based on the hobby of geocaching. With Geocaching people hide objects or letters and then share the GPS location. The object or letter gives a clue what to do next.
You can imagine that hiding stuff in the middle of a city centre can be difficult and not very vandalism proof. Here comes DreamQuest to the rescue. DreamQuest is a mobile device with an internet connection and GPS reciever made to do one thing, run Quests. A Quest consists of information, questions, points-of-interest and a script to glue everything together.
You can design and share your own Quests. The script is made in a simple but powerfull Basic language. This script controls when items appear or hide. This can be done based on location, time, distance, answered questions, etc. etc. You are in full control!
I will release the sourcecode of the project and the basic interpeter as soon as possible!
Our world now a days wouldn’t be posible without the Internet. More and more devices get a web interface. Some available to the end user as a webpage the other as webservices (SOAP eg.). To aid in creating this web interfaces I created a multithreaded webserver class for .NET Micro Framework.
It’s very easy to use but provides a great deal of flexibilty. To see how to use it and for more details go to the project page, here you can download the class and see the source of the example program.
Hope you like it. Comment’s are greatly appricated!
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