Kinect and Processing

I'd received an Xbox Kinect for Christmas just for the purpose of trying to hack it. Only until very recently I had the time to be able to work on it.  I know that Microsoft had released the SDK for the Kinect, but I find trying to write C# code without having a decent understanding of the hardware can be a real problem. So I looked for alternatives  just until I got a better understanding of some of the Kinect's features. So, I did some poking around, trying to find some alternatives to Microsoft studio. I went back to OpenCV to see if they had come up with a Kinect add on to their incredible library. Much to my dismay, they had yet to create and add one to their libraries.I did however find that their is an open source library that was made for processing. There were two libraries I found, and only one that would actually work for Windows. The library is called OpenNUI for you Windows users, and if you own a Mac, the library you should look for is called simpleKinect. The processing library makes available all the cool features for the kinect, skeleton and hand tracking, infrared depth images and all sorts of other things. I hope to be able to dome really cool things with this. I'm already working on a price of facial recognition software and more intricate hand tracking, including giving the hand its own skeleton model.

Electronics 101: What is electricity?

Hello, this is the first in the series of electronics 101. Check it out if you've ever had any curiosity about the inner workings of electronics or just interested in the pursuit of knowledge. If you guys have any questions, please put them in the comment box or email them to johnnywasascientist@gmail.com with the phrase "Electronics 101 Questions" in the subject line.

Learning AVR-C Episode 1: Introduction

This is the first in the series of videos where we go over the programming of AVR-C. Today we look at the hardware necessary to get started. WARNING, this is an advanced tutorial.

Arduino Tutorial #1 (Hardware)

I'm back, and I thought I'd kick off my return with my new and shiny Arduino. I'm still working with the second revision, but everything I'm going to go through is exactly the same. Enjoy.

Future Schedule

I know that it has been a LONG time since I've last posted a video, about 1 year, but I'm back and ready to o again. I just wanted to publish a schedule that you can expect I follow with a fair amount of strictness. Please be aware that it takes time to write out what I'm going to do, film, record audio, edit, then put together in a cogent manner, so if I miss one day, don't be alarmed. Depending on how long and involved each video is, or how much is going on at school might have an impact on the schedule as well. With that in mind, lets get the the schedule.

Monday: Electronics 101

Wednesday: Arduino Tutorials

Friday: AVR-C

---Next Week---

Monday: On a Breadboard

Wednesday: Netduino Tutorials

diyServer

I've always had a fascination with how the internet works. I just find it so amazing how everyday, people log in, go to, visit, browse and download information through this complex set of tubes we call the internet. diyServer, is my attempt to go into that process. What it is, is a simple piece of software that allows a standard computer to behave as a server. It's still in its basic stages but it can currently handle at least 5 simultaneous requests from different browsers. It is able to serve html files with pictures and downloads. I'm still trying to make it HTML 5 compatible, sending javascript files is proving to be a pain, along with some form of authentication for log ins, and more advanced browser requests.

Check it out.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/diyserver/files/

humanHardDrive Lives!

It's been almost one year since my last set of video posts, due to school, robotics and college, but know I'm back. I've already got a lot of new videos set for the future, and the frequency of posts is going to be about one every other day. Enjoy.

HAUS

HAUS stands for Home Automation and Unification System. This was my Senior Capstone project for high school. The concept of the project was to take to idea of home automation and integrate it with the idea of a smart home. It came to my attention as I was finishing the project that it wouldn't be a bad idea to try and make the project open source. So that's what I did.

http://hausinitiative.wikia.com/wiki/Haus_Initiative_Wiki

The HAUS Initiative looks at all of the work I've done thus far, all of the previous designs, road bumps and success and lets someone else build their own and modify it to their own needs. All of the parts fairly easily available. All of the software is available and open for modification. I'm hoping that someone takes interest in this and makes something even greater than I had ever hoped.